Bad Girl Blues

by Brenda Barrett

  "Here it is!" Hazel took up her handbag and drew out four pictures before Brigid and Caitlin started their familiar bickering. "I hired a private investigator to get me pictures of my darling son."

  She passed around the pictures. "So apparently the Deckers had him living with their son Curtis in the States and he is now out for the holiday."

  "He looks familiar," Brigid mused, staring at the curly-haired little boy. He was in a little formal suit.

  Caitlin looked down at her picture. "He has a little bit of Hazel in him. Look at those big brown eyes, though; they are so pretty. He is going to grow up to be a looker."

  "Thank you," Hazel said proudly. "I might not remember how he was conceived or anything about the six months I was missing from Magnolia House, but I do know I love him."

  "He is gorgeous. I wonder why he is with Curtis, a single man, and not with the older Deckers?" Casey asked.

  "That is what I am going to find out," Hazel said, a steely look in her eyes. "I intend to find that out no later than this summer. But on to even more shocking news. Brigid has been bitten by the love bug and with Nick Benedict. I want to hear more."

  Brigid flushed; just hearing his name was enough for her to get all tingly inside. She handed the picture back to Hazel.

  Hazel shook her head. "No, that's yours. He's your nephew. Keep it."

  Brigid nodded. "I probably shouldn't even have told you guys about Nick. That scenario is going nowhere."

  "Does he like you?" Casey asked.

  "Yes he does, but he said it can't work because of Thomas and he said he wouldn't even consider dating an escort or a gold-digger. Believe it or not I qualified as both. We kissed though, and it was the best kiss," Brigid said dreamily, "and here I am sounding like a teeny bopper, getting all hot and bothered over a kiss. He has this way that when he smiles it's like a slow, sensual show."

  Hazel chuckled. "The girl is smitten."

  "And he's so kind and wise and cool. You know, he will make somebody a good husband one day," Brigid said morosely. "But I won't be the one who will be by his side."

  Her sisters looked at her with various levels of sympathy.

  "Well, you could make it right," Casey suggested. "Tell him you weren't really an escort or Thomas' girlfriend or a gold-digger. You are the opposite of gold-digger; you are so fiercely independent and stubborn with it."

  "But then there is the family angle." Brigid dipped her hand in her popcorn bowl and crushed the pieces one by one. "Even if I confess and tell him all, I would be messing up their impeccable family tree."

  "He won't be dating your family," Casey pointed out gently.

  "But imagine Sonia as your in-law." Caitlin shuddered delicately. "Having her as a family member is a real liability."

  "You need to keep your distaste for Sonia in check," Hazel said to Caitlin. "It's not right for us to say bad things about her. She's Brigid's mother and she is trying. Her bad decisions are in the past. You can't tell me that none of the Benedicts have a bad past. What about Patricia's sister? The younger one who nobody talks about?"

  "Helen, that's her name," Brigid said. "Nick told me about her; she has a mysterious mental problem."

  "Oh," Hazel said sympathetically, "I am sorry to hear that."

  "You know what?" Casey said. "I just had a great idea. I am going to pair up the two of you in my wedding. Luca asked Nick to be a groomsman."

  "No!" Brigid protested weakly.

  "Yup!" Casey nodded. "By the way, we need to plan the wedding. I have mere weeks left. I need all of your input."

  "Shhh," Caitlin grabbed the remote and turned up the television. The announcer said smoothly: And on our top ten notorious list at number five is Todd Taylor, self-made millionaire, electronics entrepreneur and wife killer? A few years ago Todd Taylor became notorious for the suspicious circumstances surrounding his wife's death. He has maintained his innocence but who knows what really happened that night?

  "Why are we interested in him?" Brigid glanced as Caitlin sat in the chair looking shell-shocked.

  "Look at his face," Caitlin whispered. "Look at him."

  "What about him?" Hazel asked, exasperated. "He is good looking, so?"

  "So? It's him!" Caitlin hissed. "Him, the guy God has in store for me. That's my dream guy."

  Brigid was the first one to start laughing and then Hazel and Casey joined in.

  Caitlin got up. "He is the guy in my dreams. I can't believe this!"

  "I've painted pictures of him for years!" Caitlin had a wide-eyed scared look on her face.

  Brigid and Casey were laughing so hard they were clutching each other. Hazel was trying to look serious but she lost her composure shortly after that.

  "Where is your sympathy for me?" Caitlin hissed. "He's on a program called Notorious Jamaicans."

  "Sorry." Brigid wiped her eyes. "I have always been cynical about the dream guy theory. I bet you saw him on television years ago and then dreamed him up. I knew it was something like that."

  Caitlin marched to her room for her laptop. "I have to do some research," she declared to them. "I can't believe this; all of my dreams are solid. All of them."

  Brigid straightened up. "I am going to have to do some research myself. I am job hunting this week. I am going to have to put thoughts of med school on the back burner for now."

  Chapter Seventeen

  "To Luca and Casey!" Someone knocked their glass and then everyone took up the chanting, "Kiss, kiss, kiss."

  Casey and Luca kissed and the crowd cheered. Brigid was in the corner of the patio of Luca's spacious townhouse, trying to be inconspicuous. She could see the proceedings through the glass door but she was sitting in the shadows, totally disconnected.

  She was not in the party mood and she couldn't even fake being happy. All of her acting skills had dried up. Besides that, she was avoiding Nick. She had known the exact minute he had walked into the townhouse.

  He was wearing an oatmeal-colored shirt and khaki pants. She knew every step he made and was hyper aware of all of his movements. She was drinking him in like a starving person who hadn't seen food for days. She closed her eyes and counted to ten. She needed to get over Nick Benedict. When she opened her eyes again he was no longer in sight. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  It was a pity that she wasn't in the mood to mix and mingle. Luca's family seemed to be extremely nice. Just like Luca.

  He had greeted her warmly earlier and told her that he needed to talk to her. Brigid didn't have a clue why he would want to talk to her. She thought uncomfortably that maybe Casey had told him about her parentage and he was probably going to ask her not to say a word to any of his family members.

  No, that wouldn't be it. She was almost sure that Casey wouldn't tell him that.

  She needed to let the whole father thing go, but it was weighing on her mind. She had thought that she would have gotten over it by now. It didn't make a difference to her everyday life now that she knew who her father was, but she was finding that it popped up in her mind every so often and it filled her with a feeling of inferiority.

  She couldn't help but think of her genetics class when they examined the effects of interbreeding depression. There were side effects like recessive genetic diseases, reduced fertility and stature—the list in her head kept growing longer by the day. She had thought that it was Sonia's drug use that had caused her to have attention deficit problems in her youth but maybe it was her parentage that was the cause.

  "Darn science," she whispered roughly.

  If she hadn't done genetics then she would be fine now, but as it was she was imagining all the things that could be wrong with her right now.

  "What's wrong with science?" Nick asked softly.

  Brigid's eyes flew open. He was sitting in the chair before her with a smirk on his face.

  "I was thinking about something." Her voice quivered and she willed her pulse to calm down.

  "Something scientific?" Nick asked softly.

  "Yes
, you could say that." Brigid cleared her throat and then looked down at her hands shyly. She clutched them together.

  "So why aren't you out there?" Nick asked. He looked over her, hoping that his expression did not betray how happy he was to see her. She was dressed in a dark blue spaghetti strap dress; her shoulders were bare. Her dark brown skin was almost luminous in the half-light.

  Brigid looked in the hall past Nick, which was an effort. She spotted Caitlin, who was in her element. Brigid could hear her laughing from where she sat. She was talking to Luca's mother and the two of them had their heads together. Hazel was also in the thick of the small crowd, chatting up a storm.

  Casey was firmly under Luca's arms; he hadn't allowed her to stray far from him. She looked so happy. It was almost painful to see all of the love between them.

  "I'm not missed," Brigid said, a forlorn note creeping into her voice. "Sorry." Her voice broke on the sorry. "I am not in the party mood."

  "Why?" Nick leaned closer to her.

  "I can't tell you," Brigid whispered. "It's just a funk. It will pass."

  Nick raised his eyebrows. "Man problems?"

  "Huh?" Brigid asked. She had been looking at him, drinking him in. She barely registered that he had spoken.

  "You are here without Thomas," Nick pointed out. "Are you guys okay?"

  Brigid stood up abruptly. "I need to, er, go and mingle."

  She couldn't tell him that for a brief, misguided time in her life she had been an escort and that Thomas wasn't really her boyfriend.

  She couldn't bear to see the contempt in Nick's eyes when he found out what she had done. She felt too vulnerable tonight.

  "You are not in the party mood. Remember?" Nick stood too.

  "Yes. I ..." Brigid raised a hand to her head. She felt a bit lightheaded and her stomach rumbled at the same time. She hadn't had any of the finger food since arriving at the party. She probably should have but the food station was in the thick of the crowd. "I think I'll just head home, get something to eat. I don't want to be a wet blanket."

  "Did you drive?" Nick asked gruffly. He didn't know why he was still following up with Brigid. It was just that she looked so chronically unhappy and lost. Almost vulnerable. He figured that she and Thomas had a fight or something.

  "No, I came with Caitlin," Brigid said, deflated again. Caitlin was in the middle of a small crowd gesticulating in a lively manner, probably telling her adoring crowd about one of her dreams that God had given her and how it had come through.

  "Come on, I'll drop you home," Nick said.

  Brigid swallowed. "I don't want you to go out of your way for me. I am fine."

  "It's not out of the way," Nick said smoothly. "I just live across the road. I can just go get my vehicle, or you can have some of my food. My mother sent over so much. She probably thinks I am starving myself or something."

  Brigid looked at him and then back at the crowd. She would prefer to spend some time alone with him rather than with the crowd anyway.

  She nodded. "Okay."

  Nick's townhouse was just across the way from Luca's. He opened the door and ushered her into what was an almost identical space to Luca's except that his was painted in mint green.

  And his furniture was different, darker than Luca’s, and he had paintings of flowers on the wall. Gorgeous original oil paintings on canvas.

  "Those are really nice," Brigid said, heading to one of them. It was a picture of a lone red hibiscus with a part of the flower withering.

  It was clever too. It depicted a dying, withering, beautiful thing, which still managed to hold on to its beauty, though that was fading. She read the inscription in the corner of the painting. H. Benedict.

  "Who is H. Benedict?" she asked Nick.

  Nick smiled. "Why did I know you would be attracted to this painting? There's a message, isn't there?"

  "Yes." Brigid nodded. "Even in the face of death there is still beauty in life."

  "Nice," Nick murmured. "H. Benedict is Helen Benedict, my aunt."

  "You mean that aunt?" Brigid asked, widening her eyes. "When you said she had mental problems I thought she just sat and stared into space or something."

  "No, not Aunt Helen." Nick smiled. "Ironically, she does her best paintings when she is off her meds."

  "She did all of these paintings?" Brigid asked, looking around.

  "Yes." Nick nodded. "I rescued them, actually. She sometimes paints masterpieces like these and then decides that they are not up to par and lights them afire or she calls me to come and pick up a piece or two."

  "You don't say." Brigid's eyes widened. "Why?"

  "That's just the way she operates," Nick said. "Want to eat while you tell me about your issues?"

  "Eat, yes. Talk about my issues no," Brigid said, following him to his open plan kitchen.

  There was another painting of a tomato in the kitchen; a part of it was withered. There was also another one with a yellow bell pepper and a part of it was green.

  "She loves the concept of opposites," Brigid said softly. "It's like she was conflicted. Good and Bad. Right and Wrong. Life and Death. Ripe and Unripe."

  "Bravo for figuring that out." Nick pushed a plate in the oven and stood near the counter watching her, a look of puzzlement on his face.

  "What?" Brigid asked self-consciously.

  "You are hard to work out." Nick folded his arms. "You are a puzzle."

  "Me?" Brigid squeaked. "I am not puzzling at all."

  Nick gave her a half smile and changed the subject abruptly. "So have you totally given up on med school?"

  "No," Brigid gasped. She had not expected that question. "I am, er, job hunting."

  "Really?" Nick looked at her, a confused look over his face. "Thomas is allowing this?"

  "I don't care if he will allow me," Brigid said sharply. "He is not the boss of me."

  The oven made a pinging sound and Nick withdrew the plate and carried it over to the circular table in the breakfast nook. "Courtesy of my mom," he said, turning to her. "Come and get it while it's hot."

  He sat across from her while she ate the food in silence. It was good, very good, and Brigid doubted that his mother the university lecturer actually cooked it herself. Maybe they had a whole slew of maids in their mansion.

  "Talk to me," Nick said when she was finished eating. The atmosphere in the kitchen was thick with tension.

  Brigid wiped her lips with a napkin and then decided to shock Nick with her news of her parental situation. Hopefully, he would think this news was a little bit worse than her working as an escort.

  "I found out who my father is."

  Nick nodded. "And how was that for you? You should be ecstatic."

  "Not really." Brigid sighed. "My father was also my mother's father."

  Nick didn't even bat an eyelid. He looked at her with compassion. "They had a royal family thing going on?"

  Brigid giggled. "I doubt that. The women in my family told some lies, had some secrets. Crazy stuff."

  "Come tell me about it," Nick said. He cleared her plate and they went into the living room. They sat together on the settee and Nick turned on his stereo. Roberta Flack's song Oasis came on over the speakers softly.

  "You are a real fan," Brigid observed, looking at him and laughing. She felt curiously comfortable with him. He didn't run for the hills when she told him about her situation, at least. He was just looking at her with a soft look in his eye.

  "So I met my father and then buried him."

  After Brigid finished telling her story, Nick asked quietly, "So you didn't spend all week in St. Ann having a blast with Thomas?"

  "No." Brigid shook her head. "Why'd you think that?"

  "Nothing, just something he said." Nick paused. He looked at the picture of the hibiscus. "You know, you kind of remind me of my aunt Helen."

  "How?" Brigid frowned. "Do I give off a mad vibe?"

  "No," Nick chuckled. "She feels as if she is not worthy because of her mental issue. I am thi
nking having a mental issue is hard enough in any family. With the over-achieving Benedicts it’s somewhat of a problem. So she paints these pictures of things going bad but she leaves a good part to them." Nick looked at her earnestly. "At least she understands that there is both good and bad, especially in a thing of beauty. Look at that hibiscus. It has a withered side, a bad side, but it is still beautiful. Your parentage doesn't make you bad, Brigid. There is no reason to feel sad about it. It's done. And you had nothing to do with any of it. The best that you can do now is to live your life in the best way you can."

  Brigid smiled. "You really think so?"

  "Yes, I do. We have nothing to do with how we got here." Nick looked at her, with her hair in long plaits streaming down her back and her naked red lips parted in awe as if he had said something profound. He took a plait of her hair and tugged it.

  "Want to dance?" he asked when The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face came on. "That's our song."

  Brigid nodded, her eyes cloudy. They moved into each other's arms and moved slowly to the song.

  His cologne surrounded her. Brigid relaxed in his arms and sighed.

  "I have something to tell you," she said softly.

  "Is it about you and Thomas?" Nick asked, looking down into her eyes.

  "Yes." Brigid opened her mouth. "It's..."

  "I don't want to hear," Nick said roughly. "I just want to enjoy this dance. This moment. It may be the only time we ever get to dance with each other."

  Brigid's phone went off. The ringer was shrill. She reluctantly moved out of Nick's arms and answered it. It was Caitlin.

  "Where are you?" Caitlin sounded frantic.

  "Next door," Brigid said ruefully. "Finally somebody missed me."

  Caitlin breathed a sigh of relief. "I was going to take off. I have an assignment tomorrow."

  "Okay," Brigid said. "I'm coming."

  "You can come back with Casey," Caitlin offered. "If you don't want to come home now."

  "No." Brigid looked at Nick, who had his hands in his pockets. He was looking at her with what looked like regret, a faint frown between his eyes, as if he was contemplating something.