‘Make yourself comfortable, and I’ll order us two eggplant parms. How about a salad to go with?’
‘Great!’ Anna shed her coat and sat down on one of the beds.
‘Let’s have dessert, too.’ Maggie crossed to the dresser, which had a printed menu under glass. ‘The choices are lemon poppyseed cake, chocolate cake, bread pudding –’
‘Bread pudding!’
‘Carbs, coming right up!’ Maggie loved bread pudding, too. She was going off her diet, but it was a special occasion. It’s a girl! she thought, but didn’t say.
‘Want to watch a movie? We can get a free one.’ Anna picked up the remote, turned on the TV atop the dresser, and flipped through the choices. ‘It’s not a school night, and anyway, I’m out of school.’
‘Sure.’ Maggie pressed a button on the phone for room service. ‘I’ll look into getting you registered at Lower Merion on Monday. I don’t want you to lose too much time.’
‘I’ll be the new girl.’ Anna frowned, worried.
‘You’ll do fine.’ Maggie told room service the order, then hung up. ‘My mother always said, “When one door closes, another one opens.” ’
‘My grandmother said that?’ Anna blinked, with a smile.
‘Also “don’t sing at the table” and “don’t put so much on your fork.” ’ Maggie hadn’t thought of that in ages. Having Anna was summoning those memories, and Maggie felt the spirit of her mother with her, sharing her happiness.
‘What was her name?’
‘Cecilia Theresa Macari Ippoliti. Sounds like an entrée, right?’
Anna laughed. ‘Can I see pictures of her when we get home?’
Home. ‘Sure.’ Maggie felt her heart swell. ‘Now find us a movie, and we’ll start our slumber party.’
‘How about this one?’ Anna highlighted Top Gun on the screen. ‘I always wanted to see this.’
‘If you haven’t seen Top Gun, your education is incomplete.’
‘Ha! Suck it, Congreve!’ Anna clicked for the movie.
‘Let’s flop around until they feed us.’ Maggie kicked off her shoes and plopped into the center of her bed.
‘Here we go.’ Anna sat on her bed, and the movie credits started, playing the thumpa-thumpa theme music.
‘Turn it up, girl! You need the full effect.’
‘For real?’ Anna glanced back, shyly.
‘Yes, crank that thing!’
‘Ha!’ Anna did, moderately, then lay back in her pillows and pointed at the dotted-Swiss canopy. ‘Those dots are like stars in a white sky. Or snow in a storm.’
Maggie looked up, thinking Anna was right. ‘That’s poetic. Do you like poetry?’
‘Yes. Do you?’
‘Yes, but I don’t always understand it.’
‘Me neither, but I write it anyway. I tried to get on The Zephyr, that’s the poetry magazine at Congreve, but I didn’t make it. I showed some of my poems to Ellen.’
‘I’d love to see them, someday.’
‘Okay, oh, we’re missing the movie.’ Anna shifted up in bed, watching the TV, and Maggie looked over at the screen, an aerial battle between fighter jets. Suddenly she remembered that Top Gun was a movie about a pilot and one of the pilots died. She kicked herself, wondering how Anna would react to the movie, given Florian’s death.
‘Anna, maybe we should watch a love story or something.’
‘No, this is so cool,’ Anna shot back, riveted to the screen. ‘Who are the bad guys they’re shooting at?’
‘It’s about a jet-fighter school. They’re exercises.’ Maggie shifted up in the pillows, worrying. Anna was biting her nails, engrossed by the aerial battle in which a pilot named Cougar had a panic attack.
‘Way to go, Maverick!’
‘Tom saves the day.’ Maggie got more nervous as the next scene came on, Maverick getting chewed out with his partner Goose, the pilot who died.
‘I get it. He wants to be number one. Because testosterone.’
Maggie kept her eye on Goose. ‘Anna, I’m still wondering if we should watch a different movie. This has sad parts. It’s a movie about pilots.’
Anna looked over, getting the message. ‘I’ll be okay. I’m not a little kid.’
‘Okay, good,’ Maggie said, but she worried as the movie progressed, one iconic scene after the next. Room service arrived, filling the air with the delicious aromas of tomato and mozzarella, but Anna never took her eyes from the screen as she set her tray on the bed.
‘Jester seems like a jerk.’ Anna sipped her soda, and another aerial battle came on.
‘He is.’ Maggie took a bite of her eggplant parm. Anna seemed to be having fun, giggling when the scene changed to beach volleyball.
‘These guys have sick bodies!’ Anna ate hungrily, and so did Maggie, and they both finished their meals, wisecracking through the movie, then falling uncomfortably silent when the love scene came on. Maggie couldn’t believe how dumb she had been to pick a movie with sex and death for her first night with her daughter. The scene finished, then inevitably, the fatal aerial battle filled the screen.
‘Oh no.’ Anna watched the fighter jet whirl in the sky, corkscrewing downward, losing altitude. The scene was so realistic that even Maggie imagined Florian during his crash, wondering what his last moments had been like as their plane hurtled toward earth.
‘Oh no!’ Anna gasped as Goose ejected, then limp and lifeless, parachuted down toward the sea. Anna turned to Maggie, stricken. Her lips parted, and her blue eyes brimmed.
‘Anna, I’m so sorry.’ Maggie got up quickly, went to Anna, and hugged her as she burst into tears.
‘I know . . . it’s only a movie . . . but . . .’
‘It’s okay, honey,’ Maggie said, holding Anna close and rubbing her back as sobs wracked her body. Maggie could feel all of Anna’s sorrow as the girl cried hard, and Maggie made a vow that she’d never let Anna go again.
No matter what.
Chapter Seventeen
Noah, After
TRIAL, DAY 5
Noah’s gaze swept the gallery, but Maggie still hadn’t appeared. He felt relieved that she would be spared his testimony.
Linda stood in front of the witness stand, her legs planted like a human sawhorse. ‘Dr Alderman, let’s return to the night Anna was murdered. You testified on direct that you left work at 6:30 P.M., did you not?’
‘Yes.’
‘You drove directly to the gym, did you not?’
‘Yes.’
‘It took you approximately twenty minutes to get to the gym, isn’t that correct?’
‘Yes, that’s correct.’
‘You had your cell phone with you, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t have any phone conversations on the way to the gym, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Did you attempt to have any telephone conversations on the way to the gym?’
‘Yes, I attempted to call my wife. Rather, I called her, attempting to speak with her.’
Linda smiled slightly. ‘You’re a precise man, aren’t you?’
Noah assumed the question was rhetorical. He was a precise man, as a pediatric allergist. He didn’t know anybody who wanted a careless doctor.
‘But your wife didn’t answer your call, did she, Dr Alderman?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t leave your wife a message, did you?’
‘No.’
‘You weren’t living with your wife at the time, were you?’
‘No.’
‘You moved out at your wife’s request, isn’t that true?’
‘Yes.’ Noah remembered every minute, but even when it was happening, he’d thought he could turn it around. He knew Maggie loved him the way he loved her, deep inside. He knew her love was still there, hunkering down through a bad spell, the way love does in marriage. Embedded, sinking into your very bones. Changing who you are forever, reconfiguring your very DNA. Noah was a different man, after Maggie.
Linda cocked her coiffed head. ‘So you arrived at the gym at approximately 6:50, isn’t that correct?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘And you parked in the lot behind the gym, isn’t that correct?’
‘Yes.’ Noah had been over this with Thomas, who had warned him it was treacherous territory.