From Friends to Forever Read online

  “Was she anything like Magda?”

  “Worse.”

  “Oh.”

  Lili chuckled, then released another breath, wrapping her arms around her legs. “Still. I feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle waking up after his very long nap, trying to figure out where I fit in this strange new world of being on my own.”

  Up on the deck, Uncle Benny said something that apparently cracked up their aunt, making her laugh so hard she had to lean on him to catch her breath. And the look on his uncle’s face…

  “You believe in love at first sight?” Tony asked out of the blue, thinking of how Benny and Magda met so many years ago, the cop falling head over heels for the circus girl after seeing her perform.

  Following his gaze, Lili said, “The kind that sneaks up and surprises you? Yes, I suppose. Even though it’s completely illogical.”

  “Not sure logic’s got much to do with love.”

  Lili’s eyes swung back to his. “Wow. Deep,” she said, sending something gentle and warm and hugely dangerous snaking through him, at how easy it was, being together like this. Then he caught Claire watching them again, vibrating with worry, reminding him that nothing was easy. That being a grownup meant you couldn’t just run with something because you wanted to.

  His wife’s apparent unfamiliarity with the concept notwithstanding.

  Tony smirked. “One thing I’m not, it’s deep. Just your average everything’s-right-there-on-the-surface kind of guy.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. Still. I sometimes think the best love is the kind that happens almost effortlessly, like a plant that takes root on its own.”

  “Like weeds?”

  She laughed again. “Like wildflowers. Certainly, there was nothing effortless about my relationship with Peter. Not that even the strongest love doesn’t need tending, of course, but I should have known when it became such a struggle—” Biting her lip, she swung apologetic eyes to his. “Sorry. Don’t mean to bore you with tales of my woebegone love life.”

  Better than mine, Tony thought, as, like a distorted St. Nicholas behind a curtain of shimmering heat waves rising from the grill, Uncle Benny called everybody to dinner. Because more than once it had occurred to Tony, too, that it wasn’t right, him and Marissa having to struggle so hard to keep the flame going those last years. Sure, all marriages took work, but when every single conversation becomes a chore, you know something’s wrong.

  He just hadn’t known how wrong, Tony thought, thinking of the letter, crushed into a drawer in his office, crushing him inside—

  “Are you coming?” Lili said, already on her feet, her gaze direct and honest, her sandals dangling from one hand and the breeze blowing her hair. Tony stood, the urge to touch her—to connect with her generosity and goodness—so strong it was like an electric shock to his heart…even as he knew how unfair to both of them it would be to follow through on the impulse.

  Because who was he kidding, he knew damn well what he wanted from Lili, had known from practically the minute he laid eyes on her, and it made him sick, what he was thinking. Made him realize how bad off he was, even entertaining the idea of using Lili to soothe the anger and the grief and the black, bottomless loneliness threatening to suck out his brain.

  “You go on. I’ll catch up later.”

  He wasn’t at all surprised to see the confusion in her eyes. That, he could deal with. The understanding that immediately followed, however…

  Damn near killed him.

  All Claire wanted to do, when she saw Lili heading her way, was run. But there was no way that was happening, especially since Aunt Magda dragged her over to introduce them. When Lili held out her hand, Claire figured she didn’t exactly have a lot of choice about taking it or not. At least it wasn’t clammy or anything, and she didn’t hang on too long, or try to hug her and act like they were going to be BFFs or something. Lili was pretty, but not like Mama. Mama was gorgeous—

  Then she got, like, stuck in Lili’s eyes, which were seriously the bluest eyes she’d ever seen, only they weren’t cold like you’d expect. And her smile was just, you know, normal and stuff, not like she was trying to be nice or anything. So why Claire felt her face get all hot, she had no idea.

  “Lili’s visiting from Hungary,” her aunt was saying, and Claire said, “Yeah, I know, Stacey told me,” then excused herself, which she knew was rude but she couldn’t help it, she felt like she was gonna cry and she didn’t even know why.

  Breathing hard, she ran down the deck’s steps and out into the yard, toward Dad, who was sitting in the grass again with his arms folded over his knees, resting his head on them. When she sat beside him, though, he looked at her, smiling a little.

  “You look like I feel,” he said, and she shrugged.

  “I’m okay, I guess.”

  Dad reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “Where’s your sisters?”

  “Daph’s still with Violet’s boys, I think. And Kevin and Julianne just got here…look,” she, said, pointing to Rudy’s youngest brother, laughing at Josie trying to take his eighteen-month-old daughter by the hand and lead her God knew where. Well, actually, Pip was Kevin’s daughter, but Julianne’s niece, except now they were married so she was Pip’s mom, too. It all made Claire’s head hurt.

  “Pip doesn’t look any too sure about going with Josie,” Dad said.

  “Smart kid,” Claire said, and Dad actually laughed.

  “I see you met Lili,” he said quietly, and Claire got that tight feeling in her chest again.

  “Yeah. You gonna come eat?”

  “Not hungry. But you go on.”

  “I could bring you a burger or something—”

  “That’s okay, baby—”

  “We could eat out here, just you ’n’ me.”

  After a moment, Dad nodded. “Sure. That’d be cool.” When Claire got up, dusting off her bottom, Dad added, “We can leave right after the cake, if that’s okay.”

  Her eyes all stingy, Claire said, “Yeah, fine,” and ran back to the deck, through all the laughter bouncing off her like hailstones.

  Chapter Three

  Still mulling over Tony’s very obvious dismissal two hours earlier, Lili gave the kitchen sink a final rinse just as her aunt and uncle hauled in yet more leftover food from the backyard.

  “Didn’t I tell ya you made too much?” Uncle Benny grumbled, hefting a bowl of barely eaten potato salad—yes, the very potato salad Lili had spent an hour making—onto the kitchen table. “I keep tellin’ her,” he now directed to Lili as she set the sponge on the back of the sink, “nobody eats like they useta, when the boys were teenagers. And half the time, the wives are on some diet or other. Unless they’re pregnant.”

  He said this with a pointed look for Mia, Lili’s only female cousin, carting in a platter of unclaimed burgers and hot dogs. Tall and thin, her warm brown waves caught in a ponytail, Mia gave him a pointed look right back. “Jeez…nosy, much?”

  “What?” Benny said when Magda swatted him. “Her and Grant, they’ve been married a year, already.”

  “Pops? They have this thing called birth control? So, you know, you can plan when you have kids?” Then she slapped her head. “What am I saying, you guys had six kids in, like, five minutes.”

  “Benny on baby bump watch again?” Grant said, dragging a sloshy cooler into the kitchen, and Lili was glad nobody expected her to take part in the conversation because every time she clapped eyes on the man her tongue went numb. Rich, handsome, funny—her cousin had seriously hit the jackpot. Except Lili would take an ex-jock athletic coach she could actually talk to over Mr. Adonis, any day—

  Stop that.

  “Like you guys don’t have enough grandkids already, yeesh,” Mia said, sharing a quick glance with her husband that Magda did not miss.

  “Vat’s going on?”

  “Nothing, Ma,” Mia said, giving her mother a huge hug, and Lili felt the sting of missing her own. “We gotta go, I got an anniversary party in the Hamptons tomo
rrow—”

  “Oooh…” Magda’s eyes lit up. “Enybody famous?”

  “Nope. Just loaded. C’mon, kiddo,” she said to her stepdaughter, Haley, a six-year-old pixie with blond curls, as Grant embraced his mother-in-law. Mia gave Lili a hug, too, said how great it was to see her again, then they were all gone, leaving Lili alone with her aunt and uncle, their two dogs and enough food to feed Eastern Europe. For a week.

  As the dogs danced around, tripping over each other, Magda surveyed the leavings, sighing. “It must be ze heat. At Thanksgiving they eat like locusts. Okay, Benny, you know ze drill. Tupperware, now, and keep it coming—” She stopped, noticing the sparkling sink and surrounding counter. “Honestly, Lili—I nefer in my life knew anyone who likes to clean like you do. My own children, zey would rather parade nekked down the street zen clean. You, I nefer even have to ask, you just do it.”

  Lili shrugged. “I’ve always liked cleaning. Putting things to rights. It’s…soothing.”

  Magda narrowed her eyes. “You are a strange young woman,” she said in Hungarian, and Benny, seated at the table, groaned.

  “Aw, Mag…you know I hate when you do that.”

  “Hah! You remember efter we met, before I spoke English as good as I do now? How your parents vould talk in front of me, and all I could mek out was Magda zis and Magda zat. I zink zey call zis payback.”

  Lili laughed. “It comes from too many years living with messy brothers in tiny circus trailers. It drove me crazy. And Mama. So I’d clean while they were performing.” She skimmed a finger over the clean counter. “I still like wresting order out of chaos. Not that your kitchen’s chaotic—”

  “Sveetheart, my life is chaos,” she said, and Benny said, “Hey,” and her aunt swooped around the kitchen table to hug him from behind. “I embrace chaos,” she said, giving him a big kiss on his bearded cheek.

  “Not me,” Lili said as parts of her conversation with Tony came roaring back. “I’ve always avoided it at all costs.” As in, her life being a series of choices based on whatever was least likely to cause her agita. For instance…she could have pushed Tony harder to open up about whatever was bothering him, especially when it was perfectly obvious how little she would have had to push. But did she? No—

  “And yet you decided to come stay with us?” Benny said. After another ineffectual swat, Magda tugged him out of the chair and gave him a gentle shove toward the door. “What? You’re throwin’ me outta my own kitchen?”

  “Yes. Lili and I need to talk. Voman to voman.”

  “Auntie—”

  “And no beck-talk from you,” Magda said, pointing a freshly-applied acrylic fingernail in her direction. Lili momentarily considered sliding down the drain. Especially after her aunt’s heartfelt sigh, once Benny had gone.

  “Ven you were here before, I was so vorried about you, zat you were—vat is zat expression? A square peg in a round hole? Ze quiet one, always vis her nose in ze books. So…” a glob of potato salad smacked into a container “—afraid of…putting yourself out zere. But I zink, is just a phase, she’ll grow out of it.”

  Lili frowned. “Because I didn’t get the circus gene?”

  “Of course not, did I say that? And I couldn’t be prouder of you. Five languages! And two degrees! But zat summer, I vatched you change from zis scared little bunny rabbit into a confident young voman—”

  That was Tony, Lili thought, something sharp clutching her throat as she burped the lid over the Jell-O salad. Tony did that to me. For me—

  “—only now,” Magda said, “I see you and zink, vat heppened? I’ll tell you vat happened—my sister let you give up your life for her—”

  “But it wasn’t like that! And anyway, you know as well as I do what a mess Mama was. If it hadn’t been for me—”

  “She vould hef put on her big girl panties and gotten on vis things! And maybe she vould hef done somezing better than just vaiting out ze last five years of her life!”

  Lili frowned. “Are you implying I somehow held Mama back?”

  “I’m not implying anyzing, I’m saying point-blank. And it vorked both vays. The two of you held each other back. For God’s sake, Lili, you vere going to get married!”

  Ah. “It’s okay, auntie, since I eventually realized that wasn’t who I needed at that point in my life. And he obviously didn’t need me.” She shrugged. “Mama did.”

  “But you were hurt.”

  “Of course I was hurt,” she said, surprised at the twinge, even after all this time. “It’s a bitch, discovering someone isn’t who you thought he was. Mama and I…I suppose we were both dealing with the same feeling of betrayal. Although obviously mine was on a much smaller scale. But it’s all good now,” she said, lifting her chin. “My heart’s all healed. Stronger than ever, in fact.”

  “You zink hearts are like bones, zey’re stronger for being broken?”

  “Perhaps,” Lili said with a slight smile. “And anyway, I believe things work out the way they’re meant to. Except…”

  “And how did I know there vould be an ‘except’?”

  The containers all filled, Lili sat at the table, frowning. “The day Mama died, I stood in the middle of the kitchen and realized I was nearly thirty and still had no more idea about what I was supposed to do with my life than I did ten years ago. Because you were right, earlier. About my not fitting in anywhere.” A smile tugged at her mouth. “Ever since I was little, I was both the circus brat who didn’t fit in with other ‘normal’ kids, as well as the oddball in the family. Now I feel as though everyone else caught the boat, leaving me stranded on the shore.”

  “Oh, sveetheart…” Magda sat with her, cupping Lili’s cheeks in a gesture so much like her mother’s Lili’s eyes stung. “Trust me—zere’s more zen one boat.”

  Lili laughed. “I certainly hope so, or I’m screwed.”

  Smiling, Magda folded her hands together. “So how does one go about finding one’s purpose?”

  “That’s the part I haven’t figured out yet. I suppose my translating work is useful, but it’s not exactly fulfilling.”

  That got a thoughtful frown. “You need to be needed, yes?”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s it.”

  With a sharp nod, her aunt got up to pluck a couple of plastic grocery bags from underneath the sink, filling them with some of the storage containers. “Everybody in my femily, they tell me I’m crazy for vanting to marry somebody I barely know, somebody I can barely even talk to.” The first bag filled, she started in on the second. “But efter two dates with Benny, I know he’s a good man, and he needs me.” After plopping in a loaf of whole grain bread some kind, misguided soul had contributed to the cause, Magda turned, smiling. “Not zat he could tell me. But vords…too often zey come from ze head, and not ze heart. It’s what a person does zat counts, no? Who he is.”

  The bags filled, Magda hefted them off the counter, crossed to the table and held them out. “Don’t just sit zere, get up off your skinny little butt and take zese.”

  “And…what am I supposed to do with them?” Lili asked, taking the bags.

  “Ve can’t eat all zis food, it vill go bad. Nobody else needs it, either.” She grinned. “Tony, on ze ozzer hand…”

  “Oh, no—” Lili tried to hand the bags back, but Magda folded her arms so she couldn’t. So Lili swung them back up on the table and folded her arms.

  “I am not going over there on some…some mission of mercy.”

  “And vy not?”

  “You know full well vy—why not.”

  “Zen meybe you should explain to me.”

  “The man’s just lost his wife. And Claire looks at me as if I’m carrying some flesh-eating virus. How am I doing so far?”

  “You vant to be needed? I nefer see anybody needier than Tony right now.”

  “True. But it’s not me he needs.”

  “I’m no so sure of zat. Lili,” Magda said when Lili released a breathy laugh, “you zink I don’t see the special bond
you two hed before?”

  “Oh, please. To Tony, I was just a little sister. An annoying one, too, no doubt.”

  “I am not talking about how Tony felt about you. But iz easy for a young girl to develop feelings for an older boy, yes? Especially a boy who treats you with such kindness?”

  Lili’s eyes narrowed. She’d never said one word to her aunt—or anybody else, for that matter—about her crush. That dumb, she wasn’t. Even then. “Where are you going with this?”

  Slowly, Madga smiled. “You remember the diary you lost, ven you were here before?”

  “Yes, I…” Heat roared up her neck. “You found it.”

  “I might hef,” Magda said, pretending to inspect her nails like some character from an old movie. “I might hef read some of it, too. Before I knew vat it was, of course. So,” she said mildly, “you hef two choices. Tek the man ze demmed food, or I mek your life a liffing hell.” At Lili’s dumbfounded look, the older woman shrugged. “Vat ken I say, I fight dirty.”

  In spite of herself, Lili chuckled. And grabbed the bags’ handles. Although she sincerely doubted even Magda would stoop so low as to show Tony—or anybody—the embarrassing ramblings of a lovesick fifteen-year-old, once again it was just easier to go with the flow. To do what was expected of her than to fight.

  “Car keys?”

  Her aunt dug them out of her pocket and handed them over. Smiling.

  Soon after, Lili backed out of the driveway in Magda’s pine-scented Ford Focus, the bags safely tucked under the passenger side dash. At the first stop sign, however, she started laughing all over again.

  Because that diary? The one Magda threatened, however obliquely, to show Tony?

  Completely in Hungarian.

  She chuckled all the way to Tony’s house.

  While Josie happily batted at a flotilla of bath toys in the sudsy tub, Tony sagged against the wall between the toilet and the tub, sighing. The minute he’d walked back in the house an hour before, Fear had greeted him every bit as eagerly as the dog. And as messily. Tissues, meat trays, diapers—strewn from kitchen to front door. Although the argument between Child 1 and Child 2 about who was supposed to have put the rotten beast outside handily pushed Fear into a corner of his brain. However, unlike Ed—who at least had the good sense to cower and look guilty—Fear simply sat there, biding its time. Waiting to attack.