SIREN'S TEARS (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 3) by Lawrence de Maria

bread basket I would’ve done some serious sopping up. But I draw the line of asking for more bread after the meal is officially over. At least when I’m dining with someone. When I eat alone, I sometime bend the rules. They’re more like guidelines, anyway.
    A waiter began clearing our places. I looked at Alice.
    “Dessert?”
    Alice, bless her heart, never met a canoli she didn’t like. But she fooled me.
    “Do you think I can have an after-dinner drink instead?”
    Two glasses of wine, and now an after-dinner drink. Something was up. I felt a tingle of apprehension.
    The waiter turned to me.
    “Might I suggest the Vecchia Romagna Riserva. It’s the best Italian brandy. Made from trebbiano grapes. We just received two bottles.”
    I ordered two. With espressos. I’d suddenly lost my desire for a pastry. After the drinks came, we both took sips. The brandy was the equal of any I’d had.
    “Alton, there’s something I have to tell you.”
    There was an inflection in her voice and a look on her face that meant bad news. I mentally narrowed down the possibilities to the two that frightened me: illness and another man.
    “Yes,” I said, trying to sound calm, and knowing I didn’t succeed.
    “I’ve been offered a sabbatical in Paris. It’s for six months, starting with the spring semester in February, with the possibility I can stretch it to a year.”
    It wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t another man who in my mind I had already decided to shoot. Hell, a six-month sabbatical? That didn’t sound so bad. Did she say a year?
    “Alice. That’s great. In your field?”
    I hoped I sounded sincere. I was, but that didn’t mean I was ready to do cartwheels.
    Alice had a Masters in Philosophy and taught at Wagner College on Staten Island, where she coached the women’s swim team. I’d met her at the school pool, where I was rehabbing from recent military service after my reserve unit was called up. She had noticed the bullet wounds on me. I had noticed the legs on her.  
    “Yes. At the Sorbonne. It’s a wonderful opportunity. To study philosophy in the city where Sartre, Gueroult, Camus, Gilson and all the other great French philosophers walked is a dream come true. It will count toward my PhD. Bradley is very excited and supportive of me.”
    Spencer Bradley was the president of Wagner College, a black man who fought racism and academic incompetence with equal vigor, and who was generally acknowledged to have made his school a fine institution of learning. He also liked good football and basketball teams, which further endeared him to me.
    “Go for it, kid.”
    Alice’s eyes misted up.
    “Hey,” I said.
    “Oh, Alton. Just when we were …. “
    “Were what?”
    “You know. We have something special. I feel like I’m ruining it.”
    “Honey. You’re going to Paris to pursue your dream. That dream predated me.”
    “You don’t want to try and talk me out of it.”
    Caesar at the Rubicon had an easier decision than the one I was now faced with. Did Alice want me to say I couldn’t live without her? If I didn’t fight to keep her near me, would she assume I didn’t love  her? If I begged her to stay, would she lose respect for me? And how would I react if I asked her not to go, and she went anyway?
    “No. I think you should go. I’d be angry if you let anything, or anyone, stand in your way. That’s not who we are. That’s not what we mean to each other.”
    She must have seen something in my face, or heard something in my voice, because she simply said, “Thank you.”
    “When will you leave?”
    “Early January. I want to get settled in an apartment and feel my way before starting classes, maybe bone up on my French.” She hesitated and I sensed more bad news coming. “But I will be traveling for most of December. I want to visit my folks in California before I go, and see my sisters. I’m afraid I won’t see you over the holidays.”
    “I think I can return the peck of mistletoe I