Always You (17 page)

* * *

John carried Chiara up to one of Abby’s guest rooms. “Would you get the door?” he asked Keren, who’d readily abandoned his zookeeping duties when John called to him after failing to rouse Chiara.

Keren closed the door just before Abby and the rest of her daughters would have entered the room. For good measure, he locked it, which earned an outcry of protest from Abby.

“One minute she was sitting there, the next…” John was at a loss.

Keren sat beside her and pressed two fingers to her neck, searching for her pulse. He next parted her eyelids and examined her pupils. He lifted one of her hands and gave her inner wrist a series of light slaps that roused her.

“I feel dizzy,” Chiara moaned, trying and failing to raise herself to a sitting position.

“Keep her there,” Keren said softly. “I’m going to get my bag.”

Chiara pressed a shaky hand to her clammy forehead. “I can’t stay here, John,” she pleaded softly. “I’ve been here for an hour and I’ve already had enough of these people.”

“Those people are your family,” he told her gently, kneeling beside her. “I think—”

Her cross expression cut him off. She already knew what he thought: that her family was wonderful. John always greeted Abby with long, tight hugs, the kind he would have reserved for his own mother if Almadine were the hugging type. Abby was matronly but elegant and sophisticated at the same time. Each of her daughters, save Chiara, stood a few inches over her, but still they looked up to their mother. Abby’s waist had thickened a little since she’d retired from teaching over the summer, but that was likely due to the elaborate dinners she prepared for her huge brood. Abby had a beautiful head of silvery-grey hair that complemented her cocoa skin, and her full, cheerful face remained unlined but for a gentle fan of wrinkles that appeared near her eyes when she laughed, which was often.

John had a son’s love for Abby’s face, which was soft and kind, unlike the hard angles of his own mother’s. Almadine was ten years younger than Abby, but had deep lines etched around her mouth that made her look twenty years older. Almadine’s breathing always became heavier and her ebony skin seemed to darken when she engaged in one of her tirades, which had inspired George to follow Cady’s example and give his mother a nickname: Darth Vader.

The Mahoney home was well ordered, both on the surface and behind closed doors. But John had always thrived on the “cacophony of chaos” that prevailed in Abby’s home. When Zachary Winters was killed in the Mideast, Claire and Hank Winters had stepped in to help care for Chiara and her sisters. They had been the grandparents John never had, gifting him with the hugs, sweets and kind words that his own Baptist preacher grandfather withheld, convinced that too much affection would undo the work of his daughter’s rod.

John knew that it was easier for Chiara to take her family for granted than it was for him. They belonged to her and always would, no matter what. It was easy to toss aside what you could never actually throw away.

“You’re safer here, you know that,” John said, trying a different tack. “And it won’t be forever.”

She squinted her eyes and covered them with both hands. “It’s too much, John. The kids were running all over the place, Niema and Virginia were trying to compete for America’s Screamiest Baby, Miss Etheline was stampeding around the place like a mad elephant, Danielle can’t stop eavesdropping for five seconds, Cady keeps looking at me like she knows what’s going on, Clarence’s lizard is running free, Mama, Clara and Ciel treat me like I’m five years old, Kyla treats me like I’m an idiot, and underneath all of that, I have to live here knowing that I might be endangering every single person in this house.” She took a few tear-filled breaths. “I can’t live with that, John. If anything happens to Mama, or the babies, or—”

“Nothing will happen.” He took her hands and removed them from her face. He held them atop her abdomen.

“How can you know that?”

“I don’t,” he answered honestly. “I just think there’s safety in numbers.”

Chiara softly wept and John folded her into his arms. “I want to go home,” she murmured into his chest.

“You are home,” he chuckled lightly.

“Not this home. Our home. Chicago.”

He held her by her shoulders. “You just fainted. I think you should stay here and rest.”

Chiara snorted. “Like I can rest here. These people suck the energy right out of me.”

“I wish I had so many people who cared about me,” he told her, his eyes searching hers.

“They care about you, John, and you know it. They like you more than they like me.”

“You’re going to have to tell them to give you some space.”

She laughed and leaned back against the headboard. “Have you met my family? Have you ever known any of them to do anything I ask them to?”

John was spared an answer when Keren returned, slipping through the smallest possible gap in the door and closing it quickly behind him.

“That’s my baby in there!” came Abby’s cross voice, along with a good deal of banging on the locked door. “Keren! How dare you lock me out of one of my own bedrooms! Keren! What are you doing in there?”

“I’m removing Chiara’s appendix,” Keren called in a rare flash of humor.

Abby’s voice became only so much background noise as Chiara eyed the dark leather medical bag clutched in Keren’s hand. “What are you really doing?”

“I’m going to check you over. Fainting can be symptomatic of a number of serious ailments.”

“That’s not necessary,” Chiara insisted, even as Keren nudged John aside to get next to her. “I’m tired, and I’ve been under a lot of stress that I haven’t been handling very well, and…there was the attack…and…”

“You’re pregnant,” Keren said very quietly as he put on his stethoscope.

“Big-mouthed Cady,” Chiara sneered.

“Shh…” Keren placed the chest piece of his stethoscope over Chiara’s heart and listened. “Sounds good.” He hung the stethoscope over his neck. “Strong and steady. Don’t be mad at Cady.” He glanced at John. “She didn’t tell me about your condition.”

Chiara frowned at John.

“I had to tell him,” John said. “You passed out.”

Keren examined Chiara’s nail beds. She was embarrassed at how she’d nibbled her usually manicured nails down to the quick during the drive to St. Louis. Keren didn’t comment on the ragged state of her nails, declaring them a nice healthy pink before he placed a blood pressure cuff on her and repositioned his stethoscope. “I can’t know for certain without running tests at the hospital, but I’d say that you just had an anxiety attack. Is there something going on, other than…you know.” He nodded toward her midsection.

Chiara chewed her lower lip while Keren checked her blood pressure. When he was done, he pronounced that stat okay as well. “John, would you mind getting her some juice? You might have fainted because your blood sugar is low,” he told Chiara.

“Sure thing,” John said. He listened at the door until, satisfied the coast was clear, he cautiously opened it.

Alone with Keren, Chiara found herself close to tears again.

“I know you the least of all my sisters-in-law, but you’ve always been my favorite,” he said. “There’s something so mysterious and intriguing about you. And I’ve always admired your independence and how you live your life the way you want to, not how your mother or your sisters recommend.” He laughed softly. “They’re all very smart women, but they have a tendency to prescribe what’s best for
them
, not necessarily what’s best for the person they’re bossing around.”

“So you have been paying attention,” Chiara said dryly.

“You’re safe here,” Keren said.

Chiara choked back a laugh. She hadn’t felt safe since she last spoke with Zhou in Tokyo.

“You’re not alone, either,” Keren told her.

“I know.” Chiara wiped her nose with the cuff of her sleeve.

“If you need help with something, you know Cady and I—”

“I know,” she sniffled. “All I have to do is ask.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened in Chicago?”

She shook her head. “I just want to go to sleep.”
For about two weeks,
she added to herself.

“Okay.” Keren patted her shin before standing. “If you change your mind…”

“Thanks, Keren, but…”

He looked down at her, his concern plain in his dark eyes. She also saw that the fact that he had married into her family made him no less devoted to her than Cady, or Abby, or any one of her blood relatives. “Just being here is enough,” she said. “For right now. Thank you.”

“Are you alone?”

Chiara thought it prudent to establish Tiffani’s whereabouts before she allowed Troy to open the trapdoor. She had relocated to the attic, at Cady’s insistence, and was unpacking her garment bag when Troy paid her a visit.

“I took Tiff home a little while ago,” Troy said, the trapdoor muffling his voice. “Can I come up?”

If you must,
Chiara thought. But what she said was, “Sure.”

Chiara had to smile at the sight of her nephew climbing the stairs into the attic. All she had to do was blink to see him at six, gamboling around the dusty clutter that had occupied the attic before Abby’s renovation. He had his father’s height now, and at six feet tall he had to stay near the center beam to keep from banging his head on the lower, sloping sides of the roof.

When he sat in the overstuffed suede armchair near the foot of the bed, Chiara was sure that he wasn’t going to talk to her about his favorite TV show or how his favorite baseball team had fared lately. One look in his eyes told her that her nearly adult nephew had more adult concerns on his mind.

“What’s up, kiddo?” Chiara asked as she shook out a white knit dress before slipping it onto a padded hanger.

“Do you like Tiffani?” he asked.

Chiara shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know her. She seems…um…”

“Just say it. Your opinion matters a lot to me.”

“She seems really into you,” Chiara finished. “Us, too. I thought I was going to be buried alive in her breasts.”

“I know.” Troy smiled wistfully.

“You’d better be careful with her,” Chiara warned. “She knows you’re off to Stanford in August, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, she looks at you like she wants to swallow you in one bite.” Chiara went to the empty armoire and opened the doors, filling the attic with the scent of new cedar.

“She does,” Troy smiled shyly, “but…”

Chiara hung up her dress and the rest of the items in her garment bag. “But what?”

“I want to wait.”

“For what?”

“Until we’re married,” Troy said as he rubbed his knuckles along the soft denim covering his thighs.

Chiara paused in her unpacking to sit at the head of the bed. “Your senior spring trip isn’t to San Francisco, is it?”

“No,” he said. “Why?”

“No reason.” She turned back to her unpacking.

“I don’t want to do it with Tiffani just because all the other guys are doing it all over the place,” Troy went on. “I want it to be real. Like with you and Mahofro. My mother says that you guys have been together since you were little.”

“Don’t call him that,” Chiara requested softly.

“That’s what Aunt Cady calls him.”

“Aunt Cady refuses to see that John is a grown man and not some curly-haired kid who used to hang around all the time. John deserves your respect. He’s a part of this family, not one of your little playfriends.”

“He’s not really a part of the family,” Troy argued weakly. “He’s just your boyfriend.”

“That shows what you know,” Chiara said. “You’ve known John all your life, so give him credit for that at least.”

“You know what I mean, Aunt Chiara,” Troy said.

“No, actually, I don’t.” She set her feet hard on the floor and grabbed at her suitcase.

“I think I’ll just shut up now,” Troy said.

“Good idea.” Chiara struggled to get the heavy case onto the bed, and Troy got up to lift it for her.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he told her.

Without thanking or looking at him, she unzipped the big black case and began taking stacks of folded shirts and trousers from her suitcase. “You didn’t.”

“Seems like I did.” Troy took a step away from her, his hands forlornly in his pockets.

Chiara went to the cherry bureau that had once belonged to her Grandma Claire and slapped a stack of shirts into the deep, bottommost drawer. “I don’t like people undervaluing my relationship with John just because we don’t wave a marriage certificate around. I love John, more than anyone could possibly understand.”

“But we do,” Troy said, holding his hands wide. “We see it. That’s why we can’t figure out why you won’t get married. It seems like you are already in a lot of ways, but no one can understand why you won’t just—”

“I don’t like doing something because everyone wants or expects me to.” She approached her nephew, her socks moving her soundlessly across the polished hardwood floor. “All those women downstairs spent most of my life telling me what to do. How to dress, what to eat and when to eat it, who to be friends with, even what to watch on television. One of the main reasons I went to George Washington University was because it was at the other end of the country! I had to get away. John is the only thing in my life that has always been truly mine. He’s the only thing they haven’t tampered or interfered with. There’s no way I was going to let marriage be something they decided for me, too.”

Troy’s forehead wrinkled in curiosity. “What do you mean ‘was?’ ”

“Troy!” Clara’s voice at the bottom of the attic startled Troy and Chiara. “I’d like a word with you about Miss Tiffani!”

“Uh oh.” Panic flashed in Troy’s eyes.

“Good luck, kiddo.” Chiara gave him a light shove toward the trapdoor, where Clara’s voice met him.

“That girlfriend of yours told Danielle all about her first kiss,” Clara ranted, her words drawing Troy down the stairs and out of sight. “And apparently it took place with an eighteen-year-old junior counselor on a seventh-grade school camping trip. You and I need to have a chat about that fast little…”

Clara’s words trailed off as she and Troy moved farther from the stairs. The quiet solitude of the attic didn’t last long as Abby and Cady made their way up the stairs, Abby leading the way with a cloth-covered tray.

The tray reminded Chiara that she hadn’t eaten since lunch almost nine hours ago, and even then she’d had only a few french fries.

“I thought you might be hungry, baby,” Abby said. “I made your favorites.”

“Thanks, Mama.” Chiara sat at a lovely cherrywood table with an intricate ebony inlay, one of Christopher’s handmade originals.

Abby set the tray before Chiara and uncovered it with a flourish. Chiara’s stomach rumbled its gratitude, even though her anticipation dropped a bit when she saw what her mother had brought her: macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, corn muffins, miniature corndogs and salami and cheese rolls fastened with toothpicks. They were her favorite foods, all right. From when she was in grade school.

“I know it’s a lot, but I figured you could use a little fattening up,” Abby smiled, lovingly cupping Chiara’s chin.

“Oh, that’s nothing for Chiara,” Cady said. “She can eat for two these days.”

Chiara shot her sister a withering look.

Abby ignored the exchange and took the empty chair opposite Chiara. “Reverend Kurl is stopping by for lunch tomorrow,” she began carefully. “He wants to talk to you.”

Chiara swallowed a bite of macaroni and cheese that suddenly lodged deep in her esophagus. “What for?”

“Well, I just figured that since you moved back home, you and John would want to get things rolling.”

“I can’t
conceive
of a better idea, Mama,” Cady said, her smile overbright with mischief.

“Things like what?” Chiara asked in a low voice.

Abby patted her head, avoiding Chiara’s gaze as she hummed “The Wedding March.”

Chiara’s temper flared, and it felt like flames licking at her face and hands. “Maybe Almadine would rather have her father marry us,” she said coolly.

Abby’s eyes widened in shock. “Almadine almost had a fit when I ran into her at the market and told her that John was moving you back here. She probably won’t want to have anything to do with your wedding, God willing. And why would her daddy marry you? You’re not Baptist.”

“Then why’d you send us to his church when I was little?” Chiara countered angrily.

“It was the closest church to the house,” Abby said, leaning over the table. “And you never went anyway. Maybe if you’d done like you were supposed to, John wouldn’t have had such a hard row to hoe at home with Almadine.”

Chiara’s wrath drained away, replaced by a mixture of shock and guilt so profound, it took her a moment to find her tongue. “You think I don’t know it was my fault that he took all those whippings?” Her voice had no strength in it, even though she wanted to yell in her mother’s face.

“Mama,” Cady began, her expression grave, “that wasn’t fair. I’m the one who took Chiara to the park every Sunday. We hated that church. I was fifteen years old and I was having nightmares about going to hell and having devils burn my skin with hot pitchforks. Almadine’s father put the fear of Satan in you without bothering to balance it with the comfort of God’s love and mercy.”

“I didn’t mean it the way it sounded,” Abby tried to explain. “All I meant was that—”

“I know
exactly
what you meant, Mama.” Chiara struck away the tears of anger that had sprung to her eyes. Her appetite vanished, she left the table, curled up on the bed with her back to her mother and sister and quietly wept into her pillow.

“Chiara, you know I didn’t mean it that way,” Abby persisted. Chiara heard her mother’s chair scoot away from the table, but then her movement stopped.

“Leave her alone, Mama,” Cady said. “Let her get some rest. You guys can talk in the morning. Chi’s had a long day.”

Chiara wasn’t sure how long she lay there, her heart so heavy that it hurt with every breath. She was so deep in her misery that she almost didn’t hear the soft tapping at the window.

“Chi, open up.”

She raised her head to see John perched on the roof outside the casement windows Abby had installed as part of her renovation. She eased off the bed and dragged herself to the window. John’s smile faded as he watched her unlatch it and crank it open barely enough to accommodate the width of his face.

“I wanted to say goodnight,” he told her, searching her eyes. He reached in an cupped her face. “You’ve been crying.”

“I cry all the time,” she sniffled. “You know that.”

“No.” His eyes bored into hers, and he was alarmed that, for once, he couldn’t clearly read them. “This is different.”

Chiara dropped her gaze to the window latch. “I’m tired,” she croaked. “That’s all.”

“Well, I only came to say goodnight,” he said.

With his fingertip balanced under her chin, he raised her face and touched his lips to hers. Chiara closed her eyes and her knees weakened under the power wielded by that lone, sweet kiss.

“Goodnight,” she whispered into his lips before drawing away and closing the window. John touched the glass, but stopped short of calling her back as she returned to the bed and lay down, fully dressed. As stealthily as he could, John moved back across the pitched roof and dropped down to the tiny balcony situated outside one of the second floor bedrooms. He climbed over the railing, and stepping between the balusters, he eased his way over to the corner where he used the ridges between the red bricks of the house to climb down to the side porch.

Only when he was safely on the sidewalk and looking up at the dim glow of golden light from the attic casements did he stop to wonder why Chiara’s kiss goodnight had felt so much like goodbye.

* * *

“Glad you could meet me,” John said as George took a seat on the opposite side of the wooden booth.

“I don’t have classes on Tuesdays. You’re paying for this, right?” George grinned.

John rolled his eyes. He’d never known his little brother to pony up for anything other than computer equipment, most of which he bought under the table or out of a trunk.

“Is this a safe place to talk?” George asked in a lowered voice.

“Depends on what we talk about.” John raised a hand to signal their pierced and tattooed waitress, whose waist and wrist chains jingled as she brought them a pair of menus. “This place should be pretty safe.”

John had thought Blueberry Hill on Delmar was probably the best place for him and George to discuss their business. The restaurant wasn’t so full that other patrons surrounded them, but it wasn’t so empty that the nearest diners could overhear them. The restaurant’s motif was music, and the walls of the piano room, where John and George had seated themselves, were covered with rock and roll and rhythm and blues memorabilia among other oddities, such as animal heads, vintage comic books and dozens upon dozens of photos of the restaurant’s proprietor with the celebrities who had visited the place. The jukebox featured a wide assortment of swing, blues, be-bop, jazz and soul selections. Right now a doleful Muddy Waters track played softly in the background. John was confident that he and his brother would enjoy the solitude they wanted amidst the chaotic décor. Plus the burgers were the best in town.

“Are you guys brothers?” the waitress asked, the gold stud in her tongue clacking against her teeth as she spoke.

John chuckled. “How could you tell?”

“I couldn’t, at first,” she laughed lightly. “What can I get you guys to drink?”

“I’ll have the Brussels Black Ale,” John said.

“Woodchuck Cider for me,” George said.

“Apple or pear?” asked the waitress.

“Pear,” George responded.

“I’ll be right back, fellas.” Tucking her order pad into her back pocket, the waitress left them.

“I must be slipping,” John said.

“How so?” George wondered.

“She knew we were related.” John couldn’t have resembled George less as he sat there in his worsted wool business suit, an almost new pair of Cole Haans on his feet. His subtly patterned, dark Borrelli tie alone had likely cost more than George’s whole ensemble, which consisted of black Converse high tops, a pair of bright green track pants, a black ribbed turtleneck that looked awfully familiar and a piece of stretchy black fabric George was using as a headband to restrain his wild afro. “Is that my shirt?”

“Looks good on me, doesn’t it?” George plucked at it. “Mom gave it to me.”

“It’s not her shirt to give away,” John said pointedly.

“She said you abandoned it.”

“I had to go to USITI in Chicago.” John took off his jacket and neatly laid it across the seat beside him. “She knew I was coming back.”