Officer Hardy led her back down the corridor and she heard Enzo’s loud voice protesting. “Don’t even look at me, man.”
Her cousins were sitting on the bench, only a small space between them and Brooks and his parents. Enzo glared at Brooks. Leaned over and whispered. Maddie saw his lips moving but couldn’t make out what he said.
“No talking,” Officer Hardy said in a harsh tone Maddie would never have guessed the man capable of. He’d been her soccer coach back in elementary school and had baked them cookies shaped like soccer balls. “Please,” he added.
Vinny tried to catch Maddie’s eyes but she looked away. “Maddalena,” he said, and then spoke fast in Italian but she couldn’t understand him, not with his teeth clenched like that, not with Brooks looking up at her so sad, and then Veronica was there, bursting through the front door in her white cashmere coat, her arms wide, her hair wrapped in a turban, like she’d jumped out of an old black-and-white movie.
“Oh dear,” Veronica was saying. “What a night you’ve had!”
Maddie exhaled. The room spun and Veronica looped an arm through hers just in time to brace her.
Her grandmother winked at Officer Hardy, who bowed his head and said, “Mrs. Pencott, ma’am.”
“I’ll be taking this one with me now,” Veronica said, smiling at Maddie.
42.
Veronica
She left Maddie in White Eagle’s guest room to finish packing her things, then hurried as fast as her old legs would move across the lawn to the cottage. Thank goodness for small miracles, she thought—Tony wasn’t home. Dom sat in front of the TV set watching that trashy show Cops.
Bad boys/ bad boys/ whatcha gonna do?/ whatcha gonna do when they come for you?
Veronica nearly laughed at the irony, then remembered the fear hanging over the bench at the police station.
Ginny’s bedroom door was closed.
Dom eyed Veronica suspiciously, popping one potato chip after another into his mouth, as she grabbed brown paper grocery bags and began stuffing them with Maddie’s clothes, makeup, hair gel, the stuffed animals sitting on the girl’s neatly made bed.
“What’s going on?” Dom asked from the bedroom doorway.
“Maddie needs some things.” Veronica sat on the bed to slow her heart. Breathe in and out.
“Is something bad happening?” Dom asked.
He sounded like a child. She opened her arms and said, “Come give me a hug,” and he came to her.
*
She heard Bob shouting at the TV as she climbed the front steps of White Eagle, out of breath. All morning, he’d been ranting at the images of Clinton and Gore departing on a bus tour of America. Maddie sat next to him on the sofa, her hands folded in her lap. The poor girl was in shock.
“I brought someone!” Veronica sang.
Dom hopped onto the sofa next to Maddie and wrapped his sun-browned arms around his sister. The girl sat still, her gaze unfocused. As if, Veronica thought, under a spell.
“Good boy,” Veronica said. “You take care of your sister while I finish up the packing.”
She started in her bedroom, dumping her diamond necklace, pearl and ruby ring, emerald brooch, into a velvet pouch. If only she’d had time to go to the bank and open the safety deposit box where they kept cash.
Bob yelled from the TV room. “Did you hide my pistol so I wouldn’t shoot this draft-dodging piece of shit?”
The pistol. Hadn’t she locked it up after her visit to Tony in the cottage?
“It’s in the lockbox, dear,” she yelled back. “Don’t go shooting the television set!”
She found the cash she kept in the junk drawer next to the oven. Four hundred, plus change. And there was the money in her vanity. Two hundred and forty. She wrapped it in an envelope, secured it with a rubber band, then stuffed it into the inside pocket of the suitcase open on the guest-room bed. Maddie’s bed. She’d enjoyed having her granddaughter with her those past few weeks. Their quiet breakfasts in the sunroom. Their daily Oprah viewings. She loved watching Maddie talk, think, move—the way the girl wiggled her toes while she read one of the novels Veronica had loaned her. Books by Edith Wharton and Charlotte Bront?. Tolstoy and Willa Cather. The girl devoured them. Veronica had dreamt up so many plans for them. Trips to museums in the city. A private fitting at Saks so she could buy Maddie some proper clothes to take to college someday. Movie marathons and book discussions. Painting lessons. The kinds of activities she should’ve done with Ginny years ago. She’d even looked into flights to Chicago so the two of them could watch Oprah live. Silly dreams, she thought now as she wrapped a pair of ruby earrings in black velvet and tucked it in the girl’s worn leather purse.
It was nice while it lasted. A second chance to be a mother. When Maddie left the island, Veronica would kill herself. She’d call the nursing home and arrange to have Bob picked up. Then she’d gather the pills, make one last whiskey sour to down them, and with her rose-tinted plastic shopping bag, she’d, finally, complete her plan. Her mission.
“Hug your sister,” she told Dom as she pushed the velvet pouches full of jewels into Maddie’s hands.
“But,” he started.
“No buts,” Veronica said. “You’ll see her soon. You and I will drive into the city next week and spend a long visit with Maddie.”
She had already made the arrangements—rented a studio apartment in a nice neighborhood, within walking distance of a community college where the girl (and her boyfriend) could study for the GED.
“But,” Maddie said, “I don’t want to leave you.”
Veronica was, all at once, relieved, amused, bereft. Her heart could still break. A jaded old woman could feel girlish pain.
“It’s okay, my love. I’ve known so much in my eighty years. But I never knew what it felt like to feel safe. I want you to know that.”
She held the girl’s trembling hands. Bill Clinton’s rasping voice sounded from the TV, preaching about community, compassion, and hope, about growing up without a father.
“Puh-lease,” Bob shouted at the TV. “You’re a crybaby sissy and a womanizing piece of garbage!”
“You’ve found the person that comforts you, Maddie,” Veronica whispered, leaning close so she could smell the girl’s sugary perfume. “Your salvation. You found that. Protect it.” She added, “Protect him. Get him off this island first thing in the morning.”
“Okay,” Maddie sobbed. “Okay.”
She didn’t mean to tell Maddie the story of her own mother’s abandonment. A story she’d never even told Bob. “For years, I thought my mother was wicked … for leaving me, and my brothers and sisters. Now I understand.” She looked at Bob standing in front of the TV, his skinny legs bare under his Hawaiian-print robe, the remote control in his hand, pointed at the set like a gun.
“Life is short.” She smiled at Maddie. “A girl must do what’s necessary to claim…”—she paused—“steal her own bit of happiness.”
43.
Dom