My father.
Paul crossed from the doorway to the table in four long strides, clapped his father-in-law on the back while simultaneously pumping his hand. ‘George! What brings you here all the way from the Eastern Shore?’
‘Connie and Dennis are snowed in, so Ruth put the strong arm on me. Some nonsense about a quota.’ My father turned to smile at the woman seated on his right. ‘I actually drove over Saturday morning. Neelie and I had an ass-ig-na-tion.’ He drew the word out into four long syllables, and wiggled both eyebrows, a sure sign that he was up to some sort of mischief.
‘George! Do grow up!’ Neelie tugged affectionately on Daddy’s ear lobe. ‘What your father is trying to say is that I invited him to spend the weekend. He’s been helping me put up storage shelves in the basement.’
Neelie was Cornelia Gibbs, my widowed father’s steady girlfriend both before and after his recent post-retirement assignment to a hush-hush project with a government contractor in Saudi Arabia. Daddy had leased a one-bedroom house in Snow Hill on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to be close to his work at the satellite tracking station, but sometimes came back to our family home in the Providence community near the Naval Station in Annapolis. He’d rented the house out for a while, fully-furnished, but the last tenant had been transferred to San Diego and the next family wouldn’t move in until June, so except for my father’s pop-in-to-check-up-on-it visits, the place was now vacant.
I’d never seen Neelie dance, but she was a slim, energetic senior citizen, and my equally slim septuagenarian father had always been light on his toes. He and my mother had cut quite a rug in the early years of their marriage. It had been five years since Mom’s death. Neelie was a tonic; it was good to see Dad having fun again.
‘Well, here we are!’ My father raised a glass of iced water and beamed like an Old Testament patriarch as Paul, Ruth and I joined him and Neelie around the table. ‘A toast to the Amazing Dancing Alexanders.’
Paul helped me off with my coat, and we settled down to thaw our hands around cups of piping-hot green tea. ‘Sounds like a circus act, George,’ Paul remarked.
‘You’ll have to think of another name, Daddy,’ I said, cautiously sipping, ‘since you’re the only official Alexander in the bunch.’
Ruth Alexander as-was Gannon soon-to-be Hutchinson, selected a crispy wonton from a bowl in the center of the table and dredged it through a sweet, orange sauce. ‘It’s going to be fun,’ she said, gesturing with the wonton, deliciously but dangerously dripping. ‘I’m just sorry Connie and Dennis got snowed in.’
The Rutherfords lived on the Ives family farm near Pearson’s Corner, well south of Annapolis. It sometimes took days for the snowplow to reach them, so during inclement weather volunteers in four-wheel-drive vehicles would pick Dennis up and drive him to police headquarters. Poor Connie, though, was often stuck. ‘Connie promised they’d come next week,’ I said. ‘Not to worry. We’ve got our quorum.’
‘Quorum?’ Neelie looked puzzled.
‘The studio has a three couple minimum,’ Ruth explained.
Neelie’s brow crinkled, taking in the sixth chair at our table. Still empty.
‘Hutch is on his way,’ Ruth hastened to add. ‘He called me on my cell a few minutes ago. He was just leaving his office.’
We had completed our first circuit of the enormous buffet table when Hutch arrived, whacking his cap against his leg to dislodge the fat, wet snowflakes that were clinging to it. He bent to kiss Ruth’s cheek. ‘Sorry I’m late, sweetheart.’
Ruth smiled up at her fiancé and used the tips of her fingers to flick water droplets out of the fringe of pale hair that flopped over his forehead. ‘You smell like wet dog.’
‘You want I should smell like damp polyester?’ he teased, glancing around the restaurant, looking for a place to hang his overcoat – one hundred percent cashmere, unless I missed my guess.
A waiter materialized out of nowhere, relieving Hutch of his coat. ‘At least I don’t smell like an ashtray anymore,’ Hutch quipped as he made a beeline for the buffet table.
Ruth beamed with pride. ‘And he’s off the patches now, too.’
After a minute or two, Hutch rejoined us. He’d heaped his plate high with spicy chicken wings and egg fu yung, then – inexplicably – smothered it all with an indifferent brown gravy that was already congealing on the rim of his plate. Chef Martin Yan would have had a coronary just looking at it. Come to think of it, anybody would.
Hutch tucked into his grub like a starving man, while I used a spoon to scoop up the dregs of my hot and sour soup, in a very ladylike way, then returned to the buffet to help myself to some Singapore rice noodles, loaded with curried vegetables and plump shrimp, and a couple of dumplings.
When I returned to the table, Hutch was saying, ‘… why I was late. It’s someone you know, Hannah.’
‘Oh? Who?’
‘I met with her today, and she asked me to say “hi”.’ Hutch transferred his chopsticks to his left hand, reached into the breast pocket of his blazer, and pulled out a hot-pink Post-it note. It made its way around the table, hand to hand.
‘Eva Haberman?’ Daddy squinted at the Post-it as he was handing it over to me. ‘Isn’t she, I mean, wasn’t she, your priest, the one whose husband…?’
His voice trailed off. Daddy had been in Saudi Arabia when his great-grandson Timmy was kidnapped, so he’d missed the whole ugly business with Roger Haberman, even though it was splashed across every television screen and made the front page of every newspaper in the greater Baltimore/Washington area. Then Timmy’d been found, and Roger’d drowned – hard to call it a happy ending, but it did wrap things up.
While I was still trying to make sense of the news that the Reverend Eva Haberman was in communication with Hutch, of all people, Ruth said, ‘But I thought Eva was in Idaho?’
Still staring at the note, I nodded. ‘After all the hoo-hah over Roger, she retreated to a family cabin in the Sawtooth Range. I had an email from her just last week,’ I added, really puzzled now. ‘You met with her?’
His mouth full, Hutch grunted.
‘She didn’t say a word to me about returning to Annapolis.’
Hutch swallowed a bite of egg roll. ‘Well, she’s back now, at least temporarily, and staying with the assistant pastor at St Anne’s. She wants you to call.’
I nodded, still feeling a bit stunned. ‘Will do. Did she say…?’
Hutch waved his egg roll. ‘Lawyer-client privilege, Hannah, yada yada yada.’
Paul leaned in my direction, his breath warm against my ear. ‘The plot, as they say, thickens.’
Resisting the urge to power up my cell phone and call Eva right away, I tucked the Post-it into my purse. ‘Very curious,’ I muttered, as I picked up my chopsticks and attacked a dumpling, spearing it neatly on the first try. ‘Very curious, indeed.’
Across the table, Hutch shrugged unhelpfully.
I shook my chopsticks at him. ‘No fortune cookie for you, Mr Hutchinson.’
‘I’m sure Eva will share her concerns with you, Hannah. It’s just not my place to do so.’
‘I know.’ I smiled back. ‘It’s just that I’m dying of curiosity!’
‘And I’m dying of hunger,’ Neelie interjected. She picked up her empty dinner plate in both hands, and held it out to my father. ‘Will you fetch me some more of those spicy green beans, George? And steamed rice.’ She smiled, revealing a row of even white teeth. ‘Please?’
What’s the matter with you, Neelie, I thought. Legs broken?
Even though Dad still had mounds of fried rice and sweet and sour pork on his own plate, he got up from his chair, relieved Neelie of her plate and said gallantly, ‘My pleasure, Cornelia.’
When he was out of earshot, Neelie touched my arm, her face serious, and I realized why she wanted to send Daddy away from the table. ‘I don’t want to worry you, dear, but your father is having terrible trouble with his eyes. He’s seeing a specialist up at Wilmer next Monday.’