run into anyone I knew because I was lousy at hiding things and I simply had no stomach for spilling my guts about Dickey’s release.
I parked the Ford, hurried inside and found forty-something Liz Harrington eager to escort me to Mom’s safety deposit box. My name was on all my mom’s accounts. “Just in case I get hit by a bus,” she’d say. The likelihood of my mom getting struck down by a bus in Sonoma was equal to her getting hit by a meteor. The woman hardly left the orchard, and when she did, someone else would drive her. She wouldn’t even cross the street in the village without an escort let alone walk somewhere alone in the presence of crazed bus drivers.
But she insisted, so there I was doing her banking with the help of surly Liz Harrington who, for some inexplicable reason, seemed eager to please.
“I hear your cousin Dickey was released from Soledad yesterday,” she surreptitiously inquired as we walked toward the back of the bank, her well-worn cowboy boots clicking on the gray tile floor.
“That was quick,” I answered. Sonoma Valley was like any other small town. News traveled through it like wildfire in a dry forest.
“I also heard your family is throwing him a party tonight. Boy, I’d like to be a fly on the wall at that one.”
“It should be pretty boring,” I muttered with indifference, hoping she would get the message that I didn’t like where this conversation was heading. It was bad enough that I came from a family of aging ex-mobsters, but did I have to hear about it even from my banker?
“Not the way I heard it.”
I couldn’t resist. “And what was that?”
“You have relatives flying in from all over the country to be there,” she said as we walked into a small, stuffy room, the walls lined with tiny metal doors, each one with double key holes.
The woman knew more than I did about my mother’s plans. “Not likely, but you know how families are,” I told her trying to sound as if my family was as normal as the next guy’s.
“No. How are they?” Her head bobbed in a curiously disjointed way. I stared at her wondering if that movement was natural or was it some old neck injury that had never quite mended properly. Either way, it seemed like something she should get fixed “I grew up in an orphanage and the only parents I ever knew died from a crack overdose when I was ten. I never married, never had kids and from the looks of it, I won’t be getting those things any time soon.”
While she spoke I was thinking that perhaps it was her neck injury that had turned her into such a disagreeable woman.
Or not.
I decided to go for a more holistic approach. “Love can come when you least expect it.”
“That’s a bunch of baloney,” she said bitterly.
I smiled, not having a good comeback for that one, so I let the silence of the airless room take over.
We turned our keys in the locks. I slid the box out of the slot, and Liz Harrington stood a little too close-by, key in hand, while I went through Mom’s things. I could smell the shot of bourbon she’d mixed in with her coffee that morning, and the sweet cologne she had sprayed on her clothes to cover it up. It made me feel a little sorry for her. I knew all about the need to smooth out the day.
I found the papers Mom had asked for, along with my dad’s simple gold wedding band, Mom’s matching wedding band, a couple of photos, a picture of me in first grade missing a front tooth, some little girl I’d never seen before who was also missing a front tooth, a small mesh bag filled with gold coins and a larger one containing silver change—Mom’s security just in case the economy took a real dump and paper money became worthless—and Dickey’s flashy ring. For some reason, I remembered the ring, but not on Dickey’s finger. I stared at it for a few seconds, trying to visualize who else could have worn it, but nothing came to me.
I thought about when Mom had put all these things in this box when we first moved here. How sad she was, and how much I still missed my dad. He had left on a business trip while we were still living in North Beach—I was twelve, way before we