"But why marriage?"
Kitty answered the question with matter-of-fact, unhurried calm, as if they were in her store on a slow afternoon, not holding up three hundred people waiting for a wedding.
"We take so many unconscious risks in this life-especially you, sweetie-that we might as well take a few conscious ones from time to time."
She smoothed a piece of hair back from Tess's forehead. An hour out from under the beautician's touch, a few stubborn pieces were already asserting themselves. Had her hair always been this unruly, or was it just cranky since it had been shorn before its time? "I wish you had a date for the wedding. It's a shame Crow couldn't make it up from Charlottesville."
"I almost had four dates," Tess said. "But Mark checked the time and realized the sun wouldn't have been down long enough for them to make it here on time from Pikesville. Besides, the catering isn't kosher, and the children would be up past their bedtimes. Mark is very strict about their routines-although not as strict as he used to be. He even let the children celebrate Sukkoth late. Isaac said it wasn't fair to have Yom Kippur without having Sukkoth, too."
She had, in fact, helped Mark and the children build the traditional shelter, with Isaac instructing her at great length on the rituals of the holiday, a celebration of the harvest.
"We'll make a Jew out of you yet," Mark had joked.
"Maybe a half one," Tess said.
"Can you be a half Jew?" Isaac had asked. "Don't you have to be all or nothing?"
Mark Rubin had treated the question with the utmost seriousness. Tess was learning this was the way he treated all his children's questions, large and small.
"When it comes to faith, you believe or you don't believe," he had told his son. "But there is a cultural aspect to Judaism, too, and Miss Monaghan is talking about that part of herself. Her mother's family was Jewish, but she wasn't raised to believe anything."
"Yes I was," Tess protested. "I was raised to believe that a good handshake, big tips, and a decent Christmas-card list can grease the wheels of doing business. And that Jews can have crab feasts as long as they have them outdoors."
Mark didn't want to laugh at mat bit of sacrilege, not in front of his children, but he did anyway. "Tess doesn't have a religion. But she does believe many things. And she sticks by them, which is more than some religious people can say. She honors her own principles."
"And Mama? Was she a half Jew or a whole one?"
It was as if a cloud had passed over the sun and a bright day had grown chilly and dreary. With just a glance at Mark's face, Tess could tell he was thinking about Natalie, who was being held in a Maryland jail and fighting extradition to Ohio, where she and Zeke had been implicated in the death of a patrolman. Mark could not believe that his wife had killed anyone but Zeke, and Tess saw no reason to argue with him. But a police officer was dead, and Ohio wanted a live suspect to try. Tess, remembering the coded exchange between Zeke and Natalie, had a hunch Ohio was after the right person. But she held her tongue around Mark. People needed to believe what they needed to believe.
"Your mother," Mark said at last, "is a good woman who loves you very much. That was what she believed in-that you were precious and worth making any sacrifice for."
The Rubin Sukkoth table groaned with offerings from throughout Pikesville, and Tess knew that Mark Rubin would remain alone only by his own choice. Still, he had yet to pursue a get from Natalie, or even a more mundane Maryland divorce. She hoped he would. Mark Rubin was an awfully attractive man. Not attractive enough to convert for-Tess knew her limitations. But he would make such a good husband for the right woman, once he was through yearning for the woman he couldn't have, the woman no one should really want.
In the Pratt the jazz trio, a group of Peabody students, began playing a light classical piece that Tess knew she should recognize but didn't. Crow would know, she thought, the memory almost unbidden. Crow always knew things like that.
"That's your cue," Kitty said, pushing her past the shelf of biographies, and Tess walked the length of carpet that had been put down to create an aisle between the rows of folding chairs. She walked a little more swiftly than she should, although the heels kept her from moving with her usual long stride. At the end of the runner, she greeted Tyner and then turned to watch Kitty walk down the aisle. Because of her dual duties, she did not carry flowers, but she had a tiny velvet bag dangling from a wrist corsage. She would produce the ring from that bag when the time came.
Kitty swept up the aisle on the arm of Tess's father, Patrick, the oldest of her five brothers. The Unitarian minister raced through the service as if he had a train to catch, and it was a little pro forma to Tess's taste, with the usual Shakespearean admonitions-love is not love that seeks to alter, allow no impediments to the love between two true minds, et cetera, et cetera. Kitty had wanted Tess to give a reading, but she had balked. She had no fear of public speaking, but she was terrified of choking up from emotion, and Tyner would never let her live that down.
Fifteen minutes proved to be a generous estimate. The wedding was over in twelve, making way for the grand party Kitty had been promising all fall. Tess followed her aunt down the aisle, finishing the last of her attendant duties-removing the veil and folding it into a sealed plastic wrapper, finding a place to keep Kitty's flowers for the duration of the reception, which was to be held a few blocks northward in yet another library, the Peabody.
"You're in the second car," Kitty said. "You'll find it parked at the curb."
"Really, Kitty, I could have walked it, even in these shoes. Or grabbed a ride with my folks."
"No," she said, reverting back into her adamant-bride mode. "It's very important to me that the wedding party arrive with proper pomp and circumstance. Besides, I want you to open this in the car." She handed Tess a small box from Tiffany's. "It's traditional for the bride to give her maid of honor a gift. Don't lose this."
"I didn't lose the ring, did I?" Actually, she had almost knocked it down the sink in the Pratt washroom before the ceremony, but there didn't seem to be any reason to mention that fact now that the ring was safe on Kitty's left hand.
The Lincoln Town Car was at the curb, as promised. Tess crawled in, inadvertently flashing the guests milling on the sidewalk-she still hadn't gotten the hang of maneuvering in such a sleek skirt-and settled herself in the deep backseat. The car reminded her of Mark's. She'd hate to admit it to anyone, but she had grown rather fond of that Cadillac and had even priced a few used ones on the Internet. A woman who did surveillance for a living deserved a more comfortable ride. Besides, as Uncle Donald said: "It's a write-off, mamele."
Kitty came out and was showered with mesh bags of seed, while Tyner rolled behind her, trying to scowl but failing. He heaved himself into the limousine, a Lincoln Navigator, and Kitty folded his chair with a speedy efficiency that spoke volumes of their ease with each other. If you had to be in a wheelchair, you might as well be with someone who knew how to fold it, Tess thought.
"The Peabody," she told the driver, pulling on the ribbon of the box Kitty had given her. They said good things came in small packages, but Tess couldn't think of anything she wanted that was this tiny. Inside, under layers and layers of tissue, there was only a folded piece of paper. Maybe Kitty and Tyner had bought her the new car she wanted. Or had given her a check to pay for her pain and suffering through this ordeal. Tess was giving them a small wooden chest, courtesy of Mickey Harvey the woodworker. Tess didn't care how old Kitty was. Every bride needed a hope chest.
The paper, folded with almost origami complexity, was a note, nothing more. I'm not sure what the traditional bride's gift is to the maid of honor, Kitty had written in her distinctive parochial-school hand, but I thought I'd give you a nudge. The inscription was followed by a telephone number that Tess had memorized long ago, a Virginia number she had not been calling all these weeks. It was the home telephone for Crow's parents.