Now… Yes, she thought she could claim that now. But could Kiernan?
She straightened her back.
“You’re right.” She was glad her voice came even, matter-of-fact.
“Am I? That’s pleasant to hear. I’m not surprised, mind you. Though I’ve no idea what slice of my vast rightness you’ve spotted.”
“We’ll never get enough hubcaps clean to make a tree out of.”
“I never said—”
She cut him off with a shake of her head. “You didn’t need to. You’re not that hard to read, you know.” Her start on a smile ended abruptly, remembering how easy he’d been to read that night in July, especially at the end. She returned the conversation firmly to hubcaps. “At first I envisioned a triangle of shiny hubcaps from ceiling to floor as our two-dimensional tree. As we’ve worked on this one, I kept shrinking that vision and shrinking it, but now I have to admit that we couldn’t even get six clean enough to do three—”
She drew her hand across the air.
“—two—”
A shorter air-drawn line above the first.
“—one.”
A single dab at the top.
“You’ll think of something else.”
She renewed scrubbing, but with less vigor. They were close enough that they could at least finish this one.
Unexpectedly, he turned to her. “Why did you ask earlier if the story about your name bothered me?”
“Oh. Uh…”
“Your ex.”
She exhaled. “Yeah. My ex didn’t like my name. No. That’s not right. He liked it fine until he knew how I got it. Then he was horrified. He’d thought it was a family name. Something polished with generations of poshness. A pair of poor grad students mistiming a trip to pick up a badly needed paycheck for manual labor didn’t gibe with the image he wanted to project.”
“Horrified, was he? Eejit.”
“Eejit?”
“It’s Irish for idiot.
“I like it.” She grinned. The first time she had in association with a memory of Nigel. “And not to worry. The night he broke up with me — at his company party — I told as many of his bosses and colleagues the story as I could before I left — head held high.”
“As it should be.”
She felt her grin stiffen. “It was after that I fell apart. How could I be so wrong about someone?”
“People hide themselves. Some do. Those who want something.”
Slowly, she nodded. “He wanted a woman with the right kind of name as part of the right image to reflect the right light on his image.”
“Talk about an amadán.”
“A what?”
“It’s an Irish word.”
“It doesn’t sound complimentary.”
“It’s not. Or he’d have wanted you, not a poor shadow he made up.”
She skidded away from that. “My romantic history is no state secret, but how did you guess my ex had a role… Val?”
“No. She’d not trust me with your secrets. It was Matty. Not knowing she was spilling, I suspect.”
“Doesn’t matter. But why do you say Val wouldn’t trust you with secrets.”
He flicked her a look.
He’d noticed her changing the words from her secrets to the more general and oh, so much less personal secrets.
He rubbed hard, head down. “Val’s known me a good, long while and with that comes my history of romances. Short stories for the most part.”
“With you writing The End,” she speculated.
Accurate speculation, he confirmed. “With me writing The End.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t find the right girl. Woman.”
“But lots of wrong ones?”
“Not wrong ones. Nice ones. Lovely ones, but not the one for me.”
“Why the grimace?”
She thought he wouldn’t answer.
He thought he wouldn’t answer — she could see that when he spoke, “Because when I thought I’d found the one for me, I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Felicity?”
So they had told her at least that much at the Slash-C. “Felicity’s the name she told me. Changed the last name from the one Jack would have known.”
When I asked who you are, I wasn’t by way of asking your name. I put those pieces together. I was asking what kind of person would think to do such a thing as this…
“She came after me because of my connection to Jack. She used me to get to him. Nearly disrupted his and Val’s wedding — no, did disrupt it, though she’d been going for destruction.”
Every day. Every touch. Every moment together. Using him.
“Why? Why in the world would anyone try to hurt Jack and Val that way?”
He’d told Eric without much thought. Why not tell her?
But even as he used nearly the same straightforward words as he had with Eric, he kept hearing other words.
Words in the voice of the woman he’d thought he’d marry. Blaming Jack, despite the proof that another man had killed her sister and more young women.
It didn’t change the years that had gone before. They were still there. … Knowing he got away with murder. And paid for nothing. For killing her. For ruining our family. For taking it all away. He did that. He did it all. … All except killing Hayley. The rest he did. We took him in to our family and loved him and he’d done that. So we closed off. No more taking anyone in. No loving anyone.
No loving anyone…
Was that what he was—?
“Have you seen her since then?”
Bexley’s question broke him away from a dangerous thought.
“No.” What he meant was no way in hell.
“Sounds like she really cared for you. Was—”
“Cared for me, is it? She—”
“—conflicted about what she did.”
“—used me to try to get to Jack, to try to hurt people I care about. It was none of her doing that they were strong enough to get past it.”
He kept scrubbing, but felt her watching him as she left an extra beat pass before saying, “Sounds like you’re not over her. It’s been — what? — a year and a half since Jack and Val’s wedding. That’s a long time. People can change. … Maybe you need to see her again, see if the two of you can get past what happened. Unless you’re afraid—”
“Not afraid. Not interested. Wouldn’t trust her to give me change for a penny.”
“Trust is a choice. You decide to—”
“Is that what you did? A year-and-a-half for you, too, isn’t it?”
A harsh reminder. But she responded calmly. “I didn’t only trust him, I built my life, my business, my identity on who I was to him. Not on me, but what of me was reflected through him.” She shook her head. “Can’t believe I did that. Not doing it anymore. I know I’ll be okay, no matter what. After this sum—”
She stopped abruptly.
After this summer…
They both knew it wasn’t the season she meant. It was a night.
The end of a night.
She raised her chin. “But, yes, I have decided to trust. I’ve decided I have to. I can’t go through life not trusting because someone pulled the rug out from under me.”
As he had? That was how she saw that night, that was the movie in her head as Cahill said, that was why she ran? While he’d been so caught up in his own movie…
I know I’ll be okay, no matter what.
Even a night that ended as theirs had.
He took after a spot and cleared it better than anywhere else.
After a couple more minutes, Bexley said, “Maybe…”
She stopped scrubbing, her eyes going unfocused and vague.
He waited to see if she’d add anything. Nope.
A smart man would let it lie.
He nudged, “Maybe, what?”
She didn’t answer. Likely she didn’t hear.
She dropped the cloth
into the sink and walked out.
Kiernan looked at the cloth, turned to watch her departing back, then looked back to the wire brush in his hand, and the hubcap.
This close, might as well finish it.
He kept his focus on the hubcap, closing off all thoughts about his family, his past, his mistakes. Bexley.
Just focus on the hubcap. Transform it from filth to shine. This one hubcap. Couldn’t do all of them for her — for them. The kids. Not enough time.
Time…
The timing was off for him and Bexley. Way off.
If they’d met before he’d fallen for a woman who — far worse than betraying him — had used him to hurt others, would he and Bexley…?
Maybe…
He scrubbed harder.
Maybe not.
Before Felicity, he’d sidestepped attachments. Mostly he’d dated women with sharp edges. That avoided many temptations. The others… He’d cut off the dating soon.
Would he have appreciated Bexley’s warmth then? Or…?
He put enough muscle into the scrubbing that he loosened a patch he’d previously given up on.
Before his thoughts could take him down that path again, she came into the bathroom with the glow of a goddess carrying the standard of victory. Except what she held aloft was a can. Like bug aerosol cleaner or—
“The spray paint,” she exulted. “Green spray paint. We’ll spray paint a tree of hubcaps. And if some of the grime shows through, it will look like branches.”
*
Gramps moaned, he griped, he declared they were defacing his property.
But he didn’t come right out and say they couldn’t spray paint a triangle of hubcaps green to resemble a Christmas tree. And he had plenty of opportunity to do that.
Because, first, they let the fire die down some and decided on an area away from the stove to create the tree, which meant moving hubcaps so the tree wouldn’t be missing a chunk out of its far side. Then they broke down two thick boxes and folded them flat to slide into the diagonal gaps between hubcaps to keep the paint where they wanted it and away from where they didn’t.
Bexley insisted on doing the painting. Eric would wield the box on the left side, with Pauline as backup if he needed, and Kiernan was on the right side with Dan as backup.
The three girls and Bobby were sent into the shop. Just in case.
“Supposed to do this in a ventilated space,” Gramps grumbled, showing no sign of leaving his chair, though he’d been invited — several times — to join his younger grandchildren.
Dan laughed, startling the rest of them into swiveling their heads toward him. “If this place were any more ventilated, it’d be outdoors.”
The rest of them chuckled. Gramps humphed.
Bexley drew in a deep breath.
“Okay, here we go.”
*
Green paint on the cardboard proved the wisdom of using it. A slice of green on Kiernan’s arm did little harm, since he and Eric had taken off their shirts to reveal short-sleeved t-shirts, and it would come off his skin.
The question of whether Kiernan in a t-shirt contributed to the mishap, Bexley eventually pushed to the back of her mind.
Bexley’s fingers were well greened. She expected that would come off eventually, too.
But she regarded the finished product without joy. A fact she feared was clear to all of them.
“Good job,” Eric said. “The perfect shape for a Christmas tree.”
“You did an excellent job,” Pauline said.
Dan ducked his head. “Looks good.”
“Can we come in now?” Molly asked from the doorway between the store and the bar room.
“Come ahead. But don’t touch it. It’s still wet.”
“It smells in here.”
Lizzie stopped halfway across the room. “It’s a tree. We have a Christmas tree.”
“T’ee?” Bobby repeated, looking around.
“What’s bothering you, Bexley?” Kiernan asked.
Before she could answer, Gramps from his chair called, “That’s as bad as I thought it’d be. Can’t hardly see it from here.”
Hands on hips, she said, “That’s what’s bothering me. It’s barely visible unless you’re right on top of it.”
Kiernan didn’t dispute that.
Had she hoped he would? Her spirits dipped lower.
Kiernan, though, still stared at the wall. Then he gave a quick nod. He strode back to the wall, reached out, and took down one of the non-painted hubcaps next to the right edge of the “tree.”
“Yeah.” Eric began removing unpainted hubcaps from the left side of the tree.
With Dan assisting, they took down all the unpainted hubcaps, starting to stack them by the bar.
“Wait,” Bexley said. “Let’s put them by the stools. They’ll make a lot of noise if Bobby gets too close to it.”
“That helps. That definitely helps. Thank you all.”
Was she thinking more of the Bobby barricade than the tree?
The wall was still dark with spots of less dark where the hubcaps had been, but even that amount of difference in color, aided by the difference in texture created more contrast.
“And the garlands,” Bexley said.
The girls ran to the boxes behind the bar and carried the garlands to her in triumph.
The rest of them watched her zig-zag the garlands atop the tree, twisting, bending, fluffing them back to life.
She stepped back and looked at it critically.
“Wait,” Kiernan said, “not done yet.”
He went into the women’s room and returned with the one cleaned hubcap. He took down the top green-painted hubcap of the “tree” and replaced it with the almost-shiny clean one.
“Oh,” came from Lizzie, possibly Molly, too.
“Adds shine,” Eric said.
Kiernan looked at Bexley.
She smiled.
“That’s great. But it still needs one more thing.”
He groaned humorously. “Of course it does.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
She was right — naturally.
While everyone watched, she took red ribbon from two boxes of candy that must have been in the store cooler for a decade, waiting for some customer to desperately need apology candy. It would require desperation to buy this candy.
Bexley connected, then wound the ribbons through the pattern of openings near the hubcap rim and added an impressive bow.
“It should be a star at the top of a tree, but a wreath as a tree-topper suits our tree.”
She handed it to Kiernan to put up. For a moment, their fingers and their gazes snagged.
She stepped back.
For another beat he remained still and solitary.
A quick breath, then he turned and placed the embellished hubcap at the top of the tree.
“Perfect,” Pauline proclaimed.
Bexley clearly didn’t think the tree rose to the level of perfect, but she nodded, declaring it done. Did she not realize she’d made something of nothing?
“Okay, let’s get busy decorating our tree!”
*
They ate a simple dinner of soup, cheese, crackers, olives, and pickles. The chocolate chip cookies provided the highlight, supplemented with pudding cups, so they wouldn’t eat all the cookies before Christmas Day.
As they hung the shiny stars — the shiniest being the handful Dan and his sisters collaborated on with thin cardboard covered in aluminum foil — on the tree by wires hooked into various hubcaps, the lights flickered.
Reminded of the storm, everyone stopped, looking up at the wagon wheel light.
“Did your family have a traditional Christmas Eve dinner when your daughters were growing up?” Pauline asked Gramps in a clear attempt to redirect everyone’s attention.
“Naw. Ate whatever.”
Bexley resumed hanging stars and the others followed.
“We had pizza last year. That’s our tradition.”
“It’s not a tradition when you do it once,” Dan scoffed.
“Is so.”
“Is not.”
Paying no attention to her siblings, Lizzie asked, “What does your family eat on Christmas Eve, Kiernan?”
“Oyster stew, salad, and soda bread.”
“What’s oyster stew?” she asked.
Diverted from her dispute with Dan, Molly asked, “Bread made out of soda?”
“One at a time. Oyster stew’s made from oysters, of course. With a white sauce. Not like your beef stew.”
“But what are oysters?”
“Ah, you’ve not had oysters, land-locked as you are. Oysters come from the ocean in a shell. You must be adept with a knife to get them free from that shell, eating them as fresh as possible. Their taste depends greatly on where they come from and the type. It’s a lifetime’s endeavor to sample all the kinds of oysters there are.”
“Is that what you ate when you were our age in Ireland?” Lizzie asked.
“Ah, no. That’s come from my American family. When I was your age, we had a white fish stew. In the old days — long, long before I was born, I’ll have you know before you youngsters start calling me old enough to remember this, they had only potatoes in milk, butter, seasonings. Many didn’t have more than that and what they did have they saved up for Christmas dinner and — of course — the Christmas cake.”
“Christmas cake?” Lizzie repeated.
“How do you make that?” Molly added.
Bexley stirred uneasily at the signs of the girls’ baking fervor snagging on that menu item.
“You start months and months before, making the cake, then wrap it up, taking it out regularly to feed it more whiskey or brandy.”
“Eww.” Their noses wrinkled.
Gramps looked intrigued.
“Not for the youngsters,” Kiernan agreed. “As well as not something to whip up in a minute. Because after all the feeding of whiskey and brandy, there’s another icing goes all around, and that must harden for a time, too.”
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