“You fainted, I think. I was only gone for a minute or two, and when I came back, youâ”
“I remember now. I blacked out. I was reaching for a casserole dish in that cupboard, and IâIâ” Consternation filled Rose's expression, and she clutched weakly at Susannah's hand.
“Don't talk,” Susannah commanded, holding tight. “Just rest quietly for a moment. Then I'll call the paramedics.”
“Is Joe still here?”
“No, he just left. I'm here now.”
Rose frowned weakly. “You should go on your trip, Suzie.”
“Nonsense,” Susannah said. “The Caribbean will always be there.”
“But Rogerâ”
“Roger won't mind. He knows how important you are to me, Granny Rose. He'll want me to stay here as long as I'm needed. I want to be sure you're going to be okay.”
“But you're too busyâ”
“Hush.” Susannah hugged her grandmother. “I'm never too busy to take care of you, Granny Rose.”
* * *
J
OE POINTED
his rattletrap truck down the street and headed for his own home, just a couple of blocks away. Snow swirled across his windshield, but he knew his way around Tyler as well as a native, so the trip wasn't treacherous.
Joe Santori liked Tyler, Wisconsin. After growing up in Chicago and attending trade school and, later, engineering courses there, he'd been lured from the city by a job offer from the Ingalls Farm and Machinery Company at a time when he'd needed a change.
He'd never thought of himself as a small-town kind of guy. Despite years of hounding by his wife, Marie, who had wanted to raise their family somewhere other than the streets of a big city, Joe had resisted leaving the Windy City. But when Marie died of ovarian cancer, Joe decided to make the change she had always wanted.
He'd applied for the position with Ingalls Farm and Machinery before he was even sure he wanted to leave Chicago behind. But things had worked out well indeed, and Joe was glad he'd brought Gina to the rolling hills of Wisconsin.
For Joe, the culture shock had been tremendous at first. Wisconsin people didn't lock their back doors, and they sometimes left their cars running while they dashed into the pharmacy to get a prescription filled. It had taken him a while to relax and get over his big-city paranoia.
But his daughter blended into the small-town milieu very easily. Perhaps because she was a motherless child, Gina had been an instant hit in the neighborhood, a darling of families up and down the street. At the age of six, she had learned to run out to the sidewalk after breakfast to find playmates to ride tricycles with until noon. Now nearly fifteen, Gina led the busy life of a teenager, complete with track-team practice, Ski Club, pickup games of street hockey and baseballâand her dreaded piano lessons, the only concession to femininity Gina would allow.
Joe's only regret had to do with his wife, Marie. She would have loved the town, and he often wished he'd brought her to Tyler before her illness. He took consolation in the idea
that she was watching from above and approved his choice of towns in which to raise Gina.
Joe pulled his truck into the driveway alongside the tall Victorian house on Church Street, just four blocks from the town square. He noticed the kitchen light was on, so he walked across the snow-dusted driveway and let himself in the back door, stomping slush from his boots and shaking the snow from his parka.
“No way, Gramps,” Gina was saying into the telephone. “You couldn't
pay
me to be a cheerleader! It's so stupid cheering for a bunch of stupid boys when I could be playing ball myself. Besides, I hate to wear skirts.”
Fourteen-year-old Gina lay flat on her back on the kitchen linoleum, her sneakered feet propped on the counter above, looking just as tomboyish as ever in her torn jeans and rumpled baseball shirt. She'd pinned the phone to her ear with her shoulder, leaving both hands free to braid her ponytail into a tight plait while she talked. When Gina spotted her father entering the house, she waggled her foot at him without breaking off her phone conversation.
“Forget it, Gramps,” she said into the receiver. “You can't convince me it would be fun. I don't care if Mom was the captain of the squad in her school. It's demeaning to women. My piano teacher said so.”
Joe opened the refrigerator and took out a quart of chocolate milk. For some reason, he wanted to enjoy the taste of Rose Atkins's hot cocoa all over againâand cold chocolate milk would have to do. He poured the last three inches into a jelly glass decorated with cartoon characters and listened to Gina's conversation with her grandfather in Brooklyn.
He was glad Marie's parents kept in touch with their granddaughter, despite the miles that separated them. Every summer, Gina traveled east to be with her grandparents, and Joe tried to invite Marie's family as well as his own mother to visit as often as possible. Gina needed an extended family to keep her grounded, he felt.
Gina sighed dramatically. “Yeah, okay, Gramps. I love you, too. I gotta go, all right? Give my love to Nana. Bye.”
Without moving from the floor, she tossed the receiver to Joe, who hung it up. “Holy smoke,” she groaned, covering her face with her hands as if holding back tremendous suffering. “When are they going to realize I'm not going to be just like Mom was? Now it's cheerleading!”
Joe grinned, leaning against the counter to drink his milk. “Your mom looked good in that short skirt. It didn't demean her as far as I could see.”
“What do you know?” Gina asked witheringly. “You're a guy. A little old, maybe, but still a guy.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“Oh, Dad, you know what I mean.”
“Sure. What's for dinner?”
Gina blinked up at him from the floor. Sometimes she showed signs of her mother's innate ability to play dumb when the situation warranted. She said, “I thought it was your night to cook. Weren't you going to bring home a pizza?”
Joe blanched. “I hate pizza.”
“I never knew an Italian guy who hated normal Italian food the way you do,” she groused. “Can't you like anything that's
easy
to make?”
“You were going to fix omelets tonight,” Joe shot back. “Those are easy.”
“We're out of eggs.”
“Open a can of soup, then.”
Gina sat up, objecting. “Dad, I need a high-carbohydrate meal tonight! We're playing a big scrimmage game tomorrow against Bonneville!”
The basketball team, Joe remembered. He had trouble keeping up with Gina's athletic endeavors sometimes. “Okay, okay, I'll make the ultimate sacrifice tonight. How about macaroni and cheese?”
“Great,” she said with satisfaction, climbing to her feet and clearly believing she had manipulated her father into preparing their dinner. Joe knew his daughter hated cooking, but
he was determined to see that she was competent in the kitchen at the very least. She said, “I'll keep you company while you make it. Where have you been, anyway? I expected you home half an hour ago.”
Joe thought of Susannah Atkins at once. He turned around and put his empty glass in the sink, trying to keep his expression hidden from Gina in case it revealed his thoughts.
Keeping a casual tone, he said, “I met a celebrity today.”
“Oh, yeah? Who?”
“Susannah Atkins. Of âOh, Susannah!”'
Joe felt Gina glance at him. She said, “Is she pretty?”
“Very pretty.”
“Prettier than Mom was?”
“Different pretty,” Joe admitted, walking a fine line, he knew. “She's very nice.”
“How nice?”
“Just nice. You'd like her, I think.”
“I doubt it,” Gina said bluntly, hitching her behind onto one of the stools at the counter and dismissing the subject of Susannah Atkins. “But I like old Mrs. Atkins just fine.” She splayed her elbows on a place mat and watched Joe wash his hands and dry them on the nearest towel.
“Me, too. I'm going to fix up her house a little.”
“Why? So you can be close to the television lady?”
“No,” Joe said shortly, “because her house needs fixing, that's all. The television lady is leaving Tyler tomorrow.” Joe took a box of pasta from the pantry shelf and dug a block of cheddar cheese from the refrigerator. He said, “Maybe you'd come along and visit with Mrs. Atkins while I'm working there. She'd enjoy the company.”
Gina shrugged. “Sure.”
“Maybe,” Joe ventured cautiously, “she could help you pick out a dress for the Christmas dance. Unless you already have a dress, that is.”
Gina's dark brown eyes flew open in surprise, and the teenager sat up as if she'd been jabbed with a hot poker. For an
instant, she could not find her voice, then she blurted out, “How do you know about the dance?”
“How could I
not
know about it? Every ninth grader in town is talking about the big Tinsel Ball. Your friend Marcy cornered me in the drugstore to ask what color your dress was.”
“That nosy fink!”
“What color is it?”
“What?” Gina pretended complete bafflement.
“Your dress for the Tinsel Ball,” Joe said patiently. “Marcy said you told her it was the...let's see, what word did she use, exactly? Slinky, that's it. The slinkiest dress in Madison. I didn't know you'd gone to Madison to buy a dress.”
Hastily, Gina said, “You must have misunderstood, Dad. You know how fast Marcy talks. She must have said
her
dress was slinkyâ”
Joe set his ingredients on the counter and glowered at his daughter, ready to confront her with the truth. “Don't try to snow me, Gina. I know what Marcy said. Have you been lying again?”
Gina thrust out her lower lip and looked sulky, her automatic reaction to any accusation. She refused to meet her father's gaze, but said bravely, “I don't know what you're talking about.”
Joe considered his options. There was no denying that Gina's biggest problem was stretching the truth. She could tell a whopper without blinking an eye and had been caught so often that Joe sometimes wondered how many times she'd actually gotten away with lying. The possibilities boggled his mind sometimes. Her teachers complained every year, but the problem had finally become such a daily event that lately they'd started pushing Joe to seek help from professionals.
The school psychologist had suggested that Gina was lying because she missed her mother. Joe had a hard time making the connection, because Marie had never told a fib in her life, but Gina seemed to do it just because it was more fun than
telling the truth. If her lying was a bid to get more attention, it seemed to him that there were easier ways of doing that. He felt unable to understand or stop the situation. The psychologist hadn't been a hell of a lot of help and had encouraged Joe to find a therapist for family counseling.
Family counseling sounded like a lot of hogwash to him. He could handle the problem himself.
But he hated confrontations with his daughter and was experimenting with ways of handling the various troubles of adolescence without resorting to yelling at Gina. She only yelled back, and she was a heck of a lot louder than he was!
So he set about calmly cooking the macaroni and said, “Let's start this conversation all over again, shall we? Your friend Marcy thinks you're going to the Christmas dance next week and that you'll be wearing a great dress. The way I look at it, you need to get a dress so she won't think you'reâ”
“Yeah, okay,” said Gina, jumping at the chance to get out of trouble. “I was going to ask you for some money, Dad, but you've been so busy latelyâ”
“I'm never too busy to help you buy some clothes, Gina. Trouble is,” Joe said wryly, “I'm not going to be much help picking out a party dress. That's when I thought of Mrs. Atkins. I bet she'd love the chance to help you find something nice.”
“Well...”
Joe heard a new note in Gina's voice and looked at her sharply. “You
are
going to the dance, aren't you?”
“Oh, sure,” Gina said quickly. “Of course. I wouldn't miss it.”
Joe suspected she wasn't quite telling the truth again, so he shot a suspicious look at his daughter. Why in the world did she act this way? Wasn't he giving her enough attention? Or maybe it was just the wrong kind of attention? Perhaps it was a case, as the school expert suggested, of Gina worrying that she was going to lose
both
parents. Not through death, necessarily; she might also fear losing him to another woman, to
his work, to any number of possibilities. So she lied just to keep him hopping. And maybe she was lying again.
Gina wiped the guilty expression from her face at once. “Naturally, I'm going to the Tinsel Ball. I just...I haven't had the timeâ”
“What's the problem?”
“It's not a problem,” she said immediately. “Not exactly. I just haven't found a date yet.”
“You haven'tâ? How can you go to the dance if a boy hasn't asked you yet?”
Gina looked scornful. “Oh, Dad! This isn't the Dark Ages anymore! I'm going to ask a boy myself. I'm not going to wait around for some nerd to ask me when I could ask whoever I want in the first place. My piano teacher says it's demeaning to women toâ”
“Yeah, I heard that line before.” Joe growled, “Pretty soon Nora is going to start charging me for more than piano lessons. So if you're going to ask somebody, why haven't you done it yet?”
“I haven't gotten around to it, that's all!” Gina's voice rose petulantly. “You're not the only one who's busy around here, y'know!”
“Okay, okay,” said Joe, placating his hot-tempered child before she really blew up. “I'll leave that part up to you. But if you need money for a dress or anything else in that department, I'll be happy to give you whatever you needâwithin reason.”
“What's within reason?”