My Groom Never Showed, So I Cursed Him for Eleven Months novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Eleven Months

Cooking Sunday supper in the boss's house eleven months later, she tells the table to keep the search open so she can curse the groom to his face, and Donal posts a reward the best man calls a waste.

On the first Sunday of September I made lamb shoulder for twelve men.

Peg Hanlon tasted the gravy and told me it was too good for them.

"They'll eat it standing up and ask if there's more," Peg said.

"That's all I want from a man," I said. "Ask if there's more."

She laughed and swatted me with a dish towel.

Peg was sixty-eight and ran the Dalton house on the point at Hull, and nobody in it crossed her.

Through the window over the sink I could see Nantasket Bay going grey with the evening.

I had cooked in that kitchen for ten months and three weeks.

I had walked into it in the second week after the wedding and told Peg I was there to work off the safe.

Nobody ever agreed to it, and nobody ever told me to leave.

Peg had handed me an apron, and a composition book sat on the shelf over the stove with my figures in it.

At seven the men came in off the porch, loud and hungry, and filled the long table in the dining room.

Donal Dalton sat at the head, the way he always did.

He wore a white shirt with the sleeves buttoned down, and he did not say much at his own table, and he didn't have to.

When he ate, the room got quieter.

He looked up once as I set the lamb in front of him.

"Miss Finnegan," he said.

"Boss," I said.

It was how we had said good evening to each other since the first of November.

Ambrose came in late, with a bottle of red wine and the dimple he used on every woman in the house.

He kissed Peg on the cheek, which she allowed.

He squeezed my arm above the elbow.

"There she is," he said. "Still the best cook on the South Shore, kid. Still waiting on a postcard?"

"I've got my postcard," I said. "It says don't wait."

"Then listen to it." He smiled at me kindly. "Sit down with us tonight. You work too hard."

"Staff don't sit," I said.

I said it for the hundredth time, and the table was used to it.

It was the rule I'd made on my first day, along with the other one, that the kitchen shut at nine.

Nobody had ever argued with me, and I liked that nobody had.

Ambrose took the chair at Donal's left, where he'd sat since he was twenty-two.

He poured the wine and told the Lincoln story again, because somebody always asked.

"Stolen off my own street in Wollaston," he said.

"The night after the wedding, can you believe it? Worst weekend of my life, and some kid takes my car."

The men groaned the way men groan at a joke they've heard.

"Never found it?" one of them asked.

"Never will. It's in a chop shop in Providence." Ambrose shook his head. "Didn't even have the heart to be mad."

I put down the potatoes harder than I meant to.

Donal cut his meat without hurry.

Then he laid his knife and fork across his plate.

"Gentlemen," he said.

The table stopped.

"It's been eleven months," Donal said.

"I've had men in Florida since November. They found a bus ticket and a bartender who thought he'd seen a man like him."

"Fort Myers," Ambrose said. "I've said it since the postcard."

"We've looked in Fort Myers," Donal said.

"We're stopping. Cormac Faye is nobody's problem now. The money's gone, and I'm not paying men to chase it."

Ambrose nodded gravely.

"Right call, boss."

I stood in the doorway with the gravy boat in my hands.

I had cursed that name every morning for ten months and three weeks.

I couldn't stand the thought of him living somewhere warm with nobody ever asking him why.

I couldn't stand that I'd never say it to his face.

"No," I said.

Twelve men turned their heads.

"Miss Finnegan," Donal said, very evenly.

"You can stop paying the men," I said. "But don't close it."

My heart was banging in my ears.

"I've cursed him every day since the church, and I'd like to say it to his face once. Keep it open."

Nobody moved.

Peg stood in the kitchen door behind me with the dish towel at her mouth.

Donal looked at me for a long moment.

It was the same look I had gotten in the church, steady and grey, with nothing in it I could use.

Then he turned to Peg.

"Have the printer do a poster," he said.

"Fifty thousand dollars to anyone with a true word about Cormac Faye after seven a.m. on October twelfth."

"Hancock Street, Wollaston, the Quincy bars, every pole from here to the Fore River bridge."

"Fifty thousand," Peg said. "For a thief."

"For her," Donal said.

Nobody breathed.

Ambrose put his glass down.

"A waste, boss," he said. "He's in Florida drinking on your money. You'll get cranks and liars."

"It's my money."

Donal said it lightly, and picked up his fork.

Ambrose turned his glass a quarter turn on the tablecloth, and the smile stayed exactly where it was.

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