I probably had a message from my mom to return, too.
I put my own mug on the counter and let my lustful gaze roam over the pastries. I’d bake some brownies at home instead. They’d be better from scratch, anyway, even if the ones at the Mocha did come with a half-inch-thick layer of fudge frosting I had no idea how to replicate. My stomach rumbled despite the muffin I’d had. Not a good thing.
“Get you something?” This was Joy, one of the tersest people I’d ever met. She certainly didn’t live up to her name.
“No, thanks.” I hitched my purse higher on my shoulder, thinking I’d better head home and make myself an egg salad sandwich or something before I got hypoglycemic. Going without food not only made me cranky, it could tempt a fugue, and after the one this morning I wasn’t about to do anything to bring on another. Caffeine and sugar helped fend them off, but my empty stomach was effectively counterbalancing the oversweetened coffee.
Dellasandro reached the Mocha’s front door only seconds after I did. I’d pushed open the glass-fronted door, making the brass bell jingle, and felt someone behind me. I turned, one hand still holding the door so it wouldn’t swing shut, and there he was. Black coat, striped scarf, wheaten hair.
His eyes weren’t blue.
They were a deep green-brown hazel. And his face was perfect, even with the crinkles of time at the corners of his eyes, the glint of silver I could see now at his temples. I’d thought he was maybe in his late thirties, a few years older than me when I’d first seen him, though obviously his career in the seventies meant he was older than that. I wouldn’t have guessed it even now, knowing. His face was beautiful.
Johnny Dellasandro’s face was art.
And I let the door slam right in it. “Jesus Christ,” he said as he stepped back. His voice, pure New Yawk.
The door closed between us. Sun reflected off the glass, shielding him inside. I couldn’t see his face anymore, but I was pretty sure I’d just pissed him off.
I pulled on the handle as he pushed it open, the door’s sudden give making me stumble back a couple steps. “Oh, wow, I’m sorry!”
He didn’t even look at me, just shouldered past with a low, muttered curse I couldn’t quite make out. The edge of his paper hit my arm as he passed. Dellasandro didn’t pay any attention. The hem of his coat flapped in a sudden upswell of wind and I gasped, breathing in deep, and deeper.
The scent of oranges.
“Mom. Really, I’m fine.” I had to tell her this not because it made her worry less, but because if I didn’t say it, she’d definitely worry more. “I promise. Everything’s fine.”
“I wish you hadn’t moved so far away.” My mom’s voice on the other end of the phone sounded fretful. That was normal. When she started sounding anxious, I needed to worry.
“Forty minutes isn’t far at all. I’m closer to work now, and I have a great place.”
“In the city!”
“Oh, Mom.” I had to laugh, even though I knew it wouldn’t make her feel any better. “Harrisburg’s only technically a city.”
“And right downtown. You know I heard on the news there was a shooting just a few streets over from you.”
“Yeah? And there was a murder-suicide in Lebanon just last week,” I told her. “How far is that from you?”
My mom sighed. “Emm. Be serious.”
“I am serious. Mom, I’m thirty-one years old. It was time for me to do this.”
She sighed. “I guess you’re right. You can’t be my baby forever.”
“I haven’t been your baby for a really long time.”
“I’d just feel better if you weren’t alone. It was better when you and Tony—”
“Mom,” I said tightly. “Tony and I broke up for a long list of very good reasons, okay? Please stop bringing him up. You didn’t even like him that much.”
“Only because I didn’t think he could take good enough care of you.”
She’d been right about that, anyway. Not that I’d needed as much taking care of as she thought. But I didn’t want to talk about my ex-boyfriend with her. Not now, not ever.
“How’s Dad?” I asked instead, so she could talk about the other person in her life she worried about more than she had to.
“Oh, you know your dad. I keep telling him to get himself to the doctor and get checked out, but he just won’t do it. He’s fifty-nine now, you know.”
“You act like that’s ancient.”
“It’s not young,” my mom said.
I laughed and cradled the phone to my shoulder as I opened one of the large boxes I’d put in one of the unused bedrooms. I was unpacking books. I wanted to make this room my library and had set up and dusted off all my bookcases. Now I just needed to fill them. It was a task I knew I’d be glad I’d done after I finished but had managed to put off for months.
“What are you doing?” my mom said.
“Unpacking books.”
“Oh, be careful, Emm, you know that can kick up dust!” “I don’t have asthma, Mom.” I pulled off the layer of newspaper I’d laid on top of the books. I’d packed them not in the order I’d arrange them on the shelves, but just so they’d fit best in the box. This one looked like it was mostly full of coffee table books I’d picked up at thrift stores or received as gifts. Books I always meant to read and yet never did.
“No. But you know you have to be careful.”
“Mom, c’mon. Enough.” Now I was starting to get irritated.
My mom had always been overprotective. When I was six years old, I fell off a jungle gym at the school playground. Those were the days before schools used recycled tires as mulch, or any kind of soft material. Other kids broke arms or legs. I broke my head.
I was in a coma for almost a week, suffering a brain edema, or swelling, that doctors hadn’t been able to relieve by standard methods. My parents had been on the verge of agreeing to an experimental brain surgery when I’d opened my eyes, sat up and asked for ice cream.
The lack of coordination or loss of limb use the doctors had predicted never happened. Nor did memory loss or any discernible brain damage. If anything, I had trouble forgetting, not remembering. I’d suffered no long-term affects—at least, not physical ones. On the other hand, I’d learned to get used to the fugues.
She and my dad had thought they’d almost lost me, and nothing I could ever have told her about that time in the darkness could persuade her I hadn’t even come close to leaving. I’d tried once or twice, when I was younger, to reassure her. To get her to let go, even just a little. She refused to listen. I guess I couldn’t blame her. I had no idea of how it felt to love a child, much less fear you’d lost one.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
The good thing was, my mom knew when she was getting out of control. She’d done her best to make sure I didn’t grow up a stilted, fearful child, even if it meant biting her nails to nubs and going gray before she turned forty. She’d allowed me to do what I needed to for my independence, even if she did hate every second of it.
“You could come up once in a while, you know. I’m really not that far. We could have lunch or something. Just you and me, a girls’ day.”
“Oh, sure. We could do that.” She sounded a little brighter from the invitation.
I didn’t think she’d actually take me up on it. My mom didn’t like to drive long distances by herself. If she did come, she’d bring my dad along. Not that I didn’t love my dad, or want to see him. In many ways, he was easier