Last to Know: A Novel(77)
“Me too, I guess,” she said with the smile that lit up her face. “But anyway, you are older than me. I’ll bet when you first came to Evening Lake you hung at the soda fountain with your hair in a quiff and the girls in poodle skirts and ponytails, playing ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ on the jukebox.”
“Jesus!” Harry laughed. “I’m not that old. Anyway, what’s for supper?”
Mal heaved a dramatic sigh. She got up and walked, in her brand-new monogrammed black-velvet-loafer-slippers and her short white shorts and floaty flowered top, to lean on the wooden rail, looking out at the gently fading familiar view. “Now I feel like an old married couple. What’s for supper, little wifey?”
“I know what’s for supper.” Harry got up and came to stand next to her. “Times like this, though, I miss Ruby’s.”
“You also miss your job.” Mal glanced sideways at him. “So I guess you’re not going to quit?” She asked a question to which she already had the answer.
“After what happened here, at my own special place, with all the people who came together to help, those who needed the police, their protectors, their keepers of the proper peace, I cannot think of any other profession that would hold my interest and my feeling for my fellow men as well as the job I do now.”
Mal understood. It would make a difference to her sweet simple plan for their lives, their growing-old-together-by-the-fire dream, but there was always another dream. A new dream, that anyhow turned out to be pretty much like reality, the way she’d always known it would.
“So, how do you know what’s for supper?” she asked, changing the subject back.
“I saw. It’s takeout pizza from Tweedies.”
“And a green salad,” Mal added virtuously.
“By the way, Rossetti’s coming for lunch tomorrow. Bringing his mother.”
Mal’s eyes widened. She knew the story of Rossetti’s mother. “Wow, better hold off on the spaghetti Bolognese, then. I couldn’t take the competition.”
“It’ll be steak on the brand-new Weber.” Harry smiled proudly at his new grill that was pretty much the same model as his old one, but as yet without the layer of burned-on grease. “And baked potatoes.”
“Diz’s favorite,” Mal suddenly remembered. “We could invite the Osbornes,” she added, hopefully, daunted by the idea of entertaining Rossetti’s mom alone.
“Let’s do that.” Harry leaned companionably on the rail next to her. The lake was its usual nightly ink by now, still rippling like silk though, under a sliver of a new moon. “Look, the lights just went on at their house.”
Mal looked over at the Osbornes’ house, so festive with its twinkling porch lights, filled as always with family and friends. Remembering, she thanked God. And Len Doutzer. And Harry and Rossetti. And even, in a small way, herself. She had played a tiny part in the unmasking of the evil that was Bea Havnel. Now gone, and please God, able to be forgotten by them all.
Squeeze brushed against her bare legs and she knelt over him, snuggling her face into his soft fur. His blue eyes looked steadily into hers. It was, Mal knew, a look that meant “love.”
She got up and went and put her arms around Harry’s neck. “I love Squeeze,” she said. “He can have the front seat in the Jag anytime.”
Harry turned from the lake, away from his memories of the horrors that happened, and looked at her.
“That’s true love,” he said, enfolding her in his arms. Next to his heart.