"Thanks." Mary knew it was a concession, since he had to be at school early, and her mood lifted when she looked over to see him smiling. He had a great smile, which came easily to him, and always dressed well, in a sport jacket and white oxford shirt, like a man instead of a boy, and kept his dark wavy hair neat, with long sideburns.
"Hey, look, a s.p.a.ce right in front!" Anthony hit the brakes, flipped on the emergency lights, and grinned. Their street was tree-lined, and one of the most quaint in town. "Told you."
"You live right."
Anthony steered their car into the s.p.a.ce, parked it like an expert, and turned off the ignition. "You say that every time."
"Because it"s true." Mary gathered her bag and messenger bag, got out of the car, and walked to the steps of their old colonial townhouse. It was three stories tall, with black shutters and a brick facade, replete with historic details that Mary adored, like mullioned windows with bubbled gla.s.s and windowsills a foot deep. Every time she came home, she couldn"t believe how lucky she was to live here.
"After you, partner." Anthony unlocked the front door, and Mary flicked on the hall light and dumped her stuff on the chair, while he closed the door, turned the deadbolt, and picked up the mail. Their division of labor was that he sorted mail and she watered plants, then they had decaf tea, went to bed, and watched Jimmy Fallon. Anthony looked up from the thick stack of bills and catalogs. "What"s the deal? We having tea or are you working?"
"I was going to." Mary met his eye, feeling a new tension between them, as if his question were a test. She felt torn between wanting to make him happy and wanting to work. The Gardner case gnawed at the edges of her brain, and she hadn"t finished reading the Google articles yet.
"But it"s a special occasion." Anthony set down the mail without sorting it, and Mary couldn"t help but smile.
"Is that code for partnership s.e.x?"
"Ha!" Anthony laughed. "I"d settle for tea with the love of my life."
"Aw, have one with me instead."
"I"ll take it." Anthony shed his jacket and hung it up, and Mary kicked off her heels, then they headed down the hallway past the empty living room to the kitchen, to which they gravitated, both by nature and necessity. The house didn"t need work, but it needed furniture. They"d ordered a couch, coffee table, and chairs, but were waiting the requisite forever to get it delivered, which bugged Mary no end.
"When are we going to get our living room furniture?"
"You know the answer to that question. After they grow the tree, they cut it down, then mill it, and they have to plant the cotton seeds, pick the cotton, and make it into our dumb fabric, whatever it was called."
"Bargelle."
"Gesundheit."
Mary smiled, padding into the kitchen, which was typically small for the city, but lovely and grown-up, with black granite counters, windowed cabinets, and stainless steel appliances. She could feel her worries about the Gardner case recede as she went to the sink, her favorite spot. During the daytime, a mullioned window over the basin flooded with sunlight, because of its southern exposure, and she was pretty sure she could get tan off the reflection of the refrigerator.
"You having normal or chamomile?" Anthony picked up the tea kettle, then put it on the stove and turned on the burner.
"Normal." Mary grabbed two mugs from the cabinet, then a box of Lipton Tea.
"Nothing but the best, eh?"
"d.a.m.n right. An old-school, flow-through tea bag." Mary went to the drawer, pulled out two napkins, and set them on the round cherrywood table, then crossed to the refrigerator to fetch the Half & Half. Anthony was getting two teaspoons and setting them on the napkins, but she didn"t even have to turn around to know that, their domestic routine was so familiar. "You want anything to eat?"
"G.o.d, no."
"Me, neither."
"How"s your fig tree doing?"
"Lemme check." Mary picked up the pitcher next to the sink, filled it with water, and sprinkled some gently on the fig tree she was starting in a container on the windowsill, next to smaller clay pots of basil, rosemary, and bay leaves, which made her feel as if she actually gardened. Anthony had given her the fig tree, and its young leaves sprouted a fresh yellow-green, too floppy yet to be strong. The figs were still green, too, shaped like miniature hot air balloons.
"Is it your paradise?" Anthony asked, because the tree grew Paradiso, or Genova, figs, allegedly named for an old man in Genova, who used to say, "this is my paradise," when he sat under his fig tree, eating its fruit with bread. Mary had no idea if the story was true, but she loved it just the same.
"Yes, it is my paradise," she answered him, as part of their call and response. "Someday I"m going to be a farmer and have a grove of figs, or an orchard, or whatever you call the whole bunch of fig trees. How great would that be?"
"Great. How are the figs? Can we eat any yet?"
"No, not for a month or so." Mary watered the basil, but happened to glance back and see something bright on a fig leaf at the base of the tree, near the soil. She set down the pitcher, reached out, and plucked it off, only to see that it was a diamond ring. For a minute, she didn"t understand, then she gasped and turned around, astounded to find Anthony behind her on his bended knee, looking up at her.
"Hi, honey," he said, with a shaky smile.
"What?" Mary felt stunned. She held a gold ring with a round, sparkling diamond, but she couldn"t believe her eyes. "What is this?"
"Mary, I love you. You"re my best friend, and you really are the love of my life." Anthony"s deep voice wavered. "More than that, I feel that we are so good together, so close, that we"re somehow, of each other. And that we have, over the years, become each other"s family."
Mary swallowed hard, trying to process what he was saying. Trying to understand how she should react. Trying to figure out what to say. Because what Anthony was saying was so right, and so true, and she loved him to the marrow, but she didn"t know if she was ready to get married.
"You know what I"m saying? You know what I mean? You"re in me, you"re inside, a part of me." Anthony"s hand went to his heart. "In here, and I love who you are and everything you are. You"re sweet, funny, smart, and you"re stronger than you think. And you"re beautiful, too, but you don"t know that, either. You"re my best friend. I understand you and appreciate you, and can make you happy the rest of your life, I promise you that."
Mary felt her eyes fill with tears. It was such a lovely thing to say, and she thought he could, too, but she still didn"t know how to answer him.
"I hope you like the ring, and it"s your size. That"s why I"ve been so cheap lately, I"ve been saving for it."
Mary felt a terrible pang of guilt for the nagging she"d been doing lately about money, the parking situation, and the furniture. She hadn"t realized that he"d been saving for a ring, and the diamond must have cost a fortune. It sparkled like a flashlight and looked gorgeous, about a carat and a half, as big as a meatball.
"I know we didn"t talk about this, but we always said that when you make partner, we"d talk about getting engaged, and now you made partner. In case you"re wondering, I did ask your father and mother for your hand, and they said yes. So did The Tonys."
Mary smiled, touched. She could imagine the scene. There would be tears and hugs, like opera.
"Mary, I would be honored if you would wear that ring and be my wife." Anthony"s dark eyes filmed, and he swallowed hard, his Adam"s apple going up and down above his open collar. "So I have a question to ask you, from my heart. Mary, will you marry me? Because you are my paradise."
Mary held tears in her eyes. She didn"t know what to say. She looked at his expression, so full of hope. She could see his love, too, and felt the truth of his words resonate within her chest. She loved him, too, with all her heart.
"What do you say, honey?" Anthony smiled nervously. "Because my knee can"t take it much longer."
Mary swallowed hard. There was only one answer, whether it was wrong or right.
Chapter Five.
Mary turned over in bed, shifting onto her left side, away from Anthony. The bedroom was dark and still, quiet except for some laughter from the street below, probably people returning from a restaurant or a night out, maybe a married couple, like she and Anthony were about to be. She knew she should be happy, but she wasn"t, then she felt guilty for not being happy, making a club sandwich of guilt.
Mary glanced at the clock, and its glowing red numerals read 3:05, big enough to read without her gla.s.ses or contacts. She shifted upward on the pillow, trying to clear her mind. She listened for Anthony"s soft breathing behind her, the sweet rhythm of human respiration, and though she appreciated the fact that he was alive and breathing, it didn"t help her sleep in the least. In fact, it only reminded her of what a jerk she was for not being over the moon at a proposal from the sweetest guy on the planet. He had been so happy she had accepted, and they had made love, then he had fallen asleep, but she wasn"t going to sleep anytime soon.
She eased the covers off, slid out of bed, and padded naked to the back of the door, where she got her beloved pink chenille bathrobe, slipped it on, and left the bedroom. She went down the hall to her home office, closed the door quietly behind her, and flicked on the light, glancing around with satisfaction. Her home office was a converted bedroom, lined with white bookshelves that held law books, legal treatises, files from her active cases, and dumb stuff from her old room at home, which she couldn"t put anywhere else, like a bulletin board that had her medals from citywide Latin Club compet.i.tion, and next to that were some old photos from high school, one in particular which she went over to see, close-up.
It was a photograph of Mary and her twin sister Angie, the two of them smiling their identical smiles, with identical braces, and even matching gla.s.ses, of hideous paint acetate in an oversize shape that was considered fashionable at the time, especially if you were a hoot owl. They both had on their navy uniforms, complete with old-school black-and-white saddle shoes, an outfit more recently found in amateur p.o.r.n videos. They were grinning ear-to-ear, their faces pressed together, cheek-to-cheek, and their arms were wrapped around each other as if they were trying to merge one into the other, which was their problem, after all.
Mary scanned the photo, thinking about Angie, who had become a nun in order to find herself, or to differentiate herself from her identical twin, or maybe merely to escape from her entirely. Mary and Angie looked identical, but their personalities couldn"t be more different, with Angie the quiet, contemplative version of Mary"s yappy and outgoing nature. In time, Angie had embraced quietness more and more, turning ever inward, so that it seemed not only natural, but inevitable, that she would end up in a cloistered convent, as hard as they were to find after the Renaissance.
Mary swallowed hard, bitter still. She and Angie had been so close for so long, amazingly, for as long as they had been alive, but it had proved too close for Angie, and even when she"d left the convent, had embarked on one faraway mission after the next, the latest in Tanzania, where she couldn"t be reached by phone or email to be told that her twin had just become engaged to be married. As long as Angie was away, Mary would always feel like half of her was missing, but unfortunately, Angie felt whole only when they were apart.
Mary turned away from the photos, went to the desk, sat down, and woke up the computer, squinting against the sudden brightness. She rolled the chair toward the screen because she"d come in without her gla.s.ses, but she was nearsighted and didn"t need them for close reading anyway. She logged onto her email, clicked Compose Mail, and typed in Angie"s name, then stopped. It was an old email address, and she doubted it would work, but that wasn"t what stopped her. In the old days, when they had been close, they told each other everything and were each other"s best friends, even having their own language, the kind of twins that people read about but don"t realize really exist. Mary wondered if Angie remembered any of their special language now, or if they could even talk to each other at all, in any language.
She confronted the blank email, wondering what to say. She wished she could tell Angie how she really felt about getting engaged, how she was happy and terrified both, and that the old Angie was gone and would never come back again, but the lawyer in Mary worried about writing that down anyway. If Anthony happened to use her computer, he would see it.
Mary blinked at the super-bright screen, and the cursor blinked back at her. Then she typed: Dear Angie, I love you and miss you. Me. She stared at the sentence, the black letters so stark against the white screen, until her eyes blurred a little and she sniffled. She had no idea if Angie would get the email, because she"d sent emails before and had only rarely gotten a response, since the village Angie lived in had no electricity, much less Internet, and Mary told herself that was the reason Angie never wrote back. Still she hit Send with a prayer to St. Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes.
Mary"s thoughts turned to Allegra, and her brain shifted gears to work. She navigated onto the Internet, went to Google, plugged in Fiona Gardner, and hit Go. A line of newspaper articles filled the screen, and she clicked on the first one. GARDNER HEIRESS FOUND SLAIN, read the headline, on the Philly News, which was the city"s tabloid newspaper, and the photo under the headline broke Mary"s heart. It was what she"d heard reporters call the "money shot," which was a photo of a body bag being carried on a litter from the Gardner offices and loaded into the open doors of the coroner"s black Econoline Van. Behind the van was a police sawhorse and a crowd, and Mary spotted a much younger Allegra, in her round gla.s.ses, long hair, and a party dress, hugging the waist of a woman who must have been her mother.
Mary palmed her computer mouse, drew a blinking square around Allegra"s little face, and enlarged it, without really knowing why. But the magnification only intensified the graininess in the photograph, because its focus was the body bag in the foreground, and Mary found herself searching the black, blurry circles that were Allegra"s eyes, indistinct and bottomless behind her gla.s.ses. She knew exactly how Allegra felt in that moment, because she had lived that moment herself. The sudden, shocking loss of her husband had hit Mary with the stunning force of a blow to the skull. She would never forget when she"d gotten the news, from the police. Incredulity had both paralyzed and saved her sanity, creating an awful sort of waking unconsciousness; she had lived the next few minutes after she"d heard in the interstices between believing and not-believing that her beloved husband was gone forever.
Mary shook her head to break the spell, clicked Print, and scrolled through the article, which also contained a photo of Fiona Gardner, obviously taken for school, and the sight caught Mary by the throat. She realized she"d had no idea what Fiona looked like, even though the murdered girl was at the center of the case. Fiona was an adorable brunette, with long, wavy hair that looked unstyled, heavy eyebrows that were natural and pretty, and dark, wide-set eyes, which were probably brown, but Mary couldn"t tell the shade from the photo, which was black-and-white. Fiona wasn"t a small, delicate girl like Allegra, and her cheekbones and forehead were large, and her shoulders broad and strong, which gave her a wholesome, athletic appearance. The slight tilt to her head seemed to prove what Allegra had told them, that she had a funny side.
Mary felt heartsick. Seeing Fiona alive only made her more real, and her murder more obscene. Suddenly she wanted to read, copy, and bring into the office every article about the murder. She had four hours before she had to be at work, and she knew it was more than her job that was driving her tonight.
What it was, however, she wasn"t exactly sure.
Chapter Six.
Mary was running late the next morning, after a long and sleepless night, and stepped off the elevator carrying her coffee, purse, briefcase, and an old-school newspaper. She walked through the modern reception area with a blue patterned couch, chairs, and a gla.s.s coffee table with a fan of fresh magazines. Judy and Anne were hanging with Marshall at the front desk, and Mary crossed to them, hiding her ring and trying to figure out a way to tell them that she was somebody"s fiancee. "Good morning, ladies."
Marshall smiled. "Back at you. How come you"re late, you usually beat us all in."
Anne smiled, too, her lipstick freshly pink. "Those days are over, Marshall. She"s our boss now. We might get fired."
"Ha!" Judy looked over. "Mare, want to know how great I am? I went over to Common Pleas Court and ordered us a copy of the Gardner file. It"s being copied."
"Great, thanks." Mary realized that she didn"t want to tell them the news because that would make it real, even though she knew it was real. She hadn"t even called her parents yet, telling herself they wouldn"t be up, which wasn"t true. Her father would be hosing off the front steps, and her mother would be getting home from Ma.s.s, where she"d have said novenas for grandchildren.
Judy sipped her coffee from a styrofoam cup. "Ask me why I"m wearing this dumb outfit."
Mary smiled. Judy had on a white tank, a cropped navy blazer, jeans, and blue clogs, which was fifty colors less than her usual get-up. "Why?"
"Because of where we"re going today."
"Where are we going?" Mary set down her cup, hiding her right hand, with the ring. The diamond looked so showy, and the band felt loose. She had already turned it around so the stone faced her palm, because she didn"t want to get ring-jacked as she walked to work. She"d felt so conspicuous with the big diamond, blinding pa.s.sers-by like a driver with high beams.
"I have a plan of action for us. I was reading the case file, and they had a mountain of evidence against Stall-"
"OH MY G.o.d!" Anne squealed suddenly, finding the ring with time-warp speed. "Mary, seriously? Are you? Is it? What? A ring!"
"Mare, really?" Judy did a double-take, then her blue eyes flew open. "Are you engaged? Oh my G.o.d!"
"Oh my G.o.d!" Marshall leapt to her feet squealing, and Anne was jumping up and down, a neat trick in mules.
"Mary!" Anne shrieked, grabbing Mary"s hand. "Let me see that ring! It"s huge!"
"Mary, it"s so pretty!" Judy burst into happy laughter, then all h.e.l.l broke loose and they went nuts, jumping up and down and screaming, which brought Bennie running into reception in alarm.
"What is it? What"s the matter?"
"Ask Mary!" Anne yelped, and they all parted for Bennie to rush over, her khaki jacket flying open, her stride powerful, and her expression concerned under her curly topknot.
"Are you okay, DiNunzio?"
Mary realized she had to say it out loud. "I"m getting married?"
"Wow!" Bennie threw open her arms, grabbed Mary, and swept her into a big hug, then Judy, Anne, and Marshall joined in, and they were all swirling around like a girl hurricane, and Mary surrendered to their happiness, going along with the atmospheric pressure.
"Mare, Jeez!" Judy brushed her bangs off her face with a palm. "What a surprise!"
"Right?" Mary met her eye. "Did you know?"
"No way, not at all!" Judy grinned. "Jeez, you"re a partner and you"re engaged! Woohoo!"
"I know, right?" Mary smiled, knowing that her best friend would be happy for her, not in the least jealous. Judy had a great boyfriend in Frank Lucia, Pigeon Tony"s grandson, and they were happily living in sin.
"How did he propose?" Judy asked, astonished. "When? What did he do?"
Marshall nodded, excitedly. "Tell us! And when"s the date, and what"s your dress gonna look like?"
"Yeah, tell us everything!" Anne"s eyes lit up, and Marshall sat on the desk and even Bennie formed a little semicircle around Mary, so she began the story and told them every detail.
Everything except how she really felt.
Later, Judy caught up with her in the coffee room, after Bennie and Anne had gone off to trial, and Marshall was back at her desk. The room was small and cozy, ringed by pine cabinets with white countertops, like an office kitchen, which was why Mary gravitated there. Judy popped a Keurig cup into the coffeemaker, hit the Brew b.u.t.ton, and turned to Mary, lifting an eyebrow. "Well?"
"Well what?" Mary asked, her, but she knew. Judy could read her at a glance, and they"d talked about getting married a zillion times.
"He asked, huh?"
"Yes."
"You said yes."
"I did." Mary sighed, then felt guilty for even having the conversation. "I do love him."
"I know that. So what"s up? It"s a good thing. You love each other."