Tuesday Night Miracles (2 page)

2

The Green Dot

W
hen Kit wakes up, she can’t remember where she is. Her last dream had her running from tree to tree dodging something, or perhaps it was someone. Now she’s lying on her back, and Kit Ferranti hasn’t slept on her back since she was a little girl.

And that explains everything this late morning. Kit is tangled in the worn sheets of her old twin bed. The bed that sits in the last bedroom on the top floor of the house where her mother and father raised her and a mess of sons. The house that is blessedly quiet for the first time in days. The house that will undoubtedly explode with the sounds of those boys turned men, their wives, a mess of nieces and nephews, and who knows who else sometime in the next few hours.

“Quiet, for just a bit longer, please,” she mutters, rolling over onto her right side so she can look out the long window and across the tops of the oak trees.

She is absolutely exhausted. And riddled with such sadness that she is already wondering how she will be able to get through the long day ahead. She closes her eyes for a moment, banishing her nightmare to the back of her mind, and lets the reality of where she is, what has just happened, and what will happen next wash over her as if she is standing under a blasting shower.

It has been four days since her mother’s funeral. Three months since Kit moved back to her childhood home to become her mother’s full-time caretaker. How many times did she hope this day and the four before it would never come? Today the family is gathering to talk about the house, a lifetime of belongings, who gets what, and what will happen next.

She bravely swings her feet off the bed and wonders how long it will be before someone argues about something, the brothers start telling her what to do, or she breaks down yet again as she remembers how heart-wrenching it was to watch her mother die.

“This, too, shall fly away,” she whispers, repeating the exact words her mother had said at least a million times throughout the years.

When she raises her eyes, Kit is looking at her reflection in the long mirror that has stood against the wall since the day she was born. And she often, especially when she’s inside this house, feels like she is still a little girl.

Kit puts her hands on her tiny chest and thinks that both of her breasts wouldn’t even equal one of her mother’s. Her mom had what one of her crazy aunts would have called “a remarkable bosom.” Kit has what her brothers still call little titties. At fifty-six years old, everyone is still waiting for her to grow—like maybe she will have a late growth spurt when she hits her next birthday. She’s just three inches over five feet tall, her weight hovers around one hundred and ten pounds, and no matter how much crap she has managed to eat during the past few months she is losing and not gaining weight. Must be the worrying—her mother was right, after all. Worry can bring you down to nothing and make you doubt everything you know about yourself.

Maybe things will change now. Maybe she has earned some extra credit for taking a leave of absence from her job to care for her mother. Maybe her family will finally look at her in a way that will have something to do with the word
respect
. It’s bad enough being the only girl in a large Italian family where testosterone seems to grow like mold on plates and hang from the ceiling like streamers left over from a birthday party.

Kit is small, she’s a girl, she married someone who wasn’t Italian, and then, to top it all off, she was able to have only one child. According to the standards of an Italian Catholic family, she should have thrown herself off the roof years ago.

Right now it’s hard not to think of the word
trouble
when she thinks about her life’s relationships. Trouble with her brothers, trouble with her overbearing and also deceased father, trouble with girlfriends who thought she was brash and salty, trouble with teachers who didn’t appreciate being called assholes, trouble dating guys who were frightened the moment she opened her mouth—until Peter.

Peter the strapping Chicago-born and -bred Irishman who could lift Kit over his head with one arm, wrestle all but one of her four brothers to the ground, and charm her mother into cooking whatever he wanted pretty much around the clock. It’s a wonder they didn’t have a frigging group-wedding ceremony.

“Time to move forward!” she shouts, shaking her head to help her focus on the day ahead and to forget about the past. “This, too, shall pass, and it will be a calm and productive day.”

She jumps to her feet, stretches, fishes around the room for clean clothes, and walks down the hall to the bathroom. Before she turns on the shower, Kit looks at herself in the mirror. “Stay positive,” she coaches herself. “You will let them know what Mom wants, be supportive—you are the one in charge today.”

Two hours later she has managed to find the huge coffeepot her mom used for large family gatherings, located paper plates and cups, and created a list of everything she and her siblings need to discuss. After downing four cups of coffee, a long shower, and a call to her husband, she feels refreshed and ready. She knows absolutely that her mother would love that the family is going to be together, and she’s determined to stay positive about the day ahead with her often surly brothers.

It’s amazing how they all still live in Ellington, a lively eclectic suburb not so far from downtown Chicago that it’s affected by the noise and activity, but close enough to enjoy its many benefits. There’s a knock at the door, and for the next thirty minutes Kit’s brothers and their entourage of wives and sons and daughters arrive in chronological birth order. Matthew, Luke, John, and Mark are not exactly saints in her eyes, but she’s glad to see them—well, sort of glad to see them. The house becomes loaded with their stifling maleness so fast, and the noise level accelerates so quickly, Kit feels as if she’s been sucked into the center of a tornado.

“Coffee?” she offers immediately. The requisite bottles of wine, beer, and whiskey are already being lugged into the kitchen.

“Are you crazy?” the oldest brother, Matt, says with a laugh. “Little Kit, this is a big meeting, but we’re Ferrantis. Both Mom and Dad would want us to enjoy ourselves while we settle this hard stuff.”

“As long as we don’t start swimming in the booze,” Kit shoots back. “That’s happened, let’s see, how about every time we do something like this?”

“Kit, chill!” John orders as he cracks open a beer.

“I’m chilled, big bro, I just don’t want to be frozen.” Kit’s trying to hold her own with her brothers while plastic containers of food are dispersed by the sisters-in-law on every counter in the kitchen, the dining-room table, and on the end tables in the living room. No one in this family will ever starve.

“You’d look good in the freezer, and I know, because you’re the runt of the litter, that you’d fit in there, too,” Mark adds, holding out a beer near Kit’s face.

“You guys are such jackasses,” Kit half-jokingly says as she succumbs, and quickly grabs the beer.

“That’s a good girl,” Mark smirks. “Tradition in the family is important, so mind your manners.”

Kit decides to bite her lip to keep peace, because she knows the banter could go on for hours if she had the energy to keep pace with it. Boys will be boys is what her mother would say, and so she smiles and lets those boys think they’ve won.

The few younger nieces and nephews who accompanied their parents are beyond happy to run through the house and yard while the grown-ups declare a temporary truce.

Kit has decided to let them warm up before they get down to business. She feels a bit lost that Peter isn’t able to join her because of his work schedule, and yet there’s something comforting about being with her rowdy brothers even though they’ve picked on her and treated her like a slave for most of their lives. Kit considers her sisters-in-law to be friends, but she can’t imagine life 24/7 with one of her brothers.

About an hour later, after the food has been eaten and Luke has passed out shots of whiskey to everyone but the neighbor’s dog, Kit decides it’s time to get down to business before things get out of hand.

“Hey, guys, maybe we should get started and talk about things,” she shouts over the din in the living room, where everyone has congregated.

“Good idea, sis,” Matt agrees. “Let me get my notes.”

“Notes? But—” Kit assumed she’d be running the show, because she’s been in charge since their mother went into hospice care.

“Yes. Mom left me a letter, and there’s some things we need to go through.”

Kit is absolutely stunned. What was she thinking? Of course the boys would be in charge. Of course she’s still the baby in their eyes. Of course what she has just done for her mother, and for all of them, doesn’t even fit on the radar screen.

Kit doesn’t have it in her to pick a fight, to stick up for herself, to change the long-held order of power in her family. She grabs her third beer and decides to let things happen the way they’re supposed to happen.

For the next hour, while they go through Matt’s list, the beer cases empty, John periodically interrupts for another round of “We love you, Mom!” shots, the oldest niece decides to take all the kids to a movie, and Kit tries to imagine getting her life, job, and aching heart back.

Distracted, when she looks up, she notices that all of her brothers and most of their wives have passed beyond that sane point when having one more drink is the worst possible thing they could do. Kit realizes she’s not far from the same point herself.

Then burly, manly, macho Mark, of all people, starts to cry. This sets off a chain reaction of weeping that affects everyone but Kit and Matt. Matt keeps drinking. Kit isn’t sure she has any tears left. Her exhaustion rides itself back into every bone in her body.

What happens next will be remembered by everyone in a different way. Clouded by emotions and alcohol Mark suddenly jumps up, walks over to Kit, pulls her to her feet, and begins shouting at her. That is the only thing everyone will agree on.

“Why did you let her die?” he yells into her face, lifting her an inch off the ground and shaking her. “You could have done more! Why did you let her die?”

Kit pushes him away, and a dormant line of anger inside of her explodes as if a fuse has been lit.

“Me?” she screams back. “I changed her diapers. I held her when she cried. You stupid asshole! Me? Where were you all those nights?”

Mark is furious, and shoves Kit. “You let her die!”

Kit falls against the table and a wine bottle tumbles to the floor and shatters. Instinctively, she reaches down, grabs what is left of it by the handle, and lunges at her brother.

And she doesn’t stop.

And suddenly everything changes. Absolutely everything.

3

The Red Dot

“T
his is going to be the most perfect day of my professional life,” Jane Castoria says to herself over and over as she searches through her huge walk-in closet for the sexiest power suit she owns.

“To hell with the real-estate recession,” she says out loud, giggling as she prances from the closet to the bathroom in her matching black lace bra and panties. “Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.”

Jane needs this day. She stayed up well past midnight planning every glorious second of it, and so far her plan has been unfolding with absolute precision.

First she bounced out of bed thirty minutes before her husband, Derrick, and made the coffee and some toast. He almost fainted when he smelled coffee. “It’s like the good old days,” he yelled from the shower. “I thought this day would never get here.”

“Me, too!” Jane all but sang as she methodically checked her emails, checked her phone messages, checked her lovely leather briefcase for the papers she would need later, swatted Derrick on the rear end as he hopped from the shower, and then took his place.

“Are you back, honey?” he asked, watching her lovely, near-perfect figure bend and twist through the tempered glass door.

“You bet your sweet ass I’m back. And tonight I’m bringing home a gift that you can’t wrap, so get home early.”

“Thank God.” He sighed, trying to remember when they last made love, had sex, kissed for more than three seconds. “I’m ready now if you have time.”

“Do not drop that towel!” Jane shrieked. “I must focus on this deal.”

Fifteen minutes later Derrick yelled, “Goodbye and good luck!” and Jane is now holding up a fashionable sky-blue suit that makes her look like all the money she used to rake in as a high-end real-estate executive.

Her black hair is cut stylishly short, and when she tips her head the subtle red highlights reflect off her high cheekbones. She has lovely dark skin, perfectly formed eyebrows, dark brown eyes, and legs that seem to go on forever. She’s the kind of woman who turns heads and makes men and women sigh with jealousy and occasional lust.

Add her cocky, self-assured attitude on top of that and Jane Castoria is usually a wild, unstoppable force. In some circles, she might also be called a pushy broad with more than a bit of spunk. Back in the old days people would have called her a bitch. “Bring it on!” is what she would say to that label.

Jane dresses, applies her makeup, plays with her hair, and then steps back to have a look.

“Not bad for a forty-two-year-old Castoria.”

She turns in a circle one last time, then boldly decides to wear her red stilettos. Why the hell not? Naturally five feet eight inches tall, Jane also has an addiction to high heels. And not just any high heels. Not many women can pull off walking with a sexy sway in high heels that look like thin knives, but Jane is an expert. There’s something about stilettos that makes her feel like she owns whatever piece of earth she steps on. She checks her emails once again, grabs her water bottle, phone, and briefcase, and heads for her luxury leather-upholstered car and the bright lights of downtown Chicago.

As she drives, she tries not to think about the fact that she’s been hit so hard by the economy that she hasn’t had a sale or even a nibble in months. She’s not used to sitting around and waiting. Today’s multimillion-dollar deal is going to be the start of everything all over again. She can feel it. Nothing can stop her.

Her parents, both incredibly successful, never wanted her to focus on real estate. They wanted law school or some CEO job at a Fortune 500 company. Jane’s professional demise would prove them right, so today is a big deal for many reasons. Her parents had set the bar extremely high, and even though they raised her to be a princess, there wasn’t much wiggle room in their world for failure.

Derrick’s terrific job as an engineer had helped them stay afloat, but now it’s her turn. Saint Derrick. Wonderful, lucky Derrick, who still has a great job and a huge salary and who keeps saying he doesn’t mind if she even works. If she isn’t careful, pretty soon he’ll want to get a damn dog or start talking about adoption again.

As Jane pulls into the parking tower of the executive offices, where her broker and the couple from California will be waiting for her, she feels calm, powerful, and absolutely alive.

“Here we go,” she says, looking at herself one last time in her rearview mirror and adding a dab of fresh lipstick.

The security guard by the door greets her by name, tells her she’s been missed, and when she clicks across the marble foyer she knows he’s watching every step and she smiles, loving the attention.

Upstairs on the twentieth floor, though, the usual hustle and bustle of agents coming and going, customers coming and going, and phones ringing is missing. It disarms her a bit. Surely other agents have picked up some business?

Jane isn’t stupid. She realizes that the world is in a new cycle. People have cut back, even wealthy people. Big houses and five-thousand-square-foot condos are no longer hot-ticket real-estate items. But some still sell, and her California couple is going to be her good-luck charm.

“Hello,” she calls from the nearly darkened lobby, startled that there isn’t even a receptionist. “John? Is anyone here?”

The place looks abandoned, but suddenly John appears from an office down the hall. He’s talking on the phone and motions with his finger that it will just be a minute.

“Thank God,” she says, exhaling and sitting down on the couch in the luxurious waiting room. “I’m sure my clients will be here soon.”

It’s so strange to be sitting on the couch in the huge suite of offices that used to be filled pretty much 24/7. Jane can remember coming in to close a deal a few years ago at two in the morning and there were ten other agents working, people actually waiting to put money down on property; and there was a food vendor, upscale of course, who was doing a brisk business selling expensive coffee and sandwiches outside the door.

Jane keeps telling herself it will all come back. It won’t be quite the same, but things will swing around. They have to.

She misses this world. The selling and buying, the fast-paced deals, the lunches and awards. Less than four years ago she was on top of the high-end residential real-estate world, not just in downtown Chicago but in the trendy neighboring suburbs as well. Jane still hustled out of her home office, but on many days there wasn’t much to do because there were no customers.

Right now she’s a little concerned, because her buyers are nowhere in sight. She’s a bit early—that’s always part of her plan—but her fingers are itching to get the settlement check in her hands. She lowered her usual seven-percent commission to six percent to snag this deal, but that’s all she’s changed. Inside her briefcase she’s got a two-hundred-dollar gift certificate for a fancy restaurant around the corner from the buyers’ soon-to-be new home, and another box of goodies will be delivered to them on moving day.

She’s ready, but what is keeping John?

Jane can’t stand waiting and gets up to walk back toward John’s office. She’s walking on her tiptoes in case he’s still on the phone, but it looks as if his door is open and she can’t hear a thing.

When she peeks around the corner, she sees him sitting at his desk with his head in his hands.

What in the world is going on?

“John?”

John jumps right out of his chair and almost falls over. “You scared me!”

“Is everything okay?”

He averts his eyes.

“John?”

“Can you give me, like, ten more minutes? I have to make one more call, and then we’ll talk.”

Jane can feel her stomach move right into the bottom half of her throat. Talk? Talk about what? Where are the customers? Where’s the accountant and the lawyer who are supposed to be here at the closing?

He turns his back to her, and Jane assumes he expects her to leave his office. She almost leaves, and then she starts to think of all the money she’s made for him during the past ten years. Millions of dollars. She’s been his top seller dozens of months in a row. She has parked next to his Jaguar, been to lavish dinners at his estate in Wisconsin, dropped him off at the airport so he could catch his plane to Paris, and once she even helped him pick out diamond earrings for his third wife.

There’s no way in hell Jane Castoria is going to go sit on the couch in the waiting room as if she’s an illegal real-estate immigrant.

“John, tell me what’s going on.”

John turns slowly, and he looks as white as his crisp hand-starched shirt.

“I’m so sorry, Jane. I know how much you wanted this deal.”

Jane’s briefcase falls from her left hand. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s the banks, not me. I tried to get this deal through, but the new regulations made it impossible and the bank didn’t approve the loan.”

Jane feels as if someone has just hit her between the shoulder blades with an unsharpened ax. Her heart is pounding so fast that her blouse is moving up and down. She closes her eyes for just a few seconds, and all she can see is blackness—her world, or what’s left of it, tumbling down as if there has been a major earthquake.

This can’t be happening. It absolutely can’t be happening.

“Do you realize how hard I have worked to get this? How much of what is left of my own money I used to snag this couple? How much I need this sale?” Jane is startled to realize that she is yelling.

John takes a step forward, opens his mouth to make some excuse, then shakes his head.

“You could have said something sooner!” Jane shrieks, unable to move.

“Jane.” John lightly touches her left hand in the small space below her jacket at the edge of her wrist and the touch of his hand pushes Jane Castoria over the edge.

“I hate you, you lousy bastard!” she screams louder.

John pulls back, totally startled, and that’s when Jane bends down to take off her right shoe. The red stiletto. She hits him first on the right side of his face, then on top of his head, then on the left side of his face.

By the time the police arrive to restrain her, to take John to the hospital, and to bag the red shoe as evidence, Jane Castoria is so enraged that she can’t even remember her last name.