Page 92 of Save the Date
After another fifteen minutes of silent sulking, Bert abruptly slammed down his clippers.
“That police detective? Did you know she showed up at my apartment? That bitch Lillian Fanning told her I stole that epergne!”
“I knew Detective Peeples wanted to talk to you,” Cara said quietly.
“Yeah. She basically called me a thief. What the hell would I want with that hideous piece of crap?”
“Just calm down, okay?” Cara was startled to realize she sounded just like her father. “It turns out that hideous piece-of-crap epergne is worth about a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. And I told the detective you’re not a thief.”
Bert’s eyes narrowed. “You also told her I was a drunk.”
“She asked me what I knew about your background and how I came to hire you. I wasn’t going to lie about it, Bert. So yes, I told her you’d been in rehab. I also told her you’ve been sober for two years and that I trust you completely.”
“Except that you don’t. Do you?”
Before she could ponder that question, the shop phone rang. Bert snatched up the receiver, listened for a moment, then handed her the phone, his face an expressionless mask.
“It’s the Colonel.”
Bert was really, really pissed at her.
“Hi Dad,” Cara said cautiously. “I was just getting ready to call you. Did you get the check?”
“I got it,” the Colonel said. “But it’s not what I was expecting. Only half of what you owe?”
She crossed her eyes and glanced over at Bert, whose job it was to make her laugh during ordeals like this. Nothing. He stared studiously down at a handful of pink carnations as if they were the most fascinating things he’d ever seen.
“I know, Dad. But it’s the best I can do right now.” She took a deep breath. How to make her father understand the financial pressures she was under, without making it sound like she was broke and desperate—especially when she actually was broke and desperate?
“I have a huge wedding coming up July sixth, and in a couple weeks I’ll get paid the balance of my fees, and then I’ll try to send you the rest.”
“Not good enough, young lady,” her father said.
“Dad. If you’d just listen…”
He wouldn’t, of course.
“I’m just glad your mother’s not alive to see what’s become of you,” the Colonel said. “She’d be so disappointed.”
Cara blinked. The Colonel invoked her late mother’ name rarely, if at all. This was unfair, a sneak attack. What did her mother have to do with her failures at business?
As a child, Cara sensed there was something different about Barbara Kryzik. Her mother loved books and reading, and painting. Maybe that’s where Cara had gotten her artistic talents.
Wherever the military sent them, Barbara Kryzik always managed to find an art studio, where she could work on her paintings, mostly dreamy abstract pastels, and a group of bored officers’ wives who liked to play cards and day drink. Somehow, it had managed to escape Cara’s notice that her mother had quietly become a lush.
In her freshman year of college, second semester, a neighbor had called Cara’s dorm room, to register concern that Barbara seemed to have lost an alarming amount of weight. Cara had skipped class and driven home to see for herself. She’d been horrified at her mother’s appearance. Her mother had always prided herself on her svelte figure, but now Barbara was gaunt, a withered human coat hanger. Her skin was pale and waxy, her once-lustrous dark hair so thinned that Cara could see patches of scalp.
She’d somehow managed to bundle her mother into the front seat of her car and driven her directly to the emergency room.
The young resident in the emergency room had run a battery of tests on Barbara, and then called Cara aside for a chat.
He was very young, that doctor, young enough and cute enough so that, to her enduring shame, the first thing that crossed Cara’s mind was not what he would tell her about her mother, but whether or not he was married—or looking.
“Your mom tells me your dad is stationed overseas?” he’d said. The doctor had blue-green eyes. So light, they reminded her of the water at Panama City Beach, where she’d spent spring break just a few weeks earlier.
“Yes. Turkey right now. Air Force.”
“When was the last time he saw your mother?”
