Oh God.
“Carol and Jack live in San Francisco,” Grace said quietly. “They can be here in an hour or so.”
San Francisco.
All the weekend trips that Papa had made into the city over the last several years came rushing back to haunt Mike all at once. She’d wondered why he always went to San Francisco instead of spreading his wings a little.
Hah.
Turns out he’d spread his wings plenty. Her stomach lurched, her heart ached anew, and her soul shriveled up and wept.
“Call them,” Sam said and stepped in front of Mike, preventing her from jumping back into the argument. “Papa would want them to know.”
Grace nodded and left, after one last, uneasy glance at the two of them.
Silence stretched out for what seemed forever before Mike said, “What Papa wants? Do we really care what Papa wants at the moment?”
Sam whirled around to face her, eyes snapping, teeth bared. “We damn well better care, Mike, because for all we know—” She lifted one hand and jabbed her index finger toward the double doors. “Papa’s in there dying. Do you really want to prevent a little boy from seeing his father for the last time? Will that make this easier on us? Will that make everything okay?”
“No, but—”
“Hell,” Sam said, on a tear now and picking up speed, “maybe when they get here, you can take the kid outside and kick him for a while. And Jo can beat up his mother. That’ll be good. After all, the hospital’s right here.”
Mike shifted uncomfortably. “Jesus, Sam, get a grip.”
“I’ve got a grip,” she snapped and suddenly whirled around to face the lone man in the waiting room, now avidly watching them, the muted TV forgotten. “As for you,” she shouted, “mind your own damn business. Watch your stupid TV and don’t you repeat a word of anything you heard today or I swear to God”—she paused to inhale sharply—“I will find a way to make you sorry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the guy said, eyes wide and terrified.
Smart man, Mike thought, as he slumped down into his chair, making himself as small a target as possible. But strangers listening to the family secrets wasn’t real high up on her list of things to worry about at the moment.
“What the hell are we supposed to do with this, Sam?” Mike grabbed her sister’s arm, turning her back around to face her. “Are we supposed to greet this kid with open arms?” she demanded. “Tell his mother that all’s forgiven and aren’t we a happy family? Hey, Thanksgiving’s coming up! Well, forget it. I never wanted a brother, you know, and I still don’t.”
“You think I do?” Sam asked, peeling Mike’s fingers off her arm, one at a time. “But you know what? Unlike you and Saint Josefina out there, stomping around, filled with the Holy Glow of Certainty, I know what it’s like to make a mistake.” She lowered her voice and the words hissed at Mike, making them that much harder to listen to.
“I know what it is to do something so wrong, so heartbreakingly awful—” She paused again, to get the tremble out of her voice. “So awful that you can’t live with yourself.”
Mike knew where she was going with this and cut her off at the pass. Just a couple of months ago, Sam’s husband, Jeff “Weasel Dog” Hendricks, had come back into her life. She’d been forced to relive old tragedies to eventually find a miraculous ending. And Mike understood how she felt. God, her heart hurt for Sam, but, “This isn’t about you. This is nothing like what happened to you.”
“Of course it is,” her sister said softly. “I was sad and miserable and empty and lonely for Jeff. Just as Papa was for Mama. And I did something stupid. Unforgivable, really. I gave up my own child.”
The raw pain in her sister’s voice stabbed at Mike and her eyes filled with tears of empathy. Around Mike, no one cried alone. Papa used to say she had the most sympathetic tear ducts in the world.
Papa.
Her heart ached.
“Trust me, Mike,” Sam said, stepping forward to wrap her arms around her sister for a fierce, brief hug. “I know what it is to do something you regret. Something you’d rather no one else ever knew about. And I know what it is to be so bone-deep lonely and scared that nothing makes sense.” With her arms still tightly locked around Mike, Sam continued. “I heard him, Mike. At night, I used to hear Papa crying, when he thought we were all asleep. The thought of losing Mama pushed him to the edge. Is it so hard to understand that he grabbed hold of something to keep from falling over?”
The images Sam drew were hard to stand against. The thought of her strong father giving in to tears was something that she’d never really thought about. Stupid, she guessed, but he’d always been the rock. And frankly, she’d been too wrapped up in her own pain then to feel anyone else’s.
Mike held on for a long minute, reining in her tears and giving Sam time to do the same. When she was sure she could look at her sister without crying again, she freed herself and stepped back.
“Okay,” she said, “you understand. You get why Papa might have done what he did. And maybe . . . maybe I sort of do, too. But answer me this, Sam . . .”
She waited.
Mike took a deep breath and let it go again. “What about Mama?”
Sam’s mouth worked and her eyes filled up again.
But Mike kept going, determined to have her say. “Mama was dying and Papa was out with some bimbo, making the son he always wanted. What’s that say?”
“I don’t have all the answers, Mike,” Sam said wearily, and let her shoulders slump, as if she were a balloon with a slow leak. “I just know that there’s more here than a few stark facts. And I figure we owe it to Papa to hear his side of things. Just like we owe it to this boy to let him see his father.”
Mike’s teeth ground together and she swallowed back a sudden, tight knot of fear. She didn’t want to owe a child she’d never met. One who had as strong a claim on her father’s heart as she did herself.
“And if Papa dies? What then? We never find out why he did what he did?”
“Didn’t I just say I don’t have all the answers?”
“Right.” Mike nodded and shoved her hands into the pockets of her black slacks. “Well, since all we’ve got are questions . . . here’s another one for you. How the hell do we know this kid is really Papa’s?”
Lucas felt trapped in his own home.
He couldn’t stay in the living room. Justin might be there. Bree had taken over the kitchen. And going to his office and pretending to work was pointless.
Only one thing left to do.
“I’m going out,” he said, and realized that it was the first time in four years that he’d had to say that to anyone. He’d lived alone for so long, doing what he pleased, when he pleased, that this habit of “checking in” felt . . . alien. But if he lived a sometimes lonely life, it was one he’d chosen deliberately.
“I’ll be gone a while,” he said abruptly, more to cut off his own thoughts than because he thought the Irish Warrior gave a good damn.
“Bring some ice cream back with you, then,” she said, stepping into the main room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a blue and white checked dishtowel.
“Please?” He stopped, hand on the doorknob, and looked at the woman who was still glaring at him.
“Your brother enjoys it and he doesn’t eat much anymore,” she said, instead of the one word he’d requested.
And Lucas felt like an ass.
Justin was dying and he was an ass.
Great.
“Fine.” He opened the door and stalked out, needing to be away from the house that he’d spent so much time planning. So much time looking forward to.
Now, it was as if he didn’t belong there. Justin was inside.
Dying.
The drive into Chandler didn’t take more than twenty minutes. Huge gray and black clouds raced across a deep blue sky and the wind pushed at the trees lining the lake road, making them bend toward him in elaborate bows. He hardly noticed.
Even on a S
unday morning, Main Street was busy. Tourists clogged the sidewalks and cars crawled as if in a parade.
But he was in no hurry.
Parking the car outside the Spirit Shop, he stepped into the morning sunlight and let the weak autumn warmth seep into his bones along with the chill, ocean wind. The roar of the waves was louder here and almost sounded like music. Maybe that’s what he needed, he thought. A walk on the sand. Clear his head. Get some perspective.
But first, coffee.
He stepped up onto the sidewalk, and weaved his way in and out of the mob of people strolling or simply stopping to window-shop. Hitting the door to the Leaf and Bean, he stepped inside and a wall of conversation rushed to greet him.
The place was packed. Lucas stalked across the gleaming wood floor to the counter, paying no attention at all to the people clustered at the scattering of round tables. But their voices and snatches of conversation followed him as he made his way through the store.
“So the recount’s over . . .”
“Yep, Jackson won again.”
“No chads?” A snort of laughter.
Lucas smiled in spite of his mood.
“Rachel Vickers is fit to be tied, I hear . . .”
“Feel sorry for Mayor Vickers. Living with a queen who’s been dethroned. Won’t be pretty . . .”
Life went on, Lucas thought, idly sorting through the chitchat for a few pieces of town news.
“High school’s first football game is next week . . .”
“Autumn Festival looks bigger this year . . .”
Lucas smiled to himself, waited his turn in line, then gratefully moved up to the counter to place his order.
“Lucas,” Stevie Candellano said, a worried smile on her face. “Here on a coffee run from the hospital?”
Small towns, he thought, and wondered how Mike’s father was doing. Hell, how was she doing?
Amazing how fast news got around this place, though. They were better than the CIA at intelligence gathering.
“No,” he said, finally answering Stevie’s question as he leaned both elbows on the shining glass countertop. “I just need one cup. For me.”
“Oh.”
One word and yet it held a world of disapproval. Seemed he couldn’t do anything right with women these days. As she started on his usual order of a latte, she looked up at him and asked, “Any word about Papa Marconi yet?”
He sighed and admitted, “I don’t know. I dropped Mike off there a couple of hours ago and—”
“Yes,” she said, nodding, “I knew you were off at some big splashy party yesterday.”
One eyebrow lifted. “Word travels fast.”
“In Chandler?” She laughed aloud. “Please. There’s no such thing as a secret in this town. Believe me, it’s been tried.”
Which meant, he thought, that by this evening, news of Justin and Bree’s arrival would be the hot topic in Chandler.
Perfect.
“How was Mike doing when you saw her last?”
The espresso machine hissed and spat and the hot milk frothed with millions of bubbles. He stared at it as if the foam-covered surface held the answers to every question ever asked.
How was Mike doing when he last saw her? Pissed off at him and worried as hell about her father. And he’d driven away. Left her there to find out—Whatever it was she was finding out.
Jesus, no wonder the women in his life hated him.
He really was a dick.
“She was scared,” he said quietly, remembering the shadows in Mike’s amazing eyes. Then he glanced around to make sure no one was listening. No one was looking directly at him, but he wasn’t fooled. Everyone here was interested in the Marconis because they belonged to Chandler. They were part of the whole.
And when a single thread was disturbed in this little tapestry, all of the other threads felt the loss.
“Not surprising,” Stevie answered thoughtfully. “Bet she could use a shoulder right about now . . .”
Yeah, Lucas told himself, she probably could. And the very least he could do for Mike was to bring her some coffee. Hospital coffee was enough to poison the very people it was supposed to fortify.
He sighed and reached for his wallet. “I guess you know what the Marconis usually order?”
“Is my husband the most gorgeous man on the planet?”
“Huh?”
“That was a yes. And,” she added with a grin, “I’ve already started making them. Plus one extra. Grace is there, too.”
“Grace?” He thought about it. “Oh, the woman they were doing all that work for this summer.”
“That’s the one.” Stevie leaned toward him and lowered her voice. “And, Grace is also Papa’s girlfriend, so I know she’s there.”
“If you say so.”
“Oh, ask anybody, I’m always right.” She thought about that for a minute. “Well, don’t ask Carla, because she thinks she’s always right, so—”
“I get it,” Lucas said, laughing slightly in spite of everything. “And you’d already started making the drinks even before I ordered them, hadn’t you?”
“Yep.”
“Pretty sure of yourself.”
“Sort of. But mostly, I was pretty sure of you,” she countered with a smile.
Good that somebody was, he guessed.
13
Bree emptied the dishwasher, enjoying the mindless, soothing task. She carefully put everything away until the room looked as tidy, as unused, as it had the moment she’d arrived. A shame, she thought, this big, beautiful house, home only to a solitary man with a heart of stone.
She frowned. Although he had his reasons. Reason enough to want to turn his back on his twin—the other half of himself. But it tore at her to know that Justin might be facing death without the comfort of the one person in the world whom he most needed.
Hard to believe she hadn’t even known him eight months ago. Hard to believe there’d been a time in her life when she wasn’t in love with Justin Gallagher.
Crumpling a blue and white checked dishtowel in her hands, she squeezed the fabric and leaned back against the gleaming black granite counter. She stared out the window opposite and focused blindly on the trees in the distance, watching the play of the turning leaves as the wind danced through them. And as the silence of the house dropped around her, Bree remembered . . .
So handsome he was, with a smile made for devilment. Bridget took one look at him, sitting in the corner booth of her family’s pub and knew that here was the one she’d waited for most of her life. For four nights, she watched him, alone and friendless, oblivious to the noise and laughter surrounding him.
Most tourists came to Ireland looking to become a part of life there, if even for a while. But this one man left the glory of Ashford Castle every evening to come here, to a neighborhood bar, to sit alone. He intrigued her. Drew her to him as no one ever had before.
Of course, that wasn’t to say he was perfect. Just perfect for her.
Smiling, she asked, “Are you going to sit and drink your life away, then?” as she served him another pint of Guinness.
He looked up at her. “Seems as good a way to go as any.”
“And if I were to offer an alternative?”
One corner of her mouth tilted. “Such as?”
She glanced behind her at the bar and signaled to her older brother that she’d be taking a break. Then setting down her tray on his table, she said, “Take a walk with me.”
“What? Now?”
“You’ve something better to do?”
“Actually,” he said, “that’s the best offer I’ve had in a month.”
There was something sad and lonely about him that called out to her. Then he really focused on her for the first time and a slow smile spread across his handsome face.
“Too real for an angel,” he said, “too tall for a leprechaun. So you must be a fairy princess.”
Bree laughed, shook her head, and didn’t miss the way his gaze locked on the l
ong fall of her hair. “Oh yes. That I am.” She swept her arms out, encompassing the pub, and added, “This is my fairy raft and you’ve just been captured. So here you’ll stay for the next hundred years—” She grinned. “Or until I tire of you.”
“Sounds like a good deal to me,” he said, standing up to look down into her eyes.
She tipped her head to one side and met his gaze with a wink. “Ah, but we’ve yet to see if the deal is as much in my favor as in yours.”
“Oh, I can tell you now, Your Majesty,” he said sadly, “it could never be that.”
Sorrow welled up in his eyes until she almost couldn’t bear it. Then he seemed to find himself again and banished the pain for a glimmer of a smile. “But I’d like to take a walk with a fairy princess anyway.”
And just like that, she’d been caught. Caught in a fairy raft of her own making.
All these months later, she could see no way out but one. She wouldn’t be escaping Justin. He would soon be leaving her.
And her heart wanted to break with the knowledge.
She straightened up from the counter, folded the damp dishtowel and draped it over the oven door handle so that it fell squarely, neatly. Then she smoothed her fingertips along the edge until even she was forced to admit that she was stalling.
She wasn’t ready to climb those stairs and check in on Justin. Wasn’t ready to admit that every day he was a little paler, a little weaker, a little closer to leaving her behind.
Still, she left the kitchen, because avoiding trouble never made it go away. The heels of her sensible brown loafers clicked softly against the cold, hard tile floor.
“He made a good choice with that,” she muttered. “Wood floors have warmth. These tiles are as cold as he is.”
Laying one hand on the banister, she skipped up the stairs softly, trying for as little sound as possible. If Justin was sleeping, she didn’t want to wake him. He slept so fitfully these days. As if even in his dreams he could find no peace.
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