Free Late Rain by Lynn Kostoff Page A

a news story about the string of fires that had been appearing around and just inside the city limits. So far they had all been quickly contained, but the Fire Marshall had issued a county-wide burn alert due to the unseasonably high temperatures and critically dry spring. The announcer said there was an ongoing investigation as to the origin of the fires.
    Corrine hit the Off button. In the right lane, a man in a dark blue Mercedes convertible pointedly smiled at her. It was seven-thirty.
    Buddy and his pals would just be looking at menus, getting ready to order supper.
    Supper at the Oyster Emporium followed by a private bachelor party in one of the back rooms at Sonny Gramm’s Passion Palace. The groom-to-be, Danny Demiotos; Buddy his best man.
    The bride-to-be, Angie Trankopolous, had not asked Corrine to be part of the wedding party.
    Corrine got the point. Stanley Tedros was a pal of Angie’s father and had tugged on a few strings to make sure Corrine was excluded and to make sure she got the subtext, which was Corrine was not Greek and forever would be on the outside.
    Permanently, if Stanley Tedros had his way.
    The Demiotos-Trankopolous wedding with all its attendant preparations and pre- and post-parties would give Stanley added reinforcements for his assault on Corrine’s place in Buddy’s life and the family.
    Buddy was weak. Stanley as much as Corrine understood that.
    And how to use it.
    Over the last few months, Stanley had intensified his habit of cataloging the number of eligible Greek women that Buddy had overlooked in the Magnolia Beach and surrounding areas— Real women , he’d said, with real beauty . Whenever the opportunity presented itself, Stanley had also launched into a running commentary on any number of local marriages steeped and simmering in long-standing unhappiness or ending like monumental train wrecks, all of which he attributed to the singular folly of a Greek marrying a non-Greek.
    So far, Corrine had been able to hold her own, but it hadn’t been easy. She knew nothing was foolproof. Stanley might yet still find a way back to Phoenix, Arizona. That prospect had begun nightly to infect Corrine’s dreams.
    She wished Stanley would die. That would solve everything.
    But that was a wish that would forever be a wish. A response to Stanley Tedros’ presence in her life that was as puny and ineffectual as her practice of trying to get back at Stanley and his sacrosanct idea of home by buying and changing out furniture that clashed and ruined the atmosphere of the house Stanley had bought Buddy and her in White Pine Manor.
    A puny wish that went no further than itself.
    Stanley Tedros was eighty-five and looked one-hundred but had the blood pressure, sugar, and cholesterol numbers of a man twenty-five years his junior.
    There was a small bottleneck in traffic near the intersection of Danbury and Queensland. Across the street from Corrine a Cinema Fifteen was letting out. Corrine briefly debated pulling in but knew a movie would be nothing more than an avoidance mechanism, a holding action against where she knew she eventually had to go.
    She continued down Queensland toward downtown.
    Dusk disappeared.
    Corrine glanced into the rearview mirror and ran into her mother’s eyes.
    Her hands tightened on the wheel.
    The urge to run, to simply keep driving, overtook her. She would forget Stanley Tedros and Magnolia Beach and just take off. She’d empty her bank account and leave and then offer to divorce Buddy long-distance and no-fault, Stanley only too happy to pay her off, and then like so many other times in her life, Corrine would start over.
    A new name and a clean bankrolled break.
    Except.
    And it was a big except, one which wouldn’t let go of her or, finally, her of it.
    In its center was James Restan and his buy-out offer for rights to Julep.
    All Corrine had to do was shelve her second thoughts and drive east on Queensland to downtown Magnolia Beach and the ATM at the Maritime