Recovering Dad Read online

  Libby

  Sternberg

  EDGAR FINALIST

  RECOVERING

  DAD

  A Bianca Balducci Mystery

  Copyright 2008 by Libby Sternberg

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, people, or institutions is purely coincidental.

  Published by Bancroft Press (“Books that enlighten”)

  P.O. Box 65360, Baltimore, MD 21209

  800-637-7377

  410-764-1967 (fax)

  www.bancroftpress.com

  ISBN 978-1-61088-036-7

  Cover and interior design by Tamira Ci Thayne, www.tsgcrescent.com, 814.941.7447

  Author photo by Beltrami Studio, Rutland, VT

  To Joseph Casimir and David Stephen

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  I THINK I CAN I think I can I think I can.

  Deep breath, head high, shoulders squared. I tell myself I am worthy, I am not a geek, I am not uncool, I am not undeserving, no matter how low these people try to make me feel. I am Bianca Balducci, daughter of Balduccis, a clan of mall warriors who never let a discouraging word or squinty-eyed salesperson dim their mall-marauding pleasures. I feel the shopping mojo coursing through my veins. I can do this.

  I walk over the threshold … and prepare to enter the Realm of Deliberately Demoralizing Cooldom — Abercrombie & Fitch.

  You check your self-esteem at the door of an Abercrombie & Fitch store. I’m convinced they’re designed to make you feel so far behind the fashion curve, you’ll get down on your knees and beg forgiveness for not buying their clothes sooner.

  “C’mon, Bianca,” my best friend Kerrie says. “There’s a sale.”

  Kerrie can afford stuff without a sale. I, on the other hand, have constructed an entire wardrobe from the discount-rack offerings of a few dozen different stores, some of whose names I’ll take to my grave.

  The background music is ramped up to earache level, making the faux wood floor shake with every throb of the bass. A music video plays on a large-screen TV near the changing rooms. A perfectly moussed sales “associate” greets us and, in a voice that indicates she’ll evaluate us for hipness before deciding if we really deserve attention, asks if we need any help. Kerrie smiles and says no, heading not for the sales rack but for the new spring corduroy jackets at the front.

  Front of the store stuff is always pricey. I head for the back, where odd-sized, odd-colored, odd-everything clothes go to die. Sometimes a refugee from the Cool Clothes Kingdom finds its way here by mistake and I’m able to rescue it before it’s whisked into oblivion, eventually to be abandoned on a peg-board rack in a dollar store in New Jersey.

  “Hey, what do you think of this?” Kerrie rushes over and twirls around in a soft pink cord jacket that fits her like the designer used a mold of her body to create the pattern. Of course. Kerrie is beautiful. Beautiful skin, great bod, great hair. I’m just good-looking with a so-so figure and brownish chin-length hair that I wear brushed back — except when it falls in my face. And if you’re just good-looking, having a beautiful friend is a bad break. It turns “good-looking” into “isn’t she the one with that hot friend?”

  “Looks great!” I say.

  This shopping trip is supposed to be a cheer-me-up expedition. Kerrie suggested it and even arranged transportation. That is, she got her dad’s big honking SUV for the afternoon so we could leave our downtown Baltimore homes and head for the shopping mecca just north of the city, paying our respects at the four-level temple of consumerism known as Towson Town Center.

  Kerrie knows I’m in a blue mood this week. I took my SATs last week, and I’m convinced I’ve earned myself the lowest score ever. In fact, I’ve already imagined the headlines — “Academic Phenomenon: Student Fails to Score Minimum 200 on SAT.” (You get 200 points, I’m told, just for filling out your name.)

  Oh, I did the Princeton Review course. I took the practice tests. I even subjected myself to the humiliation of having my brother Tony offer me advice. Tony’s advice, oddly enough, is strangely akin to Tony’s scorn. That is, it’s filled with phrases like, “You’ll fail for sure, you blockhead, if you …”

  Kerrie, because she is an obsessive-compulsive overachiever, took the SATs months ago and did really well. Right after she finished, she said she felt the same way about them as she did about the PSATs, which immediately prompted an onslaught of mail from Ivy League schools and their wannabe sister colleges. My PSATs, on the other hand, elicited a weak stream of brochures and flyers from places like “The Little College of the Elms.” My mother says I’m just not a good test-taker.

  In fact, she’s twisting my gut into bowties when I think of the SATs. Mom went to college at night, finishing her degree about ten years after I was born. That’s because my father died when I was a baby — a cop, killed in the line of duty. My mom had to find a job after that. Her degree could never be her top priority.

  It’s a big deal in our family that all three Balducci kids go to college. My older sister Connie got her degree in criminal justice, and my brother Tony is finishing his in economics at University of Maryland Baltimore County, commuting every day so he doesn’t have to pay for housing.

  Me, I’m just a junior in high school — I’m not quite sure what college I want to go to yet, or even what I want to study. I like English and Writing and History. I think liberal arts is eventually the way to go, and I’ll settle on a major once safely ensconced behind ivy-covered walls. If I think about these things too much, I’ll jinx the first part of my dream — that is, getting into college in the first place. One step at a time.

  Hey — I find a pair of jeans. Nice hip-hugger cut. Nice washed-out look. But here’s the best part — very cool belt. Some satiny tie thing in a retro orange and yellow pattern. Hmm … the belt alone is worth the price. I hook the jeans over my arm for a try-on just as the sales associate sashays by, throwing me an over-the-shoulder glance. Uh-oh. Maybe she won’t let me buy these. Maybe she’ll say I don’t deserve them.

  “Find anything?” Kerrie appears beside me, pink jacket over one hand and several pieces of jewelry in the other. Before I can answer, she holds up a pair of feathery blue earrings and asks, “What do you think of these?”

  “Nice. Wonder how many birds went into those?”

  Her eyes widen and she scrunches her mouth to one side, her fashion sense now running smack into her must-protect-all-creatures-great-and-small sense. She nods and takes them back to the rack. />
  We spend another quarter hour grazing at the various in-store displays, oohing-and-aahing over foxy dresses we’d love to own but would rarely wear, sleek pants with little details that will scream sophistication, and skirts and tops we have little daily use for because we both attend a private parochial school which requires uniforms. (Once I graduate, I’ll never wear blue plaid again.)

  We pay for our purchases — or Kerrie does anyway. It turns out the pants are too loose around the waist for skinny-minny-me, so I’ve got nada while Kerrie whips out her parents’ credit card and buys the cord jacket, some beaded earrings, and a scarf. The sales associate, deeming her worthy, doesn’t snarl while ringing up the stuff. She only glowers.

  I’m getting a headache from the music so I tell Kerrie I’ll meet her outside the store.

  “Hey, no,” she says in a panic. “Wait here with me. Please?”

  I look at the disdainful sales associate and then at Kerrie. Okay, I’ll wait. Even Kerrie needs a little moral support in here. That’s reassuring.

  But once she crams her receipt in her bag and we head toward the doorway, I see it’s more than that — Kerrie’s eyes dart between her watch and the window, as if she’s expecting Johnny Depp, half-sure he won’t really show.

  “C’mon,” I say to her as her neck cranes about for whatever she’s looking for. “I’m hungry. Let’s head to the food co—”

  It’s not Johnny Depp at the exit at all, but my own personal standin — Doug! My sort-of boyfriend Doug! Doug, who won my heart my sophomore fall and broke it that next spring when he and his family moved to Virginia, where he’s now an early-admit freshman at the University of Richmond. The very Doug I want as my date to this year’s Junior/Senior Ball.

  “Hey there, Bianc,” he says in that lazy, drawling way of his. And in a flash, I’m folded into his arms, feeling as safe and happy as an out-of-season clam.

  CHAPTER TWO

  KERRIE IS BRILLIANT. Did I mention that? This whole shopping trip thing was a sham, a ruse to get me together with Doug, far away from my home and SATs and college and everything else bothering me. What a pal!

  After looping his arm around my waist, Doug walks me to the food court, Kerrie a discreet distance away. In fact, in short order, Kerrie says she has some must-buy items to pick up at various stores and arranges to meet us later. Did I mention she’s brilliant?

  “Hey,” Doug says once we’re alone. “How you doing?”

  As I look up into his deep blue eyes, my heart melts and my pants vibrate.

  My cell phone is ringing — the little Samsung I share with my mom.

  “Just a sec,” I say, pulling the cell from its home in my jeans. Flipping it open, I see it’s just Connie. I press the “ignore” button and turn back to Doug, slipping the phone back in my pocket.

  “I’m fine,” I lie. Well, it’s not really a lie. I am fine. Now. With Doug around, I feel like my old self, confident enough to be comfortable with, and not constantly aware of, all the things stressing me out.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  Doug laughs. “I wasn’t sure until just the other day. We’re visiting my aunt. I had a paper due. Kerrie emailed me.” That’s quite a speech from Doug, and it makes me smile, because I understand all the parts he’s leaving out. He had a lot of homework and wasn’t sure he could spare the time to come to Baltimore, but Kerrie told him I needed a pick-me-up, and he came galloping in, a white knight on a prancing steed.

  We reach the bustling food court and head for Boardwalk Fries, our fave. While Doug orders for us, I study him. I haven’t seen him since Christmas, and that visit was more unsettling than comfortable because, when we discussed “the future,” he mentioned a girl he’d been out with — “in a group,” of course. Sure, we said we’d see other people when he moved away — but he was actually doing it! What’s the matter with him? Did he think I really meant it when I said we should play things casual?

  He’s keeping his brown hair shorter, I notice, in a straight-arrow cut that makes him look both older and more boyish at the same time. His clothes look neater, too — less frumpy than that “pulled it from the heap on the floor” way he used to dress. He’s wearing Levi’s that hug more than hang and a URichmond tee that doesn’t hide his muscular build. He’s been working out.

  My pants vibrate again.

  And darn if it isn’t my sister calling once more. Staring at the cell phone display, I’m about to punch the “ignore” button again when Doug turns to me and says, “Go ahead and take that. I’ll find you.” He nods toward the noisy eating area, filled with heavy wrought-iron chairs and tables.

  As I walk toward an empty table, I hit the answer button and try to say hello, but can’t get through the barrage of Connie-static that hits my ear like a tsunami of white noise.

  “Where are you? I tried calling you a few minutes ago. Didn’t you have your phone on? Sheesh, Bianca, what’s the point of using Mom’s cell phone if you’re going to turn it off every time you take it somewhere? Wait a minute — did you hit the ignore button? You hit the ignore button on your only sister?”

  Ah, Connie. She’s a sweet one.

  “I was busy,” I say, sliding into a chair. “What’s up? I don’t have a lot of time.” I look over at Doug, who’s paying for our orders. What a guy — he’s treating me!

  “Why? You have a job interview or something?”

  Grrr … now I’m getting annoyed. Connie owns her own private investigation business, and I worked for her part-time last summer. Let’s just say it was a tense experience. Here’s a tip for all you siblings out there — if you have troubles with a bossy sister, working in an environment where she actually is the boss might ratchet up the tension, if you know what I mean.

  Even so, I’d still like to give the investigating business another try and Connie knows it. Her little reference to a “job interview” is her way of telling me she’s on the fence about whether or not to take me on again this summer. We Balduccis communicate in code, and the code is often brutal.

  “Come on, Con, just spill it. Why are you calling?”

  “It’s Mom. You have to come home right away.”

  I sit up straight. Mom?

  “Is something wrong?” My throat goes dry.

  “Yes, something is wrong.” Connie takes a deep breath. “She’s engaged!”

  When I left the house just after noon, my mother had been single, a widow, someone whose social life consisted of meeting a bunch of her gal pals for lunch on Saturdays or dinners out on Friday nights, attending church rummage sales, and volunteering for the sodality food drive. As long as I’ve known my mom, which would be my whole conscious life, she has never ever dated anyone, not since our father died when I was a baby. Something does not compute.

  “Everything okay?” Doug asks as he slips into a seat across from me. He pushes a big cup of fries to the center of the table and a Coke my way. I just nod and whisper, “Just a sec.”

  “Connie,” I say, “is this a joke or something? Because I don’t have time to—”

  “She’s in her room, humming to herself as she irons, Bianca. And she’s got a big fat diamond on her ring finger.”

  “That’s your evidence? Some investigator you are!” I grab a fry and pop it in my mouth. Man, they’re good. “It could be fake. It could be a joke — something she put on and forgot to take off. It could be … her old one. Maybe she’s trying it on again—”

  “Mom’s ring from Dad was a skimpy little thing. This is a big emerald-cut diamond. It’s no fake. Are you eating something?”

  I swallow. “Maybe.”

  “Look, this is serious. She’s gotten herself engaged. She’s going to tell us tonight. She told me to make sure I was at dinner because she has something important to announce. And then she shut her door and went back to humming.”

  “Connie, I don’t understand what the crisis is here. She has a right to get on with her life. It�
�s been sixteen years, for crying out loud. Don’t you think it’s time she moved on? Don’t you want her to be happy?” Sounds like a great little speech, doesn’t it? Too bad I don’t believe it. Despite my happy-face attitude with Connie, my inner child is screaming, “Wah, wah! Why is my mommy abandoning me?”

  “Everybody wants her to be happy, knucklehead,” Connie says. “Even Tony. But I think I know who she’s marrying and I don’t like it one bit.”

  “Okay, Sherlock, who’s the lucky guy?” It does seem odd that neither of us knows for sure.

  “Steve Paluchek.”

  Paluchek — he’s a nice guy in my book, a detective who’d served on the force with my father. He’s been part of our lives since Dad died, dropping in from time to time to see how we were doing, playing ball with Tony, doing odd jobs around the house, giving us presents at holidays, and even going to a few father-daughter things with me. While the rest of us treated him like a kindly uncle, Connie was always standoffish, even rude.

  “What’s the matter with him?” I ask. “He’s a decent guy.”

  She snorts. “That’s what you think. Wait’ll you see what I’ve dug up so far — and that’s not the worst of it.”

  Doug, by now, has made quite a dent in the fries. I’m bummed. I’m hungry and my favorite snack is fast disappearing. And my (sort of) boyfriend is sitting not three feet away from me and we’ve barely exchanged greetings in the short time we’ve had together. Now I have to deal with Connie’s paranoid ravings about Mom’s personal plans, and my own feelings about them, too — if Connie’s even right in the first place.