Tomorrow's Vengeance

THREE

‘Today’s 55-and-over retirement communities are not your grandmother’s nursing home. You walk into a stunning lobby with beautiful lighting and carpeting, and there’s an art gallery and a restaurant, just like a fine hotel. Some offer everything from entertainment centers with theater seating, videogames and computers, to state-of-the-art gyms with personal trainers where residents can take age-modified Zumba or belly-dancing classes. Some communities have dog parks so that family pets can also feel right at home.’

Annapolis Gazette, March 28, 2013, Section B, p. 2.

Directly over a pair of tall walnut doors, whose frosted windows had been replaced with leaded glass, hung a modest sign painted in incised gold capitals on a tasteful blue shield: ‘Blackwalnut Hall.’ Below, in smaller font, visitors were instructed to kindly check in at reception.

I straight-armed my way through the door, stepped into the lobby and slammed on the brakes. What had once been a dark, claustrophobic gallery where bygone priests had sat, smoked and read such runaway bestsellers as the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, had been transformed into a bright reception area. Light poured into the space from floor-to-ceiling windows, in front of which a double-wide staircase with carved wooden balustrades curved gently up to a mezzanine.

To my right, just beyond the reception desk – which remained where it had always been – an enormous stone fireplace rose like a rockslide, dominating the far end of the lobby, its chimney disappearing into the open rafters. Clustered around the hearth were conversational groupings of comfortable, overstuffed furniture, arranged on oriental carpets the size of your average three-car garage. All around, large, high-quality landscape oils in elaborate gilt frames decorated the wainscotting, which had been painted a warm vanilla.

I whistled softly. The decorators had bought big time into the ‘open-concept’ idea I kept hearing about on HGTV. Blackwalnut Hall reminded me of a ski lodge I’d once visited in Vail, Colorado.

But what really took my breath away was the fish tank. Nestled in the curve of the staircase, it consisted of a cylinder at least ten feet in diameter and perhaps twice as tall, embellished at the base with elaborate wrought-iron scroll work. Outside of the National Aquarium in Baltimore and some kook in his garage on the Discovery Channel, I had never seen a fish tank so huge. Surrounding the tank were two semi-circular, highly polished walnut benches. A gentleman sat on one of them, his back to me, staring into the crystal-clear water where yellow tangs, electric-blue damsels, orange-and-white clownfish (hello Nemo!), a couple of angelfish and – I squinted – yes, even a lionfish now swam. I stepped forward for a closer look. ‘Was that a…?’ I started to ask the seated gentleman, but I was interrupted.

‘May I help you?’ someone loudly inquired.

‘Sorry,’ I said, turning toward the woman behind the reception desk. ‘I was mesmerized by the fish tank, I’m afraid.’

‘It happens to everyone the first time they see it. Spectacular, isn’t it?’

I had to agree. ‘It knocked my eyes out. I’m here to meet Nadine Gray,’ I told her.

The woman consulted a computer screen on the desk in front of her. ‘Right. Mrs Gray called ahead and told us to expect you, Mrs Ives. Would you mind signing in?’

On the highly polished walnut counter an iPad-like device was mounted on a swivel stand. She turned the screen in my direction, and I used the stylus she provided to scrawl a signature in the box after my name. ‘Thanks,’ I told her. ‘I think I’ll wait over by the fish.’

I settled down on one of the benches and stared into the tank, half expecting a shark or a killer whale to make an appearance. As if it knew what I was thinking, an eel poked his snake-like head out from behind a sea fan and bared its teeth at me.

‘Zen-like, isn’t it?’ a nearby voice rasped. It belonged to the gentleman I’d noticed earlier. In his mid-seventies, I guessed, dressed in a blue, button-down oxford cloth shirt neatly tucked into a pair of khaki shorts, and secured with a Smathers & Branson needlepoint belt with elephants and martini glasses stitched into it. White socks stuck out of the toes of his sandals.

‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘I could watch sea grass undulate for hours.’

‘They cleaned it the other day,’ the old man advised me.

I figured he meant the tank. ‘Oh, yes?’

He nodded, raising one of the grizzled, fly-away eyebrows that shaded his eyes like awnings. ‘Sent two divers down. Masks, fins and all. Extraordinary.’ After a moment he added, ‘But everything about this place is extraordinary.’

‘It’s my first visit,’ I told him.

His gray eyes fixed on me and moved slowly up and down. ‘Checking out one of the town homes, I imagine?’

‘Let’s just say I’m casing the joint.’

‘Well, you’d better hurry, young lady, because from what I hear they’re selling like hotcakes.’

Young lady. Nobody’d called me that since George Bush was president. The first one. I was a grandmother three times over. ‘I’ll give it some thought,’ I said with a smile before turning back to my in-depth study of the fish.

‘I see you’ve already met Colonel Greene,’ Naddie chirped from behind me a few stress-free minutes later.

I swiveled on the bench, smiled, and patted the empty space next to me. ‘The colonel and I have been discussing aquaculture.’ It didn’t surprise me to find out that the man was a veteran. His ‘high and tight’ buzzcut was a dead giveaway.

‘Get a room!’ boomed the colonel, making me jump.

I followed his gaze. A pair of mature gouramis floated by engaged in a lip lock.

Naddie leaned forward, addressing our companion. ‘They’re not kissing,’ she explained gently. ‘They’re having a discussion over territory.’

He considered her with steel-gray eyes. ‘Humph.’

I imagined the colonel wasn’t used to being contradicted.

After introducing us formally – Hannah, Nate, Nate, Hannah – Naddie sat down between Nate and me and asked, ‘How’s Sally, Colonel?’

‘Took off in the golf cart after lunch and I haven’t seen her since. Damn fool game, if you ask me.’

‘Golf?’ I was surprised since an article in the local newspaper had mentioned that construction of the Calvert Colony club house and a nine-hole golf course was on hold pending Anne Arundel County approval of the developer’s plans for sediment containment in Blackwalnut Creek.

‘Bingo,’ he barked. ‘Every Wednesday at one-thirty. The woman is insane.’

Thinking about the spa’s deep pockets, I said, ‘I imagine there are some excellent prizes.’

‘Oh, sure. Bottles of wine, movie tickets, Macy’s gift certificates…’ Nate paused to draw breath. ‘Last week she won a Brazilian wax job. Now what in hell is Sally going to do with that, I ask you?’

Next to me Naddie snorted, and I realized she was stifling a laugh. ‘Be nice, Nate,’ she scolded gently after she had sufficiently recovered. ‘The grand prize this week is a Circle Line River Cruise for two. You have to admit that would be pretty cool.’

The colonel shrugged. ‘Not much of a cruise man, myself.’

‘I’ll go with Sally, then,’ I teased. ‘I love to cruise.’

Colonel Greene suddenly shifted on the bench and braced an arm against the seat, preparing to stand. ‘Where are my manners? Would you like a tour, Miss? Miss… Sorry. I’ve already forgotten your name.’

‘It’s Hannah,’ I said. ‘Hannah Ives. I would…’ I started to say, but Naddie interrupted, raising a hand. ‘No need, Nate. I’m planning to take Hannah around.’

Colonel Greene had the good manners to look crestfallen. Then he winked michievously. ‘Just when I was about to invite Hannah up to look at my etchings.’ He jabbed a finger ceiling-ward, in the direction of the mezzanine. ‘My apartment’s up there. Second floor. Wife and I were going to buy into one of the town homes like Naddie here, but when Adele passed I thought the apartment was a better idea.’ He waggled his extraordinary eyebrows. ‘I’d be happy to show it to you.’

Naddie and I stood, and she looped her arm through mine. ‘Behave yourself, Colonel,’ she chided cheerfully. ‘Hannah’s a married woman.’

He grinned. ‘Can’t blame an old guy for trying.’

‘Come on, Hannah, let’s get the keys.’

‘Old guys rule,’ the colonel said, giving me a big thumbs up. When I caught sight of him again a few minutes later, he stood ramrod straight next to the fireplace, flirting with a well-dressed woman more his own age.

Naddie collected the keys from the receptionist and steered me toward the staircase, giving the lecherous Colonel Greene wide berth. ‘We have model apartments set up to show perspective residents, so there’s no need to bother Nate.’

I grinned. ‘He didn’t sound bothered to me.’ I paused as a thought occurred to me. ‘If Adele is his late wife, who is Sally?’

‘His girlfriend,’ Naddie said. ‘One of several, actually. Stairs, or would you prefer the elevator?’

‘Stairs, I think,’ I said, aiming myself in that direction.

Naddie paused, resting one hand on the crystal globe that capped the newel post. ‘You have to watch out for Nate. He tried it on with me, too. Don’t know why he thinks I’m going to fall quivering at the feet of some superannuated dude who refers both to himself and to his, how shall I put this, “equipment,” as Easy Rider.’

I stared at my friend for a moment, thinking I’d misheard. Then I started to giggle.

‘He fancies himself as Peter Fonda.’ She tossed the words over her shoulder as she headed upstairs. ‘As if.’

I followed, pausing about halfway to look down, appreciating the broad sweep of the magnificent staircase. ‘I keep expecting to meet Scarlet O’Hara. Or Rhett Butler.’

Naddie chuckled. ‘It is grand in every sense of the word, isn’t it? And check out the view.’

While the windows did not face the bay – the front porch had captured that honor – the landscape architect had more than made up for it. Framed in the Palladian window was a classic rose garden, dominated by a Venetian-style fountain topped by a cherub. Water tumbled cheerfully out of the cherub’s tilted urn, cascading over a wedding cake of increasingly larger basins. Just beyond the fountain an opening in a hedge led to another garden, this one more Japanese in style. If I squinted, I could just make out the circular outline of a meditation maze in the far distance. I made a mental note to check it out the next time I felt stressed.

‘Getting back to Colonel Greene for a moment,’ Naddie commented as we reached the top of the stairs. ‘Women at Calvert Colony outnumber the men three to one. While Adele was alive, she kept him on a short leash, but now…’ She put the thought out there, then let it lie. ‘Fortunately, all the ladies seem to love him. He probably thinks he’s died and gone to heaven.’

‘He’s attractive for an older guy. Tall, slim, cleancut.’ Colonel Nathan Greene reminded me a little of my father, actually, who had retired from the navy, but not from a lifetime habit of keeping himself perpetually prepared to pass any navy physical fitness assessment. Captain George Alexander, USN, retired, was so fit he put the rest of our family to shame.

‘Nate works out every day in the Paradiso fitness center with Norman Salterelli,’ Naddie added.

‘Ah, Norman!’ I mused. ‘That trainer with abs from here to eternity. Dangerous.’

Naddie leaned closer and whispered, ‘I hear Nate buys Viagra in bulk from a mail-order house in Canada, so I like to keep my distance.’

‘Mr Easy Rider’s not exactly my type,’ I said with a laugh. ‘Fabulous etchings or not, and the Viagra information is a little scary.’

We’d reached the balcony. With both hands on the railing, I leaned over and peered down into the aquamarine depths of the aquarium. ‘Reminds me of the coral reef off that place we rented in the Bahamas while Paul was on sabbatical,’ I said. ‘Gorgeous. I could so dive in right now.’

‘Do it while you can,’ Naddie teased. ‘The aquarium’s another work in progress, I’m afraid. Eventually there’ll be a cone-shaped cap over the top. Fancy ornamental ironwork, like the base, with a hinged panel so the divers can get in and out. It’s being manufactured by some company out in Las Vegas. The first one they sent out didn’t fit.’

‘Alas, I forgot my mask and snorkel,’ I said, leaning closer. ‘Who on earth maintains the tank? It’s not like you can just toss in a bucket of water and make a few sweeps around the inside of the glass with an algae pad now and again.’

‘We have an arrangement with the National Aquarium in Baltimore,’ Naddie explained.

We passed through another comfortably furnished seating area and strolled down a corridor where original oils and watercolors hung on both sides. When I stopped to admire one, Naddie said, ‘We encourage residents to bring their art work with them when they move in. If there isn’t room in their apartment, the decorator hangs the work up in one of the lounges or in the hallway.’ She tugged on the frame of a still life with fruit and dead, drooping ducks. It didn’t budge. ‘Although security is pretty tight, it’s best to be safe.’

As we moved along the hallway, I thought I recognized a Dürer etching, a Dali print – melting pocket watches, who else could it be? – and what I was certain was a Miro lithograph, although it could have been a copy.

Naddie paused in front of a door with a doorknocker shaped like the Naval Academy mascot – a goat – and a brass plate engraved with 204. ‘This is a one-bedroom model,’ she told me as she turned the key and pushed open the door. She moved aside to let me pass by.

Although the floor plan was pretty much as I expected – a pocket kitchen with granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances, a living room/dining room combination leading into a bedroom with ensuite bathroom – what I didn’t expect was the décor. Move over Better Homes and Gardens! This was Luxe magazine meets Architectural Digest. It was what a small apartment would look like if George Clooney lived there, or maybe George’s mother. Both the living and bedroom windows framed the Chesapeake Bay; Mrs Clooney would like that, I was sure. So did I.

Standing at the foot of the beautifully duveted and accessorized bed, Naddie said, ‘The two-bedroom unit has a room similar to this on the kitchen side, complete with a second bath.’

‘Nice,’ I said, fingering the fine brocade fabric of the drapes.

‘You could use it for a guest room, Hannah, or even an office.’

‘Not quite ready for that yet.’ I smiled, thinking about the home Paul and I shared on Prince George Street in the historic district of Annapolis. ‘We’ve got four bedrooms. No way could I downsize to this extent.’

‘I think you’ll like the town homes, though. I’ll show you mine in a couple of days, as soon as the decorator’s finished. We’re hanging wallpaper.’

‘Not ready for a town home, either, Naddie.’ I opened the closet and poked my head in. Built-in shoe cubbies, for heaven’s sake. ‘We still need space for the grandkids to run around.’

Naddie frowned. ‘Children aren’t allowed at Calvert Colony.’

My head snapped around. ‘Seriously?’

‘Fifty-five and older. The covenant is strict about that.’ Her face softened. ‘The grands and great-grands can visit, of course, for up to thirty days each year. That’s enough time for most old folks! But nobody with children can actually live here year round.’

‘What if the parents died and the grandparents had to take the kids in?’

She shrugged. ‘They’d have to move out, of course.’

I stared hard at my friend, who I knew had grandchildren of her own. ‘That’s harsh,’ I said cooly.

Naddie smiled. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Hannah. I’m as besotted as the next granny with my grandbabies, but there’s a reason Mother Nature cuts us off while we’re still in our forties. Women of a certain age aren’t designed to pack lunches, run carpools and change two poopy diapers before six a.m.’

I laughed out loud.

‘Seriously,’ she continued as she led me into the hallway and pulled the apartment door firmly shut behind us, ‘they come, they visit, then their parents take them home again. Works for me.’ She touched my arm. ‘Want to see the two-bedroom suite?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m sure it’s lovely.’ I paused, then took a breath. ‘Are you trying to twist my arm by any chance?’

She blushed, all wide-eyed innocence. ‘Who, me?’

As we swept down the staircase like teenage girls on prom night, Naddie explained that the wing we had just visited was for independent living. ‘The residents in the opposite wing require various levels of physical and mental assistance, although it’s colony policy to integrate the differently abled populations, even those residents suffering from mild dementia. Everyone generally dines together,’ she added, ‘at least until they start spilling soup down their shirts or shouting obscenities. Come, let me show you.’

On our way to the dining hall we passed a library, a room filled with computers and a lounge dominated by a giant, flat-screen television. Two women were gyrating in front of the screen, giving their hand controls a workout. ‘Wii,’ Naddie prompted when I paused in front of the open door.

‘Bowling?’ I said.

She nodded. ‘Baseball and tennis, too. Good for hand-eye coordination.’

One of the ladies had evidently made a strike as she began jumping up and down, squealing with delight, while her companion drummed out a two-fisted congratulations on her back. We moved on, past a bank where nobody was doing any business and an ice-cream parlor where everybody was. Half-a-dozen people sat on vintage heart-backed soda fountain chairs at small round tables enjoying make-your-own sundaes under a sign shaped like a giant waffle cone that said ‘Sweet Tooth.’

Although I distinctly heard a tub of rum-and-raisin ice cream calling my name, I scurried along after Naddie, who was waiting for me at the door to the dining room. She pushed it open. ‘We’re between lunch and dinner. Doesn’t it look nice?’

Tables for two, four or six diners had already been set with white linen tablecloths and napkins, quality china, proper silver and glassware. ‘Wine glasses,’ I noted, nodding my approval.

‘Of course,’ Naddie said. ‘There’s a private dining room adjoining this one that seats twelve, in case you want to invite your family to join you for special occasions. And we have a full-service bar, too, called The Tidewater.’ She yoo-hooed to an attractive blonde dressed in a navy blue suit and a crisp white blouse who was seated at a table near the kitchen door, poring over some papers. The woman glanced up from the ledger she was working on, grinned and walked over to us. When she got closer, I saw she was in her early thirties, about my daughter, Emily’s age. Her hair was rolled into a twist at the top of her head and secured with a tortoiseshell claw.

‘Hello, Mrs Gray.’

‘We’re just passing through, Filomena. This is an old friend of mine, Hannah Ives. Hannah, I’d like you to meet Filomena Buccho. She’s the catering manager.’

I extended my hand and Filomena took it in her small, cold one, squeezing gently. She considered me with cool blue eyes. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Ives. Will you be joining us for dinner?’

‘No, thank you,’ I smiled. ‘Perhaps another time.’

‘Accent?’ I asked Naddie after we’d bid Filomena goodbye and were breezing through the well-appointed, wood-paneled bar, out of earshot.

‘Spanish, from Argentina. Buenos Aires, as I recall. Her younger brother, Raniero, is our chef.’

‘How fortunate to have a matched set,’ I teased.

‘Well, exactly. I only hope we can hold on to them. Raniero is fantastic! I know you’re busy today but won’t you come to lunch tomorrow? See for yourself?’

I consulted my mental calendar. Other than a trip to Wegman’s – The bakery! The buffet! The sushi! – my days were embarrassingly free. Paul would be leaving shortly on a summer sailing trip with the Naval Academy midshipman, so I would be more or less on my own.

‘I’d be delighted,’ I told her.

‘Good. Now, here’s the library.’

A woman I took to be a librarian was seated in an upholstered armchair behind an elegant Hepplewhite writing desk reading a Kindle. After we were introduced she gave us a quick tour of the shelves which were arranged broadly by topic – romance, mystery, history and biography – in alphabetical order by author. ‘We keep the collection fresh and up to date by using a subscription service,’ the librarian told us. ‘Our residents have access to all the recent bestsellers that way, although I have to say that the self-help books are our most popular items. And large print, too, of course, although some of our residents have graduated to e-readers so they can make the font as big as they want.’ She pointed to the Kindle on her desk. ‘In fact, I was downloading a book for one of them when you came in.

‘And this,’ she said with a slight dramatic bow, ‘is our pièce de résistance.’ She pushed through a swinging door that led into an adjoining room. ‘Behold! The computer room!’

Eight iMac desktop machines sat on tabletops, two of which were high enough to accommodate wheelchairs. ‘Calvert Colony is totally wireless, of course,’ the librarian explained, ‘and some of our residents have laptops in their rooms, but even then, they sometimes need a bit of assistance when it comes to email and Skyping. And when tax time rolls around, volunteers are kept super busy down here helping out with TurboTax, as you can imagine.’

Two residents who had been typing, one slowly, the other more proficiently, looked up curiously, then went back to tapping the keyboards.

At the far end of the room, a woman dressed in black slacks and a bulky red sweater, presumably to ward off the chill of the air conditioning, seemed to be carrying on a conversation with someone on the screen; her son, I gathered when I wandered over and leaned in casually for a closer look. The guy was in his thirties, wearing a gray T-shirt and a baseball cap turned backwards. The woman, who had combs shoved haphazardly into her spare, improbably orange hair, was rattling on about her dog, Winkle, who had been a very good poochie-woochie while having his toenails trimmed earlier in the day. As I eavesdropped, the son nodded indulgently.

‘Residents can have pets?’ I inquired.

‘Of course.’ The librarian smiled. ‘They’re family members, too. To say you can’t bring a family member with you… well, that would be cruel. We even have a vet on call twenty-four seven.’

I was mulling that over, thinking sourly that grandchildren were family members, too, when a new voice trilled, ‘Hannah!’

It belonged to an old friend, Angela McSpadden, one of my on-again, off-again jogging buddies. I hadn’t seen her since we ran together in the Ocean City Komen Race for the Cure to raise money for breast cancer research the previous April. ‘Angie! What are you doing here?’

Angie, I knew, had only recently achieved the Big Five-Oh, so unless she’d divorced Bill McSpadden and married an aging sugar daddy she wouldn’t yet qualify to live in the colony.

‘Visiting Mom.’ She nodded in the direction of the woman wearing the red sweater who had moved on from a dissertation on poodle manicures to a spirited discussion of the previous evening’s broadcast of American’s Got Talent. ‘Hi, Mom,’ Angie trilled, waggling her fingers in her mother’s direction.

Her mother frowned, deepening the already prominent lines that furrowed her brow. ‘Go away and leave me alone! Can’t you see I’m busy?’

Angie must have been used to such shabby treatment because she merely smiled and said, ‘Oh, dear. Somebody got up out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.’ She took a deep breath then let it out slowly. ‘Christie’s my mother-in-law, actually. She tries my patience! Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. She spends hours and hours talking to that, that…’ She paused, searching for the appropriate word.

Naddie saved Angie the trouble, cutting in before she could complete the sentence. ‘Have you discussed the situation with her social worker?’

‘Yes. She seems to think it’s harmless enough.’

I’d completely lost the plot. ‘Seems to me that Skyping is a good way to keep in touch with your family,’ I cut in.

‘If only…’ Angie sighed. ‘But that guy isn’t family.’

‘Then who…?’ I asked.

‘She says he’s her boyfriend.’

I was struck momentarily dumb while I processed that information. A woman, eighty years old at least. A young man, clearly on the low side of thirty. ‘But…’ I began.

Angie waved my sentence away. ‘Exactly. Mother says I’m just jealous.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘As if.’

‘I can hear you, Angela!’ her mother-in-law screeched. She flopped back in her chair. ‘Now you’ve done it! I’ve lost the connection.’

Angie lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘They met on Match dot.com. What does that tell you about the website’s screening process?’

‘Maybe the guy lied,’ I suggested. ‘Claimed to be older. It’s been known to happen.’

‘The guy’s a dickwad,’ she snarled.

‘Richard! His name is Richard. Richard Kent.’ Christie blushed to her white roots. ‘But he prefers that I call him Dickie.’ She scowled darkly and began tapping keys, but, judging from the mumbled curses, without much success at restoring the connection.

‘I’ll bet he does,’ Angela muttered under her breath, just loud enough, I calculated, for her mother-in-law to hear. ‘Little Dickie Dickhead.’

Christie bristled. ‘You wouldn’t know true love if it came up and bit you on the butt, Miss Smarty Pants.’ She gestured at the monitor where a beefcake photo of her true love shirtless and flexing his tats was displayed, as big as a screensaver. A blue angel wrapped its wings around Dickie’s right bicep and rays of light shot toward his shoulder where gothic letters spelled out, ‘St Michael the Archangle Defend Me in Battle.’

Angie frowned at the screen. ‘Where is spellcheck when you really need it?’

I stifled a laugh.

‘You just don’t believe that somebody this handsome could want me,’ Christie said.

I suspected Angie’s mother-in-law didn’t have both oars in the water. ‘What do you suppose he does see in her?’ I whispered. ‘Not to cast aspersions on Bill’s Mom, Angie, but she’s got to be fifty years that’s guy’s senior.’

‘And she keeps her teeth in a glass of water by the bed.’ Angie sighed. ‘May-December romance, my foot!’ she hooted. ‘January-December is more like it.’

‘Nobody thought anything of it when Anna Nicole Smith married that oil baron,’ her mother-in-law chimed in. ‘And he was in his nineties. You’re a sexist, Angela, pure and simple.’

‘And look how well that relationship worked out,’ Naddie reminded us. ‘There hadn’t been so much gold digging since 1849. And, in case you’ve forgotten, everyone ended up dead.’

‘The French have a good rule for judging appropriate relationships,’ I said, dredging up from the spot in my brain where arcane facts were stored. ‘Half your age plus seven.’

Angie furrowed her brow, working it out. ‘Mom’s eighty-four and Dickie-boy is thirty-two. So half her age is forty-two, add seven and you get forty-nine. In seventeen years, he’ll be forty-nine, at which time Mom will be one-hundred-and-eleven.’ She rolled her eyes.

Higher math had never been my friend. Just trying to follow along with Angie’s lightning-speed calculations made my head explode. ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I told her with a grin.

‘And it’s none of your beeswax, anyway,’ Angie’s mother-in-law grumbled, pounding on the keyboard with a balled fist as if trying to beat it into submission.

I drew Angie aside, leaned close to her ear and whispered, ‘Dickie can’t get into your mother-in-law’s bank account, can he?’

‘No, thank God. We sold the house and invested the proceeds. She has life interest in a trust which amounts to about a thousand dollars a month. She gets a bit of spending money for bingo, movies, trips to the museum, things like that, but her capital is all sewn up. There’s no way Dickie could clean her out.’

‘That’s a relief.’ I had a sudden thought. ‘Where’s Dickie Skyping from, anyway?’

‘He says he’s in Afghanistan.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘He claims he’s an army vet, working for a government contractor, but who knows. I can see that he’s Skyping from an office – a room with bookshelves, anyway – but he could be anywhere, really.’ Angie clutched her lightweight sweater, drew it more closely around her and shivered. ‘I hope he’s telling the truth about being in Kandahar,’ she said. ‘That’s far enough away for comfort. But what if he’s not? What if he comes calling? I have nightmares about that.’

‘Is he an American?’ Naddie wanted to know.

Lips slightly parted, Angie stared. ‘Except for the atrocious grammar in his emails, his English is perfect. I sort of assumed he was. Why?’

I knew where Naddie was headed. ‘What if he’s after a green card?’ I said.

Angie’s eyes grew wide, then narrowed. ‘Thanks, Hannah. Dickie-boy as my father-in-law, grandfather to my children. I know I shall sleep more soundly just thinking about that.’

I snaked an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. ‘Sorry, Angie. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Angie stared daggers at her mother-in-law. ‘The way I feel right now, Dickie’s welcome to her. False teeth, Depends, and that horrible little dog, too.’