I gaze at the quickly darkening sky, too, wondering if I should reintroduce myself somehow. She obviously knows my name and I can’t help but believe this is some kind of eight-year-old power play. If she doesn’t say my name, I don’t exist.
“Sweetheart?” Josh says.
“Yes?” I answer.
“What?” Penny answers at the same time.
“Sweetheart Penny, this time,” says Josh, smiling and touching her nose. “But I’m talking to Sweetheart Charlie as well. And that’s what I wanted to say. You can call her Charlie, you know, if you like.”
I scoot around, tucking my legs under me, getting ready to join the conversation. Maybe I’ll suggest we can all come up with something else she can call me. Charlotte? Aunt Charlie?
Penny purses her lips as if she’s considering how to respond to her father, but then, instead, she starts making faces at him. Widening her eyes, making pretend fins with her hands, cheeks sucked in, now-bowed mouth opening and closing. “Fish face,” she says, her words distorted though her moving lips. She points to Josh. “You do one.”
There’s a sound like a sizzle and a pop, and the night clicks into darkness as someone snaps off the spotlights that had illuminated the backyard. A shower of glittering orange plumes of light explodes overhead, illuminating the line of tilted-up faces watching from suburbia below. A Sousa march, courtesy of the Boston Pops radio broadcast, blares through speakers Matthew set up on the deck. I can hear the clash of brass and drums repeating down the street, each family with its own version of the celebration. Fireworks beginning. Conversations over.
Penny splays herself out, flat on her back, arms beneath her head and one flip-flopped foot propped on her knee. She’s made herself a boundary between us.
“COME ON, BABY GIRL.” Josh scoops up his dozing daughter, cradling her drowsy little body in his arms. One ribbon droops from a lank pigtail. There’s still a line of white marshmallow sticking to her half-open lips. The combination of football, sugar and staying up past her bedtime has zonked Penny into oblivion. We trudge across the lawn toward Josh’s car. And mine. The two of them are heading back to the vacation cabin on the Cape. The one of me is heading to Boston.
“I wish you were coming with us, sweets,” Josh says. He glances at Penny, lolling in his arms. “I was hoping you two could…”
“Me too,” I say. “Maybe Penny could even figure out my name.” I touch his arm as we walk. “I’ll be there this weekend, I promise. And I’ll take you up on the outdoor shower offer. Thanks for being so understanding about my story.”
“So what’s next? The nursing home, you said? To check on the tape?” He stops briefly and looks at me, his eyes narrowing with concern. “You’ve got to be careful, Nancy Drew. You and Franklin. Are you going to that bar tomorrow?”
In a time-honored gesture probably more age-appropriate to Penny, I cross my fingers and prepare to lie. Luckily, we arrive in the driveway’s parking cul-de-sac, where our cars are the only two left. Luckily, now Josh is distracted, and I don’t have to answer. Somehow, I’m not comfortable telling him about my complicated rendezvous with Tek. Meeting, I correct myself. Not rendezvous.
Josh opens the back door to his silver Volvo and slides Penny into the backseat, pulling a safety belt across her chest. Her eyes flicker open and she gives a groggy smile. Overtired and exhausted by fun, she sighs back to sleep as the belt clicks into place.
Gently Josh closes the car door. Leaning against the window, he takes both my hands. “It’s a hard time for Penny,” he says. “I have to tell you that there’s something more.”
Pausing, he looks down at the asphalt driveway. His face darkens as the combination of headlights and streetlights cast slashes of moving shadows, but I can still recognize his expression. He’s worried. And I don’t know why.
My brain races with possibilities. A hard time for Penny? What could that mean? I hear the final sounds of the neighborhood celebration-laughter, a slamming door, a car’s ignition cranking into life-but all I care about is what Josh will say next.
“Victoria and her husband Elliott are not at a resort in Montserrat,” Josh continues. His voice is even and unemotional. “They’re having some problems. And they needed some time alone.”
“Does Penny know?” I ask softly. Poor thing.
“No,” he says. “At least, they haven’t told her. But kids recognize when something is wrong. I’m wondering if that’s why she’s so clingy, so needy. When parents aren’t happy, that’s difficult to disguise, no matter how you struggle to pretend. I always hope Penny wasn’t really old enough to remember when Victoria and I-”
He breaks off. “Thing is, Victoria has this-idea-that maybe she and I should have stayed together.”
Slowly, I take my hands back, one at a time. I stare up at the night sky. The last of the fireworks have long faded and now it’s sprinkled with stars. Choosing one, I dispatch a fervent wish. And then the star moves. I’ve just wished on an airplane.
“For Penny’s sake, though,” I begin, stepping into uncharted territory. “Do you think it would be-”
Josh reaches out, touching my check, turning my face back to him. “Charlotte Ann McNally,” he says carefully. “Victoria’s wrong, of course. It’s absurd. Her perception of what’s ‘right’ is whatever she happens to want at the time. But if you and I are, if you and I are going to be together, we can’t have secrets. Penny, Victoria, your job. It’s all part of who we are, right?”
I search his face for clues, still unable to answer. Josh’s eyes soften and he gently takes up my hands again, one, then the other. Then, one at a time, he touches each to his lips, tenderly kissing my fingers.
“Fireworks,” he says with a smile. “And with you, not only on the Fourth of July.” He draws me closer, cradling me in the curve of his shoulder. We’re both leaning against the car, once again looking out at the sweep of stars above us. I feel his breath near my ear, feel his lips on my cheek.
“I love you, Charlie McNally,” he whispers.
A set of tiny twinkling lights moves through the sky, and this time the distant roar of the jet engines reminds me what I’m really seeing.
I nestle closer, almost convinced Victoria does not exist. Josh says he loves me. Maybe wishes on airplanes do come true.
CHAPTER 11
I look good. I didn’t even have a glass of wine at Maysie’s last night, so my eyes aren’t the slightest bit puffy. My hair actually looks the same on both sides. I’ll be out of here in five minutes, no question. Mother satisfied, me off the hook. And armed with a do-not-pass-go from her precious doctor: I get out of surgery, free.
“So what do you think, Dr. Garth?” I’m swallowed up in a gargantuan barbershop chair with metal footrest, padded headrest and wide flat vinyl arms. There’s a massive floor-to-ceiling mirror right in my line of sight. I’m trying not to stare at myself too obviously, so I turn to the white-coated physician sitting at a mahogany side desk nearby. “Am I getting past my sell-by date?”
Dr. Garth looks up from examining the yes or no boxes on the medical history chart I painstakingly filled out. His French cuffs, each monogrammed MDGIII, peek out from under his starched lab coat. “Dr. Malcolm Duncan Garth, III” embroidered in blue, is stitched over the pocket. His carefully knotted and conservatively striped tie is held in place by the silver and black rubber tubing of the stethoscope draped around his neck. I’d bet that stethoscope is engraved with his name and birth order, too.
He puts a finger on the chart to mark his place, then tilts his metal-rimmed glasses up onto his forehead, peering at me, his latest specimen. “Sell? Buy?” he asks. He gives a sharp nod and his glasses fall back into place on his nose. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Ms. McNally.”