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“Shit, couldn’t it have waited until a decent hour—you know, six or seven in the morning?”
“No. And this is no time for sarcasm.”
“Whatever you say, Pop.” Mario clicked a lighter to the end of his cigarette. “Okay, I’m dyin’ to know. What’s up?”
“Several things. Come, come.” Anthony patted the arm of his chair and indicated that Mario should sit on it as he had when he was a boy. Spewing smoke from the corner of his mouth, he obliged the old man. “Good. Here—” Anthony held a glass to his son; then, after Mario had taken the crystal goblet, touched the rim of his to his son’s. “To the future.”
“Yeah. Right. The future.” Mario, thinking the old man had really lost it and was one step away from the loony bin, began to drink, but his father’s hand stayed him. “And to the end of the feud.”
“Christ!”
“All right. To God as well,” Anthony said magnanimously.
“What’re you talking about? The fucking feud is over? How can that be? You crack out the best champagne and just make some sort of statement that it’s over and all the shit that’s gone on for nearly a hundred years is forgotten? Just like that?” Mario snapped his fingers loudly. Then he rubbed his eyes. “I’m dreaming. That’s what this is—some kind of nightmare.”
“There’s one more thing we’re celebrating.”
“Oh, great. What’s that?”
“Your marriage.”
“Now I know I’m dreaming.”
“No, Mario. It’s time. You need a wife. I need grandchildren. We have to think of the future and not the past. You’ll be married and have children and we will all be happy.”
“Oh, sure, right. What happened tonight, eh?” Mario asked. “When I went to bed everything was the same and now you’re dragging me out of bed, talking like a fortune-teller. Did you get knocked over the head or what?”
Anthony ignored his son’s ravings and clicked his glass yet again to the rim of Mario’s. There were many possibilities for a wife for his son and he hadn’t ruled out Adria Nash—London Danvers—as a potential candidate. She was beautiful and rich and smart. Who could ask for anything more from a daughter-in-law? Of course there was the chance she wouldn’t want him. Well, there were other eligible young women. Fertile women, beautiful, but not necessarily as smart as this London.
“There’s only one woman I’ve ever wanted to marry,” Mario said, suddenly sober, and Anthony had to tamp down his old feelings of disgust. “Trisha.”
Gritting his teeth, the old man swallowed his last bit of false pride. “I won’t stand in your way.” Then, he took a sip of his champagne, stared up at his son’s disbelieving face and laughed, long and hearty, as he hadn’t laughed in years. He patted Mario on the knee with a fondness that he’d forgotten—a fondness he’d once felt when his wife was still alive, and Mario was four or five and hardly any trouble at all. “Drink up. Enjoy. And let me tell you what happened tonight….”
Zach was grim as they walked out of the hospital near downtown Portland. He’d watched without a word as the police, Eunice’s lawyer, and Nelson had arrived, all arguing and shouting. Jason had shown up and his mood had been sour. Trisha, when she’d deigned to appear—in a full-length ermine coat, no less—had breezed past Adria and said to Zach, “Now look what you’ve done.”
A crowd of reporters was clustered near the door. Voices shouted over one another, trying to capture her attention.
“Ms. Nash? Is it true that you’ve finally proven yourself to be London Danvers?”
“It looks that way, yes.”
“How does it feel to finally know your natural family?”
“I haven’t sorted it all out yet.” She felt odd about it all. Though Eunice was expected to live, she was still in the hospital under police guard.
“You’re inheriting a great deal of money, aren’t you? What are your plans?”
“I don’t have any yet.”
Zach looked about to step in, but Adria placed a hand on his arm. “Look,” she said, speaking into the microphones thrust in her direction. “I’m very tired right now. Of course I’m glad to know that I’m London,” she said, refusing to meet Zach’s eyes, refusing to listen to the pain in her heart, knowing that he was her half-brother, “and I’ve no immediate plans for the future.”
“Will you move to Portland permanently?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about the charges pending against Eunice Smythe?”
“I can’t comment on them.”
