Page 110 of Return of the Spider

“Don’t ‘But Missy’ me,” she hissed. “You’re embarrassing me. We were supposed to cut the cake with Roni, and you were nowhere to be found! And the band kept playing and saying, ‘Where’s the groom? Do we have a runner?’”

“I was looking at the stars on Christmas Eve at my wedding reception,” he said wearily. “I suppose I could get angry atyoufor not being there. But I’m not.”

“Let’s cut the cake, shall we?” she said after a long pause. She took him by the hand and led him back into the barn. “He was out there freezing and looking at stars,” Missy said in a voice loud and exasperated enough to make the crowd laugh. But he could see she wasn’t amused as they cut the cake.

Soneji kept smiling as they pushed pieces of cake into each other’s mouths, but Missy shoved a little too hard for his liking.

He kept smiling. He would let her get away with this kind of thing tonight, but not in the future. Missy would have to be taught not to diminish him in public. She would have to learn there were punishments for that.

The harsh fantasies that sparked in his brain then should have been enough to calm his anger. But when it was time for their first dance and Missy warned him against stepping on her hem and ruining everything, he had had enough.

As they danced, Soneji kept looking at his twice-bride’s eyes and then down at her neck, thinking once again how satisfying it would be to strangle Missy with his bare hands and how perfect it would be when Cheryl Lynn Wise finally took her rightful place in his cruel loving arms.

CHAPTER

92

Late christmas afternoon foundour family at Nana Mama’s, where we’d spent the previous day and evening after Maria and Jannie’s release from St. Anthony’s.

Mom and newborn were upstairs nursing. My grandmother was baking a ham and making garlic potato pancakes, the delicious smell of which competed with the odor of the Fraser fir tree in the front room. On the TV was a football game.

I was on the floor with my back to the Christmas tree and the opened presents, paying little attention to the game and playing with Damon, his new Tonka dump truck, and the little figurines from his Lego set. He had a grandma in the cab at the wheel of the truck and the other five figures seated in the dump bed with a stuffed little Saint Bernard he was calling Tilly for reasons that were unclear.

“Tilly nice dog,” Damon said.

“I can see that,” I said. “Why is she named Tilly?”

Damon shrugged. “She Tilly, Dad.”

That was about as logical as toddlers got, so I decided not to probe further. He got on his knees and began to push the toy truck around, makingvroom-vroomnoises. The doorbell rang.

The door opened and shut, and John Sampson peeked his head into the front room. “Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas to you! Dinner in half an hour,” I said.

My little boy popped to his feet as Sampson entered with several wrapped gifts.

“Presents?” Damon said.

“He’s addicted,” I explained.

“Isn’t every kid on Christmas?” Sampson laughed and handed him a gift. “They’re for you, Damon.”

My son tore off the paper and looked puzzled for a second when the contents fell out. They looked like two large wool socks, but when he turned them over, he saw the faces of Big Bird and Cookie Monster and started giggling. “Puppets,” he said.

“That’s right,” Sampson said. He knelt down to put Damon’s hand into Cookie Monster’s body. The puppet was a little big for his arm, and the head flopped, but my son did not care.

“Nana!” he yelled and headed off toward the kitchen. “Look! I Cookie!”

I started laughing. “I Cookie.”

Sampson chuckled. “Where’s the new baby?”

“Upstairs with Maria,” I said. “They’ll be down soon. By the way, what happened after I left you with Fazio? He was saying something about some guy his stepbrother was afraid of?”

John’s eyebrows rose. “That’s correct. He remembered theguy being Irish, not Italian. A few minutes later, no prompting from me, he came up with a name, Sullivan, and said the guy owned a meat shop.”

“Like a butcher,” I said.