Zack also knew that, given half a chance, he’d probably ruin this one for his dad, too.
Judy Magruder helped set up the champagne glasses for the wedding toast.
She stacked the slender flutes in a tenuous pyramid atop the linen-covered table set up in one corner of the apartment building’s rooftop garden.
“Is that too tall?” she asked a waitress.
“No, that looks—”
Before the waitress could say “fine,” a gust of wind whipped up the side of the building. For a brief instant, the delicate glasses became long-necked dragonflies suspended on the breeze. Gravity, however, soon took over and the glasses crash-landed on the patio’s concrete pavers.
“Oops.”
It was a good thing Judy was the bride today. She’d tell you herself: Her very presence seemed capable of causing glassware to leap off table ledges like lemmings on a family vacation to the Grand Canyon.
Dressed in her billowy purple wedding gown, Judy crouched down and started searching for shattered glass.
She quickly found the first shard. “Ouch. Be careful,” she said to the waiter and waitress helping her clean up. “You could cut yourself.”
Proving her point, she sucked the fingertip she’d just cut. Deciding she’d better check underneath the table, too, she jounced forward, scrunched up tufts of taffeta, and scooted through an opening in the table linens like they were curtains and she was going backstage after taking her bows, something she had done when she’d been an actress. That was before she published the first book in her series about Curiosity Cat, a white tabby with gray paws who, as the name suggested, was extremely curious and, consequently, always in trouble. Most of Judy’s friends and family said her children’s books were all semiautobiographical.
Judy crawled forward and discovered she wasn’t alone under the table. “Hey, Zack. Whatcha doin’ down here?”
Zack twisted the plastic arms of a G.I. Joe. “Nothing.”
“Good. Sometimes nothing is the best thing to do on crazy days like this.” She lofted a strand of hair out of her eyes by blowing sideways through her lips. “That a firefighter?” she asked.
Zack looked at the doll and nodded, even though he was embarrassed. A boy his age playing with dolls? Youch.
“That’s G.I. Joe, right?”
Again, Zack nodded. “Yeah.”
“Hi, Mr. Joe,” Judy said.
“Howdy, ma’am.” She did Joe’s voice, too. Rugged and tough.
“Hey, Zack?” Judy asked.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think Mr. Joe can handle hazmats?”
“What’s a hazmat?”
“You know—hazardous materials? You just kind of chop the words off and squish them back together. Haz-mats.”
“Oh. I dunno.”
“Lives are at stake. Toes, too.”
Zack stared at Judy. He was still trying to figure this lady out. Sure, she was pretty and his dad laughed a lot whenever he and Judy were together. Judy laughed, too, because Zack’s dad was almost remembering how to be funny again. Her books about the cat were kind of okay. Zack had read a couple, even though they were mostly for little kids. Still, they were kind of funny. Especially when Curiosity Cat got into trouble poking his nose into places he shouldn’t. One time, he even blew himself up, but because he has nine lives it didn’t really matter.
And Zack had never heard Judy yell at his dad, not once.
Not yet, anyway.
“It’s a pretty serious situation out there,” said Judy. “We’re talking broken glass. Open-toed sandals. Things could get ugly.”
Zack looked into Judy’s eyes. She had big brown ones, the kind you see on friendly cartoon bears—the ones you can trust, not the growly, grizzly types you can’t.
He played along. “Mr. Joe?” he said to the action figure.
“Yeah, Zack?” Judy grunted back.
“Um, have you ever worked hazmat duty before?”
“Hazmat? Sure, sure. All the time. I’m fearless. I’m also plastic, so, you know, I can’t get injured unless, you know, I melt or a fire truck backs over me. That’ll hurt.”
A smile stole across Zack’s face.
“Ask Joe if he’s ever had to deal with broken glass.”
“Okay. Hey, Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“You ever work with glass?”
“Glass? Schmass. Can’t cut me, pal. Well, it could, but I wouldn’t, you know, bleed or nothin’.”
“Because you’re made out of plastic, right?”
“Exactly!”
Zack laughed. Judy, too.
George Jennings and Judy Magruder were married the Saturday before Memorial Day. Zack Jennings was his father’s best man and official ring bearer.
After their rooftop wedding reception, the new family flew to Orlando for a weeklong honeymoon and vacation at Walt Disney World. While they were in Orlando, the moving company would clean out their apartments and truck everything up to North Chester, Connecticut, the small town where George had grown up.
Their new house, a just-built three-story Victorian—with gables and a wraparound porch—was located in the brand-new Rocky Hill Farms subdivision west of town.
Right near the crossroads where County Route 13 meets Connecticut State Highway 31.
Every Monday morning, Gerda Spratling rode into North Chester like her family still owned the town.
Her chauffeur would pilot her 1952 Cadillac Coupe DeVille down the center of Main Street. A few cars would honk their horns at the big black boat straddling the solid yellow line, but the locals simply moved out of the way. They recognized the antique automobile and knew that inside was the sole surviving member of the family that had made North Chester famous. In fact, the quaint little town was still called Clocksville, as it had been for nearly a century, because of the timepieces once mass-produced in the sprawling Spratling Clockworks Factory.
“Spratling Stands the Test of Time,” their ads used to say. But the redbrick factory with its colossal smokestacks had been shuttered since the early 1980s.
Since this particular Monday morning was also Memorial Day, tourists and townspeople were lazily enjoying the unofficial start of summer by poking around Main Street’s shops and cozy boutiques.
“Why aren’t these people at work?” Miss Spratling asked her driver.
“It’s a holiday, ma’am.” The chauffeur was eighty-six years old. Miss Spratling was seventy-two.
“Holiday? God in heaven. Lazy, shiftless layabouts.” Her voice was sharp and brittle.
The car coasted to a stop.
“Why are we stopping?” Miss Spratling demanded.
“Red light, ma’am.”
“God in heaven.”
Downtown North Chester had only one stoplight—at the intersection where the town clock, a massive stone tower, also stood. Miss Spratling’s great-grandfather had commissioned the six-story fieldstone monument to commemorate his family’s Germanic ingenuity and American industriousness. The clock had ornately scrolled hands and a filigree face, but it no longer told time. The hands stood frozen at 9:52.
The light changed.
“Hurry along, Mr. Willoughby,” Miss Spratling ordered from the backseat. “Hurry along.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Miss Spratling had two standing appointments in town every Monday. First the beauty parlor, then the florist. Her personal assistant, a young woman named Sharon Jones, followed the Cadillac in a Hyundai hatchback, just in case Miss Spratling should require anything at all. The Cadillac had bullet-shaped bumper guards, tail fins, and a massive chrome grill and was kept in mint condition by Mr. Willoughby, the gaunt and gangly chauffeur.
The two cars parked in the No Parking zone alongside the curb in front of Mr. Antoine’s House of Beauty. Mr. Willoughby shuffled around the car to open Miss Spratling’s door. The skinny assistant stood with bowed head and slumped shoulders at the curb.