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Chapter Two

Nancy

T he first thin blade of light that pierced between my gummy eyelids jabbed into the center of my brain.

Ouch. That got my attention. I rubbed my eyes as my belly did a slow, queasy flop. It took a second to orient myself in time and space.

It appeared that at some point we had migrated into the living room, bringing the last bottle of port with us. The bottle lay on its side, conspicuously empty. Three of Lucia’s beautiful cut-crystal liquor glasses were tipped over on the floor, each stuck in its own small, dark puddle of port.

I had slept sitting up and had that resulting stiff, scrunched-neck feeling. Vivi’s head was on my lap, and Nell was curled up on the love seat across from us, her thick dark hair draped across her face. I patted Vivi’s shoulder, and she stirred, murmuring in a questioning tone. “Wha…?”

“Morning,” I said, my voice thick and froggy. “Unfortunately.”

Vivi struggled up into a sitting position with a hiss of pain, putting her hand to her head. “Oh boy,” she croaked. “I don’t even remember making it into this room.”

Nell stretched, yawned, and winced. “Ow,” she murmured. “I vaguely remember half-carrying you. We did a lot of toasting. Now we pay the price. Yay, us.”

“It’s worth it,” I said. “You embrace both sides, right? Like Lucia says—said. The dark and the light. Il dolce e l’amaro. The bitter and the sweet.”

“Don’t you dare, Nance.” Nell gave me a dark look. “Don’t start up with the sentimental stuff and get us all wound up again. Did Lucia keep any painkillers?”

“As I recall, she disapproved of them on principle, but I have you covered,” I assured her. “I have a witch’s brew of Tylenol, aspirin and caffeine in my purse that’ll put hair on your chest.”

“Yum,” Vivi said. “Bring it on.”

We took turns in the bathroom, washing up. I swabbed off the ill-fated remnants of yesterday’s makeup and wound my hair back tight enough to make my forehead hurt. When I got downstairs, coffee was ready and Nell was gazing in dismay at the total wreck of the kitchen.

She poured me a cup. “It looks just terrible in here,” she said, handing it to me.

“I would clean it up right now, but I have to proctor an exam today, and Vivi has to drive me back to the city to get there in time. But we’re not dumping this all on you, understand?

We’ll come back here and deal with it. Don’t you dare do it yourself. You’ve done enough.”

Hah. Like I was constitutionally capable of leaving Lucia’s kitchen looking like that, knowing how Lucia would have felt about it.

Lucia had been a passionate neatnik, and she’d passed the quality on to me, and only me, of the three of us.

It got lonely and frustrating, being the only neat-freak sibling.

I waved a vague hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No way!” Nell said forcefully. “Don’t do it alone, or we’ll writhe in guilt. You always do that. Stop that shit. Don’t be the martyr. It’s not good for any of us.”

“Okay, okay,” I lied, holding up my hands. “We’ll all do it together later.”

My sisters gathered up their things, and I followed them out to Vivi’s gaudily painted Volkswagen van, which was parked in the driveway. I gave them both long tight hugs.

After they got in, Nell leaned out of the passenger-side window and shook her finger at me. “We’ll hook up after I finish that exam. Don’t clean up yet, or I’ll make you sorry you did. Take it easy. Rest. Recover.”

“I can’t rest, Nell. I’ve got a million things to?—”

“Yes, yes. Of course you do. But you need to take care of yourself first of all,” Vivi was scolding me now, leaning over Nell’s lap from the driver’s side.

Take care of me? I didn’t even know what that would mean. I watched Vivi’s taillights glow in the morning mist until she turned the corner and was gone.

The sky had a heavy, bruised look, altogether appropriate for my mood. Sunlight would have been discordant and painful. Our drunken revels had been cathartic at the time, but in the moment, I felt as if I’d been scraped off the bottom of a shoe.

Time to get busy. My frantic schedule would save me.

All the things that I’d put off last week because of Lucia’s death and funeral would keep me too busy to think, or hopefully, feel.

Constant activity was my number one coping mechanism, and lucky for me, my career choice—managing an eclectic bunch of singer-songwriters and folk bands—involved ceaseless admin.

Back in the day, I’d dreamed of being a musician myself. Eventually, I grew up and accepted the fact that I didn’t really have the musical chops, practice as I might.

I had, however, identified other talents while helping my musical friends get gigs in college. I was good behind the scenes. I figured out how to make myself indispensable. Got hooked on the feeling of being in the middle of it all. The one who made it happen.

Everyone had their gifts. When it came to niggling, detail-minded, dogged, tenacious determination, I was unbeatable. It was good to identify one’s strengths, even if they weren’t the glamorous, shiny ones that most of the world noticed and admired.

I’d steadily nudged my handpicked group of folk artists and ensembles out of the pub and coffeehouse concert series circuits and into bigger theaters and more prestigious folk festivals.

I’d been getting more airtime on radio stations, marketing them hard on all of the social media platforms, and my efforts seemed to be paying off.

A few of them were actually poised to break into the big time.

If that finally happened, I would be able to call this activity an actual career, and not just an extremely expensive, time-consuming, more-or-less delusional hobby.

I just had to slog onward, toward that glorious day when I could hire a staff, instead of being a one-woman outfit.

I would break through that brick wall eventually.

But today, a long ‘to-do’ list suited me fine.

If I was zipping around at high speed, all hands waving like a dancing Shiva, with a phone in every one of them, I wouldn’t have time or space to feel that black hole of grief at my core.

Or if I did feel it, it would be on the periphery of my consciousness. Not smack-dab in the center.

Coping mechanisms got a bad rap, but damn, they kept the world duct-taped together. I was a big fan.

I pressed my hand against the sucking pain in my midriff and tried to breathe. I had never put my coping mechanisms to the test like this.

First things first. I needed an appropriate hideous tablecloth to cover the precious intaglio writing table. I drove down to the dollar store and stood in the aisle pondering the relative merits of hideous florals or plastic plaid in dull hues of beige and taupe.

I concluded that in the context of the understated elegance of Lucia’s front room, the beige and taupe plaid mumbled “Please don’t notice me,” while the hideous floral squawked “What’s wrong with this picture?”

I was probably giving mouth-breathing burglars too much credit. As if those bottom-feeders were going to listen to what the plastic tablecloths whispered to them.

It was starting to rain when I got back, and I darted up Lucia’s steps, holding the plastic bag that held the tablecloth over my head.

“Excuse me?”

The deep, resonant masculine voice startled me into dropping the bag.

It slid down the porch stairs, coming to a stop at the feet of the man who stood there, looking up at me.

He stooped to pick it up. Rain sparkled on the spiky tips of his dark hair.

His eyes met mine, and my breathing stopped. Everything stopped. Including time.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.

His words started the clock again. That’s okay , I tried to say, but no words would form in my mouth. I gave him a jerky little nod. My glasses were spotted with rain, so I dried them on my sweater, or at least smeared the drops around some. Even out of focus, he looked amazing.

I couldn’t focus on any particular detail that stood out amid the general excellence.

His face was wet with rain. A sexy shadow of beard stubble accented all the sculpted planes and angles of his strong jaw.

He had a bump on his nose. His eyes were pale green.

Dark brows, long thick lashes. Broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and muscular legs in faded work jeans.

I was willing to bet he had a stellar ass to match.

I was definitely going to verify that hypothesis at my earliest opportunity. Discreetly, of course.

And I horrified myself that I could be knocked on my ass by something so frivolous today, of all days. I had to shut this down right now, before I lost all respect for myself.

He observed me keenly as the rain pattered down. It gave me the uncomfortable sensation that everything noteworthy about me was written all over me, in a language that he could read in one sweeping glance. Which was unfortunate today, since God knows, I was not at my best.

I put my glasses back on. In that moment of grace before they got spotted up again, and before I could forbid my brain to do it, I flash-memorized every detail of him. The winged sweep of his thick brows, the grooves that bracketed his mouth. The smile lines. But he wasn’t smiling at the moment.

He wiped rain off his forehead with his sleeve. “Are you Nancy D’Onofrio?”

This epitome of hot manhood knew my name?

I nodded, wishing I’d opted to wash my hair this morning.

The tight bun was a lazy, deal-with-it-later choice.

A peeled-onion, tight-lipped schoolmarm still in yesterday’s stale funeral black, eyes swollen up, breath reeking of alcohol.

I looked like a walking cluster of big red flags.

This guy, by contrast, looked clear-eyed and clean-living. He probably went to bed at ten and got up at five to stand on his head for ten minutes, or run ten miles, or something insane like that. He probably drank green tea, not espresso.