Trouble Me: A Rosewood Novel (50 page)

Jade was next, with Emma and Miriam, her bridesmaids, following with her train held carefully aloft. The train wasn’t a long one, but Jordan wasn’t one to take chances.

Ned was waiting at the base of the stairs. He looked exceptionally dashing in his black cutaway coat and gray pinstriped trousers. But it was the pocket square and the rose tucked into his lapel that for some reason caused an ache in Jade’s heart. Perhaps it was remembering the number of times in her life he’d offered his handkerchief when she was bawling in misery. Perhaps it was recognizing anew how vital a part of Rosewood he was, how many seasons he’d watched its roses come into bloom.

He must have been as moved as she, for even as he smiled proudly at her, she saw his throat working, no
doubt swallowing a sentimental lump that had formed there. Lord knows she’d fought a number of the same over the past few days.

Wordlessly, she reached out and squeezed Ned’s hands.

“You’re as pretty as a picture, Miss Jade,” he said gruffly.

“Thank you, Ned, you’re looking quite dapper yourself.”

As they approached the double parlor, Jade could already hear the rustling of the occupants within, feel the hushed expectancy. Jordan, who’d dashed inside to check that everything was in place and at the ready, reappeared.

“All set,” she said brightly. “Jade, you’ve never looked more beautiful. I know you and Rob will be very happy, sweetie.”

Jade had no chance to thank her or reply that she and Margot made the most gorgeous matrons of honor a sister could want, because suddenly everything was happening at once. Yet for the moment she was left a spectator.

Her flower girls stopped their twirling on the inlaidmarble floor and came to a standstill. Baskets filled with white rose petals were produced and placed in their hands. The opening strains of Bach’s
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring
reached them, and Emma, Miriam, Jordan, and Margot blew her a flurry of kisses and then stepped inside.

It had begun, and her heartbeat kicked up a notch.

Ellie, now in charge of the girls, whispered to Hayley and Kate, “Are you ready?” and Hayley, with a backward glance at Jade, grinned and nodded. “Okay, then. Remember, don’t walk too fast. Off you go.”

Ellie turned to Jade with a tremulous smile. “It’s your moment now, my dear,” she said, and handed Jade a
glorious bouquet of gardenias, calla lilies, and roses in the same pale ivory as her wedding gown.

“I guess it is. Thank you for everything, Ellie. You’re the best.”

Standing beside her, Ned offered his arm with a grave courtliness. “May I?”

“You may. Thank you for doing this, Ned,” she said as she placed her hand on the fine wool of his morning coat.

“Miss Jade, nothing could be more important or give me more pleasure than escorting you down the aisle. I’m as proud as can be of the fine woman you’ve become. Now, are you ready to take that walk? There’s a mighty eager man waiting at the other end.”

She kissed his lined cheek. “I am.”

Stepping inside, Jade drank in the sight of those assembled, friends old and new. Her world had grown so much in the past year and a half and she was infinitely the richer for it. Rich in happiness, connections, and accomplishments. Then her gaze shifted, traveled down the aisle, and connected with the blue eyes of the man she loved and appreciated more every day.

Rob was there, her very own hero, waiting for her with all the love he felt shining in his smile.

Her own smile parted as her heart skipped with joy.

“Ned, I do believe I’ve kept this man waiting long enough. Mind if we run?”

My thanks go to Elaine Markson, my agent, for her expert guidance and advice these many years. To Linda Marrow, Kate Collins, and Gina Wachtel at Random House, I owe my heartfelt gratitude for their support and enthusiasm. I couldn’t ask for better editors or friends. I cannot thank enough my fellow writer and critique partner, Marilyn Brant, who has read so many drafts of this trilogy that I have lost count. I marvel at being blessed with such a loyal friend.

Without my family, I would not be the person or writer I am today. I love you.

“A
NNA, IT’S
me. David’s dead. He passed two days ago.”

“Oh, Tess! I’m sorry. Where are you?”

“At my parents. I needed to see them to break the news, and there was stuff I had to arrange—”

“Can you come over? Giorgio is covering tonight’s event—a birthday party for a ninety-year-old stockbroker who still plays ice hockey with his great-grandchildren and takes them out on his yacht every summer in Newport. It’s only thirty people, so he told me to take the night off.” Giorgio Bissi was the manager of La Dolce Vita, the events-planning company where both Anna and Tess worked—rather, where Tess had worked until two months ago.

“Thanks. I’d love to. It’s been rough.”

“I can’t even imagine.” Anna’s voice was a well of sympathy. “Come as quickly as you can. There haven’t been too many delays on the lines lately.”

Having grown up in the same neighborhood in Astoria as Tess, Anna knew to the minute how long the subway ride and then quick walk would take to the brownstone apartment on 74th between Second and Third Avenues, where Anna lived with her boyfriend, Lucas, an associate at a law firm who logged insanely long hours.

Forty-five minutes later, Tess was outside Anna’s building, shivering slightly in the chilly early November evening. Distracted as she was, she’d left her parents’ house without thinking to take her coat or gloves. She pressed number three and Anna’s voice came over the intercom.

Tess said, “It’s me,” and was buzzed inside the small entry hall illuminated by a shiny brass chandelier and matching wall sconces. A large rust-colored floral arrangement set on a long side table marked the arrival of autumn. Tess climbed the winding staircase, her steps ringing hollowly on the marble stairs and, reaching the third floor, found Anna standing in the open doorway to her apartment. Anna enfolded Tess in a fierce hug.

“God, Tess, I’ve missed you. I’m really sorry about David’s death. But to be honest, I’m even sorrier about the hell you’ve been through. Here.” Anna took her hand as though Tess were her baby sister. “Come into the living room. I’ve opened a bottle of wine and made us something to nibble on. You’ve lost so much weight.”

Anna Greco, Italian American like Tess (though her family came from Naples, whereas the Casaris hailed from the Trentino), was in charge of menu planning at La Dolce Vita and was attending cooking school, pursuing her dream of one day opening her own restaurant. When it came to obsessing about food, Anna was without rival.

For the past two months, food had been the last thing on Tess’s mind. And though she’d noticed that her clothes were starting to feel loose, she couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d bothered to look in a mirror.

Tess let herself be led into the living room, with its vintage Kilim rug and burnt-gold-velvet sofa and the pièce de résistance, an ornate Murano chandelier that Anna had inherited from her grandmother.

Anna released her hand. “Sit. Eat. I’ll just get the glasses and wine.” A platter, artfully arranged with paper-thin slices of salami, prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, and mushroom-and-goat cheese tarts, was centered on the mirrored coffee table. Each bite would be delicious; Anna was constitutionally incapable of preparing bad food. For her friend’s peace of mind, Tess hoped she’d be able to swallow a mouthful.

She sank down on the sofa in the room she knew so well and felt a wave of disorientation wash over her. It was so strange to be here, to be back in New York. Since receiving the phone call from her estranged husband, David Bradford, two months ago—the first she’d heard from him in twice that long—telling her that he was in Boston, in the hospital, and that the doctors wanted to operate on his brain, Tess’s world had narrowed to the confines of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. She’d arrived just as the nurses were preparing to bring David to pre-op so the doctors could remove the meningioma the MRI had revealed. Only later did Tess learn that the tumor was recurrent, and that David had first undergone treatment a decade earlier.

Lying in the hospital bed, David had raised his light gaze to meet hers and uttered a single word: “Sorry.” Before she’d even digested that that was all David was going to say, he’d closed his eyes, shutting her out and once again leaving her with no answers. Then the nurses had transferred him to the gurney and had wheeled him away.

Confused and sick at heart, Tess had hoped that after his operation she’d be able to question David and perhaps learn something that would allow her to make sense of the man who’d so briefly been her husband.

But when she next saw him, David lay in a coma, unresponsive to any stimuli.

The sound of Anna’s heels clicking on the parquet
floor brought Tess back to the present. She straightened and relaxed her hands, which she’d unconsciously been wringing.

Carrying two wineglasses and an open bottle of Sangiovese, Anna sat down next to Tess, poured the deep red wine into the glasses and passed her one.

“Here,” she said.

Tess accepted the wine gratefully. At least now she had something to fill her hands; she wouldn’t be able to glance down at the faint mark encircling the ring finger of her left hand. For some reason, most likely her eternal, naïve optimism, Tess had continued to wear her wedding band, even after David had walked away from their marriage six months earlier without a backward glance. She’d removed it yesterday for good. How soon would it be until the mark, too, was gone?

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mixed with Anna’s concern was a hint of eagerness.

Tess didn’t blame her. Her curiosity was natural. Were they to switch places, she’d have had just as much trouble resisting the urge to hear all the horrific but no less juicy details. And as Tess’s co-worker, Anna had been given a front row seat from the very beginning of Tess and David’s whirlwind romance, the setting a swank cocktail party at a Fifth Avenue duplex with windows on Central Park, which La Dolce Vita had been hired to cater.

The party was intended to launch the political career of some mucky-muck, and the first floor of the apartment had been crammed with lavishly dressed socialites and Armani-suited powerbrokers. Tess had been passing hors d’oeuvres among the guests when David had stepped in front of her silver tray. David Bradford had been as impeccably attired as the other men. With his thick, sandy-blond hair and laughing eyes, he was far better looking than many of them. Tess, however, would
never have gone beyond the instant acknowledgment that he was a very attractive man. It was David who’d appeared smitten, struck by the proverbial lightning bolt. After being offered a lobster puff by Tess, he’d ignored the other guests in order to speak with her, stationing himself at strategic points throughout the vast apartment to intercept her as she passed. Later he’d teased that it was her bow tie that had made him fall in love with her on the spot. Looking at it, he’d imagined himself in ten years regaling their children with the tale of how he’d fallen in love with their mother because of her pink-and-purple-polka-dotted bow tie. That was David through and through: outrageous yet sweet.

But now he was gone and Tess remained bewildered, unable to sort truth from fiction, unable to comprehend why he’d bothered to pursue her in the first place. Why he’d bothered to tell her he loved her. Why the need for so very many lies.

“The most important thing is that the doctors assured us that David didn’t suffer,” she said quietly. She was repeating herself, she knew. She’d probably resort to that stock phrase for a long time to come.

“So did he just … 
die
?” Anna said awkwardly. “I mean, I know you told me when you first called from the hospital that he’d had an aneurysm during the operation and had gone into a coma. Is that what killed him?”

“No. He contracted pneumonia.”

“Oh.” Anna paused. “Gosh.”

Tess nodded. “Apparently pneumonia is a common illness in coma patients and very hard to prevent. The doctors did what they could, but the pneumonia took hold so quickly. While I sat beside him day after day, watching as the doctors and nurses came in to check his vitals and perform their tests to detect any sign of responsiveness, I don’t think I fully understood that the
coma hadn’t simply robbed David of consciousness. It had stolen his strength, his ability to fight.”