That would all take a backseat to a pair of box seats at Yankee Stadium. Myself in one, and the center of my current universe in the other. That would be my niece, Elizabeth.
Her passport says she’s fourteen, but you’d never know it. Bright and articulate beyond her years, she also happens to be the bravest kid I know.
No, scratch that. She’s the bravest anybody I know.
Elizabeth ’s train hissed to a stop right on time at platform forty, the long row of doors opening in perfect unison. While the mad dash to exit was nowhere near your typical weekday morning rush hour, there was still enough of a crowd that I couldn’t spot her right away.
That’s when I heard her, the familiar sound that always accompanies her arrival on any scene.
Immediately, I smiled. I could see her now. But she couldn’t see me.
Elizabeth couldn’t see anything.
She’s been blind since the age of five.
“You forgot your mitt again, didn’t you?” I said as she got a little closer.
She smiled an amazing smile before scrunching her freckled nose. “And you’re wearing too much cologne again. I could just about smell you on the train coming in.”
I gave her a hug, squeezing her tightly in my arms. “I think Jeter’s going to hit one today,” I whispered. “I can feel it in my bones.”
“I think he’s going to hit two,” she whispered back. “Let’s go and see.”
Then she did what she always did. She broke away from my grasp so she could walk on her own, her foldout white cane leading the way.
Tap-tap-tap…
That’s my niece, Elizabeth.
The bravest anybody I know.
The perfect antidote for everything that had happened this week.
Chapter 45
YOU MIGHT WONDER – WASN’T I afraid I might be putting Elizabeth in harm’s way? I had thought about it and briefly considered canceling our day together, but that would have broken her heart – and the Mafia had always put women and children out of bounds. That was the code.
So it was Elizabeth and me – and we were already drawing some attention, as we always do.
I understood the double takes. I could even put up with the excessive staring. After all, whoever heard of bringing a blind girl to a baseball game?
But they didn’t get it, not any of them. It was as if they were the ones who were blind.
Don’t you see? Anybody?
Baseball is the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd, the smell of cut grass and hot dogs, the crunch of peanut shells at your feet.
Elizabeth couldn’t see the game with her eyes, but she enjoyed it no less than those who could. Perhaps she even enjoyed it more. Because while others merely watched it, she felt it.
And the gushing smile on her face was all I needed to see to be assured of that.
“So, how is Courtney?” Elizabeth asked after the top of the first. Between innings was when we did most of our talking. My niece had met Courtney half a dozen times and they adored each other.
“Courtney told me to say hello,” I said, which was the truth. “How’s your mom?” I asked then, quickly changing the subject.
“Mom’s lonely, that’s how she is,” answered Elizabeth. “But she’s tough, too.”
As often as I spoke to my older sister, Kate, I never felt as if she completely leveled with me. Elizabeth, on the other hand, always told it like it was.
“Lonely, huh? Like, sad lonely?” I asked.
“Is there any other kind?”
“Good point.”
“She needs to meet someone,” said Elizabeth. “Isn’t Courtney getting married?”
“She is, and to a very impressive guy. Your mom’s been going on a few dates, hasn’t she?”
“Yeah, few and far between.”
I laughed out loud. “It takes time, Lizzy.”
“Okay, but it’s been, like, four years since he died, Nick. That’s enough time.”
Four and a half, to be exact. That’s when my sister’s husband, Carl, had suffered a fatal heart attack while on business in London. He had been only forty-two. How on earth does that happen? Why? On whose orders?
Kate had called me to break the news. She’d also asked that I come out to their home in Weston, Connecticut, so I could help break the news to Elizabeth. She couldn’t bear to do it alone. The girl was nine years old and blind, and suddenly she was also fatherless, and her mom had a huge hole in her heart.
I’ll never forget what Elizabeth asked me that hot August afternoon as I held her hand on their living room couch. She was wearing a yellow sundress, her frazzled blond hair tucked back in rows of barrettes. “Will I be able to see my daddy in heaven?” she wanted to know.
My eyes welled up. I could barely hold back the tears.
“Yes,” I told her. “You’ll see him every day.”
“Do you promise?”
“I do.”
I squeezed her little hand and she squeezed back, and all I could remember thinking was one thing.
If there is indeed a God up there, he better not make a liar out of me.
“So anyway, Uncle Nick,” Elizabeth said after a quick sip of soda, “tell me all about Courtney and this impressive fiancé of hers.”
“Okay, okay – I’m heartbroken,” I finally admitted.
“I knew you were,” she said. “I could tell in your voice, just in the way you say her name. You truly are heartbroken. And I’m heartbroken for you.”
Chapter 46
COURTNEY HAD APPARENTLY been holed up in her large Upper West Side apartment through the weekend. When she finally returned one of my many phone calls that Sunday evening, I convinced her to let me come over.
When she opened the door, she was dressed in baggy sweats, she wasn’t wearing a touch of makeup, and her eyes were so red from all the crying that she could have been the “before” picture in an allergy medication ad.
But to me, she never looked more beautiful. I just wanted to hold her. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t even try under the circumstances.
We hung out in her kitchen and opened up a bottle of Bordeaux. It was a 2003 Branaire-Ducru, her favorite. I couldn’t help wondering if Thomas Ferramore knew that. Did he know any of her favorite things? Maybe he did. Maybe he loved her like I did. Screw Ferramore. Of course he doesn’t.
After a few sips in complete silence, she took the deepest of deep breaths and exhaled. “Go ahead,” she said, “ask the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”
Given Ferramore’s bank account it was more like the sixty-four-million-dollar question, but that was a bad joke I wasn’t about to crack. I was also going to do my best to avoid the word supermodel.
Still, I asked the question she wanted – make that needed – me to ask. “Is it true?”
“Tom swears that it isn’t. He even said he’d be able to prove it to me.”
“Do you believe him?” Don’t, Courtney. He’s a super-rich super-scumbag.
Courtney stared down at the wineglass cradled in her hands, the plum red of the Bordeaux reflecting off her ten-carat diamond ring. She was still wearing it.
“I don’t know,” she answered finally.
That was that.
She didn’t ask my opinion. She didn’t want to know what I thought she should do. Perhaps that’s because she already knew. She is that smart.
“Let’s focus on work,” she said. “I’ve got a magazine to run and you might have the biggest story in your life to write. Correct so far?”
I had to smile. She was proving it once again. If Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Terminator, Courtney Sheppard was the Compartmentalizer.
“The police have arrested the wrong man for the murder of Vincent Marcozza,” she continued. “And you’re the only one who can prove it.”
“They maybe arrested the wrong man,” I corrected her. “As for my proving it, I’m nowhere near doing that.”