Love at First flight Read online

  She took Mrs. Romanello out to dinner at least once a month, and that’s how she found out in July that Jeremy had sold the dream house, moved back to Florida, and married a girl named Sherrie.

  Mrs. R clucked with disapproval as she delivered the news. “I don’t know what that boy is thinking, but rushing into marriage with another woman isn’t the answer to his problems.”

  “Maybe it’ll work out for them,” Juliana said with sincerity. She had nothing to gain by wishing against the success of his marriage—apparently to the girl who called his cell phone all those months ago and set off a chain of events that changed their lives forever.

  After she dropped off Mrs. R, Juliana drove down Chester Street for the first time since she last saw Michael. She slowed to a stop outside No. 8 and watched a young couple carry a baby stroller up the stairs. Even though she was sad that he had sold the place where they lived together, she was delighted to know he was in Newport seeing to pipe dreams.

  In late August, she was strolling through the mall at the Inner Harbor on her lunch break one day when a teddy bear dressed as a bee wearing a tiara caught her eye in a window. She walked into the store to buy the bear, flooded with thoughts of her own Queen Bee. That night she called Monique Griffith to ask if she would mind if Juliana visited Rachelle.

  Monique hesitated before she replied. “I’m sorry, Juliana, but we’ve decided it’s best that she not have any reminders of the trial or of that time in her life.”

  “I understand,” Juliana said, even though she was disappointed.

  “She’s doing so well, and it’s not that seeing you would be a setback—”

  “I’d be a reminder.”

  “Yes,” Monique said, sounding relieved that Juliana understood.

  “I’m thrilled to hear she’s doing well. I have something I’d like to send her. Would that be all right?”

  “Of course. I’m sure she’ll love anything that comes from you.” She gave Juliana the address. “Michael called a couple of months ago. I was sorry to hear you two aren’t together anymore. I always thought you made such a lovely couple.”

  “That’s funny,” Juliana said with a small, sad smile. “Rachelle said the same thing. I miss her. I only knew her for such a short time, but I think about her all the time.”

  “She’s a special kid to go through what she did and come out of it so unaffected. Ever since those monsters were killed in the courtroom, she’s like a new person.”

  “Will you keep me posted on how she’s doing?”

  “Of course. I have a school picture I could send you if you’d like.”

  “I’d love that. Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Juliana. Your friendship made an enormous difference to her at a very difficult time in her life.”

  “Every minute I spent with her was such a joy.”

  They hung up with promises to keep in touch. Juliana lay awake that night thinking about Rachelle and Michael and the night she cut their hair in the hotel room. How far they all had traveled since then.

  Paullina died in her sleep in September. The medical examiner said she’d had a massive heart attack and didn’t suffer, but Juliana was devastated to lose her mother just when they had finally begun to form a real bond. It was left to her to call her brothers and sisters with the news. Donatella and Vincent came right away to their mother’s house where they waited for Domenic and Serena to arrive from the West Coast. Juliana couldn’t remember when she last saw her older siblings, but the minute they came in the door it was like no time had passed.

  They got through the wake and funeral where it seemed that Allison, the home health aide, was more distraught than any of Paullina’s five children.

  “Thank you so much for everything you did to make her last months so comfortable.” Juliana hugged the sobbing Allison. “I wasn’t kidding when I called you a miracle worker.”

  “She was a lovely person, and I’ll miss her.”

  After the funeral, the siblings spent two days cleaning out the house, each setting aside things they wanted to keep. On the last night before Domenic and Serena were due to fly home, they sat on the floor of the empty living room and finished the food that had poured in from neighbors and extended family.

  “We’ve been talking, Juliana,” Donatella said as Domenic opened a second bottle of wine.

  “About what?” Juliana asked.

  “We all agree that you should sell the house and keep whatever you can get for it,” Vincent said.

  “No way. It belongs to all of us.”

  “You’re the one who did the heavy lifting with Ma for all these years,” Serena said. “It’s only fair you should get back some of the money you put into the mortgage and her other expenses.”

  “You guys, really,” Juliana said, enormously touched by the gesture. “I wouldn’t feel right about it.”

  “It’s a done deal,” Domenic said. “We’ve already decided.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “We are,” Vincent said. “She would’ve died a long time ago if you hadn’t taken care of her and forced us to help.”

  Donatella nodded in agreement.

  “I hope we can see each other once in a while,” Juliana said. “I know we all have our own lives and you guys have families in California, but maybe we can try to get together once or twice a year.”

  They agreed to try. Over the third bottle of wine, Juliana told her brothers and sisters about everything that had happened to her in the last year. She found it hard to believe that it had already been a year since she met Michael in the airport. Her siblings were stunned to hear how much danger she’d been in during the trial and astounded by the way her relationship with Jeremy ended.

  “So,” Vincent said with a wry grin, “Mr. Wonderful didn’t turn out to be so wonderful after all, huh?”

  Juliana smiled. “You don’t need to look so pleased, Vin.”

  He made an attempt to hide his grin. “Sorry.”

  Juliana laughed and threw a wadded up napkin at him. “No, you’re not.”

  “What I want to know is why you haven’t gone after Michael like you promised him you would,” Donatella said. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  “I was just about to ask the same thing,” Serena said.

  “I’m thinking about it,” Juliana confessed. “When my self-imposed year is up, we’ll see.”

  “Don’t think too long,” Domenic advised. “He sounds like a good guy.”

  “He is,” Juliana said softly, missing him more in that moment than any other in the last nine months.

  Her mother’s house sold in November, and Juliana was staggered to clear just over forty-six thousand dollars after she paid the taxes. She wrote a check to Jeremy for seventeen thousand dollars and sent it to him via his mother with a note that said only, “Thank you for paying off my mother’s mortgage. Please accept the enclosed check as reimbursement.”

  Part of her windfall went toward the early December purchase of her first-ever new car—a silver Honda Accord. She said a sad good-bye to her old Tercel, which had served her well for many years and was one of the last remaining links to her old life. The rest of the money went in the bank, giving Juliana more of a nest egg than she’d ever had in her life.

  By then it had been almost six months since she hung Michael’s picture on the wall, and she had fallen into the habit of telling him about her day as she lay in bed each night.

  “Do you still want me?” she asked the picture one cold night about a week before Christmas. “Am I really supposed to take this huge gamble that you’ll still love me?” Have I ever said anything I didn’t mean? The memory was so powerful he might have been in the room with her rather than hundreds of miles away.

  She studied the faded picture for a long time that night. “I think I’m ready to find out if you meant it, Michael. I miss you so much that sometimes I worry I’ll go crazy if I don’t see you soon. For what it’s worth, I like myself a whole lot better than I did
a year ago, so I hope you’ll forgive me for waiting this long to keep my promise.”

  The next day, she gave the salon two week’s notice. It was time to find out if he’d meant what he said.

  Chapter 36

  Juliana left Baltimore early on New Year’s Day with even fewer possessions than she had taken to her place in Fell’s Point. She had found out over the last year that she could live without a lot of the things she used to think were essential.

  Driving through the pre-dawn mist in her new car, she thought about how yesterday would have been her first anniversary with Jeremy. But she wasn’t thinking about him today. No, today she was thinking about Michael and how proud of herself she was for taking this last year to get her life in order. Wondering if she had waited too long to keep her promise, her stomach fluttered with nerves. Because she had given herself the time she needed to heal and to grow, she knew that no matter how this day turned out, she would be okay. She had proven to herself that not only could she survive on her own, she could thrive.

  The road was deserted, so she gave the new car a workout and was in Connecticut in just under three hours. Remembering Michael’s horror at the way she had driven his car gave her the giggles. She didn’t believe in wasting time behind the wheel. That was something he would just have to get used to if they were going to be together. Don’t jinx yourself by thinking that way.

  It seemed to take forever to get through Connecticut, but she finally made it into Rhode Island around noon. She had used the computer at the salon to get directions to Newport, but once there she’d be relying on memory to find the place she had been to only once—and in the dark.

  The view from the Newport Bridge was different in the wintertime than it had been in autumn but no less striking. She took the Newport exit, and as she drove along America’s Cup Avenue she remembered Michael comparing Newport to Annapolis. Taking a right onto Lower Thames Street, Juliana’s heart began to beat fast with the knowledge that she was within blocks of him—and everything she wanted.

  She drove slowly along Lower Thames until, all at once, she recognized his building and pulled into the first available parking space on the street. Without giving herself even a minute to get nervous, she freshened up her lipstick, tucked her purse under the seat, and got out of the car. She locked the car and with her shaking hands tucked firmly into her coat pockets, she set off down the street, stopping only when she reached the sidewalk outside his building. The glass to the right side of the door was still covered with paper, but painted on the left-hand window in gold script were the words, “Michael Maguire, Attorney at Law.”

  “Good for you, Michael,” she whispered, her heart swelling with pride. “You really did it.”

  With a deep breath for courage, she pushed open the door. Once inside the vestibule, she was surprised to find the lights on in his office even though it was a holiday. She opened the office door, where again his name was painted on the glass. It was exactly as he said it would be—a comfortable waiting area, a reception desk, and his office in the back. Nothing fancy but it suited him. The receptionist looked up and gasped. Michael’s sister Mary Frances got up to come around the desk.

  “Juliana.” She hugged her. “Lord, is it really you?”

  “It’s me,” Juliana said, returning the warm embrace.

  “Oh, is my brother going to be happy to see you!”

  “Is he?” Juliana’s spirits lifted. “Is he really?”

  “You have no idea. Come in. Let me take your coat.”

  “Is he here?”

  “No, he’s downtown at the police station, but I expect him back any minute. We came in for a few hours today to deal with a few clients whose New Year’s Eve celebrations landed them in jail.”

  The phone rang, and Mary Frances excused herself to answer it. “Michael Maguire’s office. Yes, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, he’s still out.” She rolled her eyes at Juliana. “I’ll give him your messages as soon as he gets back, but he’s going to tell you the same thing he told you the last time Fifi got locked up. You have to keep her on a leash.”

  Juliana giggled at the look on Mary Frances’s face as she got rid of Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

  “There are great clients and then there are high-maintenance clients.”

  “Let me guess,” Juliana said. “Fifi’s owner is high maintenance?”

  “The highest.”

  The phone rang several more times in the next few minutes, and Juliana was delighted to realize his practice was busy. “I’m sure he loves having you here with him,” Juliana said between calls.

  “I share the job with Shannon and Maggie. We work every three days, but with all our trading of days, Michael complains that he never knows which one of us will be here in the morning. He calls it one of life’s little mysteries.”

  Juliana smiled, knowing how thrilled he must be to have his sisters working with him.

  The phone rang again. “Sorry,” Mary Frances said. “The world goes mad on New Year’s Eve. Why don’t you wait in Michael’s office? He should be here any second.”

  “Okay.” Juliana wandered into his office, which looked an awful lot like his office in Maryland—organized chaos. A framed photo on the credenza caught her eye, and she went behind his desk to get a closer look. She gasped when she realized it was the photo of them taken by the resort’s roving photographer in the Bahamas. They’d been sad to realize they forgot to pick it up before they left. In the photo they wore big smiles and had their arms around each other, looking for all the world like a couple madly in love.

  “It took me two months to track that down.”

  She spun around. “Michael,” she said, dumbstruck by the achingly familiar sound of his voice and the sight of him wearing a shirt and tie and leaning against the doorframe. She feasted her eyes on him. “You let your hair get long again.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t have anyone to cut it for me.”

  She returned the photo to the credenza. “I can’t believe you have this.”

  “When it occurred to me that I didn’t have a single picture of you, it became my mission in life to track down that one. You ought to try dealing with Bahamians by telephone sometime.” His eyes danced with amusement and what appeared to be joy. That he seemed happy to see her was an enormous relief. “It was quite an experience.”

  Reaching into the back pocket of her jeans, she carefully withdrew the folded newspaper photo. She let it fall open so he could see it. “I’ve had my own photo to keep me company. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to him over the last few months. He’s a very good listener.”

  Michael smiled. “And what have you been telling him?”

  “That I miss him more than I’ve ever missed anyone. That I love him, I never stopped loving him, that I was a fool to ever let him go, and I hope he meant it when he said he’d wait for me.”

  Michael came around the desk to her. “I think I can speak for him when I say he meant it.” He lifted her into a fierce embrace. “God, I missed you, baby. You really had to take the full year, huh?”

  Juliana chuckled as she clung to him, reveling in the familiar scent and feel of him. “I was so afraid too much time had gone by and you would’ve forgotten about me.”

  “I could never, ever forget about you.” He brushed his lips over hers. “I kept having these visions of you back together again with Jeremy.”

  “To borrow a line of yours, I’ve come to realize I spent ten years killing time with him.”

  “Until what?” he asked with a smile.

  “Until I found you.”

  He hugged her again. “What about your mother?”

  “She died in September.”

  “Oh, baby. I’m so sorry! I wish I’d known.”

  She shrugged off the burst of grief. “We were lucky it didn’t happen sooner, but it was still hard. She had been doing a lot better. I’d started to feel almost close to her for the first time.”

  “I’m glad you had that time with her.”


  “Me, too.”

  He took her hand. “I’ve got things to show you.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “You’ll see.” In his outer office, he said, “Mary Frances, I’m taking the rest of the day off. Tell the drunks to call another lawyer.”

  “You got it, counselor.”

  “Go ahead and call Mom, too. I know you’re dying to tell her that Juliana’s come home.”

  A guilty look crossed Mary Frances’s pretty face. “I already did.”

  Michael and Juliana laughed as he hustled her out the door into the vestibule. “Okay, close your eyes.” He led her across the hall to the other retail space and flipped on the lights. “You can look now.”

  Juliana opened her eyes and gasped when she saw mirrors and chairs and sinks and gleaming hard wood floors and a reception desk. He had built her a salon, right across the hall from his office. “Oh, Michael.” With her hand over her heart, she looked around in disbelief. “Oh my God.”

  “Wait, you haven’t seen the best part yet.” He walked over to the window and pulled off the brown paper that covered it from the inside. Written backwards in the same gold paint as the sign on his window was “Juliana’s Salon.”

  Tears streamed down her face as she struggled to absorb it all.

  He put his arms around her. “If you had any doubt that I knew you’d eventually find your way back to me, I hope you don’t anymore.”

  “After what I did to you.” She shook her head with disbelief. “After what I did, that you could still love me this much astounds me.”

  “I love you this much and so much more. I have since I first looked over and found you sitting next to me in the airport, and I always will.” With his hands on her face and his thumbs skimming her jaw, he finally kissed her the way she had dreamed about during the long year without him.