Frankie
That’s the cry I’m greeted with when I walk through the doors to the Brewport. My nieces are over the moon to see me at an
event that’s outside of Nonna’s house, which I’m embarrassed to realize is basically the only place they’ve seen me lately,
aside from various recitals and gymnastics events I’ve attended at their school.
I’m a big enough person to admit I might need to be a little less negative and get out more . . . and also I might have been
wrong about engagement parties. They aren’t societally necessary anymore, but they don’t have to be pretentious drags, like
mine was thanks to Richard’s mother, who hosted ours at the stuffy West Harbor Yacht Club.
Dina has made a much better choice in hosting hers for Jessica and Derrick at the Brewport. A large, family-style restaurant
overlooking Long Island Sound, the Brewport’s not the ritziest place. It has too many flat-screen TVs on the walls, broadcasting
various sporting events.
But it’s in an excellent location, popular with West Harbor’s boaters, Summer People, and witches alike.
Everyone seems to be having a great time, especially my nieces, who immediately grab my hand and drag me out to the back deck,
where a local band—made up of high school girls, including the ones Jessica is mentoring, Esther and her best friend, Gabby—is
playing.
Witch Riot—the name of the band—isn’t great. Rainbow-haired Gabby is trying to sing and play the guitar at the same time,
which appears to be a challenge for her, while Esther bangs the drums like someone who has no idea what she’s doing but is
enjoying herself immensely.
Still, there’s something oddly appealing about their music. What they lack in talent they make up for with good vibes, and
Gabby’s voice is undeniably pleasant to the ear. And since most of what they play has a beat, it’s fun to dance to—unlike
the dirges played by the string quartet my ex-mother-in-law insisted on hiring for my own engagement party.
And by hiring Witch Riot—a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Internet-famous #WestHarborWitchRiot—Dina has made Jessica happy,
since she loves mentoring those kids. Although everyone knows Jessica’s greatest joy is helping women to find a dress that looks really, really good on them. I start getting compliments on the one she chose
for me right away.
“That dress is fire,” Rochelle walks up to tell me the second my nieces allow me to step off the dance floor to get something to drink.
“Thanks. It’s a Jessica Gold.”
“Oh, well, that explains it. I thought you weren’t coming to this.”
“I changed my mind. How are you?”
“I’m good. No, I’m great. See that guy over there?”
I look in the direction she’s pointing, but there are so many people crowded onto the back deck, especially guys, I can’t
tell who she’s talking about it. “Which one?”
“The one in the suit. He’s some cousin of Derrick’s from the city. He asked me to go apple picking with him tomorrow at Farmer
Frank’s. Should I go?”
I still have no idea who she’s talking about but I say, “Yes,” anyway, because Rochelle hasn’t been on a date since the last
fireman conference came to Connecticut.
“Good. I was hoping you’d say that. Guess I’m going apple picking tomorrow. But tonight—” She knocks back the rest of her
champagne. “I’m going to get boned. See you later.”
I laugh as she heads off toward the cluster of men in suits, thinking she’s joking.
But she isn’t. She walks right up to a guy in a gray suit, grabs him by the lapels, and kisses him on the mouth. The guy looks
pleasantly surprised while his friends hoot and cheer.
I’ve been to some crazy parties with Rochelle before, back in high school. She was always like this, so I’m not alarmed.
What does perturb me a little is how surprised everyone seems to be that I showed up. I didn’t realize my reputation as a
Negative Nancy was so widespread.
But this truly is the first time since my divorce that I’ve bothered coming to a social event, let alone dressed up for one.
I even have makeup on—Angie insisted, just like she insisted on covering my gray but giving me “just a few highlights around
the face” to “brighten things up.”
The end result astonished even me.
“You came!” Dina shrieks when she sees me.
“Yeah.” I feel sheepish about my initial resistance. “Thanks so much for letting me come even though I RSVP’d no—”
“Don’t be silly.” Dina has her own superpower—I’ve seen it in action many times—keeping my family, especially my brother,
in line. She doesn’t always manage it, but when she does, the results are spectacular—like now, when I see Mark out on the
dance floor, showing our nieces and their friends how to do the Electric Slide. “You’ve had a rough year. But things are definitely
looking up for you lately, aren’t they?”
I throw her a sharp glance. “What do you mean?”
She can’t possibly mean the fact that a highly attractive—if possibly neurodivergent—bachelor has moved in next door.
No, she doesn’t.
“I mean this!” Dina plucks at the sleeve of the red dress. “You look amazing in it! And your hair—Angie did a great job.”
“Oh,” I say, relieved. “Yes, she did.”
“And I also heard you finally caught that cat that’s been living under your porch!” An attentive hostess, Dina sees that I
have no drink, grabs flutes of champagne from a passing server, then hands one to me. “Congrats! You must be so happy!”
“Ha. Thanks.”
It’s nice to be sipping champagne in the sunshine at a party on a lovely deck overlooking a body of water. Even though I have
a (much smaller) deck looking out over a lake back home, I never stand on it and drink champagne. I might need to change that.
“I haven’t had a chance to take her to the vet yet to check for a microchip,” I go on. When I’d left the house, Daisy had been perched on the back of my couch, gazing wistfully out the window at the front porch beneath which, only the day before, she’d been living.
Be a good girl, Daisy, I’d told her, still emphasizing her name.
I don’t think I’m anthropomorphizing when I say that the look she gave me in reply was so filled with reproachment, I almost
apologized . . . to a cat that I’d rescued from the cold and certain starvation.
“So,” I go on, “I don’t know for sure if I—”
“Frankie!” Mark appears in front of us, sweaty and panting from all the dancing. “You made it! Shit, what happened to you?
You look good for a change.”
I give him an icy smile. “Eat a bag of dicks, Mark.”
He makes a mock horrified face. “I’m telling Ma!”
“Speaking of your mother,” Dina says, and points across the deck at a middle-aged woman in a pantsuit, very obviously flirting
with an older Asian gentleman. She’s laughing and laying her hand upon his chest while he looks pleased. “Check it out. Love
is in the air.”
I have to shade my eyes with a hand before I recognize the woman. “Is that Mom and . . . Mr. Hong?”
I’m stunned. House of Hong has the best Chinese food in West Harbor. But Mom and Mr. Hong? No. No way.
“You didn’t know?” Mark looks delighted. Like Angela, he loves knowing something I don’t. “He’s been trying to get into Ma’s
pants for years, ever since Mrs. Hong kicked the bucket.”
“Mark,” Dina says in a tone of disapproval. “Don’t be gross.”
“I’m not being gross! It’s a fact. Did you know he brings orange beef over to Ma’s every time the Jets play at home? He knows
she’s a huge fan—of the Jets, not his orange beef. Though I think she’s coming around to it.”
“Mark!” Dina cries.
I’m still standing there, blinking. A lot more has been going on with my friends and family lately than I’ve realized.
“Hey, Frankie.” Now Troy has come up, a bottle of beer in his hand. I almost didn’t recognize him at first because he, too,
is wearing a suit and not his usual Fish and Wildlife uniform or cargo shorts. He looks excited, but not about my mom and
Mr. Hong sharing orange beef every time the Jets play. “Is it true you found one of those missing girls this morning?”
If the sight of my mother flirting with a man other than my father has caused the champagne to turn sour in my mouth, this
turns it to sand. “Why?”
“Just wondering if you got the reward. They always seem to find a way to wheedle out of paying anyone those rewards—”
“No one’s mentioned a reward. Where did you even hear I’m the one who found her?” Jackie had sworn she’d leave my name out
of it.
“I saw the address on the crime report. Lakeview Drive? That’s you, right?”
I shake my head. “And about ten other families. What about Ash? Does the report mention Ash?”
He looks confused. “Why would it mention him?”
“Because.” I realize I’m grinding my teeth in distress and will myself to stop. “I found her at Ash’s house.”
“Ash?” Dina grins in a knowing way. “So we’re calling him Ash now?”
I look at her blankly. “It’s his name. What else would we call him?”
“That coglione,” Mark says. “That’s what you’ve been calling him since he bought the place. Also dickhead, asshole, shit for brains, hijo de la chingada, leccaculo—”
“I never called him any of those things,” I say, though from the way Mark is laughing, I’m not certain this is true. “He’s
not so bad when you—”
“He’s not so bad?” Mark is howling. “I thought he was the Prince of Darkness, the way you carried on about those speaker cables!”
“Excuse me.” Dina has either spied someone else across the deck who she wants to speak to, or she’s tired of listening to
her husband bust my chops. Either way, she says, “I’ll be right back. I have to go do hostess duties.”
Mark looks in the direction that Dina has just taken off. All I see are the backs of more people I don’t recognize, but Mark
must know one or two of them since he says, “Me, too,” and takes off as well, leaving me alone with Troy.
“So where did the girl say she was all this time?” he’s asking me.
“She wouldn’t say. At least, not when I was there.”
“She wouldn’t? Why not?”
“She was too traumatized, Troy. She’s suffering from exposure and malnutrition. Didn’t the crime report mention that?”
“No, it didn’t. Exposure, huh? Exposure like—”
“Like she’s been out in the woods for a long time. She’s got poison ivy and mosquito bites and scrapes and bruises like—”
“Like she’s been living rough? In the preserve, maybe? Because that makes sense. It would explain why she and her friends
are robbing houses in your neighborhood.”
“One house,” I remind him. “So far there’s no report of—”
“And, hey, that explains why it’s taken so long to find her!” Troy is warming to the subject. “That nature preserve is hundreds of acres wide. Looking for someone in there is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
I nod, scanning the crowd. “I know. And you know the way to find a needle in a haystack? Burn it down.”
He blinks at me. “Burn what down? The haystack?” Then his eyes widen with alarm. “But you can’t burn down the nature preserve!
Those woods are protected—”
“Relax, I’m kidding.” I don’t know why I mentioned the haystack thing, except that gallows humor is an important coping mechanism,
especially to members of the health profession. We have to laugh or we’ll cry.
But I should have remembered Troy loves those woods as much as I do.
“No one would be crazy enough to burn down the woods,” he says. “Would they?”
“Of course not.” I finally see the person I’ve been looking for and set my half-finished glass of champagne down on a nearby
table. “Hey, Jackie’s over there. I’ve got to go talk to her. See you later?”
“Later,” Troy says, and moonwalks to the dance floor, to the shrieking delight of his daughters.
Jackie is just inside the doors to the deck, laughing at something the mayor, who is standing beside her, has said. I lift
a hand and she clocks me across the room, nods, says something to the mayor I can’t hear, then comes toward me.
“What happened to you, Giovanni?” she asks with a grin. “Is this the work of one of Jessica Gold’s magic spells?”
“Something like that. How’s Meg?”
“Doing okay, I think.” Jackie has changed out of her tactical uniform and into a black jumpsuit that is reminiscent of the uniform but slightly more flattering.
The bottle of beer in her hand and absence of gun belt and badge are really the only indicators she’s off duty.
“But super weak. The doctors said it will be a while before she can eat solid food again.”
I nod. “Too rapid a reintroduction of food into her system after such a long period of malnourishment could cause her organs
to shut down.”
“Yeesh, yeah, that’s what they said. Her parents are with her. They drove up from Cranbury. I’ve never seen anyone more relieved
than Mrs. Boucher when she finally got to hug her long-lost kid. Everyone in the room was bawling.”
“Has Meg said anything about where she was?”
I’m not asking for Troy or Ash. I’m asking for myself.
“Not a word,” Jackie says. “It’s pretty clear that she’s been living off the grid, most likely in those woods out near you.
But she’s too scared to say where, exactly. And before you ask, I can’t send my guys to go beat the bushes for a bunch of
girls whose only crime is stealing an old lady’s groceries and camping illegally. Those are misdemeanors. I’d never even get
the budget for a search approved.”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” I lie. “Did she say anything about the other missing girls?”
“All she’ll say is that when she last saw them, they were fine.” Jackie sighs. “I’ve called all the other parents to let them
know, but every one of them said the same thing—”
“Let me guess. ‘Find my daughter.’”
“Exactly. So, no pressure there.” Jackie sighs again, then brightens, a mischievous light in her eyes. “Hey, I wanted to ask
you . . . did you hear about Richard?”
I grimace. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry that asshole didn’t drown at sea.
” She takes a sip from her beer. “On a bright note, I asked the staff over at the hospital when I was there just now if they were going to hire Richard back as chair of the behavioral health department, and they couldn’t stop laughing at the idea. So at least there’s that.”
I smile, hoping I look appropriately appreciative.
But I’ve stopped paying attention. Because I’ve looked across the crowded deck and seen something even more horrifying than
my mother flirting with Mr. Hong.
And that’s Ash Merit, laughing with Jessica’s fiancé Derrick. Even worse, my sister Angie is standing close beside them, calling
my name and waving me over.
Ash Merit is here. Ash Merit is here at the engagement party.
And he’s just lifted his gaze and met mine.