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  Annie, composed now, her puffy eyelids obscuring her pale blue eyes, scoffed. “Tell you? Please. You’re not exactly warm and fuzzy, Mister Tough Guy. You both lock it down so tight. I blame your sorry excuses for parents. A selfish, bitter mother who put her kids last, dead last. Booze and being your father’s doormat came first.”

  “Annie, cut it out. You think reliving the past does any good? Like hell.” Peter stepped in close to her, Jeff picking up the chair he sent flying.

  “Oh, I’m saying the truth. And I’m not done. Your father was the nastiest piece of work, the exact opposite of what a dad should be. He treated you like shit, especially you, Pete. You boys were beasts of burden. If he said jump, you jumped or else.”

  “Look, this conversation is over.” Jeff took two big strides and held onto Annie’s shoulder. “Pete and I had each other, and that got us through. Did it suck? Yeah, absolutely. It double-sucked. But parents aren’t everything. You were lucky, your mom and dad are terrific. And I’m so lucky because I have you. And we’ve got two great kids.” He hugged her tight as she stepped into his arms, leaning hard against him.

  “I should’ve picked up on her signals that she was so desperate,” Annie said into his barrel chest. “Maybe she tried to tell me; I just missed the hints.”

  “No, she hid them. She always liked her secrets, tucking her dolls under her bed and stashing her make-up under a pillow even though we said no. Like we wouldn’t notice our ten-year-old sporting bright green eyeshadow and red lipstick. Plus, she’s a great little actress. Remember all those plays she did in school?” Jeff planted small kisses on Annie’s forehead.

  “Oscar-worthy. Good with accents, too. Her southern belle slayed me.” Peter patted them both on the back. “Maybe Rach had the bad luck to get some of Mom’s alcoholism gene plus our amazing acting chops. Of course, ours were survival skills. Who the fuck knows?”

  Annie straightened up and pointed at Jeff. “We need to show her how much we love and trust her. Sean got the farm. It’s time for Rachel. She’s a baker now—you have to do the food truck with her.”

  “Yeah, honey. I’m almost there.” He pinched some air between his forefinger and thumb. “This close. What’s holding me back isn’t the truck. It’s the gamble on Rach. You gotta keep your eyes peeled. If we do it, me and Pete’ll be really busy.”

  Annie nodded, revved up with new energy. “Yup. The Three Musketeers. I’ll keep chugging at Park and Rec, but count on me behind the scenes, watching and helping. She’ll be terrific. I know it like I know my own name.”

  “Hey, Igor Russo—just so me and him don’t turn it into the Three Stooges.” Peter got a smile from Annie, her fierce expression relaxing momentarily, and a throaty chuckle from Jeff.

  When the commissary was finally ready to get off the ground some four months after the tearful porch session, Annie and Rachel put out a red alert for help with production and stockpiling some frozen inventory. Sean had his hands full with the farm, Annie had a nagging sinus infection, and Donna Tomassi was visiting her mother in North Carolina. Jeff showed up ready to go, but Rachel, running the show, exiled him to clean-up.

  “Stop hovering, Dad. You’re pissing me off.”

  John Tomassi answered the call, sporting a frilly apron of Donna’s, and swore that his son, Mike, on break from law school, would be there in a heartbeat. Tomassi was elbow deep in dough when Mike and his old pal, Josh Richardson, clattered downstairs.

  “Nice look, Sergeant T,” Josh said, laughing. Josh, as lean as Mike was stocky, had spent many hours at the Tomassi household after his father died and his mother lost her connection with reality. Now finishing up his MBA at a middling local university, Josh hated his job as an assistant guidance counselor at West Hadley High School and was counting the days until he could leave for something better. Josh’s mother, still fragile and clingy, was the biggest impediment to that plan.

  “You wish you had the balls to wear this, Josh. Only real men can pull this off.” Tomassi pranced in a circle to loud cat-calls.

  “Dad, you look like Fred Flintstone in drag as Julia Child. Only worse, and in real life.” Mike ducked when his father flicked a ball of dough at him.

  “No food fights,” Rachel yelled. “We have a time deadline, people. Where’s Pete?”

  “Town council meeting.” Jeff rolled his eyes. “This time, he’s speaking for the piping plovers. Some kind of problem with Bridgeville’s hospitality.”

  “I thought it was shad migration. Can you believe they want to build another gas pipeline across the river? I told Pete to give ‘em hell.” Tomassi turned very serious and pounded the mound of dough into submission. “Enough’s enough.”

  “So, Dad, why don’t you go support him at the meeting? He could use a few soldiers.”

  “Nah, no can do, Mikey. Too political. I gotta be Switzerland to the public.”

  “Yeah, but maybe you could catch them doing something illegal.”

  “My son, the almost-lawyer. Lemme tell you, those morons couldn’t catch a cold. Every word is a lie.”

  “Whoa.” Josh feigned shock and staggered under the weight of Tomassi’s truth.

  “Get to work, people,” Rachel said as she approached Josh. “Do you remember me at all?”

  Josh knew all about Rachel’s drug bust, but he didn’t go there. “Your name’s on the tip of my tongue. Gertrude?” Josh had a winning streak with women that was a running joke in the Tomassi household, but his current girlfriend, Emmie, usually had a pleasing grip on his mind and body. Plus she bought into his California dream. The only hitch remained his mother.

  “That better be the only thing of hers at the tip of your tongue,” Mike muttered. “Her boyfriend could shred you like a carrot.”

  Josh guffawed as Rachel swatted Mike with a dish towel, and then swerved as she came after him with a big grin on her face. The joy of child’s play helped Josh forgot about the fight he’d had with Emmie about getting his mother out of their business.

  Jeff hadn’t wanted Rachel to handle all the baking. He reinforced his point one night sitting outside on Peter’s deck, putting a big dent into some frozen margaritas. They sat quietly and spellbound in the dark, watching the fireflies’ magic show.

  “I never get tired of this,” Peter said.

  “What—you, me and the fireflies?”

  “And the margaritas.” Peter looked over at Jeff when he exhaled loudly. “Tell me.”

  Jeff spoke haltingly. “So, Rach is all-or-nothing about doing the baking. Nobody else. Pressure like that on her scares the shit out of me, you know. It could backfire and then what?”

  “She’ll have help from all of us. Me, you, Annie, Marco, probably a couple of friends. Plus, she’s still getting counseling.”

  “Yeah. You’re chief dishwasher, more like it. Listen, I can’t put her in a position to fail.” Jeff laid his cards on the table. “I’m trusting you that Marco is a good guy who’s done with the fuck-ups. Fine for working on the truck, but not near Rachel too much. I don’t want to put my baby into a situation where she’s got easy access again to, you know—easy access to drugs.”

  “Hate to break it to you, but Rach probably knows more eager-beaver dealers than you can count. Scary people, too.” Peter poured more margaritas for himself and Jeff. “She’s into a new chapter of her life. Are you saying Marco’s going to corrupt her? Get real, all due respect to Rach.”

  “Hey, you know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.” Peter sat up straight and jabbed his finger in Jeff’s face. “Marco is not your problem. He’s good people. He and Kenny Johnson have been hanging out; try that on for size. Marco talked him into doing some part-time coaching for the youth baseball team that Marco’s cousin manages.”

  “Huh, Marco and Kenny? I didn’t see that coming.”

  CHAPTER 25

  NANCY HAD BEEN HANGING BY A THREAD FOR TOO long, the insurance company having dicked her around endlessly.

  Some days she could bar
ely breathe and rarely slept at night for longer than one hour. Impatient at the delay, Nancy’s anger and blood pressure surged. Anything on the floor got kicked into a corner until she could corral it with long plastic tongs. Putting on socks was as likely as climbing Everest.

  Inspirational magnets and pictures from magazines covered every inch of Nancy’s white refrigerator door. The big red paper stop sign taped to her snack drawer had started to curl at the edges. Finally, after fits and starts, insurance agreed to pay every penny for her pending gastric sleeve surgery.

  Nancy’s psychologist, not her regular one, but one assigned to the hospital’s gastric sleeve team, worked with her on getting mentally strong, ready for the obstacles she needed to overcome pre-and post-surgery. Nancy fired the first one for stupidity after one session.

  “How do you cope?” Shrink Number One posed the question while sucking noisily on the end of his pen. His feet, clad in worn Birkenstocks, smelled awful.

  “With what?”

  “With life,” he said, seemingly stunned at her dim-wittedness.

  “How do you think? I’m a morbidly obese woman who’s single.”

  “Hmmm. I’d like to hear you articulate how you handle life’s complications, the stresses that come from personhood in our time. What are your strategies?

  “Are you fucking kidding me? It should be beyond obvious that I have exactly one coping mechanism. Eating. Don’t even try to psychoanalyze me.”

  “Aha.”

  After Nancy cut the session short, she called her surgeon’s office manager and demanded to be set up with a competent and female therapist. Assigned to a younger woman who dressed very formally—pencil skirts, blazers, pumps, and pearls—Nancy tried to be patient with the process. Part of their work centered on locating here-and-now Nancy and taking her pulse. The rage bubbled up surprisingly quickly once she found the trapdoor into caverns of anger at just about everyone, especially her sons, her ex-husband, Brock Saunders, and Peter.

  “I don’t even know why I’m angry with Peter.”

  “You do realize that the people you are most angry with are the men in your life’s arc. Let’s sit with that for a few minutes.”

  “I don’t need to waste our time on the obvious answer. Men suck.”

  “All of them?”

  “Every single last one. Can we move on to something actually important, like how to keep the weight off?”

  When Peter came over with the cache of documents and the flash drive, Nancy tried to pour cold water on his curiosity.

  “Why do you care about this—it’s not your business.”

  “Why wouldn’t you care? Someone went to a ridiculous amount of trouble to bury everything.”

  Nancy plugged in her laptop. “Give it to me. But I want to refresh the security software first. The drive could be corrupted or loaded with a virus.” She checked her cellphone. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment in an hour; this one’s with the pulmonologist. They have to be confident I can make it through anesthesia.”

  “You better.”

  “Saying good riddance to all the fat clothes will make my day. I hate them, and I hate this.” Nancy gestured disgustedly at her body.

  “Stop.” Peter patted her arm. “Ian says your body can hear you. Don’t talk smack to it.”

  “Ian is a blockhead.”

  Peter reached for a pair of Nancy’s omnipresent bifocals from the countertop and removed the documents from the envelope, being careful not to spill his coffee.

  “Holy moly.” Nancy whistled softly. “I’ve seen zillions of spreadsheets, but these are some big calculations. This could be like some kind of revenue projections for manufacturing and production runs.”

  “Are those New England Council Consortium watermarks? Look: N-E-C-C. Bastards. I wonder who made these documents.” Peter reached for the laptop to check on its progress, but Nancy grabbed it from him.

  “Don’t even sneeze near it. You have some weird paralyzing effect on electronics. They malfunction immediately.”

  “Geez, I’m hurt.”

  “Yeah, the truth stings. Hey, this flash drive is password protected, and the financials were probably stolen from the Consortium. I don’t want to mess with it and neither do you.” She gave him a very pointed look over her leopard-print bifocals.

  “Come on, Nance. Quick party game—we get one guess for the password, and then we give up. You go first.”

  “Danger.” Nancy typed it in on the keyboard. “No, not it. I’m out.”

  “Try: Fuck the Consortium.”

  “Is that one word or three?” Nancy tried both versions. “Nope.”

  “Where there’s smoke there’s fire. Something’s happening, and the timeframe is the key.” Peter slurped the remainder of his coffee. “I mean, my mother, not the brightest crayon in the box by a long shot, actually created those stupid blankets with sleeves that ended up being such a big thing. She could have made millions if the timing was right. Sometimes you don’t know the world has been waiting for something so simple.”

  “As simple as water?” Nancy asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I keep seeing ‘H20’ on these projections. That’s water.”

  “I don’t get it. They’re making water?”

  “Whatever.” Nancy started to clear the mugs from the table. “I have to go. We’re done here.”

  “So how do we unlock the password?” Peter drummed his fingers impatiently.

  “We don’t. Just stop this wild goose chase.”

  “If the Consortium is involved, it’s sketchy. I can smell it.”

  “Let’s talk about me for a change. I’m getting nervous. I’m only a month out from surgery. God, I hope my numbers are decent. Can we sacrifice a goat or something?” Nancy motioned for him to get moving.

  “Alright, alright.”

  “Take all this stuff with you. I don’t know why you think some gigantic earth-shattering revelation is hidden there.” Nancy slicked her lips with pink lip gloss in front of her hallway mirror. “Just don’t let it bring any bad luck my way.”

  Peter whistled for Brutus as Nancy hurried out of the house.

  “Just close the door tight behind you when you leave. Or maybe I should ask Brutus to do it. Pay attention. Sometimes it doesn’t click shut so really give it a pull.”

  “Sure. No problemo.”

  CHAPTER 26

  PETER WASN’T THE ONLY PERSON THINKING ABOUT THE Consortium and its activities. The Consortium now dominated Josh Richardson’s life, too. Back before he and Mike helped Rachel build inventory, his mother sent his resume into the Consortium, along with ten other regional companies in a massive blitz, unbeknownst to him. Desperate to keep him from leaving, she pulled a rabbit out of the hat when Human Resources at the Consortium plowed double-time through their file folder of resumes and settled on Josh’s. That same day, the last day of the school year, the Consortium requested an immediate interview.

  “What the hell?” Josh read the email from HR while eating jello at his mother’s kitchen table. “How does the Consortium know I exist?”

  His mother squealed with joy. “I sent them your resume months ago. Look at the opportunity, Joshy.” she said, beaming with pride.

  “Mom. No.” Josh put down his spoon and started pacing.

  “The Consortium protects our natural resources and the environment,” she read to him from its website. “You love the environment, Joshy.”

  “Mom, I asked you to stop calling me by that stupid nickname like twenty years ago.” Josh really did like to snowboard, hike, and swim. But in his mind, he was already gone to California. “The Consortium is not a place I want to work. Nobody does.”

  “You could be making great money in no time. You could be an executive. Come on, Emmie told me all about you helping Sean Russo’s sister bake bread. That’s ridiculous.”

  “I was doing Sean and her a favor like months ago. And I went with Mike. Emmie’s got a big mouth.” Jos
h hated when the two women talked about him. Besides, Rachel Russo, hot and a little too daring for a typical Josh woman, still occupied a space in Josh’s brain.

  “Just go in for the interview. If you take the job, I’ll sign the papers to give you control of the money your father left when you turn thirty instead of thirty-five.”

  “Can I get that in writing and notarized?”

  “Cross my heart. Oh, I just know they’re going to hire you. Wear the navy blazer and the red tie. You look even more handsome when you get dressed up.”

  After meeting two days later with the CFO and several underwhelming sidekicks for a position billed as strategic business analyst, Josh found himself fast-tracked through Human Resources. Pamphlets for dental, health and 401-k in hand, he signed a standard contract. Going from $30,000 to $85,000 practically overnight made him and Emmie postpone their plans for just a little longer.

  “When do I start?”

  “Yesterday,” his immediate boss said. “Get up to speed fast.” He dumped a mountain of files into Josh’s arms. “From now on, you eat, drink and breathe this deal.”

  Josh found his way to his small bare office, little more than a desktop computer, printer, desk, chair, file cabinet, and a mountain of folders. He got a paper cut when he opened the top folder and sucked on his bleeding finger.

  “You got half a window?” a grumpy co-worker asked, suddenly walking into Josh’s office. “I’m still in a cubicle after four years. Not fair. What did they hire you for?”

  Josh closed the door so he could concentrate. Shifting uncomfortably in the stiff desk chair, he pulled out his calculator, flash drive, phone, and Tic-Tacs. He started going over his copy of the deal with a yellow highlighter, affixing sticky notes and wishing he had a band-aid.

  “Two million gallons of water daily?” Josh stopped writing, put down the report and popped two Tic-Tacs. “That’s a lot of water.”

  He started searching through online documents and spreadsheets to find an essential study that should have been conducted.