by Cathy Kelly
‘He says I have too many books and magazines all over the place and this way, because the new one has more shelves, it will all be tidy.’
The women grinned at each other.
Tom liked an excuse for his work. It would be no good spending hours making something if it wasn’t strictly necessary. Perfectly adequate shelves were often deemed to have some structural flaw to allow him to search out a few nice bits of ash or walnut. Maura’s kitchen cupboard doors were whisked on and off with dizzying regularity because of allegedly dodgy hinges and handles that needed redoing.
Maura, one of life’s serene souls, put her feet up when the sawdust flew, and admired each new piece of furniture.
‘Do you truly like it?’ Tom would ask.
‘It’s beautiful, love,’ Maura would reply. ‘I’m the luckiest woman in the world.’
‘Tea?’ said Maura now.
‘Yes please,’ said Vonnie, though they both knew she wasn’t there for tea really. She was there to cry and say all the things she wanted to say to Ryan but couldn’t, because he was under enough stress already. Like were they mad to think of moving in together when he had a furious not-quite-ex-wife in the background who’d make hell when she found out their plans.
Maura had been like a mother to Vonnie since she’d lived in Bridgeport. She’d never asked why Vonnie had fled Boston a year after Joe died. Never queried if it was wise for her to move away from Joe’s beloved family – or even her own, admittedly distant parents.
‘It’s killing us that she wants to go when she and Shane are all we’ve left of Joe, but she has to find peace somewhere,’ Geraldine had said on the phone from Brookline. ‘She needs to grieve, and if moving to Ireland will help, then she has to do that. They had their best holidays there, she says. Vonnie knows her own mind.’
Her sister had always been the wisest of the family, Maura knew. The whole Reilly clan were reeling from Joe’s tragic car crash, and still they were gathering round Vonnie, taking care of her. In the years since Vonnie had married Joe, she had become like a beloved daughter rather than a daughter-in-law.
Maura knew from phone calls and emails from her sister that Vonnie spent more time with the Reillys than with her own parents.
‘Ah sure, her mother’s a good woman, but she’s a bit too concerned about how things look,’ Geraldine would say, because she rarely said a bad word about anyone. ‘Not the best one for saying the right thing to someone who’s suffering. Not her fault, God love her but she just can’t connect.’
When Joe died, Vonnie’s mother hadn’t been able to help her devastated daughter. Vonnie’s wild grief was outside Violet’s frame of reference. People did die of broken hearts, and the love match between Vonnie and Joe had been so vibrant that it was almost a palpable thing. Upset and frightened, Violet simply hadn’t known what to do.
In the year following Joe’s death, Vonnie and Shane had practically lived in the Reilly house in Brookline, until it had all become too painful and Vonnie had said she needed to get away: ‘To be somewhere we were happy, somewhere different where I don’t expect Joe to walk into the room twenty times a day.’
The whole Reilly family had been to Ireland several times during Joe’s youth, and Maura remembered her handsome nephew’s zest for life, evident even when he was just a child. A photo of Joe and Vonnie taken in this very house on Vonnie’s first trip to Ireland had sat on the mantelpiece for years, but Maura had put it in a drawer when she’d heard Vonnie was coming.
Now, six years later, she wondered how she’d lived without Vonnie and Shane in her life.
‘Tonight Ryan’s going to tell Jennifer that we’re buying a house and are going to move in together.’
Vonnie, settled with tea she didn’t actually want at Maura’s kitchen table, blurted out the thing that was weighing so heavily on her mind. ‘Poppy Lane. I still love the sound of it – it’s like a fairy-tale address. I wish I had a fairy-tale crystal ball to see how Jennifer’s going to react.’
‘I’m not sure you need a crystal ball for that,’ Maura replied.
‘No,’ agreed Vonnie. ‘Probably not. I should be glad the gun laws are a lot stricter here than at home, or she’d be paying a visit to my house tonight with an assault rifle.’
Despite it all, Maura laughed.
‘I think you need police clearance or to be in a gun club or something official-sounding,’ she said.
Vonnie played with the sugar in the bowl. ‘Jennifer would find a way round those pesky rules. Hell hath no fury and all that. Remember what she was like the first time Ryan introduced me to Ruby and Shelby?’
Such had been Jennifer’s rage that she had prevented Ryan from having any contact with his daughters for a month, until her own mother had got involved and persuaded her to let the girls see their dad again.
Until that point, Vonnie had thought the difficult thing was going to be helping Ryan’s daughters adjust to there being another woman in their father’s life. She had not foreseen Jennifer’s volcanic reaction.
‘But it’s life. It happens all over the world every day,’ she had said to Ryan. ‘People split up. Families merge. There’s no point sitting at home and eating yourself up with bitterness about it.’
‘Yeah, well there might not be any point in it, but that’s how some people do things. People like Jennifer, in fact,’ Ryan had said, sounding worn down.
It had taken the threat of legal action to change Jennifer’s mind. But she still hadn’t eased up. Her next move had been to drag the girls into it, which enraged the normally calm Vonnie.
Shelby, then a tender seven, began parroting things to Vonnie like ‘Mum doesn’t like us to have pizzas at weekends because it’s junk food,’ or ‘We have to phone Mum to ask if we can see films because they might not be suitable.’
As if Vonnie didn’t know what sort of movies a seven-year-old could watch.
‘Let’s ask your mom, good plan,’ she’d say brightly. Dealing with cranky customers had made her able to deal with a cranky Jennifer.
Things hadn’t changed, though.
‘She still doesn’t keep that bile away from the kids,’ Vonnie told Maura, finally giving up on the tea. ‘She’s like the CIA, interrogating Ruby about everything that happens when they’re with us. I heard Ruby on the phone to her friend about it. We’d been to see a film, but Ruby told Andi she daren’t tell her mother or “she’ll be furious”. What sort of mother doesn’t want her children to enjoy themselves just because they’re with someone else?’
‘I’d say give Jennifer time, but it’s been two years since you and Ryan met,’ Maura said. ‘Look, love, some people just don’t like to take responsibility. Jennifer appears to be that sort of person: it’s easier to blame Ryan, you and the universe for her problems than to admit that she’s lost in a pity party and needs to get out by herself.’
‘I wish there was a way I could make it all better,’ Vonnie muttered. ‘Ryan’s heart is broken over this, and …’ She didn’t know if she could say this out loud; so far she’d only said it in her mind. ‘Maura, I wonder if we’re crazy to move in together. Or even to have a relationship. Jennifer is so determined to ruin it, and I’d rather walk away now than go through more pain. Please,’ she said, ‘tell me honestly what you think. I can’t do this to Shane, not after losing his father. It might be better to cut and run now.’
Maura reached out and took Vonnie’s hand with its short unpainted nails and long, slender fingers.
Vonnie leaned forward in her seat, eyes closed. She couldn’t bear to feel pain again or to have her beloved Shane hurt.
‘Ryan’s the best thing that’s happened to you in a long time. Jennifer will try to ruin it all, you know that. So don’t let her.’
When Vonnie had gone back to work, Maura texted her sister in Massachusetts.
Vonnie was just here. Afraid crazy ex-wife is going to go ballistic when she hears about Poppy Lane.
It was breakfast time for Geraldine, and she always
replied quickly.
How’s she holding up?
Not bad but said she thought about not moving in …
Can I take out a contract on crazy ex?
Not legal.
Darn. Should I fly over for moral support?
Not yet. Will tell you if you need to.
In the small study nook in Brookline, Geraldine Reilly got on the computer and began looking at flights to Ireland. She missed Vonnie and little Shane so much – not that he was so little these days. On their frequent Skype calls, she’d seen how much he’d grown in the last year. He was the image of his father now. He played hurling, he’d said proudly, and had held up all the medals he’d won with his team.
He was at that vulnerable stage: not quite out of the sweetness of childhood, but growing taller and stronger, and with that deeper voice that had never lost its US accent. Looking at him was like looking at a mini Joe. It still hurt. It always would, Geraldine knew. Nobody lost a son and got over it. Not ever. But the pain changed sonehow. It was always there, but she had learned to live with it, for the sake of the rest of her family – and for Vonnie and Shane.
She had to do that much for her son. Not seeing her beloved grandson all the time was painful, but she wanted what was best for Shane and his mother. Ireland had helped heal Vonnie. That was good enough for Geraldine. When her other grandkids muttered that they wished Shane lived in Boston, Geraldine said that people needed to find their peace in the world and that didn’t always suit other people and they’d better get used to it.
In private and early on after Vonnie’s flight to Bridgeport, Pat sometimes asked Geraldine if they should have tried harder to get her to stay close with Shane.
‘We’re here for them, Pat: on the phone, email, holidays,’ Geraldine had pointed out. ‘We love them and we can’t keep them like birds in a cage. You do have to set something free if you love it.’
‘I thought that was a fridge magnet motto,’ Pat said miserably.
‘Fridge magnets say wise things sometimes,’ Geraldine pointed out. ‘Besides, the poet Rumi put it better: Rise up and go on your strange journey to the ocean of meanings. Or something.’
Joe would never come back; all she could do now was care for his family: that was her gift to him.
Pat had kissed her on the cheek. ‘What a lot you know, my wise woman.’
Vonnie drove away from Maura and Tom’s house inwardly raging over Jennifer and her blinkered view of life. Nobody had handed life to Vonnie on a plate, she thought furiously. It was the same for Shane, who’d had to deal with having his father die when he was just five.
As the therapist she’d seen for a few months had told her: ‘Grief is not something you can put a plaster on. Not even for your son. His father has died and there is no protecting him from the fact that he will not be seeing him again. Painful as it is for you to witness, he must learn to live with that.’
The therapist never used euphemisms like ‘passed away’. No, it was all straightforward and clear in her office. Death, pain, grief, survival and good enough mother were her watchwords.
Joe was dead. Vonnie and Shane were not. They would survive. It would be painful, but they would do it.
‘You’re a good mother, Vonnie, but you must not cocoon Shane so that he never has to feel pain. That will do him no good. It’s better that he learns to deal with this. The same goes for you.’
Vonnie wondered why Jennifer didn’t understand that life could be hard but you just had to learn from it and move on.
Vonnie hadn’t been looking for love when Ryan had turned up two years ago. She’d honestly thought that part of her life was over. Besides, Ryan was almost the complete opposite of Joe.
While Joe had been fit, he was a lawyer, a man at home among giant law books. By contrast, Ryan was an outdoorsy sort of man, son of a market gardener, now with his own cycling and triathlon sports store business and with plans to open another one. But like Joe, honesty shone out of him like a beacon.
He’d told her that he was separated from his wife and had two darling daughters: Ruby, who was then fifteen, and seven-year-old Shelby.
‘What happened to your marriage?’ asked Vonnie, who wanted no grey areas.
It was their second date and she needed the truth before agreeing to a third. She had gone through enough pain without falling for a man who wasn’t what he said he was.
Ryan kept his steady blue eyes on her. ‘I left. I couldn’t stand the rows. It wasn’t that Jennifer was a danger to the girls or anything,’ he added, seeing a flare of anxiety in Vonnie’s eyes. ‘But she’s pyrotechnic when you’re married to her. I did think of having an affair to make her throw me out, because that would have driven Jennifer entirely mad, but that was the coward’s way out. I simply had to leave.’
‘You wanted to be thrown out?’ asked Vonnie, thinking she must be crazy not to get up and leave right then, but something was compelling her to stay. For the first time since she’d met Joe, she’d felt an attraction to a man: she watched Ryan gesticulating as he talked, speaking with his hands as well as with his mouth, the way so many Irish people did.
She’d wondered what those hands would feel like holding her, what she’d feel kissing him. Her sense of sexual attraction, long since dulled, had sparked into life the moment she’d met him. There was a raw physicality to him, like there had been to Joe, even though they were two very different men.
And there was truth in this man – Ryan was no Casanova, she knew it somewhere deep inside herself. There had been no other woman involved in the break-up of his marriage.
Ryan nodded, as if he couldn’t quite trust himself to speak. ‘I love my daughters so much I’d kill for them if I had to, but I couldn’t stay with Jennifer. We should never have married in the first place,’ he admitted. ‘We weren’t in love, not really, not in the let’s-actually-stay-together-for-ever way. She’s funny, Jennifer: she’s got this deadpan sense of humour. Compared to lots of girls, it was easy to fall for that. All our friends were getting married at the time – we actually got engaged at a friend’s wedding, mainly because we’d been together ages and marriage seemed the next step.’
‘That’s sad,’ said Vonnie, head instantly full of memories of Joe and what she’d felt when they’d got married. How could you get something like that wrong?
‘Yes,’ Ryan said. ‘It is sad. I had no idea when I stood in that church what marriage meant. It’s not like dating someone for ages – it’s hard, it takes work. The fun and the humour don’t last when you’ve got a mortgage and a small baby. Neither of us knew how to do that. We argued all the time, but I thought we should stick it out for Ruby. Shelby came along just when the arguments were becoming non-stop. I did think of suggesting counselling, but why sit in a room with someone and try to fix what’s unfixable?’
Vonnie had no answer to that.
‘How are things with you and Jennifer now?’ she asked.
Ryan paused so long, she wasn’t sure he’d heard her. He was perhaps lost in regrets about his marriage, she thought, until he answered.
‘Dreadful,’ he said flatly. ‘As soon as I left, it turned into Armageddon. I tried to get her to come to a mediator to organise the split, but she walked out after one session. She says I’ve ruined her life. She’s going to hate it that I’ve met you.’
Vonnie had felt a flicker of fear run through her.
Ryan made her heart sing in a way she’d thought would never happen again. She hadn’t meant to let him in – she couldn’t take a risk, not with Shane to look after, plus she couldn’t take any more pain – but he’d got in anyway.
‘How can she say you’ve ruined her life?’ she asked. ‘Life isn’t easy for any of us, but we have to try.’
Jennifer’s marriage might have ended in bitterness, but Vonnie had had to identify her darling husband’s dead body in a cold morgue.
‘She can’t blame you for everything,’ she went on. ‘It takes two to make a marriage fail.’
; ‘You tell her that someday,’ said Ryan with a wry grin. ‘Moving on is not Jennifer’s thing.’
He was worrying too much, Vonnie decided. They lived in the twenty-first century, after all: people married, divorced, and life went on.
‘It will work out,’ she’d told Ryan. ‘I know it will.’
As she drove back to the shop, Vonnie prayed that she’d been right. This was a huge leap of faith for her and for Ryan. They’d both been hurt by life; they didn’t want to rush into a short-term relationship and have it all fall apart a few years later.
She so wanted this to be for ever for both of them.
But nothing was for ever, was it? Vonnie’s thumb idly stroked her simple gold wedding band. She still wore it and Ryan had never asked her to give it up.
She knew she had to, but she was waiting until the time was right.
Ruby Morrison settled herself into the corner of the dusty window seat in the attic bedroom of the Wards’ old house and squashed her school coat into a cushion behind her so she could sit comfortably and stare out at the pinprick lights of the town spread out below her. She tried not to think about the insect life that was probably dangling in the old curtains behind her head. She hadn’t turned the lights on as she’d climbed the winding apple-green wooden stairs that led from the second floor to the attic eyrie. But she wasn’t scared. When the Wards had lived here, Ruby had often called round to play with their daughter Lesley, so she knew the house well. Nobody had been to view it for ages, so nobody had seen the broken pane in the French window by which Ruby let herself quietly in.
The Ward family had been gone a year now and still nobody had bought the house.
‘Doesn’t surprise me in the least,’ Ruby’s mother had said. ‘It’s a buyer’s market and people want somewhere tasteful and clean.’
Mum had never liked Ruby playing with Lesley Ward: ‘common’, she used to call her, and Ruby knew it was because Mr Ward had a white van and his wife wore skin-tight jeans and spindly high heels and had hair extensions. There would follow a diatribe on downmarket people ruining the nice reputation of Bridgeport.