Confession Is Murder Read Online Free Page B

didn’t she just push the beds together? Practically all I ever have to do to get Frank’s attention is roll over.”
    She’d never had to do anything special to keep Frankie interested. Did men really like that kind of thing? Maybe now Frank would find himself someone who did that sort of stuff. Maybe he already had. She felt her chest tighten again.
    “What are you doing?”
    Lucille jumped and whirled around. “Connie! We was just—”
    “Give me that.” Connie lunged at Flo and grabbed the box of plastic wrap from her. She tossed it in the trash. “I never want to see that again. It was the most humiliating day of my life.” And she threw herself, crying, onto the bed. But carefully, Lucille noticed, so as not to wrinkle the cover or disturb the pillows.
     
    • • •
     
    “Yo, what’s for dinner?” Bernadette lifted the lid off the pan that was steaming on the stove.
    “The usual, what did you expect? It’s Sunday. Put that down, you’ll burn yourself.” Lucille took the lid from her daughter and replaced it.
    Bernadette rolled her eyes and ticked off on her fingers. “Escarole soup, penne with sauce Bolognese, roast chicken, salad, fruit and nuts and pastries.”
    “Shells. I’m doing stuffed shells today, Miss Smarty Pants.”
    “Is Grandma coming?”
    “Of course.”
    Bernadette rolled her eyes again and slunk out of the room.
    Lucille sighed. If that girl ever offered to help, she swore she’d drop dead from shock right on the spot. “Bernadette?” Lucille called out. No answer.
    She went halfway down the steps to the basement-level rec room and stuck her head in the door. Bernadette and Tony Jr. were sitting on the sofa staring mutely at something on the television.
    “Bernadette.”
    “Yo.”
    “You and Tony go get Grandma Theresa for me, okay?”
    Her mother could still drive, but Lucille didn’t like to let her. Pedestrians jumped back up on the sidewalk, and other drivers pulled way over to the side when they saw her coming. At four foot nine, her mother could barely see over the wheel, making it look like the car was driverless—which, in a manner of speaking, it was. She swerved left in order to turn right, took right turns on two wheels, was known to drive on the wrong side of the road, and had no respect for one-way streets.
    Lucille checked the pots on the stove again and then wrestled three leaves into her dining room table. Normally Frank did it for her. She tried not to think about that as she unfurled the white tablecloth she washed and ironed every Monday night.
    The dining room was cramped with the table extended like that. Funny, but when they moved into the house it had seemed so large. They didn’t have any dining room furniture back then. Bernadette’s playpen had been in there along with all her toys so Lucille could keep an eye on her from the kitchen.
    Flo was always on at her to stop these Sunday dinners. Too much work, she said. They were taking her for granted. But Lucille didn’t have the heart to. This was her family—this is what she lived for. What else was there, after all? She wasn’t young and pretty, or smart and successful, or rich. She didn’t even have the money in her savings account no more, thanks to that no-good husband of hers. Lucille slammed down a wineglass, and the stem broke. She sighed and threw it in the trash.
    “Hey, anybody home?”
    Lucille heard the front door open and stuck her head out of the kitchen. “In here, Flo.”
    “The kitchen, of course.” Flo walked in and dumped her coat and purse on a chair. She had just come from eleven o’clock Mass and was wearing a brown and black leopard-print suit with high-heeled patent leather boots. “If you’d spent less time in the kitchen and more—”
    “More what?”
    “Never mind.”
    “More what, Flo? Tell me.”
    “Nothing. It’s just that Rita says she saw Frank at the Old Glory the other day.” Flo went over to the stove and began to sniff at the simmering pots.