I was looking forward to studying Darlene in her natural habitat, which is more than I can say for Ruth. I didn’t need the staff meteorologist at WBAL-TV to tell me that a storm was brewing on that front. As Daddy prepared to relocate to Chestertown, he and Ruth moved around the house almost as strangers, inching their way toward an inexorable clash like high-pressure systems moving across the face of a weather map. From the devil’s point of view, I thought, things were percolating along nicely; we could just sit back and wait for the eruption and hope that Darlene would not survive the fallout.
Round one went to Darlene when Ruth begged off the party at the last minute, blaming it all on Eric Gannon, her ex-husband, who is notoriously unreliable. If there was any time of year when Ruth needed help, it was the extended Christmas season when the downtown stores were open late and midnight madness often reigned. But Christmas also meant rounds of parties for the freewheeling and fun-loving Eric, who was not inclined to let part ownership in Mother Earth cramp his style.
“No can do,” Ruth announced when I stopped by the shop on my way home after some Christmas shopping. Ruth reached under the counter and handed me a holiday bag with silver and gold tissue paper erupting from the top.
“What’s this?”
“I must be getting soft in my old age,” Ruth said.
“What?”
“Look inside.”
I tunneled down through the tissue paper and discovered a gift-wrapped bottle.
“It’s peppermint schnapps for Darlene. My peace offering. I don’t know what came over me at dinner the other night. I must be menopausal.”
I looked up from the bag expecting to see Ruth’s self-deprecating smile, but her face was composed and perfectly serious. “I don’t think it’s hormones, Ruth. We were all on edge. You stepped a wee bit over the line is all.”
“I’ve decided to be as nice as pie, even if it revolts me.”
This reminded me of the trouble we’d had with Emily. The more dead set we were against some wholly unsuitable boy she was dating, the more determined she’d be to stick with the relationship. I wondered if the same were true of senior citizens. “Dad’s a stubborn old bird.”
Ruth nodded. “I know. Anyway, take that to Darlene with my apologies.”
“I will, and I’ll pop in on Monday with a full report.”
“Monday? Why not tomorrow?”
“Ah, well. That’s the surprise. Paul has reserved rooms at the Imperial Hotel. He didn’t want to drive back late at night when we might be tired and, well, just a bit tipsy.” I stepped closer to the counter as two customers entered the shop and began sniffing experimentally at the incense sticks that sprouted from an array of ceramic jugs on the shelf behind me. “Besides, it’s my turn to be the designated drinker!”
“Are Emily and Chloe staying over, too?”
I nodded. “He’s reserved the Parlor Suite for us”-I shot my sister an exaggerated wink-“and the room next door for Emily. Dante has to work this weekend.”
“Again?”
“ ’Fraid so. It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t have such a long commute.”
The ladies behind me had made their selections, so I said a hurried good-bye and breezed out the door, Ruth’s gift for Darlene tucked into the shopping bag I’d got at The Nature Company. I took a shortcut through an alley to State Circle, where I stopped at Annapolis Pottery to buy a gift for my author friend, L.K. Bromley, and at Flowers by James to buy a poinsettia for Darlene. I had just gotten home and was wedging the plant behind the driver’s seat of my Le Baron when Paul appeared on our stoop, freshly scrubbed, looking très distinqué in gray slacks, a white open-necked shirt, and a tweed jacket. He cast a critical eye over my jeans and red chenille sweater. “You gonna be warm enough?”
“You kidding? It must be fifty degrees out!” I slammed the car door with a comforting thrump. “Besides, I’m going to change.”
Paul followed me upstairs and fussed with his tie while I threw on a green, ankle-length wool skirt and a V-neck sweater, appliquéd with handmade Christmas ornaments. I clipped a jingle bell earring on each ear and pinned a Christmas wreath with teeny blinking lights to the collar of my sweater. I had a necklace of miniature Christmas tree bulbs somewhere, given to me by Sean and Dylan, but picked out by my sister, Georgina. I found the necklace in a box marked “Xmas” at the back of my jewelry drawer, slipped it over my head, then spread my arms wide. “There! How do I look?”
Paul’s eyebrows did a two-step. “Like a mail-order catalog on December the first.”
I punched him on the arm. “So where’s your Christmas spirit?”
He fingered his tie, a conservative red with an overall pattern of minuscule Christmas wreaths. He waggled the tail of it under my nose.
“That hardly counts, Paul. It would take a magnifying glass to distinguish those wreaths from garden-variety polka dots.”
We rounded up Emily and Chloe (looking Baby Beautiful in a stretchy red headband bow), took our festively attired selves to the car, and were soon whizzing through the tollbooths and over the Bay Bridge. By the time we reached the fork in the road where Routes 50 and 301 split, Chloe was asleep in her car seat. Next to her, Emily sat listening to something on her CD player. If I had ever watched MTV for more than five minutes, I probably could have recognized the tune from the chee-cha-cha, chee-cha-cha noises leaking from the earphones she had clamped to her head. I had half a mind to warn her she was going to go prematurely deaf, but thought better of it.
At the exit for Route 213, Chloe awakened, her chubby face red with the effort of producing something of significance in her diapers. A few miles later, we crossed the old-fashioned drawbridge over the Chester River into Chestertown. I consulted the map I had printed off the Internet and it was a good thing, too, because the left turn onto Queen Street came up so suddenly, we almost missed it. Paul eased the car down the street while I scanned the house numbers. “There it is!” I pointed. Paul slowed the car to a crawl. Darlene’s house stood in the middle of the first block, a two-story, double-dormered brick structure that had at one time been painted white, but the paint had softly weathered, giving the house an attractive, antiqued look.
“Well, at least it’s not a dump,” Emily commented. “I guess she spent all her ex-husbands’ money getting into this neighborhood and now she wants Gramp’s bucks to keep her in the style to which she’s become accustomed.” When I turned to scowl at Emily she raised a hand. “Joke!”
Signs along the street indicated that only residents should dare think about long-term parking there. “Where will we park?” I asked as we passed a turning for East Church Street.
“Never fear!” Squinting into the dark, Paul spun the steering wheel hard right and pulled into a driveway that led to the parking lot behind the Imperial Hotel. While we waited in the car, he gathered up our overnight cases and quickly checked us in, then we walked the block or so back to Darlene’s with Paul lugging the poinsettia.
I stepped onto the porch and mashed my finger on the bell. I heard it buzz rudely somewhere inside. The door swung open almost immediately to a whoosh of overheated air and a blast of Mannheim Steamroller Christmas. Peeping around the door were the violet eyes and the beaming cherry-cheeked face of a woman I’d never seen before.