Anna wasn’t unattractive, but she didn’t adorn and embellish herself like the girls he was dating that summer, the family-sanctioned neighborhood girls who so actively solicited his attention. Anna didn’t want to be noticed, with good reason.
Baba believed Stanley Toska was Stanislav Shehu, once a key player in the family’s racketeering business. In 1983, they were infiltrated by the newly formed Organized Crime Drug Enforcement task force. Shehu turned informant, violating bes?, the family’s sacred oath of allegiance, and leading to a flurry of arrests. After testifying for the prosecution, he disappeared with his family into the government’s Witness Security Program.
Lost in the past, Jacob walks blindly until he reaches the intersection and looks around to get his bearings. Concrete barricades and orange cones funnel bottlenecked vehicular traffic down to one lane as hard-hatted workers jackhammer a gaping hole into the roadway. Cops are shouting directions and stalled drivers honk or curse out their open windows. Stinking garbage spills from bags heaped at the curb, rotting in the sun that glares over it all.
He spies a street sign. Lower Broadway.
Baba used to take him to an old-world restaurant in this neighborhood, where they could get kajmak and qofte and strong boiled coffee. Authentic, just like at home.
His father wasn’t talking about Pelham Parkway, but the distant land across the ocean where he’d been born. He’d longed to see it again one day before he died, but that wasn’t meant to be.
Wondering if the restaurant is open for breakfast, Jacob heads toward it, and back into the past. He thinks again of his dead father. Of Anna, back from the grave.
Of Anna, in August of ’93, telling Ellie about her impending departure for college as Jacob eavesdropped behind a tree.
“So that’s it. She’s going away,” he told Baba that night. “And it’s time for me to go back, so—”
“What do you think this is, summer camp? You’re not going anywhere except wherever she goes.”
“But, Baba . . . what about trade school?”
“You’re no good at that. How long do you think it’s going to take you to get through, and then be able to support yourself? It doesn’t make sense. You needed money, I gave you a job. Finish what you started.”
The “job” was far more appealing than returning to struggle in trade school. The money was good, and his father, uncles, and cousins were finally treating him as something more than a pesky little boy.
For Jacob, it was a new beginning.
For Anna, it was the beginning of the end.
Nora
Dressed in tattered jeans and gardening clogs, Nora finds Kato waiting beside the back door.
“Really? I thought you’d be in a deep sleep by now.” She opens the door, and he trots out into the sunshine. “Maybe you should have morning treats every day.”
At the word treats, he stops and turns, ears twitching.
“Yeah, no,” she tells him. “Go ahead and do your thing, and I’ll do mine.”
After a string of monochromatic days, the world is bedazzled, sky and foliage tinted in autumn’s burnished gold. The west wind, crisp and layered in a sweet earthiness, has finally chased the sodden tropical air out to sea. The garden is carpeted in petals and leaves.
Nora finds a rake in the shed, trying not to notice the shelf where she’d hidden the metal box.
Cash . . . A gun . . . Remnants of lost lives . . .
Last night, those things pursued her in the restless purgatory between consciousness and sleep, with a dead girl joining the chase.
Don’t forget me, the girl whispered. Forget-me-not . . .
At first she was Gertrude Williams, but then her face morphed into the one that’s haunted Nora for twenty-five years.
At last Nora dozed off and found herself a teenager again, wandering in a distant, dreamy garden, gathering beautiful blue blooms in memory of her murdered friend. She heard a rustling in the trees and looked up to see Jacob there, watching her. She dropped the flowers and started running, running, running for her life . . .
Just a dream.
She begins raking leaves, dwelling on things she could have done differently all those years ago . . .
Things she could have done differently on that fateful day last April, when Keith greeted her at the door when she returned from her clandestine meeting with Teddy.
He asked her about the flower show as if nothing were amiss.
“It was great,” she said, setting her overnight bag on a chair and opening the closet to hang her coat.
“That’s all? Just great?”
Her hand froze on the hanger.
“It was . . . you know, a flower show.”
“Really, I don’t. I don’t know.”
“There were booths, vendors, presentations . . .” She resumed draping her coat over the hanger, placing it just so on the rod, shoulder seams meticulously aligned.
Then there was nothing to do but close the closet door and face him. When she did, she spotted a dangerous flare in his eyes. He knew . . . something. How much?
“Is that all?” he asked.
She shrugged. “There were some amazing exhibits.”
“And . . . ?”
“I don’t know what else I can tell you, Keith.”
“You can tell me that you didn’t go to a flower show. You can tell me that you went to Mexico. And you can tell me why you lied to me. Who is he?”
She opened her mouth, realized that if she tried to speak she might vomit, and clenched her lips in her teeth so hard she tasted blood.
“Is it Greg Whittle?”
Greg Whittle—the newly divorced father of Piper’s closest friend. She shook her head, disgusted. How could he even think that?
“No? One of the soccer dads?”
“No!”
“Then who? Your tennis coach? Our financial adviser? Daryl? I’ve seen the way he looks at—”
“Stop! It’s not . . .” Thoughts churning along with her stomach, she thought better of what she was going to say. “He’s not . . . he’s not anyone you know.”
Wildfire engulfed his summer sky eyes. “How long has it been going on?”
“Not long. It was just . . . it was a stupid mistake, a huge mistake. And it’s over. I ended it. Because I love you.”
He flinched when she put her arms around his neck.
“Keith, please . . . I’m sorry. It’s just . . . I miss you so much with all the long hours you’re putting in. It’s no excuse, I know,” she added quickly, “but it’s been hard lately.”
That part was the truth. A round of January layoffs had left his firm understaffed and overextended. He’d been working later and on weekends, no longer a part of many things they used to do together, from watching Piper’s soccer games to eating dinner.
“It’s not like I haven’t had opportunities, Nora. It’s not like I haven’t been tempted to—but I haven’t. Not yet. Maybe I should have, though. Maybe I will.”
“Maybe you will . . . what?”
“Have an affair. Or maybe we should both just . . .” He shrugged. “The Whittles aren’t the only ones who are splitting up. Every time I turn around, another couple we know is getting divorced.”
“You want to get divorced?”
“Do you?”
“No.” That, too, was the truth. It still is.
“I love you. I’m so sorry, Keith. Please forgive me.”