by Liz Flaherty
“Dad and I went every year. He made me,” she murmured. She straightened and faced Boone, leaning on the hoe. “He’d sit on a bench and talk to Mom and I’d run around looking at all the names on the markers. There was an Isobel Dolan who was buried three rows away, and I used to put flowers on her grave. I just knew she was a long-lost grandmother.” She smiled sheepishly and handed him the hoe to put away. “My grandparents are all buried in Ireland and I never knew any of them, but that didn’t stop me from daydreaming.” She nodded. “I’d like to go.”
The Jeep was full of flowers. Some were silk arrangements, some real, their aroma sweet in the warm air. “You just want me along to help distribute all this,” she accused, climbing into the passenger seat and accepting a bouquet of yellow roses from him.
Boone started the Jeep. “You got that right. Aunt Gert and Kelly will go to the cemetery today—it’s one way we’re all very traditional, I guess—but I always get to be the flower boy.”
“These are gorgeous,” she said, sniffing the flowers in her lap.
“They were her favorite.”
Oh. “Her” must have been his wife. Lucy was surprised by the surge of jealousy she felt.
Now, that was a new and attractive development, being jealous of a dead woman. It wasn’t as though she and Boone were going to have a real relationship, for heaven’s sake. He’d be going back to Chicago at summer’s end and Lucy would be staying here, too busy trying to build a life for herself to worry about including a terrible driver still in love with his wife within its boundaries.
No matter how good a kisser he was. No matter how good and warm and safe she felt in his arms. No matter how easy he was to talk to.
Nope, no matter at all.
So why did her eyes feel teary and her throat scratchy? It must be the flowers. She’d never had allergies before, but it wasn’t too late to start. She sniffed.
“Oops, allergies?” He reached for the roses, causing the car to veer alarmingly. “Sorry. Let me put them in the back somewhere.”
“No, that’s okay.” She held onto them—and to the upper edge of the door so that she’d have just the slightest chance of leaping to safety before he drove into a tree. Of course, chances were better she wouldn’t be able to get her seatbelt unfastened and she’d be stuck in the Jeep with a bouquet of roses and a maple tree branch in her lap. “They might get damaged back there. I’m not allergic.” She sniffed again. “Just a tickle.”
At the small, shady cemetery, Lucy distributed arrangements where he directed, taking time to get them straight. “I always just toss them on there,” he said.
“I’ll bet you do,” she said wryly, placing a spray of carnations on top of Michael Taylor’s monument and a smaller one on the little marker next to it. “Susan Ellen Taylor. Gert lost a child?” she asked, taken aback. “She’s never mentioned it.”
“It’s been a long time,” he said. “She and Uncle Mike never expected to have children at all, then she found herself pregnant. I don’t know how old she was, but I think her age may have been problematic. The baby lived a few months, but she was never healthy. I’m not sure what all was wrong. I can just barely remember my mom holding Aunt Gert while she cried. Later, Mom and Dad stood, real quiet, with their arms around each other, watching Kelly and me. It was the first time I had a clue how much kids mean to their parents.”
Lucy nodded. “Dad said he and Mom were confused by it. They’d always been everything to each other, then all of a sudden there was this little intruder who became everything to both of them.” Tears smarted in her eyes, and she blinked them back. “We were lucky, weren’t we, having the parents we did?”
“I think we were, even though it didn’t last nearly long enough for either of us.” He knelt at his parents’ graves. “Once we got past the worst of it, we were glad they’d died together. They were like your folks. They meant that much to each other. Took years to get to that point, though. I think Kelly and I both stayed mad about it till we were grown up.” He shook his head. “For that matter, Kelly might still be mad about it. I don’t know how to tell the difference with her.”
A wind chime hung from a shepherd’s hook on the next grave they came to. “Maggie Brennan, beloved wife and daughter,” Lucy read to herself. “I’ll wait in the car,” she offered quickly, turning to leave, even though she wanted to straighten the flowers he’d stuffed into the vase on the base of the granite marker.
“No, that’s okay.” He stood silent, smiling a little, and she knew he’d gone somewhere alone. It didn’t matter if she was there or not.
She straightened the yellow roses, rearranging the Queen Anne’s Lace that was with them so it wasn’t all in a clump. For the first time, she noticed the white sweetheart roses on the other end of the marker. She didn’t remember having seen them in the car. She fluffed them anyway, stealing a few pieces of ferny greenery from the other container to make the little spray fuller.
Boone cleared his throat. “That was the second time I had a clue about what kids mean to their parents,” he said quietly. “She was pregnant when she died. We’d just found out and—Jesus, we were happy. I was surprised two people could be that happy. As far as Maggie and I were concerned, it was the second perfect conception. Not immaculate, just perfect. I hadn’t really had time to get used to having a baby, but that additional loss made it all so much worse.”
Lucy’s tears welled again. The cemetery was peaceful and pretty with its mature trees and neat hedges. The area was bright with Memorial Day flowers and the sun shone steadily, but she was still overwhelmed by the loss represented by the crosses and granite stones.
“How do you get over it?” she asked. “It was hard losing my mom so young, and I’m still like a boat without a rudder without my dad. Losing Maggie and the baby—I don’t know how you survived.”
His smile was crooked. “Sometimes, I’m not sure I did. But if you go through the motions long enough, pretty soon you start living again. When I was a kid, though, I don’t know how long it was before I stopped expecting to see my folks in the bleachers at ball games.”
Lucy nodded. She understood that. “I still think I see Dad sometimes. Still listen for him when I wake up in the night. It’s odd, too, because I don’t really wish him back. The Johnny Dolan I knew would have hated the life Alzheimer’s forced on him.” She saw the path of pain on Boone’s face. “But you went through worse.”
“Remember that movie, Pleasantville, where they lived in a black and white world and only saw little patches of color at first?” He ran a hand lightly over the top of Maggie’s headstone. “That was the way I felt after losing her.”
“Is it better now?” she asked.
As they walked toward the Jeep, he reached for her hand. “A lot better.”
She smiled. She liked to hear his voice. It sounded the way sunlight felt. “You’re all about color,” he said. “Your hair’s the shade of Aunt Gert’s butterscotch pie. You’re always sunburned somewhere. You wear bright clothes. You even laugh in color, somehow. It’s like reading the Sunday paper funnies after three years of the weekday black and whites.” He dived in for a quick, hard kiss that took all the strength from her knees before opening the car door for her. “I draw cartoons for a living. I love color.”
*
Gert came into the kitchen and frowned at the cake Lucy had covered with a particularly lavish amount of cream cheese icing. “Is that a butter pecan cake? Do we have a party tomorrow?”
“No party. I just haven’t made one of these in a long time. I thought it would be a good dessert.” With her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration, Lucy piped loop-de-loops of caramel sauce over the cream cheese icing.
“Would be, except we already have angel food on the menu. Are we becoming a two-cake tearoom?”
“Nah. I just like this kind.” It was her favorite, in fact. Her father had made it for her birthday every year until he died, even after he didn’t know who she was anymore. Last year,
her first birthday after Johnny’s death, she’d ignored the day—there seemed little to celebrate. However, today, this particular Friday when she turned thirty-four, seemed like a fine day to have a good time.
“Anybody up for Trivial Pursuit?” she asked. “The game’s still in the parlor from where some of the high school teachers had a tournament today. I don’t know how they did, but they were laughing really hard and drank all of the beer we bought from that new microbrewery.”
“Count me in. For the beer, too.” Moving slowly with his walker, Sims came into the kitchen. He made his way to the island and sat down, gesturing toward the cake. “What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion.” Lucy put a bottle of beer in front of him. “Want a glass?”
“I don’t need a glass. I’m not a sissy. Speaking of which, where’s that boy at?” Sims grumbled. “Ethan and Jack ran the station yesterday and today both. Ethan’s too old for that and Jack’s too young.”
“Boone went to Chicago for a few days. He flew up on Wednesday,” Gert reminded him, whacking his shoulder as she walked past, “and Ethan Walker’s no older than you. Plus he doesn’t have any broken bones and his head’s not nearly as hard.”
“Nancy says he’s enjoying working in the station,” Lucy said, sitting at the island with the older couple, “and I think Jack needs the money. He never says so, but he works really hard and is willing to do anything.” She sipped her coffee. “Sissy? Did you really call Boone a sissy, Sims?”
“Yup. Always did. Him and Crockett both.” Laughter gleamed from his blue eyes. “Called ’em that because they weren’t.”
“Let’s go get the board set up.” Gert held Sims’s walker. “Just come in when you’re ready, Lucy. Give me your beer, you old grouch. We’ve already mopped the floors once today.”
“Calm yourself, woman, and make sure that bottle’s still full when we get to the parlor.”
They left the room, still grumbling at each other. Lucy smiled after them. She started to cover the dessert, then changed her mind. Today was her birthday, after all—they could eat while Gert trounced Lucy and Sims at Trivial Pursuit. Because there was no doubt that’s how that particular scenario would go. Lucy rinsed her cup and got a miniature bottle of chardonnay out of the wine cooler. Might as well live dangerously.
She wondered if she’d ever grow weary of this house or of the mundaneness of living on Twilight Park Avenue. Would playing board games in the parlor and croquet in the back yard become boring with the passing of time? Would Gert and Sims become simply two old people she’d met instead of residents in the family portion of her heart?
Would she ever again start a day without wanting Boone Brennan to be part of it? She’d missed him since he’d given her a quick one-armed hug on his way out the door Wednesday.
To be real up front and honest about it she missed him pretty much all the time he wasn’t with her. This was not something she was going to admit in a public forum of any kind, including the passenger seat of his Jeep. Or even the driver’s seat, if Boone was smart enough to let her sit in it.
With a chuckle at her own foolishness, she left the kitchen, carrying the cake and her bottle of wine, going through the center hall of the house to the front parlor. The pocket doors were closed and she frowned in concentration. How on earth was she going to open them without dropping everything in the process? She’d have to do more than mop the floor again—she’d have to do the hands and knees scrubbing thing, and that wasn’t going to happen. Not on her birthday.
“Gert?” she called. “Open the door, will you? Do I want to know what you and Sims are doing in there?”
The pocket doors slid open as though by magic, accompanied by a shout of, “Surprise!”
She almost dropped the cake, but Boone caught it, handing it off to Landy Walker before bending Lucy back over his arm and kissing her senseless.
“How did anyone know?” she asked, hugging him hard and turning to face the people stuffed into the parlor like so many laughing sardines.
“That’s pretty easy,” Gert said. “It’s on the partnership papers, then Boone the Intrepid snooped in your wallet just to make sure. The boy has no class at all.”
“Boone the Intrepid?” Micah Walker snorted. “Sounds like another comic strip to me. Maybe we should start our own syndicate. I couldn’t care less if you have any class or not, Boone. Actually, I’m used to you not having any.”
Gert raised her voice. “Now that everyone’s here, let’s take the party outside so that we can actually have room to move.”
The back yard was full of patio tables and chairs. “We cleared the neighborhood of lawn furniture and liquor,” Boone confessed, “so if anyone calls the police—”
Tom Simcox spoke from behind Micah. “It won’t matter, because I’m already here.”
Lucy was busy hugging people. “I still don’t see how you got it all past me.”
“I had to keep grouching at you earlier to keep you away from the kitchen windows,” Sims complained. “It was a stretch for me, I’ll tell you,” he added, provoking laughter from the whole crowd.
She’d never had a birthday party. Johnny always baked her cake, and the restaurant staff sang to her and gave her presents, but then they all went back to work and it became just another day.
“Do you want to play croquet?” eight-year-old Lindsey St. John asked. “Or can you still play? My dad says you’re really, really old now. Almost as old as Mr. Sims.”
“But still not as old as your dad,” Lucy said into the laughter that followed. She hooked an arm around Lindsey’s neck. “Let’s play.”
She lost, as she always did, but won at horseshoes. She danced, stood in a circle with other women and drank wine and talked about men, then danced some more. When she jitterbugged with Tom Simcox, they cleared the “dance floor,” at least until Crockett swung past them with Gert on his arm.
She blew out what seemed like hundreds of candles, cut her cake, and opened more gifts than she’d had if you added all thirty-three of her other birthdays together. She sang karaoke and was booed off the makeshift stage. She laughed all night—the kind of laughter that made her hold her stomach and wipe her eyes, the kind she made into a memory to save for later.
People began to drift away at ten-thirty or so, and by midnight, the back yard was empty. Gert and Sims had hugged Lucy and gone to bed. Boone went in a few minutes later to see if Sims needed anything, leaving Lucy alone in the yard.
She sat at a lacy wrought-iron table that usually lived on the front porch, sipping coffee and playing with the bangles on her arm. They’d been a gift from Eli and Jessie St. John, which Lindsey assured Lucy she’d be glad to wear if Lucy didn’t like them. She had on a musical-sounding charm bracelet too, which had been sent by Andy, the chef at Dolan’s, and two of the waitresses who’d gone to work at the same place he had after the fire. A necklace which should have been gaudy but wasn’t fit the curves of her neck, its pendant resting just below her collarbone.
“You never wear jewelry except for your earrings,” Landy said when Lucy opened it, “and everyone needs a little artificial light sometimes.”
Lucy fingered the peridots in her ears. They’d been her mother’s, and she never took them out—it was a way of not letting go of Siobhan Dolan.
Boone came into the yard, reaching back inside the sunroom to turn off the outside lights so the only ones remaining were solar ones in the flower beds and a citronella candle that burned on the table where Lucy sat. “Happy birthday, Lucy.”
“Thank you.” She smiled. “I’m glad to see you, by the way. It was quiet around here while you were gone.”
He pulled her up and into a loose embrace. “I missed you,” he said.
She curved her arms around his neck, relishing his touch. She wanted him to kiss her in the worst way. “I’ve been happy at times in my life,” she said. “Especially before my mother died and then for a long time before Dad got sick, but never more so than tonight.”
“That’s good.” His lips hovered over hers. “So, what do you want to do now?”
“I’m tired,” she murmured, rising—just a little—on her tiptoes so he could reach her mouth more easily. This wasn’t a night for playing hard to get. “It’s been a long day.”
“Has it now?” He held her closer with one arm and lifted his other hand to shape her face, his thumb rubbing lightly over her bottom lip. “I love your mouth.” His face was so close to hers she felt his breath on her cheek.
“Same goes,” she said, and closed the distance.
Growing up in a restaurant kitchen, Lucy was well acquainted with “sizzle.” However, kissing Boone Brennan in the back yard gave the word a whole new connotation. His hands slipped down her sides as they kissed, doing a little foray over her breasts that had her nipples pebbling up against the fabric of her bra. He held her hips, fitting her to him so she knew she wasn’t the only who was being aroused.
His voice was uneven when he spoke against her mouth. “What would you say,” he said, “if I invited you upstairs?”
It was as though her entire body was reaching for his. “I watch lots of old movies.” Her voice hitched as his hands moved over her. “I’d probably say, ‘Your room or mine?’”
“Yours,” he answered immediately, and stepped away to snuff the candle on the table. “It’s closer.”
They were quiet going up, using the front staircase because it didn’t have as many creaky spots as the worn treads on the steps from the kitchen. Lucy’s room was in the back, with its own miniature sitting room, balcony and bathroom. The suite was a mirror image of Kelly’s on the other side of the stairs.
Lucy was glad she’d remembered to make her bed that morning, although that didn’t do much to calm her nerves. “It’s been almost an embarrassingly long time. I don’t know…” Her voice faded away as whatever it was she didn’t know lost importance in the overall picture of things.