“Work called while we were walking? You want to tell me know what’s going on?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He buckled up himself and turned on the ignition. The convertible had a manual transmission, and he stepped on the clutch, shifted into first gear, and drove away from the house I’d grown up in.
“But I’m going to. I just want you to promise me one thing.”
“Whatever you want, babe.”
“You won’t kill my father.”
He was silent for so long I started to panic. “Wills?
He sighed. “What did he do?”
I told him, and the car stalled out.
“Say that again?”
“He told the family I’m a crackhead, that I use crystal meth and God knows what all else.”
“I…I see. Well.” He shifted into neutral and restarted the car. “Two promises I regret.” He looked grim.
“Wills?”
“I promised you I wouldn’t kill that—your father. And I promised your mother we’d be here for Mother’s Day.”
“Now I wish you hadn’t.”
“Yeah. I’d break those promises in a heartbeat.” He made a right turn onto the road that led to U. S. 19 South.
“What are you going to do?”
“We can’t say I have to work. They’d start getting suspicious. We could always tell them the truth.”
“I guess.” My temper was cooling, and I felt sick.
“We’ve got a few weeks to think on it, babe.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I’m…I’m so high maintenance.”
“Doesn’t matter. I love you just the way you are.” His hand was on the stick shift, and I rested my fingers over it.
God, I was lucky.
Wills had finally gotten in touch with his maternal grandparents. “I’m getting married, Grandma, and I want to introduce you. Is it all right if we come down?”
He’d already told me he wanted to inform them face to face that he was gay, so I wasn’t bent out of shape at how ambiguous he was.
When he got off the phone, he was smiling and there was a relieved expression in his eyes. “I told Grandma we’d be there for Mother’s Day.” For the last few years, things had been strained between them, although Wills was certain it was because his Uncle Tony intercepted his phone calls. “Is that okay?”
“It’s a little late to ask, don’t you think?”
“Ah, shit, Theo—”
“That’s okay, I was just teasing you. After all, we will be stopping in Tarpon Springs before we come home.” We hadn’t been able to come up with a valid excuse to cancel the visit. But now…”And actually, that makes it perfect. We can tell Ma you have to let them know about our wedding. If we can’t cancel it, at least that will keep the visit short.”
“Yeah.” He worried his lower lip, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The hell with what Poppa had told the family. I found myself leaning toward Wills to take his lip between my own teeth. But then he said, “Uncle Tony still blames Dad for the accident that killed my mom.”
“He’s an asshole.” And not just because thoughts of him interrupted a chance for me to kiss my lover. “If he wants to hold onto a grudge, fine, but you were five freaking years old! You didn’t have anything to do with it.”
He shrugged. “This will work out well. He’s going to be at the nursing home seeing patients on the day before, so that will give us a few hours to have Grandma and Grandpa to ourselves.”
“And when he gets home?” I knew Tony Sabatini had moved his practice down to Florida after his marriage had broken up, and he’d been living with his parents, supposedly because they were getting frail.
Wills shrugged again. “I hope he won’t pitch a fit when he sees me there.”
“Take your gun with you and shoot him.”
That made him laugh. “I don’t think Mr. Vincent would approve.”
But I would. I’d dealt with being tossed aside because I was gay, and I envied my lover his very accepting family. I hadn’t met them all, but even his paternal grandparents had welcomed me when we’d driven from Cambridge to Seaford on Long Island to see them on Easter Sunday. How would his mother’s parents react to the knowledge that Wills was gay?
I’d trained myself not to miss my family; although I’d written to Ma and Acacia from time to time, I’d had more than thirteen years to get used to living without them.
It hadn’t occurred to Wills that as a Greek, I’d have a metric ton of relatives. He never questioned why, when I brought him to meet the family, it was just Ma and Poppa and Casey. Even Casey’s boyfriend hadn’t been there.
And then at Easter…Aunt Agalia and Uncle Konstantinos’s disapproval had been so obvious. The girls had seemed fascinated…more by Wills, I thought, than by my trashed reputation. Daria…Casey told me she’d asked a lot of questions about my supposed career as a junkie and had said snidely, “I think she wants you to be her dealer.”
As for Alax’s hostility, it was the epitome of the Greek male.
I knew Ma hadn’t been pleased with Poppa, but even she wasn’t going to get all the aunts and uncles and cousins together and announce her firstborn was involved with another man. Especially since the reason Poppa had given everyone for my disappearance from Tarpon Springs was that I’d gotten heavily into the drug scene. I hadn’t said anything to Poppa when I’d learned of that, but I felt as if my heart had been ripped out again.