What Stella Wants

Oh, we were dead. Aunt Lucy was banging on the other side of the van. There was going to be total hell to pay.

Jake looked at me, wide-eyed, as the same realization hit him.

“Let me handle this.” I pushed my way past him, pulling on and zipping my parka as I went. I didn’t even wait for Jake to answer me. It was my aunt and my execution.

I flung open the door and was momentarily blinded by the brilliant winter sunlight.

“Stella! Marone! What are you doing in there?”

“Lucia, you don’t know?” Mrs. Talluchi’s querulous tone grated like fingernails on a chalkboard. “They were doing the nasty if you ask me!”

My eyes adjusted in time to see my aunt shoot her best friend a dark look before she leveled the same gaze at me.

“Well?”

I forced a broad smile and stepped down the two metal stairs onto the sidewalk where Sylvia Talluchi and Aunt Lucy stood waiting. Jake stood framed in the doorway behind me and I prayed he had the sense to smile as well.

“No, of course we weren’t ‘doing the nasty’ as you so succinctly put it, Mrs. Talluchi. Jake and I were about to stop back by the house before we went out on surveillance. You see, we were on our way to Lancaster to see Max when we got this call and…”

I stopped in midsentence. At the far end of the street, a limousine slowly crept past on Johnston Avenue.

“Who is that?” I demanded, pointing so there’d be no doubt about the vehicle in question.

Aunt Lucy and Sylvia Talluchi spun on their heels just as the long black sedan’s tail lights vanished from view.

“Who was what?” my aunt asked, turning back to face me. “Never mind that! What were you doing out here? Have you no sense of common decency? In the van, for all the world to witness? Have you no shame?”

Jake stepped down out of the van to join me on the sidewalk. “Mrs. Valocchi, we noticed you had company and I said we shouldn’t disturb you, so we were just waiting.”

I wanted to slap him. How could he think my aunt, a former CIA chemist, could possibly be so stupid? But it was too late. Jake had wandered into the minefield.

“You noticed I had company? How did you notice that, Jake?”

“Well, we saw the limousine pull up and…”

“Saw the limousine, did you?” she echoed dangerously.

Jake nodded. A slight smile tugged at the corners of Sylvia Talluchi’s lips as my aunt let Jake swallow the bait.

“So you’ve been waiting outside my house for almost an hour, have you?”

Jake, former Special Forces operative, suddenly realized now how badly he’d underestimated my aunt.

“Yes, ma’am.” It was a weak tone for such a big man.

“Right out here in the van, were you?”

He nodded.

“Both of you?” she murmured, her eyes boring into my soul.

“Aunt Lucy, you’ve been disappearing for hours at a time without any explanation ever since we got back from the beach. We were worried. There were those flowers that kept arriving mysteriously and then the notes. You gotta admit, you were worried, too. We were only trying to protect you!”

Damn. Too late for Stella Valocchi the Brilliant Former Cop, too.

“So, I suppose it didn’t occur to you that if I was no longer worried and if I chose not to say where I’d been that I might no longer feel concerned about my secret admirer? Furthermore,” she said, her voice rising just enough to let me know the depth of emotion that lay behind the words, “did it ever occur to you that perhaps my private life is none of your business?”

“And what if this man was conning you? What if he…”

My aunt cut me off with a look. “So, now I’m not capable of discerning danger for myself? Now I’m suddenly feeble-minded and incompetent? What next, we have a hearing and I get placed in one of those homes?”

“Sweet mother in heaven!” Sylvia Talluchi cried. “Betrayed, by your own family!” She crossed herself and looked up at the sky above our heads. “Father, forgive them,” she whispered.

“No, nothing like that!”

“Humph! I think it’s exactly like that.”

Okay, not withstanding the fact that Aunt Lucy thought Lloyd was Uncle Benny reincarnated, she was one of the sanest women I knew. And I had hurt her beyond all comprehension. I saw it in her eyes.

“Aunt Lucy, I was just worried. I’m sorry. I should’ve know better.”

Aunt Lucy slowly shook her head, looking at me with a mournful gaze that completely broke my heart.

“Yes, cara mia, you should have known better, but you didn’t.”

She let her gaze shift to Jake, the man I knew she loved almost more than she loved me, the man more like a son to her than a family friend. Slowly her eyes traveled the length of his body, down to his feet and back up again.

“And you,” she said. “Stunade! You have broken my heart.”

“Aunt Lucy, I…”

“You lied to me! Both of you lied to me!” Her eyes glittered with anger and pain.

“We only wanted what was best for you. We didn’t want to see you get hurt!” I cried.

Aunt Lucy sniffed imperiously.

“I don’t need that kind of help,” she said softly. “I need love and I need family, but I don’t need to be treated like a child. If I want privacy, you should respect my wishes.”

Now my back was up. I had acted out of love. I wanted to protect my aunt.

“Well, I was only trying to look out for you,” I said, stung. “I didn’t realize you needed so much privacy. I thought we were closer than that. Maybe you need more privacy than I thought.” Jake dug his elbow into my ribs in a warning but I was too far gone to stop. “Maybe I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

“Maybe you have,” Aunt Lucy said quietly. Without another word, she turned and walked back across the empty street, up the steps to her row house and inside, closing the door firmly. In the echoing silence that followed I heard the solid click of the dead bolt as it shot home.

Mrs. Talluchi, not to be outdone, glared at me. “Put-tan!” she spat. Turning to Jake, she narrowed her eyes and stared hard at his chest. “Ha! I was right!”

She stomped off down the street and up the spotless marble steps to her row house. I turned to Jake, puzzled until I caught sight of his chest. He’d buttoned his shirt wrong, making his shirttails uneven and leaving no doubt as to what we’d been doing in the van. To further seal the verdict, his fly was undone and he was only wearing one sock.