Happiness Key (32 page)

Wanda tried not to smile.

“So who were your parents?” he asked Wanda.

“The Grants. Were you even alive in those days?”

“I was. Too young for the war and too old to escape the stories.”

“I had another friend, too, who used to talk about this place. Man name of Herb Krause. Did you know Herb?”

“Can’t say I did. Do you want some more of my Puzzle?”

“You absolutely stuffed me to the gills,” Wanda said.

“Wanda, didn’t you tell me that you knew somebody else who recommended Gasparilla’s?” Janya asked.

Wanda was glad Janya had pitched in. “Who’s that?”

“Clyde…somebody or other. Or do I have that wrong?”

Wanda snapped her fingers. “That’s right. Clyde…what was his name?” She paused dramatically. “Franklin. That’s it. A neat old guy.”

She was watching Ralph’s face, and it changed. She’d been living with Ken long enough to read even the slight
est nuances on a man’s features. The teeniest lift of an eyebrow, the tightening of lips.

He shrugged. “Not familiar.”

Except for his reaction, Wanda might have thought they’d chosen the wrong man to ask. Now she was sure he knew something. “Really? I’m sure he used to hang out there. I guess those were the days.”

“Well, I’ve got to get back to my cooking.” Ralph turned, and without a word, he headed back toward the kitchen door.

“What is it you say here? Strike two?”

“Strike three,” Wanda said. “You know, we’re going to have to bring you up to speed on baseball, you planning to be an American and all.” She worried her lip with her tongue. “He knows something. You notice the way his face changed when I said Clyde’s name?”

“Why don’t you just tell him the truth?”

“Because then he won’t tell us for sure.”

Janya didn’t argue. “He did seem in a hurry to leave.”

“What is it about old farts that they protect each other right to the grave?”

“What was it about Clyde that was worth protecting?”

Wanda wondered, but she wondered about something else, too. She had recognized Ralph from somewhere. Did he come into the Dancing Shrimp? Had she run into him in Miami at one of the restaurants where she worked? Or had he shopped at her grocery store? She worried her lip some more.

“What is it?” Janya asked.

“I know him. Ralph, I mean, but he looks pretty much like a hundred other old guys I’ve—” Wanda slapped the table. “Damn…if that don’t beat all.”

“What beats what?”

Wanda got to her feet. “You stay here. Eat another
mozzarella stick if you can stand it. They weren’t cooked in lard, you’re safe.”

“I think they were cooked in motor oil.”

“Get used to it.” Wanda stalked toward the kitchen. To get there, she had to go around the bar. The bartender started toward her, but she waved him away. “Ralph’s expecting me.”

He looked suspicious, but he turned back to the counter. She pushed through the swinging door. Ralph looked up from what looked like a witch’s steaming cauldron. “Hey…”

“Studley,” she said. “I thought I recognized you, only it was the voice, not the face. It just took me a minute.” She moved a little closer and lowered her voice. “You’ve been seduced…”

The man was standing over a stove. His face should have been rose-red, but suddenly he was snow-white. “I don’t— I have no idea… Are you crazy?”

“About you, sugar. We’ve had some lovely conversations, haven’t we?”

He looked around. There was a young man on the other side of the kitchen chopping vegetables. Ralph left the soup and pulled her into the corner closest to the door. “How did you find me?”

“Well, I wasn’t looking for you, if that makes you feel any better.”

“You’re supposed to be twenty-five and a blonde!”

“Isn’t it funny the way that works?”

“So what are you doing here?” He peeked over a collection of pots on the island, then lowered his voice some more. “That was supposed to be private. A–non–y–mous!”

“Well, you know, you’ve just got the sexiest voice, and
how could I help but recognize you when I heard it out there?”

“Look, just leave me alone, okay? I…I don’t want anybody to know….”

“Of course not.” She sounded properly sympathetic. “And I’m not about to tell a soul. Didn’t you stop calling because you had a new woman in your life?”

“What do you want?”

“Everything you remember about Clyde Franklin.”

“Why the hell do you care?”

She told him the truth. Quickly, succinctly. “We need to find his daughter. As far as we can tell, she doesn’t even know he’s dead.”

Ralph pulled her even farther into the corner. If this kept up, Wanda figured she would be shaped like a wedge by the time she left.

“I don’t know a lot,” he said. “But Clyde just disappeared one day a long time ago. We all knew something was up, but out here on the beach, we’re the kind of people who don’t ask a lot of questions.”

“He’s dead. What can it hurt? Nobody wants to harm anybody. But if his daughter is still alive, she deserves to know he’s gone.”

“Who was this Herb somebody or other? Why’d you start with him?”

“Because Clyde changed his name sometime after the war to Herbert Krause. And that’s how we knew him. Maybe you don’t know another thing that will help.” She smiled. “But for old time’s sake, can’t you try?”

The guy across the room yelled over to say he was nearly done chopping.

“Start on the canned tomatoes,” Ralph yelled back.

“Studley…” She smiled coquettishly.

“Clyde used to tend bar here on weekends. I was about
sixteen, and I thought he was hot stuff, you know? I used to hang around and talk to him.”

“Okay…” She nodded to encourage him.

“He wasn’t happy at home. That was obvious. Why else would he spend all his weekends away from his wife and kid?”

“Did you know his wife and kid? Did they ever come in?”

He shook his head. “Not then, anyway.” He looked as if he was trying to decide whether to go on.

“I would really hate to have to come back here and bug you again,” Wanda said. “I know you’re a busy man, Stud—”

“Stop that! Okay… Part of the reason Clyde kept coming back was because of Gloria.”

“Gloria who? Gloria what?”

“Gloria Madsen. I remember, because I used to say her name like it was some kind of bippedy-boppedy-boo spell. If I’d been a girl, I would have written it in a little heart in my notebook. She was a cocktail waitress, gorgeous girl. The men came in just so she could get them drinks. And she liked Clyde. She was younger, of course—closer to my age, truth be told. But she wouldn’t look at me. She only had eyes for him, even though he was a married man.”

“Since when has that ever stopped a woman like that?”

“And you think
you
should talk?”

“I do, regularly, although I’m better at
listening,
aren’t I?”

He looked away. “Some of the guys knew Clyde before the war, and they said it changed him. A lot.”

“I guess it changed a lot of men.”

“Anyway, one day he just didn’t show up for work, and neither did Gloria, and that was that. We all knew they’d
run off together. Clyde’s wife came looking for him, got a friend to bring her up here. She was a plain little thing, almost homely. And she had their little girl with her. Everybody felt bad about that.”

“Did she know about Gloria?”

“I couldn’t tell you. Nobody here would have told her, that’s for sure.”

“Did Clyde ever write? Call? Come back to visit?”

“No, and I would have known, too. He was the subject of a lot of speculation. Some guys envied him, and some thought he was nuts. Gloria was the kind of girl had her eye out for the main chance. Clyde was good-looking, and smart, but he was nobody’s main anything. Too mixed-up, and he drank too much.”

“So drinking was part of it.”

“Yeah, he was a boozer. He could hold it, too, so you could hardly tell. But one day it gets to you and you fall apart.”

“His wife had him declared dead,” Wanda said. “Did you know that?”

“I think I heard there were people snooping around at one point, but that’s all. Maybe that was it.”

“Anything else?”

“No, and that’s the truth. I haven’t heard Clyde’s name for decades.”

“Can you spell Gloria’s last name?”

“Like it was tattooed on my arm.” He did.

“That little girl of his would be in her…what, sixties by now?” Ralph said.

“Something like that.”

“Maybe she ought to go on thinking her father died all those years ago.”

“And maybe she’d rather know the truth, so she can really put him to rest.”

“Glad it’s your problem, not mine.”

“Ralph…Studley…” She smiled. “We’re done here. I didn’t see you, you didn’t see me.”

“I always knew you were older than twenty-five.”

“And I always knew you were one good-looking son of a gun. You can tell a lot about a man from his voice.”

Ralph actually smiled.

Janya was tired but elated by the time she parked in front of her house. Driving was beginning to feel natural, and she was increasingly comfortable behind the wheel. Soon she would head back out to pick up Rishi and proudly drive him home. In the meantime, she thought she might spend a few minutes reading the
India Post,
which had come in yesterday’s mail. She might get more updated news on the Internet, but nothing was better than holding a real newspaper about her own country in her hands.

She didn’t notice the car parked just beyond her cottage until she started inside. Then the driver’s door opened and somebody called her name.

“Janya…”

Startled, she turned. The man, outside the car now and cutting through her yard, was familiar.

Oh, so very familiar.

She stopped, and her heart seemed to stop with her. Her limbs felt unnaturally light.

“Darshan?”

“It’s you. It’s really you.” He strode over quickly and stopped in front of her. He didn’t touch her, but he stood close, and she could almost feel him pulling her closer.

“What are you doing here?” Her words were choked, uncertain.

“I had to see you.”

She didn’t know what to say. She was afraid to study
his face, and more afraid not to. When her eyes lifted to his, she saw that he looked exactly the same, still tall and broad-shouldered. As an artist, she had analyzed his features many times, trying to understand what made him so handsome, so appealing. Not just to her, but to every woman who saw him.

She still wasn’t certain. He had a strong nose, cleft chin, high cheekbones. His eyes were almond-shaped but wide, heavily fringed with long lashes. His hair was thick and lustrous. Taken separately, his features were attractive, but not stunning. Despite that, everything worked together in exquisite harmony. Had he come from a different sort of family, he might have headed right for India’s flourishing film industry. All he had to do was flash that enveloping, caressing smile, and every woman in the theater would have fallen in love with him.

“I tried to tell you I was coming,” he said. “But you never answered my e-mails.”

“I didn’t read them.”

“You couldn’t bear to open them?”

“I couldn’t see the point.” She was glad she was beginning to sound more like herself. She was not a lovesick girl, devastated by loss. She was a married woman, living in another land, finding her bearings at last.

“The point was that we loved each other,” he said, in a voice that was as caressing as the smile. “We were to be married.”

“Yes, Darshan. But you let your parents destroy that. And you stood by as I married someone else. And now you’re to marry the woman who caused all my pain.”

“Padmini swears she had nothing to do with what happened.”

“Padmini is a liar.”

He didn’t protest. “I’m not here to talk about your cousin.”

“Oh? You will decide for both of us what we discuss? Suppose you tell me what subjects are safe, then. Not my family, who hate me for what I did to them. Not your family, who believe I was a fool. Not Padmini the liar, not the end of our betrothal. Certainly not my marriage to a man I didn’t even know. Shall we discuss the weather? Tell me about the monsoons. I hope everybody who believed the worst of me drowns in them!”

She turned to start up the walkway to her house, but he took her arm.

“Let’s talk about what didn’t end—what couldn’t end—Janya. I thought I could forget you. I thought your coming here would be best for everyone. I tried to believe it, but I can’t.”

She didn’t turn. “Why are you here? To tell me you’re miserable? So I’ll feel better knowing you suffer, too?”

“Too, Janya? Then you feel it? You know how wrong this is? You haven’t given your heart to this man you married?”

“Given your heart” was such a sentimental, almost feminine, expression, and it surprised her, coming from him. Had Darshan always spoken this way? As if he had practiced phrases to please a woman? She couldn’t remember.

She lifted her chin. “I agreed to my marriage. I circled the sacred fire with Rishi.”

“It was wrong. It was a mistake.”

She faced him again. “Your mistake, not mine. Had you spoken one word of support, I would have fought everyone to stay with you.”

“You don’t know what went on, Janya. You weren’t there.”

“And you never told me. Tell me, does Padmini know you’re here? Did you mention that you would seek me out on this trip?”

“You’re bitter.”

“I am realistic. But you haven’t yet answered. Why are you here?”

“Because you’re the only woman I will ever love.”

She stared at him. Darshan’s eyes were brimming with emotion. She remembered when he had looked at her this way and she had trembled under his gaze. She was trembling now, and she wasn’t certain why. This was too much to bear. All the nights she had prayed Darshan would come back to her. And now, here he was, and their love was impossible.

“Go,” she said. “Don’t come back.”

“You haven’t yet listened. You don’t know why I’m here.”

“Tell me quickly, then, before you say goodbye and mean it.”

“I can’t do it quickly, Janya. That’s not fair to either of us.”

“I must pick up Rishi at work. He will wonder what’s taking so long.”