“What? You’re breaking up on me,” Rose said as she looked at her phone and saw only one bar.

“Don’t you guys have any towers around here, or are you afraid they’re gonna kill you too?” Rose quipped to Angelica as she cupped her hand over the phone.

“I said, do you want to start vacation early?” John repeated.

“What do you mean?” Rose replied.

“My angel investor, Wade Ferry, just called me and invited us to a secret supper club dinner tomorrow night,” John gushed with enthusiasm.

“Oh,” Rose said, interested, but clearly not as excited about the idea as John was. John picked up on the tone and decided to sell the notion.

“This is one of Nick Vegas’s special dinners, part of that 50-Forks thing we heard about on Fox News last week. It’s only for the members of 50-Forks and even then you have to be invited to join,” he added.

“How did you...we get invited?” Rose asked.

“A couple of members can’t make it. You believe that? Shell out seventy-five grand and you can’t make the first event?”

“Where will it be?” Rose asked.

“A house here in Athens. Not sure where. Wade said we’d get an email tomorrow morning telling us where to go. He said there’s going to be amazing food that can’t be found anywhere else. Sounds like a great start to the vacation to me!” Rose thought about it for a moment. She didn’t care as much for the hobnobbing and social scenes as John did, preferring a more quiet life at home in front of a good movie with John and the girls. She pondered that for a second, realizing that maybe she and Angelica weren’t as different as she had thought.

“Sounds like fun,” she said, knowing how excited John was about it.

“You betcha!” John said. “Then Sunday morning we’re off on our private flight to San Salvador, and a couple of hours later we’ll be walking on Grotto beach!”

Angelica sipped her tea as she watched Rose on the phone. She couldn’t hear the conversation but could hear the mumblings of John’s excitement, of good news he had that he wanted to share with Rose. She picked up on Rose’s sensitivity to John’s needs, giving in when necessary and standing firm when necessary. A marriage based on loving give and take. She glanced over at Rose’s girls, who were happily lost in a world of make believe. Angelica was thrilled that Rose was letting her keep her nieces for so long. She would take them out to the garden and show them another world, one that wasn’t make believe, one that was real, alive, and wondrous.

Rose had it all, Angelica thought. Beautiful girls, a loving husband and security, although she had almost become a little too big for her britches just like pretty much everyone that went off to college. She had lost her way with nature and with God, but she had the children and a loving relationship that Angelica longed for.

Why can’t I have that? Why doesn’t Blake talk to me that way, doesn’t spend time with me the way John does with Rose? John is much busier with his business and he finds time for Rose and the girls. He always puts them first.

“Anything new on tropical storm Isabel?” Rose asked John.

“They say it should pass south of Puerto Rico and go south of Florida,” John said. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll know in advance if the course changes and we’ll have plenty of time to leave if we have to. The pilot will be on call.”

“Good. That’s what I want to hear. All right, I’ll see you tonight. Love you!” Rose said as she pressed the button to end the call.

“Did you get some good news?” Angelica asked.

“John got an invitation to a fancy dinner tomorrow night. He’s all excited.” Rose knew the dinner wouldn’t interest Angelica much so she skipped the details. Angelica smiled. As Rose figured, she didn’t get what the big deal was. No dinner would be more special to Angelica than a home cooked meal with a husband and children that she not only cooked herself, but also from food that she grew, raised, and produced herself. The simple life was all she hoped for or aspired to.

“What storm are you talking about?” Angelica asked.

“Don’t y’all get the news up here in Clayton? You know man walked on the moon too, has that news reached here yet?

Angelica cocked her head at Rose and raised her eyebrows.

“Nothing, just your typical October tropical storm brewing in the Caribbean. They say it will become a hurricane, but John says it’s going west into the gulf.”

“Cuckoo-Cuckoo.” The clock in the kitchen struck one and somehow managed to penetrate the girls’ bubble. Their eyes marveled at the bird that came out and announced the time. The girls rolled on the floor and laughed with silly hysterics, the way that only little girls can.

“Oh jeez,” Rose said. “I lost track of the time this morning. I need to get back to Athens. I’ve got to go by the post office and cancel mail delivery before our trip.”

Rose got up to give her girls a hug. They accepted it begrudgingly as Ariel had captured their attention once again.

“You girls mind what your Auntie Angelica says,” Rose said to the ears in the living room deaf to all sounds not from The Little Mermaid.

Angelica walked with Rose out to the car.

“Looks like the fog’s about burned off,” Rose said to Angelica at the car door, and reached her arms around her sister. Angelica closed her eyes and hugged Rose’s middle as she normally did when Rose draped her arms around Angelica’s neck. As she did, Angelica opened her eyes as...she felt something deep inside. She concentrated on the feeling and looked around to see if something around her was out of place or was wrong. It wasn’t. It was coming from within, from Rose. Angelica grew uneasy, but felt it must be silly. But still...something didn’t feel right to her.

She pushed back from Rose and looked into her eyes.

“Rose,” Angelica began, “be careful.”

Rose smiled. “Don’t worry, silly. We’ll be careful and we’ll see you in about ten days. Just have a great time with the girls!” Rose got in the car, buckled her seat belt and put the Honda Odyssey into reverse. She looked through the windshield at Angelica, waved goodbye, and left.

Angelica stood for a moment trying to put her finger on what she had felt. She turned to go in and get the girls, but had the most troubling feeling in her gut. A feeling she hadn’t had since the last time she saw her parents alive.

Chapter 19

Blake sat in his truck in the parking lot of The Federal, paralyzed by fear. All of his worst thoughts and fears raced round and round, crashing into one another inside his head like unruly kids in bumper cars.

Slow down. Think!

He tried to calm himself the way he had done in college football when opposing fans would stomp their feet and scream, trying to make so much noise that Blake would be forced into a mistake. A hurried snap, an errant throw. But Blake had mastered those fans, those sweaty palms, time and time again.

Think! What could happen? What are you afraid of? He asked himself silently. Money. Money was the first worry that popped into Blake’s head because it was what Nick had just mentioned. No...he had threatened it. Threatened to reveal that he had paid Blake a lot of money and that maybe someone should review Blake’s tax filings. Nick knew that Blake hadn’t reported that income, that he had cashed those checks instead of depositing them. There was no doubt that Nick had looked at Blake’s signature on the checks, that he had kept them stowed away just in case he ever needed them.

So? What would happen if Nick did report me? Blake thought.

Tax evasion! He felt his body shrivel like an overripe blueberry as he thought about the real trouble he could be in. He didn’t believe that Nick would really report him, but that wasn’t what bothered him. What scared him, what infuriated him, was that Nick knew! He flat out could report it, as he had made painfully clear. Nick could do that today, a year from now, or hold it over Blake’s head for years. The threat would just linger and follow Blake, keeping him awake at night, causing him to look over his shoulder in public. Causing him to dread going to the mailbox, to shudder anytime the phone rang. If Nick ever did report it then Blake would have to explain to an IRS criminal investigator what had happened to the money and why it wasn’t reported. At a minimum, they’d slap a seventy-five percent penalty on him and he’d have to pay that, plus interest, from the first day he should have filed his return. He knew this because he had curiously looked it up when he cashed Nick’s first five thousand dollar check a year and a half before. Since then he had cashed almost thirty of them and still had over ninety thousand dollars in cash tucked away at home that no one knew about, that he couldn’t invest or deposit because then there would be an audit trail. Cash that he couldn’t tell Angelica about, because how would he explain such an obscene amount of cash to her?