Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3)

by Cindy Brandner

“Go ahead,” she said, giving his hand a final squeeze. “I need to find Conor and feed him anyway.”

  Over the last few years she knew Pat and Deirdre had exchanged letters, and so this meeting between mother and son was not quite as fraught as it would have been otherwise. She stood for a minute, watching Pat wend his way through the crowd with his mother. There were similarities, despite Pat’s overwhelming resemblance to his father, Brian.

  Conor, when located, was being paid court to by a circle of women. He absorbed all this attention with the air of a tiny pasha, though upon sighting his mother he started to fuss. She retrieved him and looked about for a quiet spot to change and feed him.

  She saw Sophy beckon to her from the hallway off the crowded parlor.

  “Here, come into my Auntie’s bedroom, love. Ye’ll want a bit of quiet for you an’ the babe, no?”

  Pamela followed Sophy away from the din of the Murphy clan into the quiet of an old fashioned bedroom, thick with late afternoon sunshine and the smell of dusty rose petals.

  “Well, that went about as well as could be expected, I suppose,” Sophy said wryly, laying out a clean blanket on the bed for Pamela to lay Conor down.

  “They knew she might be here but I think it’s still a shock to see her after all these years.”

  Sophy nodded, looking very tired suddenly. “They’re strong men. They’ll manage it, but damn that woman. She never did have much sense of timing.”

  She leaned down, gave Conor a kiss and left the room, shutting the door firmly behind her back. To Pamela’s strained nerves, the quiet was immediate and relieving.

  She laid Conor on the bed and removed his tiny green outfit. He was always happiest in just his t-shirt. Like Casey, he had a small furnace inside that kept him warm at all times.

  “Hello, love. Did you miss Mommy?” she asked, removing his diaper and exposing his dimpled bottom to the air. He cooed in delight, kicking his legs happily and not at all interested in having another diaper, clean and dry notwithstanding, placed on his bottom.

  She gave him a few minutes, spending it stroking his tummy and kissing his face until she could feel the tension that presaged his realization of just how empty said tummy had become.

  She sat with him in a rocking chair in the corner of what had been Lucy Murphy’s bedroom. The windows faced west and the sun flooded the room with rose-gold, lending a gilt edge to the worn bedding and carpet. The room smelled faintly of the dried rose petals that filled a crystal bowl on a tall bureau. On the table beside the bed was a pair of reading spectacles and a picture of a young couple on their wedding day, beaming into the camera. In an era when the fashion had been solemnity in photos, their happiness seemed a living thing. The man was tall and thin with a full head of dark hair, and the woman tiny and fair. Casey and Patrick’s Murphy grandparents, for she could see both these people in the aunts and cousins.

  Conor set to nursing with a hearty appetite, the soft round of his skull edged in the same gilding, setting his dark curls afire. Here, in yet another generation, she saw the echoes of family for Conor, though still tiny, held traces of Casey in his face and what her husband might have looked like as a child. She wondered what a shock seeing the fully-grown man must have been for his mother, yet the woman had come here knowing it was likely her sons would also attend.

  Pamela stroked Conor’s cheek and when his mouth popped open, switched him quickly to the other side. Just then, the door to the bedroom opened and in walked Casey’s mother.

  She started slightly when she saw Pamela sitting in the rocking chair and then smiled tentatively.

  “Oh—I’m sorry. I didn’t realize anyone was in here. I just thought I’d come spend a minute in my mother’s room.”

  “Please stay,” Pamela said, making a quick decision and hoping Casey didn’t kill her for it later. “I don’t mind.” She did wonder where Patrick had gone, and so soon after encountering his mother.

  Deirdre turned back, shutting the door softly behind her.

  Pamela sat Conor facing forward in the manner Casey always used to burp him, his soft chin in the vee of her fingers and her hand braced against his chest.

  Conor perked up, holding his head straight in an effort to examine this new person. The strain left Deirdre’s face and she smiled at him. Conor responded with a gurgle of joy and flailed his plump arms and legs.

  “May I?” Deirdre asked, and though the words were spoken without intonation, Pamela noted that the woman’s hands were trembling slightly. “I’ve found that babies will settle better for a stranger at times than they will for their Mam.”

  “Certainly,” Pamela said, lifting Conor carefully off her lap and handing him into the arms of his grandmother.

  Conor, who possessed his father’s sangfroid when encountering new people, merely gave the woman holding him the eye and set to gumming on the lapel of her suit.

  “He’s a fine-looking wee man,” Deirdre said, gazing down at the dark head, “like his Daddy was.”

  “What was Casey like as a baby?” Pamela asked, unable to resist asking the one person alive who would hold those memories of her husband as a child.

  “Oh, he was a bonny, fine, strapping little lad. The women loved him even when he was a babby, always wanted to hold him an’ fuss over him. He was restless though. Lord, the times I thought that boy would be the death of me through sheer frustration at trying to keep him safe. He wasn’t happy until he was up on his feet and running about, knocking his head into something every other minute. He was only eight months old when he started walking. Stubborn as an ox and had a skull like one too. His father claimed he came by it naturally, the Riordans being hardheaded as the rocks of the field.” She smiled at Pamela over Conor’s fuzzy skull. “I imagine he’s just as hardheaded now, but a good husband to ye still?”

  “I couldn’t ask for a better,” Pamela replied softly.

  “Aye, I thought as much. His Daddy was that way, tender with the women an’ loyal as the day is long.”

  Pamela nodded and busied herself with setting her clothing to rights. She was surprised that Deirdre brought Brian up so casually when it was bound to be an incredibly difficult subject for her.

  “Casey an’ yerself,” Deirdre gave her a quick glance, “ye love one another a great deal? I was watchin’ the two of ye for a minute before the boys saw me, and it seemed to me you had something rare between the two of ye.”

  “We do. We’re very fortunate.”

  “It’s what I hoped for them, that they’d find good women, ones they loved. Patrick wrote me some time after his fiancée was killed. I was terribly sorry to hear of it.”

  “She was his wife,” Pamela said quietly, for to speak of Sylvie was still an exercise in pain, “though only just. She was lovely and she adored him. It was a terrible loss.”

  “And what of you and Casey? It’ll not be simple living in Belfast with his past being what it is.”

  “No—but then what marriage is simple? I love him beyond reason,” she said in complete honesty. “I’d follow him through the gates of hell if that’s where he chose to go. Belfast is his home as he is mine, so there we stay. Though we live a ways away from it now.”

  “But there are times maybe that it’s a bit much, no? To love a man so?”

  “No,” Pamela said quietly. “Though it scares me now and again, I can’t imagine a day without him.”

  “Aye, has he left his old occupation then?”

  “He has,” Pamela said stiffly. The familiar fear was never far from the surface and, like a barely healed cut, it needed little more than a butterfly touch to make it bleed.

  “Mmmphmm,” was Deirdre’s only comment on this statement. “I don’t blame him for being angry but I had hoped he might allow me a word.”

  “They felt forgotten, as though you’d walked away and neve
r looked back. Casey maybe a little more so as he was old enough to remember you.”

  “You’re a mother. Do you believe that it’s possible to forget your children—to not think of them every day?”

  “No,” Pamela admitted. “But still, you can see why they’d feel as they do. It’s not just that you left them, either. They loved their Daddy fiercely and they know the hurt you left behind with him as well. I can’t imagine a woman getting over a man such as the one they tell me about.”

  “Would you?” The woman asked, looking very fragile in the sunset reds that were spilling all through the room now. “If you walked away from Casey tomorrow and never set eyes on him again, would you get over him?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there’s your answer then. Brian wasn’t a man a woman would forget.”

  “The difference is I wouldn’t leave,” Pamela said.

  Deirdre gave her a searching look and then said quietly, “No, I can see that you wouldn’t. I wasn’t that strong, though.” Pamela was startled to see tears glimmer on the edge of the woman’s dark lashes. “I’ve never lived a day without regret, not a single day. They can hate me or not, but I’d like them to know that, not a single day has passed that I didn’t regret what I’d done. I loved their Daddy too. I think they need to know that and I missed him every day of my life. I still do. I thought I’d die too when word of his death reached me.”

  “Still you didn’t come back.” Pamela said, unable to keep a touch of anger from her words. “The boys needed you then, possibly more than they ever had before or would ever again, yet you stayed away.”

  “I sent the both of them the money to come to England. Pat refused, and Casey was already in prison by the time I learned of Brian’s death. Pat never cashed the cheque either though I suspect he needed the money. I wrote Casey every week during his time in Parkhurst. All my letters were returned unread. I know he didn’t owe me anything but still it was hard. I went to the prison and tried to visit but he refused even that, when I’m sure he was in sore need of the company.”

  “I think he couldn’t afford any vulnerability at that point in his life,” Pamela said, thinking of the few things Casey had actually shared with her about his life in prison. “Seeing a mother he’d not seen in years would have been far too hard for him under the circumstances.”

  Deirdre nodded. “Yes, I imagine you’re right.”

  Pamela stood and smoothed down the front of her dress. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go see if I can find him now that he’s had a bit of time to cool off.”

  Deirdre took her hand, startling Pamela. The woman’s touch was cool but oddly comfortable. “I’m glad he has you,” she said, before turning her attention back to Conor, who had his chubby hands entangled in her necklace now.

  “Would it be alright if the baby stayed here for a bit with me?” Deirdre asked, dark eyes still slightly damp. “I swear I’ll not kidnap him—you can tell Sophy. She’ll keep an eye on the two of us.”

  “Alright,” Pamela said, though she felt some worry at what Casey might feel about this. Still, the woman was Conor’s grandmother, and this might be their only chance to spend a bit of time together. She gave the baby a kiss on his forehead. He seemed content enough to stay with Deirdre so she took her leave quickly, wanting a bit of time to find Casey.

  She closed the door behind her and walked down the hall into the bright bustle of the kitchen.

  Sophy, stirring something aromatic in a big black pot, beckoned her over. She tilted her head to the side, indicating an unopened bottle of Jameson’s and two clean glasses.

  “Take that with ye. The lad may well need somethin’ to take the edge off.” She nodded toward the west-facing window. “He’ll be sittin’ up atop the wee hill there. It’s where he always went when he was a boy an’ felt troubled. Ye just follow the path up an’ ye’ll have no trouble findin’ him.”

  “I left Conor with Deirdre,” Pamela said.

  Sophy raised a red brow. “Aye, well, I think he’s safe enough. She’s not likely to run off with him, an’ I’ll keep an eye out as well.”

  Pamela bit down on a smile, for Sophy’s words echoed Deirdre’s so exactly that there was no doubt that, despite the years of estrangement between them, they were family.

  All the family drama notwithstanding, it was a lovely night with a breeze blowing out of the west, soft and smelling of grass and the crushed thyme that bordered Lucy Murphy’s garden.

  The path was narrow, but there was still enough light to make the going easy. Sure enough, when she crested the rise of the hill, there sat her husband, with his knees drawn up and his back against the solid trunk of an oak.

  Casey looked up at her approach. “A beautiful woman bearing a bottle of whiskey. Have I died an’ gone to heaven then?”

  “I thought you could use a drink about now.”

  He smiled wearily. “Aye, I could at that, darlin’. Where’s Conor?”

  “Fed and burped and in good hands. Your Aunt Sophy’s keeping an eye on him,” she said, thinking that it was best to omit the fact that it was Deirdre who actually had possession of their son at present.

  Casey raised a dark brow at this.

  “I quite like her,” Pamela said. “Granted, she’s a bit… unique, but certainly fit to watch over a sleeping babe.”

  “That,” Casey said darkly, “remains to be seen.”

  “Well, there are about forty other baby-mad women down there, so I’ve no doubt he’ll be well attended to.”

  She took the lid off the bottle of Jameson’s and poured them each a stiff two fingers, took another look at Casey’s face and added a third finger to his glass before handing it to him.

  “So, how are you doing?”

  Casey scrubbed his hands hard through his hair and sighed before answering.

  “I feel a little like someone hit me over the head with a hot poker but I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you going back to talk to her?”

  He shook his head. “No, an’ I think ye can understand it well enough with yer own situation. Would ye look kindly on yer mother were she to show up out of the blue an’ act as though she hadn’t disappeared into the ether twenty-odd years ago?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. But mine isn’t going to magically appear. I think maybe, whether you ever see her again or not, you should take this chance to talk to her.”

  “Why, Jewel? What can she possibly say to make me feel less bitter toward her?”

  “Possibly nothing, but still she’s here. It might be nice for Conor to have one grandparent.”

  Casey gave her a slanted look. “Now that’s not playin’ fair at all woman, an’ well ye know it.”

  “Maybe not, but what’s fair about being a parent?”

  “If I tell ye I cannot talk with her right now, will ye think less of me?”

  “Casey,” she said, shocked that he would even think such a thing, “if you never spoke to her for the rest of her life, I would think no less of you. If you’re not ready, you simply aren’t. It was enough of a shock to see her.”

  “Aye, it was at that.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, putting out a hand tentatively and touching his arm.

  He looked at her and raised a dark brow. “Whatever on earth are you sorry for, Jewel?”

  She shrugged. “Just that this is so painful for you.”

  He sighed and put one of his hands over hers. “I feel that I ought to be able to be civil. I’m a grown man with a family and an entire history that’s naught to do with her in there, an’ yet I swear to ye Pamela that I felt about six years old the minute I saw her lookin’ at us across the room.”

  “Oh, Casey.” She held him closely and felt his body relax against her.

  “Jewel, I don’t know what I’d do without ye,” he
said softly. “Yer my conscience, always savin’ me from the worst of myself.”

  “As you do for me, man,” she said, laying her cheek to the soft coil of his hair. They sat so for several long moments until Casey finally sighed and stood, brushing leaves and needles from his pants.

  “Come on, woman,” he held a hand out, and pulled her up. “Let’s go down an’ face the lions.”

  Night sat soft about the house as they descended the hill, the lights glowing in hazy parhelia and the sound of talk ribboning out on the breeze. There were fewer cars than when Pamela had ascended the hill, for some of the guests were taking their leave.

  There was a chill thread in the wind, blown back by an autumn that lay only a few weeks ahead. Casey wrapped his suit jacket around his wife’s shoulders and added his own arm for good measure. Pamela snuggled gratefully into his side. Despite sitting on the hillside for a good two hours, the man was still warm as toast.

  “It’ll be alright. We can go now, if you’d like. No one would blame you.”

  Casey smiled down at her in the waning light.

  “’Tis alright, darlin’. I need to say goodbye to everyone. I think I can manage that well enough.”

  Inside the house, it was much quieter. Even the Murphy tongues seemingly had a limit. There was a fire in the hearth though the windows were still open to the night. Pamela collected Conor from Sophy, and sat down with him in a squashy wingback chair near the fire. Beside her on a mattress lay a crumpled posey of tiny Murphys, three buttercup heads with one small clove pink resting royally in the midst. The aunts and cousins were strewn about the room and Pamela instinctively looked about to place Deirdre, but if she was still present in the house, she was not visible.

  Devlin was strumming his guitar softly, random riffs of plaintive chords that reminded them all of why they were gathered here under this roof.

  He eyed Casey as he crossed the room. “Sing with me, boy,” he said. “Yer Nan did always love the sound of yer voice.”

  Casey nodded and wove his way over to where his uncle sat. “What would she have us sing then, Uncle?”