The Replacement Bridesmaid

by Laurie Ralston

  Bridy wore a loud floral apron and busied around the kitchen. “Not at all,” she said. “Let me get this into the oven before we do anything else.” She placed a large baking dish in the oven and shut the door. Reaching up to the collection of items lined up on top of the counter, she picked up an old-fashioned timer and set it.

  “Now,” she said, “Let’s get you up to your room.” She deftly removed the apron and took Jill by the hand, pulling her up out of the kitchen chair. “Come on, then.”

  As they marched up the old staircase, Jill saw that the walls along the stairs were covered with photographs in a variety of frames. She wanted to stop and look at them more closely, but Bridy bustled along up the stairs and down the narrow hall. Jill hurried to keep up with the older woman.

  “Here we are,” Bridy said, opening the last door at the end of the hall. “It was Teagan’s room, but she really hasn’t lived here for years, and now that she’s married –“ Bridy drifted off, gazing absentmindedly at the room and everything it held.

  It was a lovely room, almost still a little girl’s room, in pale pinks and greens. It seemed so... well, Irish to Jill.

  “I love it,” Jill said, turning to Bridy and hugging her again. “You are a life saver.”

  Bridy laughed. “Well, I have to admit, I’ll be glad to have a little company around. This house gets a little lonely now that both Coyle and Teagan are gone. Coyle comes around a lot, but it’s just not the same.”

  Jill turned and walked around the room, before easing down onto the edge of Teagan’s old twin bed. She looked down at her hands in her lap, shaking her head, and then directed her eyes up to meet Bridy’s.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing, Bridy.”

  Bridy smiled sweetly as she stood in the bedroom doorway. “You’ll figure it out, lass. I’m sure of it.” Then she backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  Jill flopped back on the bed, letting her arms spread wide to her sides. It hit her like a sudden summer storm. She was in Ireland. She hadn’t gotten on that plane.

  Pushing herself off the bed, Jill went to the dresser next to the window and pulled open the top drawer. It held some shirts, mostly t-shirts. She picked one up and checked the size. They must have been Teagan’s, but Jill figured she could wear them in a pinch. She took the few items she purchased at the airport tourist shop – an “I heart Ireland” t-shirt and a soft cotton blouse – and placed them in the drawer.

  “There,” she said, brushing her hand together like she’d just completed some heavy work. Laughing at herself, she decided to ask Bridy about borrowing a bike so she could get out of the house and explore Killarney a bit. It was early afternoon and she had plenty of April daylight left.

  As she sauntered down the stairs, she took the time to look at the photographs along the walls she’d had to hurry by on the way up. Baby pictures of Coyle and Teagan. Wedding shots of Bridy and a handsome man. Jill searched her mind and remembered Mary talking about her Uncle Pat. Jill needed to ask Coyle about Patrick sometime.

  A few steps more and Jill was delighted to find a family snapshot that including her friends Mary and Tara, young and laughing, their arms thrown around their Irish cousins Coyle and Teagan. Coyle leaned towards the girls, saying something, and Mary had her head thrown back, her dark hair flying back like a horses mane. They looked to be in their teens. Jill smiled and felt a small pang of homesickness at the sight of Mary.

  The next photograph showed Coyle and a pretty young blond woman. They had their arms looped around each other’s waists. Coyle grinned at the camera, while the young woman looked up at him, an expression of longing and love on her young face. Jill frowned slightly, wondering about this young woman, what she had meant to Coyle. Then Jill shook her head. Silly, really. It was an old picture and besides, Jill had no claim on Coyle. He wasn’t the reason she didn’t board that plane.

  “Settled in?” Bridy asked when she saw Jill step into the kitchen.

  “Not much to settle in with,” Jill said, leaning against the counter next to where Bridy chopped up vegetables. “Do you have an old bike I could borrow? I’d like to go out and get a few things and maybe explore the town a bit.”

  Bridy nodded to the back door, which led out the kitchen and down a short set of stairs. “There’s an old shed out there. Teagan’s old bike is out there. The tires are likely flat, but I think there’s a pump out there, too.”

  “Thanks, Bridy,” Jill said. Pushing away from the counter, she headed for the door.

  “Dinner is at seven,” Bridy said, not looking at Jill. Jill saw a mischievous smile appear on the other woman’s face. “Coyle will be here.”

  “You don’t have to feed me, really,” Jill protested, but Bridy started shaking her head.

  “No, no, if you’re staying in the family house, you’re family.”

  Jill stared at the back of Bridy’s head and started to say something, then thought better of it. She hadn’t known Bridy long, but it was clear from early on that you did things Bridy’s way. Period.

  “Okay, I’ll be here,” she said as she went out the back door.

  The bike was as promised in the rickety shed in an overgrown corner of the yard. Jill swiped the cobwebs off the childish bike. It wasn’t a kid’s bike exactly, but Jill guessed Teagan must have gotten it as an early teenager. It was pearly pink with a wire basket on the handlebars. The basket had white and yellow plastic daisies affixed to it. The paint wasn’t so pearly in places, but overall, it looked in good shape. Bridy had been right about the tires. Both were flat, so Jill hunted around the shed until she found the pump. It only took a few minutes to fill the tires and she was wheeling the bike out through the gate and out onto the narrow blacktop road in front of Bridy’s house. Then she straddled the seat and pushed off, the front tire wobbling a bit, but soon righting itself and becoming steady.

  She pedaled to a corner shop displaying simple but stylish clothes in the window. A pair or two of pants and a handful of blouses ought to hold her for a while, she thought. It was April and even though it wasn’t anywhere near as hot as Phoenix was at this time, the blouses were lighter in fabric and color. She wasn’t going to be in Ireland that long; she shouldn’t need anything heavier. Two pairs of slacks and six tops later, she rode the bike back out onto the street and coasted along as she peered into each of the shops. It was almost going back in time, the stores being so much like ones she’d seen in her mother’s photographs.

  Returning to Bridy’s, she saw Coyle’s car in the driveway. Her heart gave an extra little thump. Silly.

  He was slicing up the large roast that Bridy had put in the oven earlier when Jill entered the kitchen.

  “Well, hello, Jilly,” he said, glancing up at her and smiling.

  Damn, she thought. He is just so... So many things occurred to her at once that she failed to respond to his greeting.

  “Jill?” He stopped carving now and looked at her pointedly.

  “Oh, um, hi Coyle,” Jill said, her face blushing as she frantically looked around to find something, anything to do. This was stupid. She had just seen him that morning when he’d rescued her from the airport. But she felt different now. It had sunk in that she was here and that she still had access to him. It scared her.

  Bridy came in from the backyard, saving Jill from herself.

  “There you are!” Bridy exclaimed. “I was afraid you might have gotten lost somewhere in town.”

  The trilling of the kitchen phone interrupted Jill’s response. Bridy snatched it off the counter and answered it. Her face changed in a split second, from friendly to subdued. She held the phone out to Coyle.

  “It’s for you,” Bridy said, her eyes widening.

  Coyle wiped his hands on a towel he had tucked into his pants and took the phone. Glancing at Jill, he excused himself and went out the back door, shutting it behind him.

  The smile back on her face, Bridy handed some silverware to Jill.

  “Teagan and Sean a
re coming for dinner, one last one before they go on their honeymoon. Did I tell you they are going to Bora Bora? Not exactly sure where Bora Bora is, but it sounds exotic, doesn’t it?” Bridy prattled on, obviously trying to distract Jill from Coyle’s mysterious phone call. “Anyway, can you finish setting the table?”

  Jill laid out the silverware. Finding the cloth napkins Bridy had placed on the counter, she placed on at each seat. This she knew how to do. All those dinner parties, all those attempts to impress.

  The back door opened and Coyle appeared. He shut the door behind him and placed the wireless phone on the kitchen counter where it had been before. His jaw flexed as he returned to slicing the roast. Jill had seen that look before. In the short time she knew him, she’d learned it probably meant something was bothering him.

  “Everything okay?” she asked as she tidied up the last napkin.

  His flexing jaw immediately gave way to an enchanting smile as he turned to her. “Yes, everything’s fine. Just some – work stuff.”

  He turned back to the roast, but Jill wasn’t fooled. Something was definitely bugging him.

  After dinner, Jill went up to her room and sat on her bed with her cell phone in her hand. She steeled herself for the conversations she was about to have with her husband and children. She called Scott first, at his office. His secretary put her through.

  “Jill, where are you calling from? Aren’t you in flight right now? You know how expensive those jet phones are.”

  “Hi Scott,” she said. “I’m not in the plane.”

  “In New Jersey already, then?”

  “No, I’m still in Ireland.”

  “What! What you still doing there? You missed your flight, didn’t you? Jesus, Jill, you are so irresponsible! I suppose I’m going to have to pay for a new flight, aren’t I?” he spouted off angrily at her.

  “Scott, calm down. I didn’t miss my flight. Well,” she amended, “I did, but on purpose.”

  “Now I know you’ve lost you mind,” he said, his voice hard and condemning.

  “I haven’t lost my mind. I’m just not coming back. At least, I’m not coming back right now.”

  “What does that mean?” he demanded to know.

  “It means I’m not coming back right now. And I have something else I need to tell you. I was going to tell you when I got back to the house, but things changed.”

  “What?”

  “I’m leaving you. I’m going to file for divorce.”

  “Oh, Jill, come on! You are not!” His voice became even louder as he bellowed at her.

  She remained calm. “Yes, I am. I don’t know how I’m going to do it from here, but I’ll figure it out.”

  “Why would you want a divorce?” he asked, now incredulous.

  “It’s simple, Scott. You’re never home, you treat me like a servant most of the time when you are home; you belittle me in front of friends and your partners. Ryan sees it – he agrees with me,” she said.

  “Does Ryan know your plans?”

  “He knows I was planning on leaving when I got back. He doesn’t know I stayed here.” She hesitated. “Martie doesn’t know anything, though.”

  Scott was silent for a moment. Jill hoped that he was thinking it through. It was obvious to her that this was the right thing to do, the only thing she could do.

  “You won’t last a month there. Not alone. You haven’t had a job in over twenty years. What are you going to do?” he said meanly.

  “I have friends here now. I have my own money, too, remember? I’ll be fine.” She sighed. “I’m not a total idiot, Scott.”

  “When are you coming back then? To serve me with papers, or whatever it is that you decide to do?”

  “I don’t know, Scott. I haven’t planned that far ahead,” she said.

  “Well, that figures,” he said. “Jill, don’t plan on squeezing me for all my money, because it isn’t going to happen.”

  “I don’t want your money, Scott. I just want me back.” She hung up on him.

  Even though she was relieved that conversation was over, Jill was thoroughly exhausted and a nervous wreck. She went downstairs to find Bridy cleaning up the kitchen, Teagan and Sean already gone.

  “Oh, my, it looks like you’ve been through the wringer. Sit down.” Bridy rummaged around in the cupboard and pulled out a shot glass and a bottle of whiskey. Jill watched her, wondering if she always drank like this, and was surprised when Bridy put the drink down in front of her.

  “Drink it, you’ll feel better.” She pushed it a little closer to Jill, sitting down opposite her, watching Jill toss back the shot, coughing afterwards. “What happened?”

  Jill told her about her conversation with Scott. “I hope you’re not disappointed in me. About the divorce, I mean.”

  “Dear, people in Ireland get divorced, too. It sounds like it was about time in your case.” She poured Jill another shot, then got up and found another glass for herself. They took another shot and started talking about other things, mostly about Jill and her background, her kids, and what she planned on doing now.

  The door banged open and Coyle stomped in. He stopped short when he saw his mother and Jill sitting at the table drinking whiskey.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked.

  “Your mother is counseling me,” Jill said.

  “With whiskey shots?”

  The two women started laughing, clinking their shot glasses together, then drinking the whiskey down with single gulps.

  Chapter 18

  Jill sat on the edge of the twin bed in the pink and green room, wondering what she should do. She guessed she’d better tell her daughter what she had one. Martie wasn’t going to be happy. She was, if anything, her father’s daughter.

  She picked up her phone off the night table where she’d put it after the conversation with Scott the night before and dialing her daughter, she put the phone up to her ear to wait for Martie to answer. Instead, Jill heard a series of beeps and a woman’s voice informing her that the call could not be completed. Baffled, Jill dialed it again. Same thing. She dialed Ryan’s number. Same thing. It came to her in a flash. Scott had the service stopped. She dropped the phone on the nightstand and put her head in her hands.

  After breathing deeply for several minutes, Jill knew she could simply get another phone. This was Ireland after all. It wasn’t like she was in Borneo. She slipped on a pair of jeans and a plain grey t-shirt and hustled outside to dig Teagan’s bike back out of the shed. Pedaling swiftly, she shot down to a small phone store she’d seen the day before. A short time later, she’d chosen a phone and was handing the clerk her credit card.

  A look flashed on the young clerk’s face and he politely looked up at her and said, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, that card has been declined.”

  Jill’s head snapped back. “It must be some mistake. Could you try it again?”

  The young man graciously ran the card again. Moments later, he shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. It declined it again.”

  It dawned on Jill. Scott had cut off her credit card. What a jerk! She took back her card and said to the clerk, “I’ll be back. If you could hold the phone for me for a few days, I’d appreciate it.”

  She furiously pedaled back to Bridy’s and breathlessly asked her hostess if she could use her phone. She dialed Scott’s cell phone.

  “You turned off my phone?” she asked as soon as he answered.

  “Hello, Jill,” he said calmly. It infuriated her even more when he acted like this. Like he was always taking the high road. “Yes, I turned it off. I don’t see any reason I should continue to pay for it while you refuse to come home.”

  “And my credit card?”

  “That, too.”

  Jill was speechless. She took a deep breath, expelled it and said, “You know, it never occurred to me that you would do something like this. I’ve just proven your theory that I’m an idiot. I should have known you’d do this, based on how you’ve treated me for the past... I don�
�t know fifteen years?”

  His calm voice gone, Scott snapped right back. “How I’ve treated you? Are you kidding? You have a huge, beautiful house. You drive a Lexus. Give me a break. How I’ve treated you?”

  Jill was unexpectedly cool. He didn’t get it. Didn’t understand how he’d dug and dug and dug the hole for her. She wanted out of the hole.

  “You know what, Scott? It’s fine. I don’t need the phone or the card. Or you.” Jill pushed the end button and set the phone down on the kitchen table as she sunk down to sit. She took a minute to recoup and think, then pulled out her wallet. She had all the information for the trust account her father had left for her. There was a phone number for her father’s long-time banker. She dialed it and a short time later, hung the phone up, knowing that new debit and credit cards attached to that account would be Fed-Exed to her and she’d have them the next day.

  So much for Scott.

  Unsure of her future, Jill didn’t do much for a few days. Using the funds from her trust account, she bought a small used car, which she drove all over southern Ireland. She drove the Ring of Kerry, marveling at the brilliant green mixed with heartbreaking rocky terrain. She stood on a cliff edge, close enough to get her heart beating wildly, but not so close that the sharp gusts of wind would blow her over into the sea. She visited Kinsale south of Cork City and stayed in an ancient thatch-roofed cottage out on the end of a sand bar that reached out into a small bay. She thought a lot.

  Jill had been afraid that she would have second thoughts and go running back to Phoenix. Instead, the more of the Irish countryside she saw, the more she was sure she was doing the right thing. What she was actually doing was a bit of a mystery, even to her, but she just did not worry about it. She hoped a plan would come to her, like water from a spring. For the first time in her life, Jill was living for the moment, not planning anything, not running mindlessly from activity to activity.

  She thought a lot about Coyle on her solitary journeys. He had offered to accompany her a couple of times, but she had declined. She needed the time alone. None-the-less, he was always there, flitting around in her head, making her heart flutter when suddenly the thought of him came to the forefront of her consciousness. Even though she had told him that her staying had nothing to do with him, she knew that it did.