A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [155]
“Watch your mouth, you crazy spook, or whatever the hell you are.”
“Jada!” Gordon grabbed her as she lunged forward, trying to get at the man. “Stop it! Stop that now,” he said. The man laughed as she screamed obscenities at him.
“It’s not your dog,” Gordon told her. “You know it’s not, so stop it! Stop it! Why are you doing this?” Even with both arms around her, she struggled and screamed.
“Why?” He turned her to face him. “Why?”
“I found him.” She sank against him, sobbing. “I didn’t steal him, I swear I didn’t. I found him. And I wanted to keep him. That’s all, I was just tryna help him, that’s all I was doing.”
“Go home, Jada. Go on inside.” He stepped away now that the men were gone. “Go on. Go ahead now.”
She picked up the rose from the sidewalk. “You don’t believe me, do you.”
He nodded. “I believe you.” Believed that she’d take whatever she needed to get by. Believed that for her there was no other choice.
CHAPTER 24
After drinks in the great room, Lisa had eased her guests into the dining room. It was a casual affair, the women in slacks, the men in open-necked shirts, place mats instead of linen. Up and down the table, small votive candles floated in bowls of water above iridescent glass chips, reflecting ripples of light off everyone’s faces. Lisa looked especially pretty tonight, radiant, Gordon thought as she sat beside her mother. His initial panic at seeing so many people here had subsided into a careful busyness with his utensils and his food. He was pleased to see his roses in the middle of the table, however spindly they were compared to the profuse arrangement they had replaced, pink and orange dahlias spiked with pink and white astilbe. The brighter bouquet sat on the sideboard, but it was the fragrance of roses that graced the room. He was grateful for the anonymity he felt as conversations cross-fired around him. They were all vigorous talkers, each as anxious to be heard as he was to be ignored. Twice now from his end of the table, Mr. Harrington had tried to include him. Gordon’s responses were brief. His pallor ashen, Dennis sat at the other end. Above the untouched food on his plate, his fixed smile made him look bored and distracted. Across from Gordon was Father Hensile. Next to the priest sat Luke, the new youth minister. A delicate young man with thinning hair, he seemed only a shade less nervous than Gordon, and his fair cheeks smarted with any attention. Farther down the table were Marty and Becca Brock, Mitzi and Tom Harrington’s very best friends. Tom and Marty had been roommates at Dartmouth. In fact, it had been Marty’s sister who had introduced Lisa’s parents. Well into her seventies, Becca Brock was a petite, startling-looking woman with heavily made-up eyes and long, inky-black hair. Busily opinionated, she was able to tune in to three or four conversations at once. She had just asked Jennifer, the teenage girl hired to help with dinner, to get her another fork, her tines were bent. Dennis stared at her.
“And that was the last we ever saw of him.” Tom had been telling Father Hensile about a man he and Marty Brock fondly recalled as Mossie. Lisa looked up quickly and asked her father if he’d like more wine. It was obviously a story she’d heard too many times before. The way both men told it, Mossie, heir to a steel company, got up one day in his parents’ Pittsburgh manor, had a robust breakfast with his father, “steak, home fries, eggs, put on his snowshoes, then went three miles into the woods out back—”
“Oh, five or six, anyway,” Marty interjected. “They owned half the county.”
“He dug a little hollow in the snow, sat down against a tree, and put the gun in his mouth—”
“Tom!” Mitzi said with a pained smile. “Lisa wants you to try the new Merlot. Here, dear, let me.” Mother and daughter exchanged looks as Lisa passed the bottle.
The teenage girl had returned with a new fork. The men continued to wonder why Mossie would choose to end such a charmed life. “Looks, brains, bucks, dames, the kid had it all!” Marty sighed as he cut his veal.
“Amazing,