Regrets Only

by Nancy Geary

  “He can take the Fifth if he needs to,” she replied.

  “It’ll take more than a curious mother to keep me away,” Archer said, as he rested his hand on Lucy’s thigh and gave her a squeeze.

  “You make a grown girl blush,” Lucy said. “Not that modesty has been one of my particular virtues.”

  “Lucy O’Malley, I’d send you to your room if you weren’t old enough to resist,” her mother said, only partly in jest.

  “I’m named for my father, Rodman. But it seemed so pompous. ‘Famous man’ it means in German. Do you think that’s me?” he asked, smiling at Mrs. O’Malley. “Anyway, I started calling myself Archer. Sort of a pun, or at least I thought so at the time. I was about ten and into bows and arrows, cowboys and Indians stuff. It stuck.”

  “I see.” Mrs. O’Malley looked a bit confused. Name variation within the several-block radius of the O’Malleys’ Somerville network was limited. And nobody was named after someone in the family who was still alive. That honor came with death. “You have an interest in garden ornaments, I hear. How interesting,” she said, obviously struggling to change the subject.

  “It started when I was trying to find furniture for my bar. I wanted small tables—bistro, but sturdier—and I looked at a lot of old wrought-iron stuff, most of which had been used outside. It was beautiful. The patinas, the mosses, the age, each piece was so different that I thought it would make my bar unusual. So I started buying it up. Then I got into stone birdbaths, statuary, and fountains. I’m quite sure I violated the fire code, although I guess I’m not supposed to admit that in this company.”

  “Violating an ordinance is fine. What you’re not supposed to admit is that you like decorating—or shopping for that matter.” Mr. O’Malley laughed. “Now I’m going to have to excuse myself from this scintillating conversation. My wife has declared an end to my cigar smoking indoors. I say something’s got to get you, but to show my gratitude for the exquisite meal she produced, I’ll head outside.” He leaned over and kissed the top of his wife’s head. “If anyone cares to join me . . .”

  Archer rose quickly. “I’d love to. I’ve a couple of Macanudos in my coat. I wasn’t sure I’d have any takers.”

  Mr. O’Malley patted Archer on the back and grinned back at the group as they walked outside. Lucy watched with a mixture of delight and apprehension. How could it be that Archer was this comfortable? “Just relax,” she could imagine Aidan’s voice as if he were sitting beside her. “He’s a hit.”

  9:15 p.m.

  Lucy leaned against the butcher block, waiting with a dishrag. Mrs. O’Malley, wearing yellow rubber gloves, stood at the sink, slathering her platters, bowls, and crystal with soapsuds, scrubbing them vigorously with a bristle brush, and then rinsing them under fresh water before passing them off to her daughter. It was a familiar scene. Despite the pride her parents took in their daughter’s accomplishments on the police force, women still did the dishes in the O’Malley household.

  Lucy didn’t mind. She enjoyed listening to the sound of Archer and her father talking outside on the porch, and smelling the cigar smoke that wafted in through the screen door. Her brother and his family had left, and she welcomed the few minutes alone with her mother.

  “Aidan would’ve liked your gentleman friend,” Mrs. O’Malley remarked, as if reading her mind.

  “Did the police ever question the circumstances surrounding Aidan’s death?”

  She heard a clatter as her mother dropped a handful of flatware she was holding. “What are you talking about?” she asked, burrowing beneath the suds to retrieve the forks, knives, and spoons that still needed washing.

  “Was there ever any doubt about the accident?” Perhaps it was the several glasses of wine and the bit of Baileys she’d drunk, perhaps it was the birth of her nephew, his namesake, perhaps it was her own sorrow that Aidan wasn’t outside with her father and Archer, or, perhaps, it was her recent promotion to the Homicide Unit that spurred her to ask what she’d wondered for years.

  “I don’t know what you mean. Your father looked at the report. Go ask him if you need to be raising skeletons. It could have been written in French for all I remember.”

  “I spend a lot of time thinking about it, about what happened, about what might have happened. It never made sense to me,” Lucy replied. “And I truly wish I understood.”

  “It was a long time ago. May he rest in peace,” her mother said, crossing herself. Water from her gloves left dark spots on her chest and shoulders. “But it would make sense to you if you’d recognize that God has a plan for all of us. We don’t need to understand the particulars of why. It just is.”

  Lucy wasn’t about to challenge her mother’s Catholicism. One of the most vivid and constant images she had was of her mother kneeling before the crucifix mumbling a litany of daily prayers. Mary O’Malley had tried to impart her deeply held faith to all of her children. There had been grace before each meal, prayers at bedtime, adherence to the Love Thy Neighbor commandment, Sunday school where the nuns instructed Lucy on how to make a rosary by stringing Froot Loops cereal on garden twine, monthly confessions to Father MacGregor. Lucy had been allocated penance and given absolution for sins ranging from kissing Rory Pearson on the lips just before he scrambled down the school bus steps, to lying about her schedule to avoid a date with Monty Ernsberger, the fifteen-year-old math genius, who had orange fingertips from his subsistence diet of Cheez Doodles. When she came home to visit, she accompanied her parents to church to maintain family harmony, but the rituals held little meaning.

  “Aidan drove into a parked car. Parked right—”

  “It was a truck. It was an electrical company truck. And it could’ve happened to any of us. That truck had no business being left out on the street. There weren’t any orange cones or flares or anything.” Her voice cracked.

  “But still,” Lucy persisted. “It was after dawn. He would have seen it. The autopsy showed no signs that he was under the influence.”

  “Aidan didn’t do drugs. He was a good boy, a responsible boy. You know that. It had been raining that night. His accident was a tragedy, a horrible, horrible tragedy. But there’s nothing to be gained from revisiting old sorrows. Why don’t you go join your father on the porch?”

  “Wouldn’t you want to know if the truth were something else entirely?”

  Mrs. O’Malley turned to face her daughter. Her lips were trembling. “I don’t know why you’re bringing this up after we’ve had a nice holiday, but I won’t have it. If what you’re suggesting is what I think you’re suggesting, I won’t hear it. No son of mine would do such a thing. Mother of Mary may have had some plans for my boy but a sinner he was not.”

  “Mum, this isn’t about sinning. It’s about Aidan.” She took hold of her mother’s shoulders and held her squarely. “I’m just asking because hardly a day passes without my wondering whether there was something I should have done to help him. I’m looking for an answer.”

  Her mother shook her head and turned back to the sink. “I can’t give you one. And you’d do well to leave your brother’s memory alone and find a bit of peace nonetheless.” As she passed Lucy the flatware, her hand shook. “I want this conversation to end. You’re talking nonsense, gibberish. All your investigating isn’t going to bring your brother back.”

  “I was gone. He was here with you. Did something happen? How did he seem?”

  Mrs. O’Malley turned on the faucet. The sound of running water almost covered her words. “He was just fine is what he was. He had a part-time job at the Market Basket. He was making good money. He went to school. He even bought himself that new racing bike. It’s still out in the garage, hardly ridden once,” she said, as she choked back tears and then coughed to collect her composure. “Now who goes about wasting hard-earned money if there’s no plan to use it? You tell me that. You’re the detective.”

  Lucy dropped her dishrag on the counter, stepped behind her mother, and wrapped her arms around her mother�
�s waist. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you or bring up a painful subject, but I’m not sorry to want to know. And I don’t love him any less for asking,” Lucy whispered in her ear.

  “Sometimes ignorance is bliss, Lucy. You may never want to accept that, but it’s the God-given truth. Some things are simply better off left well enough alone.”

  Lucy hugged her mother again. There was nothing else to say, and she didn’t want to upset her more than she already had. But try as she might, she could never agree with her mother’s philosophy. And it surprised her that in a family of law enforcement officers, she seemed to be the only one willing to revisit her brother’s death.

  10:09 p.m.

  Archer stood on the threshold and pulled Lucy toward him. “If I’m relegated to the guest room, do I still get a kiss?” he asked. His eyes were bloodshot and she could smell cigar on his breath. “Are you at least allowed to sneak down the hall?”

  Lucy didn’t answer. Even at her age, her parents wouldn’t hear of having an unmarried man and woman share a bed. But the O’Malley household wasn’t designed to accommodate overnight guests so Archer would spend the night in Aidan’s former room. Although his high school sports trophies, his collection of baseball cards, and the poster of Elle McPherson had long since been removed, the blue-and-brown-plaid spreads from Filene’s still covered the twin beds. No matter how much Lucy wanted Archer, that she would spend the night in there was out of the question.

  She kissed him, feeling the softness of his lips and the thickness of his tongue. Then she pulled away.

  “I had a wonderful time. Thank you for inviting me here,” Archer said.

  Lucy forced a smile. The conversation she’d had with her mother still consumed her thoughts. She knew it had to be difficult, if not impossible, for a parent to accept that a child was depressed, miserable, unable to function, but the stonewalling had frustrated her for years. She’d even wondered whether her parents had been forced to ignore the problem because of the economic reality, the astronomical, largely uninsured cost of serious mental illness that they couldn’t have begun to afford even on a commissioner’s salary.

  “Why’d you do it?” Archer asked. “Yes”—he nodded in answer to her perplexed look—“your dad and I could hear every word. The walls in this house don’t hide much, and a screen door muffles even less,” he said by way of explanation. “Your father tried to cover it up. I think he was upset for your mother, but all I could do was wonder what had gotten into you.”

  “Am I supposed to be quiet?” Lucy asked. “It was my brother after all.”

  “No. That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I know you miss your brother, and I’m sure holidays are worse than other times. They have been for me. But you’re incredibly lucky. Luckier perhaps than you realize.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Archer steadied himself by holding on to the doorknob. When his spoke, his words were slightly slurred. “I wouldn’t recognize my mother if she walked by me on the street. She never boiled me a vegetable or baked me a pie. She never made an Easter celebration. Hell, she never read a single bedtime story.”

  Lucy reached for his hand and squeezed his fingers.

  “She might as well have been dead for all she was involved in my life, except that she wasn’t, which made it worse. I wondered and fantasized about who she was and why she’d left. I wondered if my father had driven her away or if it was something I’d done. I raised the subject with him again and again over the years, but he never wanted to talk about it. He’d make oblique references to her or to ‘problems.’ That was it. In many ways he seemed as confused as I was. Then she has the gall after all this time to drop off a letter inviting me to lunch. She left it with Sapphire. The very idea that I could sit across the table from her and make conversation now after nearly thirty years of nothing is absurd. But that’s not my point. My relationship with my mother doesn’t matter. None of that matters now. I’m just telling you all this because sometimes I think we tend to take the people we love most for granted. Your mother loves you, and that’s worth a lot. Don’t hurt her.”

  The narrow hallway spun as Lucy listened to what he said.

  “Your mother invited you to lunch after all these years? Why don’t you go? Why don’t you confront her and ask her all the questions you’ve been asking yourself?”

  “It’s too late. And, as I say, that’s not my point. My point to you is to cherish the mother you’ve got. Maybe she can’t take the truth about Aidan. But that doesn’t make her a bad person.”

  Lucy felt a lump in her throat. She knew that much of what Archer said was true. But at the same time, part of the closeness in her family came from candor, from confrontation. No O’Malley was subtle enough for innuendo.

  “You make the choices you want. I respect that. But I’m not like you. I can’t pretend everything’s all right when it’s not.” She leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. “Now go to sleep. Good old Philly awaits us in the morning. If you think my mother is so great, perhaps you should give your own a second chance. You may find that they’re not as different as you think.”

  7

  Monday, April 14th 11:05 a.m.

  As she gazed out at the cobblestone courtyard, Faith Herbert pressed her knuckle into her bottom lip to stop it from trembling. She’d known since the moment Foster’s memorial service had ended that this day was coming. The only question had been how soon. She’d lain in bed listening to Bill’s footsteps as he made his way down the hall to the guest bedroom. She’d spoken to several of her closest friends about trying to find a job, part-time perhaps, at the cashmere shop or the fine stationers in Bryn Mawr. She’d applied for a credit card in her own name and made an appointment with an accountant. Yet despite the preparations and anticipation, as she stared out through the rain-streaked windowpane, she felt completely lost.

  She’d tried to imagine how life would be different without Bill. She’d had plenty of time for reflection as she’d moved through room after room, color-coding and tagging furniture and objects—the bird’s-eye maple chest of drawers in the guest room, the leather umbrella stand in the foyer, the pair of eland antlers in the library—but nothing had prepared her for the sight of the moving van pulling into the driveway shortly after eight that morning. She’d tightened her robe around her waist, sipped her coffee, and shivered as she stared at the blue and white truck boldly marked SAFE PASSAGE. Ironic. It was what she thought she was getting when she married William F. Herbert, Jr., twenty-two years before, but it was the last term in the world she’d use to describe the life she’d had with her soon-to-be ex-husband.

  The horses had been sold already—Jumpstart pulled out of retirement to be a school horse and Fern carted off to a private stable in Devon for a family who employed its own trainer. This house—her home—would go on the market next week. The more-than-competent Realtor had prepared the color brochure, and a flurry of activity was expected with the official listing for the desirable Gladwyne property. Faith could imagine the couples who would wander through, commenting about the number of bathrooms, the built-in closets, the flow of the floor plan, and the need to repaint the barns. They would whisper about the tragedies that had beset the sellers: “They lost a son,” the Realtor might explain to prospective buyers. Or, if she wanted to stress the urgency to sell, she might disclose, “It’s a divorce situation.”

  Faith shuddered. Damn them. Damn him.

  The turn of the lock startled her. The door opened, and Bill stepped into the library. Behind him in the foyer, she could see two leather suitcases. His hair was still wet from the last shower he would ever take in this house, and she couldn’t bear the thought of seeing the steam on the mirror if she checked upstairs. He didn’t need to take another step toward her; just imagining the scent of his sandalwood cologne was painful enough. His cheeks were drawn but he still looked handsome in his pin-striped suit. And although his yellow ti
e was slightly too pale for this time of year—it really was a summer pattern—she said nothing. She had to accept that it was no longer her role to comment or correct.

  He checked his watch, the platinum one she’d given him for their fifteenth anniversary, with the back engraved with the date and both their initials. “I’m heading in to the office so as not to lose the whole day,” he announced.

  That’s it? she thought. Why was it that she could hardly function, that each breath felt labored, while he waltzed off to his legal practice, engaged with his clients, and logged hours worth $400 each? Why did life go on for one person while the other fell apart?

  “The movers are done but for a couple of book boxes. I’ve already tipped them so you don’t have to worry about that,” he continued, seemingly oblivious to the tears that she now felt on her cheeks.

  She turned back to the window and wiped her eyes.

  “Faith.” She heard his voice but couldn’t find the strength to reply. Then she felt the presence of his body behind her, the touch of his hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  What a question! How could he even ask? She hadn’t experienced anything close to normalcy in weeks. There hadn’t been a day in the past hundred that she hadn’t second-guessed everything she’d done, everything that had happened, all that had been destroyed. And now she was supposed to carry on when she had nothing left.

  Still, every fiber in her body cried out to embrace him and never let go, to forget all the hurt and blame that had transpired between them, and to cherish the memories they had, but she couldn’t. Even Avery, their daughter, the one person who might have kept them together, knew of his infidelity.

  The so-called marriage counselor had rationalized Bill’s conduct as Faith nodded in feigned understanding: “Especially in reaction to intense grief, one partner or the other often seeks solace in the arms of a stranger. Your husband needed a temporary distraction without the commitment. It was a way to forget.” But the “stranger” turned out to be nothing of the kind. Rather than a barroom pickup, or the flight attendant on one of his many shuttle hops to Boston, she was an associate at his firm, a magna cum laude graduate of Yale Law School who also happened to have acquired a doctoral degree in molecular biology, a brilliant blond patent attorney nearly fifteen years his junior, who was destined to make partner. And there was nothing temporary about their relationship. They’d been involved for more than a year, months before Foster’s death. Bill had the audacity to bring his wife to the firm retreat while he was sleeping with another woman, one whose room at the Greenbrier had been just down the hall.