Briar Hill Road

by Holly Jacobs

  “Things have changed. We both have changed.”

  “That’s a cop-out.”

  “Morning.” Brian walked into the room and smiled at Livie, but avoided eye contact with Hayden, as if she’d become invisible.

  For a moment, she was Cootie MacNulty again, sitting on the bus, wishing she was invisible so that no one would pick on her. But those days were long gone, and Hayden MacNulty Conway had grown into someone who not only expected to be seen, but deserved it.

  “Morning, Brian,” she said loudly and clearly, throwing down the gauntlet, daring him to try and sidestep her. She’d spent so many years invisible to her parents, she wouldn’t step back into that role, not for anyone, not even for Brian.

  He looked up and their eyes met and held. He dropped his gaze first, but he’d seen her and acknowledged her. And right now, that was enough.

  But it wouldn’t be enough for long.

  He kissed Livie’s cheek, then walked over to the coffeemaker and poured himself a cup, before sitting opposite Hayden and Livie at the counter.

  He took a sip, then slowly lowered the cup, studying them both. “What’s up?”

  “Livie was just telling me that she knows you’re sleeping in the other bedroom, knows that we’re having a problem—”

  Livie interrupted. “And before the two of you break up and leave me a child of divorce, I want a family vacation. One last trip to remember when I’m trying to divide my holidays between the two of you.”

  “And I was about to tell her that she can’t blackmail us back into our old relationship, since that’s her ultimate goal. Not just a last vacation, but rather us reconciling.” Hayden tried to keep her tone gentle, but she wanted Livie to understand that this wasn’t like when she was young and watched The Parent Trap, planning her parents’ Halloween costumes.

  Coercing them into a trip wouldn’t mend her and Brian.

  Hayden didn’t know if anything could. She knew they were broken, but until she could figure out how it happened, why it happened, she didn’t think any amount of planning would heal what was wrong between them.

  She looked from Brian to Livie. Her daughter’s eyes were filled with tears, her voice hoarse and brimming with emotion. “I don’t want you two to lose what you’ve worked so hard for.” Her voice lowered as she added, “Nana wouldn’t want it. She’d hate it if she thought she’d somehow driven a wedge between the two of you.”

  “Livie, she didn’t …” Hayden started, then not knowing what else to say, how to convince Livie, she turned, where she’d always turned, to Brian.

  He took their daughter’s hand. “Honey, it was us, not Mom and certainly not you.”

  “I don’t believe it, and I’m sure she wouldn’t, either.”

  “That’s not fair,” Hayden said, feeling angry, where just minutes before she’d felt guilt. “You can’t just manipulate us both like this. Our relationship, for better or worse, is ours.”

  Livie mirrored Hayden’s anger as she stood, pushing her stool back with enough force to send it toppling. The crash reverberated through the kitchen, and Was a loud prelude to the heat of Livie’s retort. “No, Mom, you’re wrong. Dead wrong. Your relationship with Dad, for better or worse, affects me. It’s not about just the two of you. I’m here, as well.”

  “Livie,” she and Brian said in unison.

  “One last vacation. Just the three of us for a week. I’m not looking for miracles, I’m looking for one last memory, one last time it’s the three of us. That’s not too much to ask, is it? Next year I’ll be getting ready to go away to college, so this is really our last chance.”

  Brian shook his head. “Livie, you know we’d do anything for you, but—”

  “There’s no buts in this. None at all.” She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a well-worn piece of paper. She slapped it on the counter. “I’ve carried this around for a week and a half, waiting for the right time to show it to you both. I’ve already paid for the cottage. There’s no refund. I’m going in two weeks and I’ll be gone for a week. You’re both welcome to join me, or not.”

  Hayden picked it up, studying the reservation receipt. It was the cottage Kathleen had rented from time to time. “How did you …” She left the question hanging as she read the part on the receipt that said paid in full, non-refundable.

  “Mom, you’re right. My college is all paid for, I didn’t need to work this much this summer. But I called Mr. Durkie and he let me make payments on the cottage while he held my reservation. He sent me that last week. I’ve paid off the entire thing. If we don’t go, then all my work this summer will be for nothing.”

  “We can pay you back the money,” Brian said.

  Hayden hadn’t bothered to offer. She knew her daughter. She knew the stubborn look that was on Livie’s face.

  Olivia Kathleen-Rose Conway was a force to be reckoned with when she had that look on her face. She turned to her father and said, with far more maturity than a seventeen-year-old should possess. “I wouldn’t take your money. You’ll either come and accept my gift, or you won’t.”

  She picked up the stool, set it back in place and with a deceptively soft voice said, “You both decide. But I’m going. And I’d really like my parents to come with me. One last week, just the three of us. It’s not that much to ask, is it?”

  She walked out of the room, and Hayden found herself sitting opposite Brian, who was once again not looking at her.

  “So now what?”

  Brian stared at his coffee, sighed and looked up. “How do you want to handle it?”

  “I’m going.”

  “Can you get the time off from work? I know you took a lot of time off when Mom …” He let the sentence just hang there.

  “When your mom was sick. Yes. But everyone at the hospital knew her. They understand how hard this has been. They’ll give me a week off. Unpaid, of course, but we’ll handle it.”

  He nodded, back to staring at the coffee.

  “Can you get the time off?” she countered.

  “Probably. But—”

  “Bri, no matter how rocky our relationship is, we’ve never stopped putting Livie first. And Livie obviously needs this. She’s worked all summer to do this.”

  She slid the receipt across the counter.

  “Look. It’s not just any cottage. It’s the cottage. Our cottage.”

  He studied the receipt. “Shit.”

  “Can you say no? I can’t.”

  He sighed again, then nodded. “I’ll make it work somehow.”

  She could sense he felt he was being backed into a corner.

  She reached out and touched his hand. Once, she’d have done so without thinking about it, it would have been so natural. Now she thought about it and did so with a sense of purpose.

  His gaze snapped from the coffee to her.

  “Bri, we were friends for years before we got married. No matter what happens, I don’t want to lose that, lose you. It’s only a week and it matters to our daughter. That’s enough for me. Can it be enough for you?”

  He didn’t answer, just pointed out, “It seems like forever since we spent time together.”

  “Well, I remember it took us about eight hours to get from here to Southampton, so we’ll have all that time in the car to start us off.”

  Southampton, Ontario, sat on the shore of Lake Huron. Kathleen used to have family in the area and had taken Brian there often when he was young, but Hayden had only been there twice. Once when she was in her teens, then a second time when Livie was five.

  It was beautiful up there. She still remembered that first trip.

  1981

  Captain and Tennille’s “Do That to Me One More Time” played its last notes and the radio host started talking again. Brian knew what was coming, but hoped against all hope she’d fallen asleep, or fallen out of the car.

  Or maybe she found the radio host’s patter engrossing enough to forget to ask—

  As if on cue, Hayden piped up. “A
re we there yet?”

  Brian glanced in the rearview mirror. She was sprawled across the seat, looking bored beyond belief. “It’s only been twenty minutes since you asked that the last time.”

  “So, we’re twenty minutes closer … is that close enough?”

  “No. We’ll let you know when we get there, kid. Just be glad we’ve got a radio station again.” For about a hundred miles there had been nothing but static on the radio. Hayden had filled the silence with humming.

  Terrible off-key humming.

  Hayden was many wonderful things, but she was no singer. He’d been thrilled he scanned the static yet again and found the station.

  “Stop bickering, both of you,” Kathleen scolded, laughter in her voice. “I thought that because you’re starting college and high school, you could handle a trip.”

  “A trip, yes,” Hayden said, “an epic journey, no. I mean, this has Homer’s Odyssey written all over it. ‘Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.’ Of course, I wouldn’t mind sacking Troy … it would be more adventurous than this trip.”

  “Show-off,” Brian muttered.

  “Me? You’re the one who’s been all I’m a man, let me drive to Kathleen. As if suddenly, you turn eighteen and we little-womenfolk need your input to accomplish anything, when all along you’re just covering the fact you can’t read a map. ‘See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly.’”

  Brian groaned, which he knew to Hayden was a white flag of defeat. The kid had a memory like nobody’s business. If she read something once, she could quote it forever. And she would, or at least it would feel like forever on this—the car trip that wouldn’t die.

  “We’ll be there in less than an hour now, Hayden,” Kathleen, the voice of patience and reason said. “We used to come up here almost every summer when I was little. My mother was Canadian, and her family lived in Port Elgin. We’d stay at her aunt’s lakeshore cottage, and visit with them. And we’d take day trips. There’s this one store that has a stuffed polar bear—”

  Brian knew that Hayden had heard variations of this story before, ever since his mother had started planning the trip.

  Hayden’s loud exclamation was right on time, interrupting his mother. “That’s so gross.”

  “Maybe it is, if you think about it. But when I was little, we’d go to the store every visit and my mother would tell us stories about Nanook of the North, a polar bear that pretended to be stuffed by day, and did marvelous things at night after the store had closed.”

  Brian glanced over at his mom, who was smiling, lost in her memories.

  “There’s none of your family left at all?” Hayden asked, though she’d asked it before. She seemed to love to hear his mom’s stories of her family. Maybe it was because the poor kid had no family to speak of.

  “No. My mom’s dad died when she was young, and her mother died when I was twelve. There are probably distant relatives, but no one I really know. When Bri was little, we used to come up every year, but it’s been a long time.”

  Brian remembered exactly when they stopped coming. It was after his dad left. There hadn’t been much money after that, and vacations were a luxury they did without.

  “I’m sorry your family’s all gone. I’ll bet they were wonderful.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that wistful expression on Hayden’s face. She loved his mom and spent an increasing amount of time at their place. It wasn’t unusual to come down in the morning and find her on the couch. And it wasn’t surprising. Hayden’s mother spent most nights at the bar, which left Hayden all alone in the ramshackle house down the street.

  Some guys might have minded a kid like her creeping into their families, but Brian knew that his mom would be lonely when he left for school in a few short weeks. Hayden would keep her company. He liked knowing they’d have each other.

  “My family was pretty special,” his mom said with cheer. Then she sat up and pointed out the window, giving a little squeal. “Oh, look there’s the sign. We’re almost there.”

  Brian couldn’t remember ever seeing his mother like this. She pointed out things the entire drive through the small, sleepy town of Southampton. And she was little-kid excited as they finally pulled into the cottage drive.

  The cottage sat on the edge of the beach, no grassy lot around it, just sand.

  They quickly settled in. His mom and Hayden shared one room, he had the other to himself. After they’d unpacked, they all got back in the car and headed into town to the grocery market to stock the kitchen, then they had a quick lunch and went out to explore.

  It was cool here along the lakeshore. Much cooler than it had been in Pittsburgh. The sand was coarse, and the water lapped at its edge.

  That first night, they all stood on the beach, watching as the sun set. His mom had mentioned the sky as it turned orange-pink, outlining the small lighthouse.

  That’s what Brian remembered most about Hayden’s first trip to Southampton. That first sunset on the beach.

  All three of them had sat barefoot in the sand, but with their sweatshirts on to fight the northern chill as they watched as the sun sank down onto the lake. The sky illuminating the lighthouse his mother had told Hayden all about.

  And his mom, reminiscing the whole time, recounting stories of her childhood, of her family.

  He remembered her happiness.

  “You were such a pain on that first trip. Every ten minutes asking if we were there,” Brian said, the force of his memory so strong, he still could remember his teenaged annoyance with Hayden.

  “I was furious with you. I knew every time I asked the question it annoyed you, so I kept it up on purpose.”

  “Why were you furious?” He’d never heard her mention that before.

  “You were going to college. Kathleen organized the trip, and told me she knew you’d get busy, that you’d go away a boy but come back a grown-up. She wanted one last vacation with you while you were still just her son, her boy.”

  “I didn’t know.” His throat felt tight and his eyes felt dry thinking about his mom knowing he was leaving. He remembered being happy she’d have Hayden around, and he remembered being excited about going to school. Had he had any bouts of homesickness? He couldn’t remember.

  “She didn’t want you to know she was dreading letting you go. I hadn’t planned on coming along on that trip, I thought it should be just the two of you. But she said—” Hayden paused and blinked hard, as if trying to hold back tears “—but she said it was a family vacation and that meant I had to come.”

  “So why were you mad?” Brian might have been raised by a single mother, might have grown up with Hayden acting as his shadow, might even be the father of a teenaged girl, but none of that had helped him understand the workings of a female mind.

  “I was furious because I knew she was right, that you were going to leave us. I was mad that I’d finally had a family, and you were splitting it up. I was so pissed. It burned in my gut that entire trip. Kathleen knew it, just like she always knew things. That final night at the cottage, she hugged me and asked if I’d like to consider moving in with her fulltime. She claimed I’d be doing her a favor, that she couldn’t stand the idea of an empty house.”

  Hayden brushed the tears out of her eyes. “I miss her so much, Bri. She was my stability. I could count on her, no matter what. You can’t know what that felt like after so many years of having no one. She gave me a family. I hate to think what would have happened to me if she hadn’t taken me under her wing.”

  “You were and are a survivor. You’d have survived and overcome your family, with or without us.”

  “I’m glad I got to do it with you both. I don’t think I ever thanked you for sharing your mom with me like that.”

  “She loved you …” He wanted to add, I loved you, but didn’t.

  “Bri, I just want to say—”

 
The phone rang, interrupting whatever Hayden had been about to tell him. She answered the call.

  “Hello?”

  Whoever it was, the news wasn’t pleasant. He watched her expression turn dark.

  “Okay, I’ll be right there.”

  “Your mom?” he guessed.

  She nodded. “I have to go.”

  “If Livie comes back, I’ll tell her we’re in.”

  Hayden nodded and left. Brian wished the phone call had been held off a few more minutes, wondering what she’d been about to say.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hayden stood outside the nursing home with a feeling of déjà vu.

  In all the years she’d been coming here, nothing had really changed. From the shrubs planted along the brick exterior, to the flowers they planted each spring and summer, to the benches and picnic tables in the yard.

  Her mother’s condition had meant she’d been there for years. Jeri MacNulty had wasted away, bit by bit, year by year. Dying by increments. She used to come out to the small courtyard by the entrance when she’d been in an independent-living section. But as her dementia worsened, she’d been moved to the long-term-care unit and the only time she left the building was if Hayden took her out.

  Knowing she couldn’t put off the inevitable, Hayden walked into the lobby area. When she’d first begun coming to the home, she’d been impressed with the cheerfulness of both the decor and the staff.

  Year after long year, she’d walked through the perky lobby, to the elevator, up three floors to the nursing unit. Here, the appearance was more hospital-like. Carpet gave way to tile, the reception desk into nursing stations. But the walls were a cheery rose color, and the staff was as nice and likeable as the rest of the home’s employees.

  And her mother still had the same bitterness, the same anger as she’d always had, but now it was marked by more confusion. The doctors diagnosed her with multi-infarct dementia brought on by blood clots on the brain. It was a disease that predominantly struck people older than her mother, but being outside the norm didn’t soften the blow. Piece by piece her mother lost memories and time became blurred. Aphasia had wreaked havoc on her speech.