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"Good," he says. He lets go, then says, "Does Henri know yet?"
"Since Thursday night."
My father looks out across the car park and smiles.
"Put me at the front," he says, his eyes twinkling. "Where he can see me."
* * *
Wendy Green comes out of the fridge at midnight.
I wash my hands, roll my sleeves, and set the brushes out in a perfect line. That’s how I like them. The powder went everywhere on Thursday because a man knocked on my door about a duck, and now there's a Valmont in my life and a case of vodka on its way to her idiot brother. I can lose myself in this routine for a while.
"Sorry about the wait," I tell her. "It's been a week."
She doesn't mind. That's the thing about Wendy. She's got nowhere to be until eleven tomorrow, and she has never once asked me a question. Down here my hands know the work without me, and my head finally goes quiet, because nothing is even a millimeter out of place.
I work the powder over her cheek, lightly, the way it's done, the way I’d already started before being rudely interrupted the first time. The open casket was the family's idea and they'll stand there tomorrow telling each other how well she looks.
"There's going to be a wedding," I tell her. "You'd have had something to say about it. Everyone else does."
The lamp hums over the table. Down here, at this moment, there's no noise, no drama. There's a face that needs doing and there's the correct order to do it in.
"She thinks the year starts on the wedding day," I tell her. “Well, that’s what I said.”
The brush moves. The room is so peaceful. Wendy Green keeps whatever answer she may have to herself, which is the only reason I said it out loud.
“I’ve been waiting…” I murmur. Indeed, I'd have waited forever.
Luckily for me, it didn't come to that.
CHAPTER 4
Manon
I always thought Charles and I were meant to be together, that we'd get married eventually. After four years, I was still waiting. He never actually asked.
"Say it again," he says. I've just told him I'm marrying another man.
"I've explained it three times, Charles. That I’m getting married to someone because my father is in the mafia business." I’m so matter-of-fact about the whole thing.
"Just repeat it. So it makes sense."
He’s right. It cannot make sense to him as it’s outside his frame of reference. But he’s making me work for it and I’m about to blow my top. Granted, this has been like dumping a bag of trash over his head.
His hands are flat on the counter, taking up too much of my kitchen. There's a butterfly stitch over his eyebrow, put on by a team doctor in Vancouver on the last road trip. Four years with a hockey player and I've stopped asking about the new marks on his face. I'm staring at it instead of him.
"My family is part of a criminal organization," I confess. I wasn't planning on doing things like this, but being that our relationship was serious, I knew I'd have to tell him some day. That day is today. There is no leeway to keep dragging this out, especially with the current turn of events.
"Manon. Your dad's in shipping. He's not a criminal."
"He is in shipping, yes," I say, inhaling a deep breath to keep the exasperation from my voice.
Half a beat passes and he doesn't move. Maybe they’re finally sinking in, the words hanging in the air between us.
I'm such a chicken. We've been together so long, and I never told him. Not on the third date, when he asked what my father did and I said shipping. He took that to be true, of course. Why wouldn’t he? Not at Christmas either, when he visited my parents’ house and never once questioned more in depth how my family got their money. They know how to deal with outsiders like Charles and act like upstanding citizens on the surface. Then too, not at his sister's wedding, where he introduced me as Manon, a doctor—the only sentence about my background I've ever wanted said out loud.
Charles shakes his head then lets out a laugh. No, it apparently hasn't sunk in yet.
