From Friends to Forever Page 6

  “Magda sent you again?”

  “No, this time was my idea. I thought of it last night.”

  Tony stood, this time noticing Lili’s loose, blah-looking gray T-shirt flopped over some seriously short shorts. Deep in whichever gland was responsible for noticing things like short shorts, a tiny, defiant spark erupted, momentarily obliterating the fact that, except for the girls, his life was hell on a stick.

  He finally dragged his gaze back up to a smile flashing in a glowing, scrubbed-clean face behind adorably crooked glasses, and the spark cleared enough for her words to register. “Thought of what last night?”

  “That while I’m here, I could help you clean the house. I assume the girls are gone?”

  “Uh, yeah—”

  “Good.” Lili pushed past him, ponytail swishing as she and Ed headed with definite purpose toward the kitchen, one of them trailing a faint cloud of something flowery—probably not Ed—which Tony only half noticed because his gaze was glued to all that smooth, pale skin below the hem of those very, very short shorts.

  Dude. Wrong. “What are you,” he called to her back, slightly dizzy and more than a little pissed, “my own personal Merry Maid?”

  “I like to clean,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen. A second later, a disembodied, and apparently disappointed, “You started without me?” floated back down the hall.

  Tony ambled to the kitchen doorway, where he crossed his arms across his own baggy T-shirt, worn over a pair of ancient gym shorts unfit for anyone to see who didn’t share his last name. “We did eight o’clock mass, the girls were gone by ten. So, yeah. Since I had no idea you were coming. But hey, I haven’t gotten to the bathrooms yet.”

  He could have sworn he snarled that last part. Lili, however, actually brightened, her eyes as clear and blue as the water in some tropical paradise brochure. “Wonderful!”

  “Jeez, Lil—I was kidding—”

  But she was already gone, mop in hand and cleaning supplies merrily rattling. Tony caught up with her at the stairs, nearly tripping over the stupid dog as he lumbered up after her two steps at a time. Not only were the legs easy on the eyes, but they moved at the speed of light. “I’m serious, I can’t let you do this—”

  “Oh, dear. Did you wash the dog in this tub?”

  Ed lifted deeply offended eyes to Tony.

  “No. Just Daph.”

  “How can such a little girl get so dirty?”

  “It’s a talent,” Tony muttered, doomed, as, on a happy sigh, Lili grabbed a bottle of tub cleaner, squirted some into the tub, then dropped to her knees, sponge in hand.

  “You’re insane,” Tony said. Now ogling her butt. Which was amazingly…round. Ed plodded over to see if he could help, but his butt wasn’t nearly as interesting as Lili’s.

  Tony thought she might have shrugged while she scrubbed. Then she actually started humming. Transfixed, Tony dropped onto the toilet lid to watch her. She glanced up, a piece of hair snaked into her eyes. “You’re not supposed to be watching, you’re supposed to be cleaning, too,” she said, and her damned pretty accent and damned laughing eyes and damned round butt nudged aside the self-pity he now realized he’d been clutching to him like Nonna Vaccaro that ratty black shawl she used to wear. Not a lot, not completely, but enough to see a glimmer, maybe, of pale light beyond the murky little world he’d been calling home this past year.

  Then he thought of Marissa’s letter and the glimmer went out.

  “Already did the kitchen, remember?”

  Another glance—this time, she’d apparently caught the sharpness—but she simply shrugged and turned on the squeaky old faucet. “Is there laundry, then?” she said over the water roaring into the old porcelain tub. “Or something else you need to do?”

  “There’s always something else that needs doing,” Tony mumbled, too tired to keep up the Big Bad Ogre routine, too amazed to stay mad at her. The tub rinsed, another bottle appeared out of the depths of the Magic Bucket, this one dispensing foam all over the fixtures and tile. A little more scrubbing, a little more butt-wiggling, and shazam. Gleaming fixtures and sparkling tile.

  “How’d you do that?”

  “I have my ways.” She flapped her hands at him. “Move.”

  Still seated, Tony lifted his eyes to hers. “You are not cleaning my toilet.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve been cleaning lavatories since I was seven. So go,” she said, poking at him with the dry johnny mop. “You’re cramping my style.”

  Defeated, Tony stood to leave, only to turn back when he reached the doorway, his earlier annoyance pretty much disintegrated, replaced by a gratitude so sudden and profound he nearly wept. “Thanks.”

  She grinned up at him from over his open toilet. “That’s more like it,” she said.

  Two hours later, the bathrooms clean, beds stripped and changed, the living room vacuumed and dusted, Lili found Tony out in his backyard, on his hands and knees in the middle of the overgrown vegetable garden taking up half of it. The plot was nearly choked with weeds, which he was attacking as though each one was a personal insult.

  “We’ve had so much rain, and I haven’t had a chance to get out here in weeks.” He straightened, removing his billed hat to wipe his forehead on the hem of his shirt, a move that revealed the midsection that time forgot. As had Lili.

  “When on earth do you have time to work out?”

  His shirt hem still in his hands, Tony gave her a curious look. Which is when she realized she’d said that out loud. Oops. “I lift weights a couple times a week. Try to get in a run whenever I can, if nothing else to take the edge off the stress. Hauling a two-ton toddler around doesn’t hurt, either.” He bent over again to yank out another clump of weeds. “Keepin’ in shape at least gives me some illusion of control, you know?”

  Lili sat on the edge of the back porch, hugging her knees. “Want some help?”

  “You’ve already done more than I should’ve let you. Forget it.” Sitting back on his knees, he squinted over the tangled mass of vines and plants, shaking his head. “This wasn’t my idea. The garden, I mean. Marissa had the green thumb, not me. But the kids wanted to keep it goin’, so I said okay.”

  “Gardens are a lot of work.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I’m serious. My grandmother spent half the day during the summer in hers. It was twice the size of this one, of course, but…do the girls at least help?”

  “Yeah, they do. Some. Daph more than Claire, but she does her bit, too.” He tugged out a particularly vicious looking clump of weeds, tossed them aside. “This shrink or whatever we went to after Rissa died, she said it was important to keep as much continuity as possible, that it would make the transition easier. A lot of people—” he got up, moved over to a line of straggly tomato plants, weighed down with several dozen ripe fruits “—the first thing they do when somebody dies? They make a major change right away—sell the house, move someplace else, whatever. But that’s like runnin’ away from the grief instead of dealing with it, adjusting to life with the new hole in it. Plenty of time to make changes later. Just not right away.”

  He gave her a look one might have construed as a warning glance, then nodded toward the porch. “You wanna hand me that basket over there? Shoulda picked these puppies days ago.”

  Lili looked behind her, spying the bushel basket a few feet away. She retrieved it, the hot sun pouncing on her when she walked out into the garden. Instead of handing it to Tony, however, she began gently twisting the swollen, warm tomatoes off the plants, carefully setting them in the basket. “I see a lot of spaghetti sauce in your future.”

  Beside her, Tony sighed. “Actually, I’ll give most of these to Magda and them. Rissa did a fair amount of canning and stuff, but it’s not my thing. Here, let me take that, it must be getting pretty heavy.”

  As she pulled off two more tomatoes, Lili sneaked a peek at Tony’s face, drawn and determined. “I hope the girls appreciate you’re only doing
this for them.”

  One corner of his mouth twitched. “Putting them first…it’s my job, isn’t it? If it’s not good for them—” he glanced over “—it’s not good, period—”

  “Yo! Mister V.!” boomed from the side of the house. “I see your sorry old car sittin’ out here, so I know you’re home!”

  “Hollis Miller?” Tony yelled back, grinning. “That you?”

  A moment later, an equally grinning dark face framed in short braids appeared over the back gate. “Nobody else, Mr. V. Oh, sorry…didn’t mean to crash the party—”

  “Not at all…come on back! Lili Szabo,” he said after the kid swung open the gate and joined them in the yard, his tall, spindly frame nearly lost inside an oversized baseball jersey and baggy pants that puddled around huge trainers, “this is Hollis Miller, one of my kids who graduated last year. Lili’s sort of a cousin, visiting from Hungary for a few weeks.”

  White teeth gleaming in one of the most beautiful faces Lili had ever seen, Hollis extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Szabo.” Then bright, mischievous eyes flashed to Tony. “‘Sort of a cousin’?”

  “Her mother’s sister married my father’s brother.”

  The kid looked puzzled for a moment, then laughed, holding up his hands. “Whatever, man. Hey—my mother and me, we just moved into that new apartment complex a few blocks away,” Hollis said, pointing east. “I was out getting the lay of the land when I spied that old rust bucket of yours and thought, No way, this must be Mr. V.’s place. So looks like we’re neighbors.” The boy turned his bright smile on Lili. “This dude saved my sorry ass, and that’s no lie.”

  Tony choked out an embarrassed laugh. “I wouldn’t go that far—”

  “No, what you did was go above and beyond, man. If it hadn’t’ve been for Mr. V.,” he said again to Lili, “I probably wouldn’t’ve even graduated, and that’s the truth.” He scanned the yard. “Whoa. Serious garden. In serious bad shape. You trying to grow your own national forest or what?”

  Lili sputtered a laugh; Tony shot a brief glare in her direction, followed by a sigh. “Yeah. I know.”

  “Hey, man…you need some help? I usedta spend summers with my great-aunt in Virginia when I was a kid, she had a vegetable garden so pretty it’d make you cry. Anything you wanna know about vegetables and stuff, I’m your man.”

  Tony perked up. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I’d be glad to pay you—”

  “After everything you did for me? Forget it, helping you out’s the least I can do. I gotta run now, but I got some time on Monday morning. I don’t have to be at work until noon. That okay?”

  “That would be great,” Tony said. “In the meantime…please take some tomatoes and cukes off my hands. No, really,” he said when the young man started to protest, “you’d be doin’ me a favor.”

  “Mom’s gonna bust something when she gets a load of these,” Hollis said when Tony found another, smaller basket and loaded it up with vegetables. “She’s always complaining about how those pitiful things from the grocery store taste like plastic.” Basket in hand, grin firmly in place, the young man nodded to Lili, saying how nice it’d been to meet her, then strode back to the front.

  “Well. It appears you now have a gardener,” she said, the almost worshipful look on the boy’s face now indelibly etched on her brain. “Not to mention a fan for life. What on earth did you do—?”

  “Hey, we got all this stuff, and that bread you brought from Magda’s…wanna stay for lunch?”

  She decided he hadn’t heard her. “Sure, why not?”

  Compared with the blistering heat in the yard, the clean, tidy kitchen felt cool and inviting. A breeze even teased the lightweight curtains over the windows. They worked as a team to pull together their simple meal, one similar to what she might have eaten back home in her grandmother’s country kitchen in northern Hungary—bread and cheese and cabbage salad, the fresh vegetables warm from the garden.

  “Sorry about the air conditioning,” Tony said after they took their food back outside to eat on the porch, nearly as cool as the kitchen. “Or lack thereof. My folks had central air installed when I was in college, but when it goes on the blink it’s a pain in the ass to fix.”

  “Please don’t apologize, I’m not used to it much, anyway, except at school and in public buildings. My mother’s apartment got wonderful cross breezes, but even when it was still…” She shrugged, popping a piece of tomato into her mouth. “Heat doesn’t bother me.”

  “Does anything?”

  Lili frowned at him across the chipped, wrought-iron table. “What a strange question.”

  “Didn’t mean it to be. It’s just…I’ve never known anybody to take things as they come like you do.”

  Lili tore off a piece of the crusty bread. “I wasn’t always that way. But with enough practice—and enough time—one can get better at anything.”

  “Is that why you’re here now? Giving yourself time to adjust?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps.” She sighed. “Although it’s not as if I expect to have a major revelation about what to do with my life simply because I’m here. I still have to decide what I want to be when I grow up. Where I am when that happens is immaterial.”

  Tony rocked back in one of the iron chairs that matched the table, his arms folded over his chest. “Any clues? About what you want to do, I mean?”

  “Nary a one. But what keeps going around in my head is…shouldn’t I be making a difference? Adding to the world instead of just existing in it?”

  Tony looked amused. “You wanna be famous?”

  She laughed. “Dear God, no. I just feel I should be doing more, somehow. Even if I don’t yet know that’s supposed to play out. What’s so funny?”

  “Hearing American slang in that accent, that’s all,” Tony said, looking almost halfway relaxed. “Tickles me every time.”

  “I watch a lot of American TV and movies, read magazines, to keep up. For my translation work? I guess a lot of it’s rubbed off.”

  His expression suddenly pensive, Tony looked out over the garden. “For whatever it’s worth…” His gaze returned to hers, giving her gooseflesh. “I’m glad you decided to come.”

  “You’re just glad someone else cleaned your bathrooms,” Lili said lightly.

  “Won’t argue with you there. But it’s not just that.” Focusing again on the garden, he brought his hands up to link them behind his head. “You make a difference, Lil,” he said softly. “Just by bein’ yourself.”

  Her face warmed. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  “Deal with it,” he said, then scratched his chin for a second before clamping his hands behind his head again. Except this time he didn’t look even remotely relaxed. “Right before we came to the party yesterday? I got this letter. From Rissa, through our lawyer.”

  Lili felt the blood in her veins chug to a standstill. “What? But—”

  “She’d apparently given it to him sometime before she died, I don’t know when, it wasn’t dated.” He paused, a muscle clenching in his jaw. “She confessed to havin’ an affair.”

  “Tony, no…” The dog put his head in her lap; absently, she stroked the smooth, stiff fur on his neck. “Is that what you didn’t want to talk about?”

  “Yeah. But it seems kinda pointless keeping secrets from somebody who’s cleaned your toilets.” His attempt at humor didn’t even begin to mask the pain working its way to the surface. He lowered his hands. “I mean, I knew we were having problems for a while there, but…I had no idea. None. But you wanna hear the kicker?”

  Although Lili braced herself, nothing prepared her for the agony that now shrieked in his eyes when he faced her. “Judging from the dates she gave? There’s a good chance Josie’s not mine.”

  Chapter Five

  It had felt even better than Tony had imagined, finally giving vent to the putrid feelings inside him. But only to Lili. Because in a world where damn little was a sure thing anymore, Tony knew this about h
er: She wouldn’t go crazy on him, and she wouldn’t go blabbing to the family.

  “Oh, dear God,” she finally whispered. “Are you sure?”

  “About the timing? Yeah. Not that there were many gaps in that department,” he said bitterly, thinking how stupid he’d been, assuming because things were still more or less okay in the bedroom, they were okay otherwise. “But if she was foolin’ around with somebody else at the same time…” He slammed his hand on the tabletop, making the dog jump. Lili didn’t even flinch.

  “Did…did she say the baby might not be yours?”

  “Yeah. She did. I mean, sure, I’ll have a test done and all but…”

  Lili reached over and wrapped her hand around his. “It’s going to be all right—”

  “You don’t know that!” Tony said, yanking free. “Nobody knows that! Especially considering the insane number of things that have gone wrong over the last year! So spare me the pats on the head, okay?”

  She pulled back, her arms crossed over her ribs, but otherwise seemingly unaffected by his outburst. Tony got up to lean hard on the porch railing, the paint completely peeled off in places. Like his life, peeling away bit by bit.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t’ve blown up on you like that.”

  “As you can see, I survived.”

  Tony almost smiled, only to blow out a harsh breath instead. “Funny how you can look back, see the clues you totally missed. We argued a lot, mostly about stupid stuff. Now I’m wondering…did Rissa feel trapped? Like maybe marriage hadn’t turned out the way she thought it would?”

  “In what way?”

  “Damned if I knew. She’d never really come right out and say what was bugging her. Like she expected me to, I dunno, figure it out on my own. I mean…”

  He turned to Lili. “I thought she understood exactly what she was getting. Who she was getting—a jock who wasn’t gonna suddenly turn into some brainiac businessman or somethin’. Yeah, there was that time Lou—her father—suggested I come into the restaurant with him, but they couldn’t’ve been serious about that. I mean, come on—what the hell do I know about runnin’ a restaurant? Not to mention the god-awful hours. It was like I kept tellin’ her—maybe teaching high school PE wouldn’t exactly make me rich, but I figured the time it left me to be with the girls was a fair trade-off, right?”