Jake, former Special Forces operative, suddenly realized now how badly he’d underestimated my aunt.
“Yes, ma’am.” It was a weak tone for such a big man.
“Right out here in the van, were you?”
He nodded.
“Both of you?” she murmured, her eyes boring into my soul.
“Aunt Lucy, you’ve been disappearing for hours at a time without any explanation ever since we got back from the beach. We were worried. There were those flowers that kept arriving mysteriously and then the notes. You gotta admit, you were worried, too. We were only trying to protect you!”
Damn. Too late for Stella Valocchi the Brilliant Former Cop, too.
“So, I suppose it didn’t occur to you that if I was no longer worried and if I chose not to say where I’d been that I might no longer feel concerned about my secret admirer? Furthermore,” she said, her voice rising just enough to let me know the depth of emotion that lay behind the words, “did it ever occur to you that perhaps my private life is none of your business?”
“And what if this man was conning you? What if he…”
My aunt cut me off with a look. “So, now I’m not capable of discerning danger for myself? Now I’m suddenly feeble-minded and incompetent? What next, we have a hearing and I get placed in one of those homes?”
“Sweet mother in heaven!” Sylvia Talluchi cried. “Betrayed, by your own family!” She crossed herself and looked up at the sky above our heads. “Father, forgive them,” she whispered.
“No, nothing like that!”
“Humph! I think it’s exactly like that.”
Okay, not withstanding the fact that Aunt Lucy thought Lloyd was Uncle Benny reincarnated, she was one of the sanest women I knew. And I had hurt her beyond all comprehension. I saw it in her eyes.
“Aunt Lucy, I was just worried. I’m sorry. I should’ve know better.”
Aunt Lucy slowly shook her head, looking at me with a mournful gaze that completely broke my heart.
“Yes, cara mia, you should have known better, but you didn’t.”
She let her gaze shift to Jake, the man I knew she loved almost more than she loved me, the man more like a son to her than a family friend. Slowly her eyes traveled the length of his body, down to his feet and back up again.
“And you,” she said. “Stunade! You have broken my heart.”
“Aunt Lucy, I…”
“You lied to me! Both of you lied to me!” Her eyes glittered with anger and pain.
“We only wanted what was best for you. We didn’t want to see you get hurt!” I cried.
Aunt Lucy sniffed imperiously.
“I don’t need that kind of help,” she said softly. “I need love and I need family, but I don’t need to be treated like a child. If I want privacy, you should respect my wishes.”
Now my back was up. I had acted out of love. I wanted to protect my aunt.
“Well, I was only trying to look out for you,” I said, stung. “I didn’t realize you needed so much privacy. I thought we were closer than that. Maybe you need more privacy than I thought.” Jake dug his elbow into my ribs in a warning but I was too far gone to stop. “Maybe I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
“Maybe you have,” Aunt Lucy said quietly. Without another word, she turned and walked back across the empty street, up the steps to her row house and inside, closing the door firmly. In the echoing silence that followed I heard the solid click of the dead bolt as it shot home.
Mrs. Talluchi, not to be outdone, glared at me. “Put-tan!” she spat. Turning to Jake, she narrowed her eyes and stared hard at his chest. “Ha! I was right!”
She stomped off down the street and up the spotless marble steps to her row house. I turned to Jake, puzzled until I caught sight of his chest. He’d buttoned his shirt wrong, making his shirttails uneven and leaving no doubt as to what we’d been doing in the van. To further seal the verdict, his fly was undone and he was only wearing one sock.
“Great!” I said. “Look at you.”
Jake looked down and shrugged. “Well, it’s not like you gave me an option,” he grumbled. “You threw open the door and I did the best I could.”
I looked across the street at my aunt’s front door. “What are we going to do now?”
It was a rhetorical question. I moved past Jake and climbed back into the van, this time settling myself in the passenger seat where I waited for him to slide behind the wheel.
“Where to, boss?” he asked as we pulled away from the curb.
I shrugged. I was already going to hell, what did it matter where we went in the interim? And then I remembered Bitsy Blankenship.
“The office. If I’m going to need to rent an apartment, I’d better start making enough money to pay for it. Let’s do a little background work before Bitsy comes at two.”
Jake nodded. Neither one of us was as enthusiastic as we would’ve usually been about the prospect of new business, not with Aunt Lucy feeling as she did. How had our good intentions suddenly turned to shit?
I reached into my jacket pocket, retrieved my cell phone and punched in my younger cousin, Nina’s, number. I needed to share the misery.
She answered on the first ring. “Peace, baby!” she cried. She sounded so happy I almost hated to burst her bubble with my worries, but the hesitation was overridden by the need to find a soft shoulder to cry on.
“Oh, no, you didn’t.” Nina sounded horrified.
So much for sympathy.
This was followed by more questions, muffled relays of information to her girlfriend, Spike, the former assistant D.A. turned performance artist, and more cries of disbelief. Apparently, Nina “resonated” with my aunt’s “cosmic energy” and was as appalled as Aunt Lucy had been.
“I don’t know, Stel,” she said finally. “I’ve gotta look up your chart again. I think your sun is in some serious retrograde.”
“Let me talk to Spike,” I said, disgusted.
“Where are you?” Spike said without preamble.
“Heading into the office. We’ve got a new client in about an hour and a half.”
“We’ll meet you there,” she said and severed the connection.
That was Spike for you. Sensible. Level-headed. The polar opposite of my cousin, Nina. How the two ever fell in love was a complete mystery to me, but love it was. They’d been seeing each other for almost two years and they never seemed to hit a bump in the road. Their love just
