Aefle & Giesla Page 20

  Tom looked around the room, now aghast to see his peers nodding at this argument. Was Tom missing something? Hadn’t Farley just told them that he’d chucked the “profit-making” tests that showed he wasn’t doing his job well and substituted tests that earned him a profit and that seemed designed to give him results showing he was doing a good job that might entitle him to a raise? Did they not see this?

  Heather poured Farley more coffee and smiled. “I wonder if your evaluations would work at the post-secondary level,” she purred. “I’d love to see if I can use them. I have some phenomenal students -- really brilliant minds -- who struggle with the essay and multiple choice formats. They’re… archaic.”

  Tom was about to make a sarcastic remark about brilliance being in the eye of the beholder when his cell phone saved him, vibrating in his pocket. Glancing at the LED, he saw it was a call from Megan. Maybe something was up with Dad. Whatever -- he was grateful for the interruption.

  “Family matter,” he mumbled, holding up the phone to leave the room.

  As he scooted out back to the patio, he answered the call.

  “Hope I didn’t pull you out of anything important,” Megan said when she heard his hushed voice.

  “No, you saved me from something ridiculous. What’s up?”

  “Good news. St. Cecilia’s Village, that assisted living facility that Dad really liked, has an opening. Any chance you can get down here this weekend to help move him?”

  “Sure.” He’d be glad to. DeeDee’s fake wedding would be over. Everything would be settled. And new. Why did he still feel uneasy when thinking about it?

  “Great. Well, that’s really all I have for you.”

  “C’mon, keep talking. You’re saving me from a really boring meeting. I’ll look concerned while I talk.” He did just that, plastering a worried frown on his face. It wasn’t hard to do under the current circumstances.

  The worry deepened, though, when he heard her next bit of news. “Okay. Here’s something ironic -- I almost got a gig out of this whole Buck Bewley fiasco. A legal job.”

  “You’re kidding. What is it?”

  “Nothing, really. Some gal he dated wanted to talk to me about possibly hiring me for ‘potential’ lawsuits. She was breaking up with him and was worried he’d go after her in court the way he’d gone after DeeDee. I told her I stood ready to help, but I think the situation with DeeDee was different. She was a runaway bride, after all. This Gretchen is just leaving him for another guy.”

  “Gretchen? Gretchen Waters?” He gripped the phone tight to his ear.

  “Yeah. You know her?”

  “Just of her.”

  “She met some fellow in her hair salon, and they’re moving to the West Coast this weekend. I told her I really don’t think Buck will pursue her. Plus, he’s marrying DeeDee now.”

  Exactly. He was marrying DeeDee.

  Gretchen had been DeeDee’s thermometer, a gauge of Buck’s true intentions. As long as DeeDee knew Gretchen was in Buck’s life, she’d felt assured that Buck was taking this wedding as seriously as she was. That is to say, not seriously at all.

  But if Gretchen had broken up with Buck, what was to stop him from deciding to go through with the vows, taking the one from Column A after the one from Column B was gone?

  He’d do it. He’d do it in a flash. He’d get a woman and a business all in one. It had been his original plan, after all.

  “You there?” Megan asked. “Look, I gotta go. Just pretend you’re still talking if you want to stay out of your meeting.” She said goodbye and hung up.

  But Tom continued to stand there, staring into the garden, frantic. Sure, DeeDee had said she’d just call off the wedding again if Buck got to the point where he was saying yes to all the vows. But down that path lay disaster. Buck’s fury would be boundless if she ran away from him again. Moving to the West Coast wouldn’t save her from that wrath. He’d get Dickie Faulkes and a whole team of lawyers to ruin her life from now until she took her last breath.

  He quickly dialed her number. Voice mail. Damn it, DeeDee! He left a message telling her she couldn’t go through with the wedding, that Gretchen had left Buck. He told DeeDee to call him as soon as she got his message.

  His heart racing, he turned back into the house. He couldn’t stay here. He had to see her. He had to drive to Oyster Point. What if she didn’t get the message? What if…

  “Oh, there you are,” Heather said, greeting him in the library as he made his way to the dining room. “Could you give Dr. Farley a ride to campus for our tour? I walked over and Q.T. only has his Mini today. The others have gone ahead.”

  Inwardly groaning, he just nodded, but he barged through to the dining room to grab his passenger.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Farley. “My car’s right out front.”

  Without waiting, he plowed out of the house, Farley fast on his heels. When they reached the SUV, Tom grinned inwardly at the man’s hesitation.

  “These things are so high,” he said, struggling to get in.

  “You have long legs,” Tom said before taking off. Farley had yet to buckle his seat belt.

  “Are we behind schedule?” Farley asked.

  “No, but I have a family emergency. My dad.”

  “Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.”

  Tom glanced at him as he checked his briefcase for something, his aquiline profile a study in what people used to think of as refinement. And then it hit him. Farley was no better than those previous generations who’d been born into a social class and intended to keep riffraff out. He was a snob and a bigot. A social class bigot, prejudging people by their station and how they’d been born.

  “No, you’re not,” Tom said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said you were sorry to hear about my dad. I said you’re not sorry. You don’t know him.”

  “But if I did…”

  “If you did, you’d probably evaluate him as being not worth the trouble,” he said with bitterness.

  “Look, I know you don’t agree with my approach -- I picked up on that last night and this morning -- but I sincerely do not wish your father ill and hope your family situation improves,” Farley harrumphed and stared out the window.

  “My father was a working man, like I told you before,” Tom said, his mouth twisted to one side. “He started in a canning factory in high school. If he’d had you for a teacher, that’s where he would have stayed.”

  Farley just pursed his lips and shook his head as if a nervous tic had afflicted him.

  Tom continued. “He worked in a factory, yes. But he rose to the level of manager. And the only way he did it was because someone at his school made sure he knew how to write. They did the drill and kill routine with him because that’s what worked when a kid’s parents didn’t have an education beyond the eighth grade.” Tom and Megan’s grandparents had been farmers and fishermen. “They figured they needed to make up for what a kid didn’t get at home.”

  Farley rolled his eyes. “I am very sorry for whatever problem your father is facing,” he said. “One might suggest that you are too emotionally distraught to engage in a rational debate about my theory and approach at the moment. Perhaps another time...”

  “One might suggest,” Tom said, inwardly boiling, “that you want to end this debate because you know I’m right, not because you give a damn about my father or how I’m feeling.” Tom thought about his dad’s background, about how hard he’d worked to better himself and his family. They’d been good, if flawed people, like people everywhere. And his father had learned to be a scrapper as well as a good manager. It had all started in school, though, with teachers who hadn’t decided that since he wasn’t going to Harvard, his failures should be overlooked. No, his teachers had expected him to perform, just as well as the students who did end up leaving Oyster Point for higher learning.

  “You know you're wrong because you depend on capricious judgments that mask your own biases,” Tom told him. “It�
��s the very method used by Ivy League schools to keep Jews out when Jewish kids started scoring high on entrance tests and doing well. The bluebloods like you decided those tests and grades didn’t really capture what a kid was like, that there was some better ‘meritocracy’ approach that really measured a kid’s value. They used that kind of thinking to discriminate against hard-working Jews in favor of slacker kids from ‘good’ families.”

  Farley laughed, but Tom could hear the nerves in it. “Really, Dr. Charlemagne. Where on earth did you get that nonsense -- listening to talk radio?”

  Tom screeched to a halt in front of the university’s main gate, hitting the auto-unlock as he did so.

  “Nope. I had to write an essay about it in a history class as an undergraduate. For a test. Using material I’d had to memorize.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  WHEN DEEDEE arrived at the town hall a few minutes before noon, she turned off her cell phone, shaking her head. Oh, Tom, she thought to herself, looking at the screen indicating she’d missed several calls and texts from him. I’ll be phoning you soon .

  She couldn’t allow herself to falter. She’d not realized just how hard this charade would be. She needed every fiber of her resolve to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

  “Here we are,” Kelly announced as their car, driven by Kelly’s husband, pulled up.

  “My God,” DeeDee said, staring at the rush of people outside the building. It looked as if the whole town were in attendance. And there was plenty of news coverage, too. She saw at least three cameras, reporters at the ready, doing standup reports while they waited for the bride.

  This calmed her. Buck wanted the world to witness her humiliation. The plan was still working.

  “You ready?” Kelly asked as Ron went around to open their doors.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Taking a deep breath, DeeDee plastered a smile on her face and stepped out of the vehicle into blazing sun as cameras clicked and the crowd applauded.

  ***

  Traffic was heavy for a weekday. Tom yelled at slow drivers and slipped through several signals on the sad side of yellow.

  Once on the highway, he ignored the state’s no-cell-phone-while-driving law and dialed DeeDee again. Still no answer. He called Megan.

  “Look, would you do me a favor?” he asked, passing a line of sedans. “I need to find a number of one of DeeDee’s friends. And the town hall in Oyster Point. Yeah, that, too.”

  “What on earth for?”

  He saw no point in hiding the truth from her, so he spilled the story of DeeDee’s planned deception and his hunch that it wouldn’t go as she wanted.

  “Holy effing crap,” Megan said. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. And I need to stop it.”

  “Damn straight you need to stop it. If she thinks Buck Bewley was a monster before… hell, if I was his lawyer, I’d be suing her for every last penny after this stunt.”

  “She didn’t intend to walk away this time. She thinks he will!”

  “But you don’t think he will.”

  “Right. Based on that bit of news you gave me about Gretchen Waters. Which is why I need your help.” Worried about timing, he now asked her to phone Kelly and town hall and anyone else she could think of, in order to get a message to DeeDee before the wedding.

  This calmed him as he headed toward the Bay Bridge route. As he waited for his sister to call him back, he began to think of what would happen next.

  When he’d pondered next steps with DeeDee before, his mind had frozen. He’d attributed this to his worry over her wacky wedding caper. He’d told himself he’d be able to think clearly once they were through this thicket.

  That hadn’t been the real reason for his stall, though. He’d not been able to bring himself to face what was most likely to happen if DeeDee were successful. None of it held good tidings for them as a couple.

  If, contrary to what Tom now believed would happen, Buck did reject DeeDee at the altar, exacting his revenge, she’d be changed. She’d never look at Tom the same way. Tom would be the fellow who’d stood on the sidelines while she’d fixed things. He hadn’t even cheered her on in her plans. He’d objected and groused and whined like a child. And even though she’d not asked him to attend the ceremony, he should have insisted vigorously that he share in the humiliation she’d engineered to befall her this day. Instead, he’d not offered, rationalizing it was better for her not to be distracted. No, it had been better for him. He’d been afraid.

  That was what had bothered him. He was afraid of Buck. And DeeDee had to know it.

  She did know it, he realized. And that would color their relationship. She’d not feel she could count on him.

  On top of all this was his career’s future and how that would impact DeeDee, as well. He’d secretly hoped he could convince her to move to Baltimore to be with him. But he’d soon have little to offer her in the way of stability. Although he was increasingly convinced he’d be able to prove Aefle’s latest writings were real and “valid,” in the meantime the university would drop or postpone his tenure application, and Heather would continue gunning for him, especially now that he’d made his opinions of her educational idol, Dr. Farley, crystal clear.

  “I’m toast,” he said to himself as he saw the Bay Bridge loom in the distance. The sight brought him an unexpected sense of peace. For the first time, he felt good about returning to Oyster Point. His current mission pulled him fast and hard toward his hometown, and he felt as if he were returning to at last settle something that had kept him at odds with his home for a long, long time. Buck Bewley had not been his lifetime nemesis. But Buck represented all the bullies he’d been unwilling to face down.

  He didn’t know precisely how he’d do it, but he was determined to stand up to them at last.

  ***

  An accordion played “Here Comes the Bride.” Kelly walked through the short lobby to stand at an improvised dais. Buck already stood there, next to the minister they’d engaged for the day. Buck looked serious. That made DeeDee nervous. What did he have up his sleeve? She scanned the crowd. No Gretchen, as far as she could tell. Okay, so his latest squeeze didn’t want to see the ceremony. No biggie. Tom wasn’t here either, after all. She swallowed. She felt as if she was going to puke.

  One foot in front of the other, she told herself.

  And started across the room toward her erstwhile groom.

  ***

  “I swear the whole town must be on hiatus,” Megan reported to Tom after he’d crossed the bay and was zooming toward Oyster Point. “I tried everybody -- Kelly, some old classmates, even DeeDee’s lawyer. They either went to voice mail or, in Jane-Ann’s case, I discovered she’s on a short vacation.”

  “What about town hall itself? Anybody answering there?”

  “Nope. Just machines. I have a feeling they’re all at the shindig. You know how Oyster Point is. A big event shuts everything down.”

  “Shit,” he said as he turned onto the road leading into town. “I’m almost there.”

  “Look, these things always get going late. You might still make it in time. In the meantime, I’ll keep trying.”

  ***

  DeeDee couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. She’d felt it that morning as she’d gotten ready, and she’d let Kelly talk her out of bailing. Just nerves. But now, as she stood next to Buck and listened to the minister talk to them about marriage, she put her finger on it.

  Buck was too serious. He’d nodded and barely smiled when she’d joined him in front of the preacher. It was as if he was sad about something.

  She knew him. If he was planning on aborting the ceremony to rub her face in humiliation, he wouldn’t be able to contain himself. He’d be snickering under his breath. Maybe even laughing. He’d be downright gleeful.

  Her eyes widened. Her face warmed. Her pulse thudded at a galloping pace.

  Oh. No.

  Something had changed. He was
going through with it.

  All the warnings from Tom thundered in her ears. Now when she left the altar, she’d be lucky to make it home before he set after her in every conceivable way.

  And how cruel she’d seem for setting him up for another public rejection.

  No, not just “seem.” It was cruel to do this to him again. Everyone in town would be on Buck’s side.

  Oh, damn.

  She swayed.

  “You all right?” Kelly said under her breath.

  “Mmm-hmm,” she whispered. But she wasn’t. She felt like collapsing into a sobbing mess, begging Buck and the town’s forgiveness. Why on earth had she thought this would work? She was crazy. Certifiable. Maybe she could use that in her defense when the lawyers came after her again. Plead insanity.

  She hardly heard the words of the ceremony as it proceeded. Her head spun. Her stomach turned.

  ***

  Tom screeched to a stop in the middle of the road in front of the town hall. He elbowed his way through the crowd, not caring who he was pushing aside, offering no apologies as he plunged forward. He saw a flash of white -- her dress -- at the far end of the lobby. He saw Buck turning to her to grab her hands in his… he saw the minister’s mouth moving but couldn’t hear his words.

  It didn’t matter. Tom didn’t care if he was in the right place in the ceremony. He didn’t care about anything except saving DeeDee and standing up to Buck.

  “I object!” he shouted from the doorway, out of breath. “I object to this wedding with every fiber of my being!”

  DeeDee and Buck turned toward him. The crowd murmured and whispered. Someone said, “Not again.” A TV camera zoomed in his direction.

  “Tom?” DeeDee’s voice trembled.

  Buck glared at him with the ferociousness of a wild animal intent on keeping his prey to himself. He stepped forward, in front of DeeDee.