The Marriage Conspiracy Page 3

“I hope he works it out soon. A man’s liver can only take so much.”

  “He will,” Dekker said. “He’ll get through it.”

  They were good words to hear, especially from Dekker, who had never been the most optimistic guy on the block. “You sound so certain.”

  He winked at her. “I oughtta know, don’t you think?”

  They shared a long look, one full of words they didn’t really need to say out loud.

  Three years ago, Dekker’s wife, Stacey, had died. His mama, Lorraine, had passed away not long after. Dekker had done quite a bit of drinking himself in the months following those two sad events.

  Dekker said, “Maybe you ought to start whipping up a few casseroles.”

  It was a joke between them now, how Joleen had kept after him, dropping in at his place several times a week, pouring his booze down the drain and urging him to “talk out his pain.”

  He wouldn’t talk. But she wouldn’t give up on him, either. She brought him casseroles to make sure he ate right and kept dragging him out to go bowling and to the movies. Good, nourishing food and a few social activities had made a difference.

  It had also brought them closer. She was, after all, five years younger than Dekker. Five years, while they were growing up, had seemed like a lifetime. Almost as if they were of different generations.

  But it didn’t seem that way anymore. Now they were equals.

  They were best friends.

  She said, “You still have not bothered to tell me why you thought you had to fly off to Los Angeles out of nowhere like that.”

  “Later,” he said. “There’s a lot to tell and now is not the time.”

  “Were you…in danger?”

  “No.”

  “Was it something for a client?”

  “Jo. Please. Not now.”

  On the couch, Hubert stiffened, snorted and then went on snoring even louder than before.

  Dekker said, “I think we’ve done all we can for him at the moment.”

  “Guess so. Might as well get back to the party. We’re probably out of frilly toothpicks again.”

  Dekker grinned. “DeDe grabbed me a few minutes ago. Something about cutting the cake?”

  “No. It’s too early. They’re still attacking the buffet table. But it is a little cooler now. Safe to get everything set up.”

  “Safe?”

  “That’s right. We can chance taking the cake back outside.”

  “This sounds ominous.”

  “A wedding can be a scary time.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She took his big, blunt-fingered hand. “Come on.”

  They left Uncle Hubert snoring on the couch and went out to the kitchen, where they enlisted Burly to help Dekker carry the cake back out to the patio.

  Once the cake was in position for cutting, Joleen went looking for Niki and Sam. She found them on the front porch, building a castle out of Duplo blocks.

  “Mama. Look.” Sam beamed her his biggest, proudest smile.

  “Wonderful job, baby.” She asked Niki, “Did he eat anything yet?”

  Niki nodded. “He had some corn. And that fruit dish—the one with the coconut? Oh, and he ate about five of those little meatballs.”

  “Milk?”

  “Yeah—and what’s with those Atwood people?”

  What do you mean? Joleen wanted to demand. What did they do?

  She held the questions back. Sam might be only eighteen months old, but you could never be sure of how much he understood. And she didn’t want Niki stirred up, either. She gestured with a toss of her head. Niki got up and followed her down to the other end of the long porch.

  “What do you mean about the Atwoods?” Joleen kept her voice low and her tone even.

  Niki shrugged. “I don’t know. They sure stare a lot.”

  “Have they…bothered you?”

  “I don’t know, Joly. Like I said, they just stare.”

  “They haven’t spoken to you at all?”

  “Well, yeah. Twice. They tried to talk to Sam, but you know how he is sometimes. He got shy, buried his head against my shoulder. Both times they gave up and walked away.”

  So. They had tried to get to know their grandson a little and gotten nowhere. Joleen found herself feeling sorry for them again.

  “No real problems, though?”

  “Uh-uh. Just general creepiness.”

  Joleen reached out, brushed a palm along her sister’s arm. “You’ve been great, taking care of Sam all day.”

  “Yeah. Call me Wonder Girl.” Niki was good with Sam. She took her baby-sitting duties seriously. In fact, Niki was doing a lot better lately all the way around. She’d given them a real scare last year. But Joleen had begun to believe those problems were behind her now.

  “Want a little break?”

  “Sure—Can I get out of this dress?”

  Joleen hid a smile. Rose-colored satin was hardly her little sister’s style. Niki liked black. Black hip-riding skinny jeans, equally skinny little black T-shirts, black Doc Martens. Sometimes, for variety, she’d wear navy blue or deep purple, but never anything bright. Certainly nothing rosy red.

  “Go ahead and change,” said Joleen.

  Niki beamed. “Thanks.”

  They rejoined Sam at the other end of the porch. “Hey, big guy,” Joleen said. “I need some help.”

  Sam loved to “help.” He considered “helping” to be anything that involved a lot of busyness on his part. Pulling his mother around by her thumb could be “helping,” or carrying items from one place to another.

  Sam set down the red plastic block in his fist and leaned forward, going to his hands and knees. “I hep.” He rocked back to the balls of his feet and pushed himself to an upright position.

  Joleen held out her arms.

  He said something she couldn’t really make out, but she knew he meant he wanted to walk.

  So she took his hand and walked him down the front steps and around to the backyard. When she spotted the Atwoods alone at a table on the far side of the patio, she led him over there.

  Okay, they were snobs. And they made her a little nervous.

  But it had to be awkward for them at this party. They didn’t really know a soul. Joleen had introduced them to her mother and a few of the guests when they first arrived. But they’d been on their own since then.

  All right, maybe Robert Atwood had given her cold looks. Maybe he didn’t approve of her. So what?

  She was going to get along with them if she could possibly manage it. They were Sammy’s grandparents and she would show them respect, give them a little of the slack they didn’t appear to be giving her.

  And besides, who was to say she hadn’t read them all wrong? Maybe staring and glaring was just Robert Atwood’s way of coping with feeling like an outsider.

  When she reached their table, Joleen scooped Sam up into her arms. “Well, how are you two holdin’ up?”

  “We are fine,” said Robert.

  “Yes,” Antonia agreed in that wispy little voice of hers, staring at Sam with misty eyes. “Just fine. Very nice.”

  Joleen felt a tug of sympathy for the woman. A few weeks ago, when the Atwoods had finally agreed to come to her house and meet Sam, Antonia had shown her one of Bobby’s baby pictures. The resemblance to Sam was extraordinary.

  What must it be like, to see their lost child every time they looked at Sam?

  All the tender goodwill Joleen had felt toward them when she saw the newspaper photos of them at Bobby’s funeral came flooding back, filling her with new determination to do all in her power to see that they came to know their only grandson, that they found their rightful place in his life.

  “Mind if Sam and I sit down a minute?”

  “Please,” said Antonia, heartbreakingly eager, grabbing the chair on her right side and pulling it out.

  Joleen put Sam in it. He sat back and laid his baby hands on the molded plastic arms. “I sit,” he declared with great pride.
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br />   Antonia made a small, adoring sound low in her throat.

  Joleen took the other free chair at the table. As she scooped her satin skirt smooth beneath her, Robert Atwood spoke again.

  “Ahem. Joleen. We really must be leaving soon.”

  Protestations would have felt a little too phony, so Joleen replied, “Well, I am pleased that you could come and I hope you had a good time.”

  Robert nodded, his face a cool mask. Antonia seemed too absorbed in watching Sam to make conversation.

  Robert said, “I would like a few words with you, before we leave. In private.”

  That got Antonia’s attention. A look of alarm crossed her delicate face. She actually stopped staring at Sam. “Robert, I don’t think it’s really the time to—”

  “I do,” her husband interrupted, his voice flat. Final.

  Antonia blinked. And said nothing more.

  Joleen felt suspicious all over again—not to mention apprehensive. What was the man up to? She honestly wanted to meet these two halfway. But they—Robert, especially—made that so difficult.

  She tried to keep her voice light. “Well, if you need to talk to me about something important, today is not the day, I’m afraid. I think I told you, this party is my doing. I’m the one who has to keep things moving along. There’s still the cake to cut. And the toasts to be made. Then there will be—”

  “I think you could spare us a few minutes, don’t you? In the next hour or so?”

  “No, I don’t think that I—”

  “Joleen. It is only a few minutes. I know you can manage it.”

  Joleen stared into those hard gray eyes. She found herself thinking of Bobby, understanding him a little better, maybe. Even forgiving him some for being so much less than the man she had dreamed him to be. Joleen doubted that Robert Atwood knew how to show love, how to teach a child the true meaning of right and wrong. He would communicate his will—and his sense that he and his were special, above the rules that regular folks had to live by. And his son would grow up as Bobby had. Charming and so handsome. Well dressed, well educated and well mannered. At first glance, a real “catch.” A man among men.

  But inside, just emptiness. A lack where substance mattered the most.

  “Joleen,” Bobby had said when she’d told him she was pregnant. “I have zero interest in being a father.” The statement had been cool and matter-of-fact, the same kind of tone he might have used to tell her that he didn’t feel up to eating Chinese that night. “If you are having a baby, I’m afraid you will be having it on your own.”

  She’d been so shocked and hurt, she’d reacted on pure pride. “Fine,” she had cried. “Get out of my life. I don’t want to see you. Ever again.”

  And Bobby had given her exactly what she’d asked for. He’d walked out of her life—and his unborn child’s—and never looked back.

  She thought again of Dekker’s warnings.

  Forget the Atwoods. They have too much money and too much power and given the kind of son they raised, I’d say they’re way too likely to abuse both….

  She rose from her chair. “Come on, Sam. We’ve got to get busy here.”

  Robert Atwood just wouldn’t give it up. “A few minutes. Please.”

  Sam slid off the chair and grabbed her thumb. “We go. I hep.” He granted Antonia a shy little smile.

  “Joleen,” Robert said, making a command out of the sound of her name.

  Lord, give me strength, Joleen prayed to her maker. She reminded herself of her original goal here: to develop a reasonably friendly relationship with Sam’s daddy’s parents. “All right. Let me get through the cutting of the cake. And the toasts. Then we can talk.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But only for a few minutes.”

  “I do understand.”

  Joleen kept Sam with her, while DeDe and Wayne cut the cake and after, as the guests took turns proposing toasts to the happy couple. Then she handed Sam back to her sister, who was now clad comfortably in her favorite black jeans.

  By then it was a little past seven, and growing dark. The breeze had kept up, and the temperature had dropped about ten degrees. It was the next thing to pleasant now, in the backyard. Joleen went around the side of the house and plugged in the paper lanterns that she and a couple of cousins had spent the day before stringing from tree to tree.

  There were “oohs” and “aahs” and a smattering of applause as the glow of the lanterns lit up the deepening night. Joleen felt a glow of her own inside. She had done a good job for her sister. In spite of more than one near disaster, it was stacking up to be a fine wedding, after all.

  Camilla had a decent stereo system in the house. And yesterday, after the lantern stringing, Joleen and her cousins had wired up extra speakers and set them out on the patio. So they had good, clear music for dancing. DeDe and Wayne were already swaying beneath the lanterns, held close in each other’s arms. So were Aunt LeeAnne and her husband, Uncle Foley, and a number of other couples as well—including Joleen’s mother. Camilla moved gracefully in the embrace of yet another middle-aged admirer.

  “You did good, Jo.” Dekker had come up beside her.

  “Thanks.”

  “Welcome.” He was staring out at the backyard, his eyes on the dancers.

  Joleen thought of Los Angeles again, wondered what had happened there. She was just about to make another effort at prying some information out of him when she remembered the Atwoods.

  She supposed she’d better go looking for them.

  Dekker sensed her shift in mood. “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, nothin’. Much. I have to say goodbye to the Atwoods.”

  His brows had drawn together. “I don’t like the way you said that. What’s going on?”

  Teasingly, she bumped his arm with her elbow. “You are such a suspicious man.”

  “When it comes to Robert Atwood, you bet I am. I don’t trust him.”

  “I noticed. He wants a few minutes with me before they leave, that’s all.”

  “A few minutes for what?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I’m sure he’s plannin’ to tell me. When he gets me alone.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Dekker. Chill.”

  “‘When he gets you alone.’ What does that mean?”

  “It means I am giving him five minutes. In Daddy’s study.”

  “Why? I can tell by the way you’re hugging yourself and sighing that you don’t want to do that.”

  “I want to make it work with them.”

  “People do not always get what they want.”

  “Dekker—”

  He cut her off. “It’s pride, Joleen. You know it is. You’re ashamed that you had such bad judgment about Bobby. You want them to be different from him. But Jo, they raised him. You have to face that.”

  “I was a fool with Bobby. This is different.”

  “No. No, I don’t think it is.”

  “You think I’m still a fool?”

  He made a sound low in his throat. “Damn it, Jo…”

  She stood on tiptoe and whispered to him. “It is only five minutes. Then they will leave and we can enjoy the rest of the party.”

  “You are too damn trusting.”

  She planted a quick kiss on his square jaw. “Gotta go.”

  He was silent as she walked away from him, but she could feel his disapproval, like a chill wind on the warm night. She shrugged it off.

  Dekker had seen way too much in his life. He’d been a detective with the OCPD before Stacey died. He’d quit the department during the tough time that followed. But before that he’d seen too many examples of the terrible things people can do to each other. Now he worked on his own as a private investigator, which gave him an ongoing opportunity to witness more of man’s inhumanity to man. Sometimes he saw trouble coming whether it was on the way or not.

  Joleen put on a confident smile. She was going to do her best to make things work with the Atwoods. It was her
duty, as the mother of their grandchild.

  She could stand up just fine under Robert Atwood’s cold looks and demanding ways. What could he really do to her, after all? She held all the power, when it came to their relationship with Sam.

  She would not abuse that power. But she wouldn’t let Robert Atwood walk all over her, either.

  Joleen found the Atwoods waiting by the back door. They followed her into the kitchen and on to the central hall, where Uncle Hubert’s snoring could be clearly heard through the open door to the living room.

  Joleen held up a hand. “Just one minute.”

  The Atwoods stopped where they were, at the foot of the stairs. Joleen moved to the living room doorway. Uncle Herbert lay just as she and Dekker had left him two hours before, faceup on the couch, his stocking feet dangling a few inches from the floor. Gently she closed the door.

  “This way.” She led Sam’s grandparents across the hall to the room her father had used as his study. She reached in and flicked the wall switch. Four tulip-shaped lamps in the small chandelier overhead bloomed into light.

  The room was as it had always been. Samuel Tilly’s scarred oak desk with its gray swivel chair waited in front of the window. His old medical books and journals filled the tall bookcases on the inner wall. There was a worn couch and two comfy, faded easy chairs.

  “Have a seat.” Joleen closed the door.

  The Atwoods did not sit.

  They stood in the center of the room, between the couch and her father’s desk. Robert looked more severe than ever. And Antonia, hovering in his shadow as always, looked nothing short of bleak—too pale, her thin brows drawn together. She had clasped her hands in front of her. The knuckles were dead white.

  Joleen said, “Antonia? Are you all right?”

  “Oh, yes. Fine. Just fine…”

  “But you don’t look—”

  Robert interrupted, “My wife says she is fine.”

  “Well, I know, but—”

  “Please. I have something of real importance to propose to you now. I’ll need your undivided attention.”

  Joleen did not get it. Antonia looked positively stricken, and all her husband could think about was what he wanted to say? A sarcastic remark rose to her lips. She bit it back. “All right. What is it, Mr. Atwood?”