“But, Lily, remember the night of the big bar fight, when the owner showed up with the police...”
“There have been lots of fights,” Lily said, not unkindly. “This is a strip club, not a...”
“Library,” Nell finished for her. “My sister said.”
Lily regarded my sister mildly and began to stock clean glassware. Nell knew that Lily recognized her, and that Lily was lying. She had no idea why.
Did Lily act that way because of Jack Melodia? Perhaps nobody will ever know. Lily certainly isn’t saying.
She owns Ophelia now. Apparently, her agreement with Jack provided that if he should die or be otherwise incapacitated, she would assume full ownership responsibilities for the club for a period of three years, after which she would own it free and clear. I remember Archangel saying that Lily was the only one Jack ever really trusted. Did he trust her too much?
For Jack disappeared. That was how Lily described it when Sam finally went to see her. Sam had to try to negotiate some kind of visitation with Sparrow, if that was what Jack wanted and if his current marital status was expansive enough to accommodate the heretofore-unknown child of a former mistress. Grudgingly, Felicity knew she had no choice. She took Sam’s advice to relocate before he gave even preliminary notice. If Felicity had still been in Madison, Jack could presumably have requested anything, even joint custody. He still could have.
But he had disappeared.
Lily shrugged when Sam pressed her about how to get a message to Jack. “I have no idea where he is,” she said.
“When did he contact you last?”
“The last time I saw him.” That had been last spring, she thought. Why hadn’t she reported him missing? “Wasn’t up to me,” she said. “Maybe his wife did. I really don’t know.”
It was clear to Sam that she knew more than she was saying. Sitting in the midday dusk at Ophelia, Sam ventured somethingabout how all this seemed pretty convenient, but Lily came back hard. “Convenient how? I get twenty questions a week about liability and facility depreciation and city permits that I have to figure out on my own. He’s the one who knew that stuff.”
And again, Sam had little doubt that Lily was literally unable to ask Jack for advice. Jack had overseen the financials of the club, separate from the accountants who handled the rest of his properties. Inherited from his godfather, it was a sort of passion project, Lily added. She gave Sam an ironic look that said she knew exactly how that sounded.
And yet, I had to consider Lily’s unswerving loyalty to Felicity—and how the two of them, hiding in the back room that day, overheard Jack as he showed that man a photo. Of what? Of whom? Something or someone so dear to that guy that he was reduced to a blubbering, trembling, begging wreck of a creature... who knew Jack would do anything to keep what was his.
When Sam got back, I asked him if he ever had any news of Jack.
Sam said, “Not much.” Before I could question him further, he added, “I’m not trying to find him. Nobody is trying to find him, I don’t think.”
“Do you think something happened to him?”
“I don’t think about it,” Sam said.
“Oh yeah, you do.”
“When I do, I remind myself not to.” He went back to the corner piece he was struggling to fit into the edge of our white subway tile kitchen backsplash. As he turned away, satisfied, the chip popped out like an imp. “Oh please, let’s call a guy,” Sam said. “This is an art form, and I clearly don’t have what it takes. But I’ll bet the guy I pay to do it couldn’t make a closing argument either.” Sam paused. “No, maybe he could.” We stepped out onto the screen porch. We were nearly drunk on the blessed interval of aloneness because Claire was visiting, and she and Miranda and Felicity had taken the children on the long-promised sojourn to Magic Kingdom! We didn’t know what to do first, go out to a fancy restaurant or get drunk or have noisy sex or simply turn off all the lights and sleep for nine hours. Or put all those things on hold to talk about things we didn’t talk about during the ordinary run of life.
“Where do you think he went?” I asked Sam. “Come on!”
“Remember when we were first together, and I told you that you could ask me anything and I would give you an honest answer? But never to ask me a question you didn’t really want to know the answer to? This falls under that heading. Because I am telling you the truth, Reenie. I really don’t know, and I don’t want to know.”
“You think somebody whacked him?”
“I think those are great movies, Reenie,” he answered. “He lives the kind of life that could put you in harm’s way. So maybe. Maybe he went to Missoula.”
“Would that be all bad?”
“I guess for his family.”
“But not for mine,” I finished, and my husband knew just who was included in “my family.” As we lay in bed, I remembered that Lily used to be a police officer. If anyone knew how to make someone disappear and stay disappeared, it would be a cop.
Some months later, I wrote the real story. A murderer confessed her guilt. An innocent woman was freed. A businessman disappeared. All this happened in the name of love—all the fear, all the deception, and all the courage.
And that really was that.
The house that Felicity built was a lush little jewel box, everything in blue and gray except for a pop of gold here and there, with every amenity Patrick could dream up. In time, Sparrow began to call my parents Granny and Grandpa. In another year, Felicity decided, even if a prince did not come to break the spell,much less a familiar villain to try to ruin her life, she would try to have another child. The world to which she had returned, she said, was like a pair of running shoes she’d purchased but barely used—still practically new, worth another try.
