Page 18 of I Can't Even

“Nothing...yet,” Hannah admitted with a grin. It reminded me so much of Soph at that age that I wrapped my arm around her and squeezed her close.

“What about you, Harry?” I asked my nephew, who was also working the door. My question drew his gaze away from one of our young neighbors who looked to be about twenty and had an impressive booty which she showed off to the best possible advantage in a bottom-clinging micro mini that made men, young or old, lose all brain function.

“What about me?” Harry never took his eyes off the rumpus. Poor bastard.

“You “tapping” anything yet?” I winked at Hannah, who laughed.

“Oh god, gross!” Harry cringed. “You’re supposed to be the cool one, Aunt Jules. You can’t ask a teenage guy stuff like that!”

“I thought being the “cool” one meant I get to ask these questions, no?”

“No, just no,” he said.

Harry shook his head until his shaggy blond hair partially covered his face, which I figured was why he wore it that way.

Hannah, who had the same blond hair and blue eyes as her brother, as well as the same dimples, leaned close to her sibling and tipped her head in the direction of Liam. He was on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall and holding an untouched glass of wine.

“I’m trying to convince Aunt Jules to make a play for him,” Hannah said.

Harry glanced at Liam and then at me. “Well, the guy has been staring at you for the past forty-five minutes so you should go talk to him or shoot him and put him out of his misery. I say this as a dude who has done his share of holding up walls and staring.”

I hadn’t seen Liam since the morning under the lemon tree. The days in between had been a flurry of activity as we were swept up in planning a service worthy of Babs’s diva expectations. Thankfully, she’d left us an exacting list of instructions, telling us precisely what she wanted, so there was no debate or second guessing.

I’d ordered the flowers and food, notified the papers of her passing with an obituary she’d written herself, and created a PowerPoint slide show of the photographs Babs had picked out to be synced to the music she’d chosen which we’d played during the memorial service.

The few times I’d had a chance to peek during the week, Liam’s workout room remained dark and I didn’t see him moving about his house or his yard, not that I was stalking the guy or anything. Okay, maybe just a little. I assumed after our emotional clinch, he was steering clear of me, letting me know in no uncertain terms that he was not interested. Message received.

But then he arrived at Babs’s service with his parents, the Professor and Mrs. Mahony, who had come from their retirement village to attend, and my heart had tried to punch right through my chest at the sight of him. I’d had to dredge up every bit of self-control I possessed to keep from running across the church and throwing myself into his arms, and I do mean every bit.

Yes, I was aware that I was grieving and not one-hundred-percent in my right mind. I knew I was vulnerable and likely running away from my emotions and probably seeking comfort from the familiar, which was Liam. Still, I had felt his eyes on me throughout the service and only resisted meeting his gaze because I wasn’t brave enough to face the possibility of rejection, not today.

It didn’t stop me, however, from checking him out on the few occasions he was speaking to someone else. And, hoo boy, if I thought Liam working out had been quite the eye popper, Liam in a suit, well, let’s just say the urge to grab him by his tie and drag him upstairs to my room and have my way with him had crossed my mind every minute since he had stepped through the door of our house. I blamed the grief for making me think crazy inappropriate things.

In an effort to be more circumspect, I scouted the room for my sisters. Em was in the corner talking to several of Mom’s closest friends, women who had moved into the neighborhood when Mom did, and like her had raised their children and buried or divorced their husbands here. They were a St. John-wearing, afternoon-card-playing, Friday-morning-hair salon tribe who drank Manhattans and met for mahjong once a week where they commiserated about the unfortunate choices their grown children were making. I was pretty sure I was one of their main topics of conversation and was more than happy to let Em be our emissary.

I shifted my gaze until I found Soph, who was standing by the front window with her husband. Stan and Soph had met in college, and Soph, still reeling from the death of our father, had fallen head over heels, crazy in love.

I don’t know that Stan had ever felt the same way about her. They had only been together a few months when Soph turned up pregnant with the twins and the next thing we knew, she was married and a mom. To me, the loss of Sophie had been almost as big a blow as the loss of our dad. Watching her tight expression as she stood with Stan, I wondered, not for the first time, if my sister was happy in her marriage.

Stan was a big, lantern-jawed, Dudley Do-Right sort of guy with thinning blond hair, narrow blue eyes, and a bit of a paunch. He loved cross-fit, expensive wine, fast cars, season tickets, and exotic trips to exclusive places. Yeah, in short, he was a pretentious douche and I’d never really warmed up to him.

I never thought he was good enough for Soph, because I knew he saw her as nothing more than the mother of his children. She was the field he’d plowed to bear the fruit of his loins. If I could pick one word to describe how he treated her, it was dismissive. Even now, I saw her ask him something with a tight expression, putting her hand on his arm to get his full attention.

Stan shook her off and spun away from her, appearing irritated until he caught sight of the neighbor girl with the generous southern hemisphere strolling by. He perked up, giving the young lady what I’m sure he thought was a charming smile but was in fact a middle-aged creepy guy smirk. I squelched the urge to walk over to them and punch him in his big, stupid face.

“Julia, how pretty you look.” A familiar voice pulled my attention away from my sister and her husband and I turned as Mrs. Giovanni approached the open front door.

“I was just devastated to hear about Barbara,” the older woman said as she reached past me and handed Harry a casserole dish. The teen hurried to the kitchen.

Mrs. G was one of Babs’s mahjong buddies and I knew that losing one of their own was a crushing blow not just because it left an empty space at the table, but it also forced them to acknowledge their own mortality. Never fun. I studied her face and could see that despite the carefully applied make-up, she’d been crying. I opened my arms and hugged her. She started to cry again.

“I just don’t know how I’m going to get by without her,” the woman said.

“I know,” I agreed. “Mom was a force of nature.”

Mrs. G stepped back. She smiled at me through her tears and then fished a tissue out of her purse, dabbing her eyes with it. People were moving around us, coming and going, while Hannah filled in as greeter until Harry returned and I focused on Mrs. G.

“Barbara loved her girls so much.” The woman gently pressed the tissue to her lids. “She was so proud of how you went off to New York and made a new life for yourself. It was always “Julia this” and “Julia that.” You made your mother so proud.”

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