Veiled Threats by DEBORAH DONNELLY Read Free Book Online Page A

whole crabs and gaping salmon, stacks of hand-woven baskets, bundles of fresh herbs, tables of carved wooden toys—everything looked appropriately wholesome, quaint, whimsical, or just plain tempting.
    The street entertainers were out in force: a bluegrass fiddler, a team of jugglers, a one-woman puppet show with a tall cardboard box serving as a theater. I watched her for a moment, then I followed the heavenly aroma of cioppino wafting from a fishmonger's kettle. Nickie and I loaded up our trays and found a table set back from the sidewalk, out of the breeze. I was grateful for Nickie's sweatshirt, though purple was hardly my color. As we wrestled with our clams and mussels and sopped up the broth with French bread, I asked another, more personal question.
    “Did you ever get an RSVP from your mother?”
    Julia Parry had moved to New Mexico soon after the divorce, when Nickie was seventeen. That was all I knew about her, except that her name on the invitation list had triggered a family quarrel. Douglas put it there, Grace objected, and Nickie, with a very adult bitterness in her voice, pointed out that since Julia hadn't shown up for her high school or college graduation, or anything else, she certainly wouldn't come to the wedding, so what difference did it make? End of quarrel, and the creamy envelope with its stately calligraphy had gone off to Santa Fe.
    Now, Nickie rattled the ice in her empty paper cup. “Not yet. She won't come. I know she won't.”
    “Would you rather she didn't?”
    “I don't know.” She tossed the cup at a garbage can, missed, and got up to retrieve it. When she sat down again,she didn't look at me. “She was an alcoholic, Carnegie. I don't know if Daddy told you.”
    “No, and you certainly shouldn't if you don't—”
    “It's OK.” She let out a long sigh, as if the truth had been trapped in her lungs. “They didn't tell me at first, but I knew. She went to a clinic for a while, and we thought she was better, but she wasn't. Then there was a car accident.”
    “Was she hurt?”
    “We both were.” She drew back her lips in a quick grimace. “That's how I got all these teeth capped. When she got out of the hospital, Daddy told her not to come home.”
    “Nickie, I'm so sorry. The crash last night must have been horrible for you.”
    She seemed not to hear me. “I've been reading these books, about adult children of alcoholics? About forgiving and letting go of anger and all that. Daddy says she doesn't drink anymore, and I think he misses her sometimes. But I don't know if I ever want to see her. She used to get pretty scary. And she made kind of a nasty phone call when he and Grace got married.”
    I thought about my own mother, so fussy and prosaic and always, always there when I needed her. And my father, my stern hero who often seemed to forget that he even had children, let alone that they needed him. I wanted to comfort Nickie, but she wasn't asking for comfort this time. She was trying to make peace with reality by explaining it to me.
    “It's hard to forgive your parents,” I said. “It's hard to allow them to be ordinary, or to have troubles of their own.” She nodded, but I couldn't tell if she was listening to me. “There's so much we never understand about their lives—”
    “Grace has been terrific, you know.” Nickie was rushing her words as if to convince herself as well as me. “She's afinancial genius, everybody says she's just brilliant, and she does investment counseling for elderly women. They love her. She's incredibly busy, but she's been really good to me. Just like a mother.”
    She reached for her tote bag. “Could we get going now?”
    “Sure.”
    W e spent two pleasant hours wandering through the market stalls and the shops nearby, finding just the right handcrafted thank-you gift for each bridesmaid. Rain clouds rolled in. I'd left my bride's-hairdo-protecting umbrella in the van, so Nickie and I ended up with wet shoes and hair dripping into