Marcia Talley - This Enemy Town

“Botox, too?” I asked as we passed through a set of double doors and stepped into the dining room. I had noticed Phyllis’s smooth, seamless forehead and was feeling frisky.

“Botox, too,” she said, not skipping a beat. “And when you’re ready to face the world again, you can take a plunge in the indoor/outdoor pool.” She waved an arm, indicating an expanse of glass that had been intended, I felt sure, to give the dining room a panoramic view of the Potomac River. “The pool will have to be built, of course,” she hastened to add, “but I see it starting here and ending…” She waved a hand toward the river. “… there.”

“With a vanishing edge, right?” I asked. If money were to be no object, might as well go for broke.

“Of course.”

The former club room and its thirty-foot bar, I soon learned, would become the spa’s dining room, where nutritious, low-carb lunches would be served, prepared by a master chef-Dante already had somebody in mind. “We won’t serve alcohol, of course, only a full range of designer waters and approved fruit juices.”

“If you want a blended drink,” Phyllis chortled, “it had better be a smoothie!”

At the end of the men’s wing, in a large room Winebarger said had been intended for a pro shop, we caught up with Emily and the children. When we pushed through the double doors, Emily spread her arms and spun around like Julie Andrews on the mountaintop in Sound of Music . She wound to a stop and grinned. “And this is going to be the day care center. I’m going to run it! Won’t it be wonderful?”

Chloe, who had been imitating her mother, kept spinning around the room like a dervish until she collided with a pillar and fell over. Jake pounced on his sister, and in a tangle of arms and legs, the two children giggled until they got hiccups. Just watching them made me laugh, too.

“But you’ll have to have a gift shop, right?” I pictured ball caps and bathrobes and T-shirts emblazoned with the spa’s logo; gift baskets of health care products; designer sunglasses; self-help books.

“That will be off the main entrance, where the developer’s office used to be,” Dante said.

They seemed to have it all worked out. And if Phyllis Strother’s check had cleared, there didn’t seem to be any financial impediments, either.

“Do you think Dad will approve?” Emily wanted to know.

“I don’t know why not.” I smiled, thinking of Paul’s measly five percent share. Looking around the building now, I figured we might end up owning the coat check room, or perhaps a restroom or two.

“Aunt Ruth is going to help with the decor.”

Why was I not surprised? Emily and my sister Ruth were soulmates. I could see it all now: banzai, meditation gardens, fountains, and wind chimes all over the place. With Ruth involved, everything would be perfectly feng shuied.

While Dante huddled with Phyllis and Guy, discussing what offer they were prepared to make on the property, I, “Hannah Alexander,” wandered the facility with Emily and the children. Outside the dining room windows, snow began to fall, dusting the tufts of brown winter grass with white.

“Emily, what are you going to name the spa?”

“‘Paradiso,’” she told me. “Dante’s Paradiso. Do you like it?”

“Yes,” I said truthfully. “I really do.”

Leaving Emily to play tag with the kids, I opened the door and stepped out on the patio. The future spa was set high on the riverbank, with no trees to break the wind that came roaring across the creek, tossing my hair about my ears. I pulled my coat more tightly around me. In addition to the renovations, the place would need serious landscaping.

I circled the building, making a mental list of all the work that needed to be done before the golf club became a spa. I grew discouraged, and more and more concerned that Emily and Dante might be overextending themselves, both physically and financially.

I’d forgotten about the Crown Vic until I heard its engine rev. I turned in the direction of the noise just in time to catch sight of the vehicle as it roared down the road, spewing slush and gravel in its wake, emergency lights flashing.

What’s that all about? Had the FBI lost interest in me?

“Paradiso.” I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sky. Plump snowflakes fell on my cheeks, lingered there for a brief second before melting away. Paradiso.

O Lord, I prayed. Let it be so.

Paradise, after all, sometimes had a way of turning into hell.

After dinner at the Golden Star, where Chloe pronounced the shrimp with snow peas “yummy” and Jake worked the fried rice thoroughly into his hair, we returned to the Super 8 for baths and bed. With the children asleep in the queen-size bed next to me, I nestled under the covers and had just turned the channel to HBO when my cell phone rang.

I picked up, thinking it’d be Paul, but according to the Caller ID, it was Dorothy.

“Dorothy. Hi,” I whispered, not wanting to wake the children.

“Oh, Hannah, I just had to talk to somebody!” Dorothy was weeping so copiously I could barely understand her.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Ted,” she wailed. “He’s being investigated. People are crawling all over his office and he’s being transferred!”

I leaned back against my pillows. It was happening. At long last it was happening. The feds had closed in on Ted Hart. If all went well, the spotlight would be trained on him now, not on me. A weight had been lifted from my shoulders, but it had been placed squarely on Dorothy’s. With her health so precarious, I worried she’d not be strong enough to support it.

Dorothy was saying something about Norfolk.

“Norfolk?”

“Ted’s going to Norfolk, Virginia. They’re assigning him as Special Assistant to the Commander, Fleet Forces Command. You know what that means.”

I did. It meant that the Navy was kicking him out of Washington, D.C. with a rocket tied to his tail. While they investigated the allegations against him, Admiral Hart would drive a desk. He’d plan menus, address invitations, and write place cards for Navy Relief balls. As much as I wanted the Navy to dress Theodore Hart in cammies and drop him off in downtown Falujah with a target strapped to his back, there was no way they’d give the man anything important to do.

“Oh, Dorothy, I’m so sorry.” And I was sorry, too, but for her, not for the admiral. He’d made his bed and would have to lie in it. Eventually, there’d be a courtmartial. Chances are, Hart would do hard time in Leavenworth.

Dorothy wept quietly into the phone and I waited her out. “I have a migraine like you wouldn’t believe,” she sobbed.

“Don’t worry about checking the set this week,” I told her. “You just stay home and get well.”

“But I want to stay involved,” she choked. “What else am I going to do now that-that-”

“Does Kevin know?” I asked.

My question set off another crying jag. It was over a minute before Dorothy was able to speak to me again. “Kevin’s so angry, I thought he was going to kill his father.”

“Is Kevin with you?”

“No.”

So Kevin was laying low, too. I wasn’t surprised. Until this happened, he’d been the pampered son of an admiral, cocky, behaving as if the stars his father wore were his own. When the news broke, it’d be payback time. The brigade would not treat him kindly.

“Dorothy? I’ll call you later, okay?”

Snuffle.

“If you need anything, you just let me know.”

Sniff. Sniff.

As I hung up the phone, I realized that Dorothy’s worst fears had come true. Except for me, she was utterly, completely alone.