That night, after a rousing dinner in a Limerick pub eating cheese and tomatoes sandwiches and listening to the locals play traditional Irish songs, Jill said her goodnights and slipped back to her hotel room. She was exhausted. It had been a long day. A fun, exciting day, but in the back of her head, she never quite forgot about leaving Killarney without speaking to Coyle.
After changing into her pajamas and washing her face, she pulled back the covers on the big bed. She saw then that the right light on the phone sitting on the nightstand was blinking. She picked up the receiver and dialed the number to get her messages.
“Jill, it’s Coyle. You left without saying goodbye. I… I don’t understand.” Coyle’s voice was raspy, hoarse. “Please call me.” Then he hung up.
Jill sat crossed legged on the bed. She wanted to call him. She missed him, missed his laugh and his warm smell, the way when he put his arms around her that it felt like he had completely enclosed her in his own body. Tears ran hot down her face now. She picked up her cell phone and found Coyle’s number, her finger hesitating over the dial button.
The thought of her husband popped into her mind, the life she had been living before she had come to Ireland, the way she had put him before herself in almost every way. She did not want to find herself in another situation where she had to put aside her own life, put aside her own convictions and desires. If Coyle still had strong feelings for Sharon, even if they were not romantic feelings (and Jill was not completely convinced of that), Jill would still end up on the waiting end of things.
“No,” Jill said out loud. She turned off the cell phone then called down to the front desk of the hotel and told them to hold any outside calls.
Determined to get a good night’s rest, she turned off the light beside the bed, plumped up her pillows and burrowed deep down into the covers. She had a big day ahead and she wasn’t going to let any man ruin it for her. Not even Coyle.
Chapter 25
“Ready, Jill?” Collie asked, clutching Jill by the arm, preparing to pull her out onto the stage. The festival host was on stage telling jokes, warming up the crowd. There had been an opening act, but Rogue Irish was the main event for the night at this venue.
Jill gulped as she peeked around the curtain at the packed concert hall. Her heart banged in her chest, her stomach felt like she was on a roller coaster. But she turned to Collie and nodded, smiling so hard her cheeks burned.
“Is it hot in here?” Jill swiped her forehead, looking around at Dooley, who held out his fist for her. She smiled and bumped her fist on his.
“You’ll be grand, Jilly,” Kevin said, putting an arm around her and squeezing hard. They waited, listening to the crowd noise swell.
The announcer was standing in the stage, holding one hand in the air, microphone in the other hand, as he said, “So give a big hello to….. Rogue Irish!”
And then they were all jogging out onto the stage to take their places. The crowd was cheering, clapping and whistling loudly. Jill looked over to Collie and then back at the rest of the band as they readied their instruments. Each gave her a reassuring nod.
The crowd noise seemed to disappear for Jill. She took a deep breath, head down as she stood at the microphone on its stand, her eyes closed. Her heart beat crazily. She was overwhelmed, but she knew she wanted to remember every second of this, every feel and sound. This was it.
She looked back at Collie and nodded.
Rogue Irish began to play, Dooley’s guitar starting simply then gaining steam as Kevin kicked in with the beat, Tim’s keyboard picking up the melody. The sound was like an ocean wave, the music rolling over Jill as she stared out over the audience. There were people clapping and cheering, some jumping out of their seats and raising their arms high. Her heartbeat double-time and for a split second she thought she might pass out. Collie started singing and as she did something clicked in Jill. One moment she was absolutely terrified and the next she could not wait to start singing herself.
When it came time for Jill’s part, she didn’t hesitate. She let it go, her voice loud and clear and beautiful. She felt it deep inside, a blossoming of her soul fuller than she’d ever known before.
That first song came to an end and the crowd jumped to their feet, cheering and clapping enthusiastically. Collie sidled up to Jill, giving her a little hip bump and a big grin. She didn’t say a word, because it would have been too loud for Jill to hear her, but she didn’t really need to say anything. Their faces said it all. Jill was finally where she was supposed to be.
Chapter 26
The stage manager waited in the wings for the band as they came off the stage after their second encore. They all laughed and slapped each other on the backs, flopping exhausted but happy onto the sofas in the reception room set up a post-performance party. The men each gave Jill a big hug, congratulating her on a job well done.
“Jilly, my girl, you did fantastically out there!” Kevin raved, his green eyes lit up. “What luck to have found you!” He laughed a big belly laugh, shaking his head in wonder.
Jill, for her part, could not stop grinning. She honestly couldn’t remember a time when she was so wiped out tired and still so elated. Maybe the last time was when she had given birth to Ryan and Martie. Thinking of them made her want to call them and tell them about the concert, but with the time difference she knew she would need to wait until the morning.
She marveled at the fact that just a few months before she had felt like a nothing, despised her life, and thought she’d have no future to speak of. Yet, here she was, part of a popular band, singing along-side accomplished musicians in front of thousands of adoring fans. Amazing.
They celebrated for a couple of hours, then rode in a black limousine back to their hotel, where they all said their goodnights and stumbled back to their rooms. Jill barely had the energy to change out of her stage clothes and wash her face before she fell into the big bed. She didn’t remember a thing after her head hit the pillow.
The singing ring of her cell phone woke Jill the next morning. Her head was a little muzzy – too much champagne the night before – so it took her a few seconds to realize what the noise was. She reached over and grabbed the phone, poking the answer button.
“Hello?” she said, her voice a little scratchy. She probably ought not party like she did last night after every show or she’d end up sounding (or worse – looking) like Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones.
“Mom?”
“Martie?” Jill sat up in bed. She’d wanted to call the night before so she was happy to hear her daughter’s voice. She couldn’t wait to tell her kids about the concert.
“Mom…” Martie’s voice cracked and Jill heard her choke back a sob.
“Martie? What’s the matter?” Jill’s excitement disappeared. Her strong-headed, non-emotional daughter was crying, something Jill had not seen or heard Martie do since she was a teenager.
“It’s Grandma Owens,” Martie said. “She had a heart attack. She… she… died.” Martie wailed into the phone.
Jill’s heart ached. Even while her relationship with Scott had deteriorated, Elaine Owens had remained kind and generous to Jill. She had been a wonderful grandmother to her kids and that hadn’t ended when the kids had grown into adulthood. Elaine and Martie had been particularly close and Jill knew this was breaking her daughter’s heart.
“Oh, Martie,” Jill said. “How’s your dad taking it?”
Martie sniffled. “He’s not good, Mom. You need to come home. We need you here. Dad needs you here.”
Jill didn’t say anything. Here it was, that moment she figured would always come, when she would have to wake herself up from the dream she had found herself living. Not going home because she was unhappy was one thing, but if she didn’t go home now, it would break her entire family apart and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that responsibility.
“Mom?”
“Yes, Martie. Don’t worry, honey. I’ll get home as fast as I can,” she said, he
r heart tearing down the middle.
Ryan was waiting for her at the airport and he quickly swept his mother up into his arms and held her there for a minute. “Mom, it is so good to see you,” he said when he’d released her. He held her back away from him and smiled. “You look incredible. Ireland certainly agrees with you.”
She smiled back and tucked her hand into his elbow as they walked to get her luggage. She hadn’t packed much; she’d left so quickly she didn’t have time to think about what she was doing.
“How’s your father?” Jill asked.
“Oh, you know Dad. Taking charge and trying to arrange everything. Problem is that he’s so scattered right now he isn’t doing much good.”
Jill nodded. She felt for Scott. Losing a parent is one of the hardest parts of life for anyone, even someone so strong and confident.
Once settled in his car, Ryan said, “So, tell me all about Ireland. What are you doing?”
“Well,” she said, “I worked in a little pub as a bartender and waitress for a while.”
“Really,” Ryan turned to smirk at her. “Cool, mom.” He turned his attention back to the road. “For a while? What are you doing now?”
Jill wasn’t ready to tell anyone about the band or the concert she’d been in just a day before. Every mile she was closer to the house she had shared with Scott and her kids, the more she felt like her life in Ireland was slipping away. Talking about it felt like she’d already left it all behind and she didn’t want to think about that right now.
“Not much, really,” she said, as she stared out the car window, not seeing the palm trees and green winter grass lawns. All she could think about was yellow daffodils.
They pulled into the driveway, which was already full of cars. Stepping into the house, Jill saw that Scott’s younger sister Kim and her husband were there, as well as Martie and a young man that Jill had never seen before.
Martie rushed to her mother when Jill stepped into the living room where they all were sitting.
“Mom!” she cried, throwing her arms around Jill. “Thank God you’re here.” Martie’s face was stained with tears and she was not wearing any makeup, something completely out of character for Jill’s daughter.
Jill greeted Scott’s older sister, Susan, and her grown children with hugs and words of condolence. Martie sat down next to a young man Jill didn’t recognize.
“Mom, this is my boyfriend, Christopher,” Martie said, sniffling. He stood to shake Jill’s hand.
“Good to finally meet you,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances.” He sat back down and put his arm around Martie.
Martie hadn’t told her about any boyfriend. In fact, when Jill had left for Ireland, Martie had just gone through that nasty breakup with Ted. Had she really been gone that long?
Jill turned to see Scott sitting on the love seat, his hands laying limply in his lap, his eyes red but dry, gazing at nothing at all. She went and sat next to him.
“Scott?” she said gently. “Scott, I’m here now.”
Scott turned his eyes to her, still not appearing to comprehend. Jill was worried that he was going to act out and berate her for not being there, for taking off in there first place. But instead, his eyes welled up with tears and he reached out for her. She took him into her arms and let him sob into her shoulder.
The next few days flew by quickly. Jill ended up taking over the funeral arrangements because neither Scott nor his sisters seemed up to it. There had been a nice service at the Methodist church where Elaine Owens had been a member and where Jill and Scott had been married. After, they traveled out to the cemetery with just the family and sat through another brief service there. At the end of the day, they opened up their house to friends and family who wanted to come and pay their respects.
Through the whole ordeal, Jill had played her wifely roll perfectly. She arranged for flowers and music. She dealt with the funeral home and the caterers for the food at the house. It was amazing and a bit frightening to her how easily she slipped back into this world after being gone for months and living a completely different life in a completely different place.
Coyle had called several times on her cell phone. After avoiding his calls at first, Jill decided it wasn’t fair to him to keep putting him off.
“Jill, I’m so sorry to hear about your mother-in-law,” Coyle said softly when she finally did answer the phone.
“Thank you,” she said. “My kids are taking it pretty hard and Scott – well, Scott’s a mess. He’s torn up.”
Silence fell between them for a few moments.
“Why did you leave like you did?” Coyle asked abruptly.
“Coyle, not now. I can’t talk about that now, not with my family falling apart,” she said. “I promise we will talk about it, but just not now.”
Jill just could not bear talking about why she left. Her heart was still aching, the sound of his voice bringing back everything she had felt that day in the shop in Killarney. It was just too much.
“Okay, but soon, Jill. Promise me?” Coyle asked.
“I promise,” she said and gently hung up the phone.
Chapter 27
The day after the funeral service, Jill slipped out the back door to sit in one of the Adirondack chairs in the yard. It was early winter, but the Arizona sun was still warm and the grass still green. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back to soak up the warmth, something that had been scarce in Ireland. She had missed that.
Sighing, Jill opened her eyes and gazed around the yard, across at the pool, over at the little gazebo Scott had built shortly after they moved in. She had loved this yard when the kids were growing up. They’d kicked balls around and wielded croquet mallets in this yard, spent nights “camping out” in pup tents, had birthday parties at the pool. Now, still beautiful and peaceful, it seemed lonely. Scott had the pool emptied at the end of the summer, presumably because since she hadn’t been there, no one had been using it. The rose bushes had bloomed out, but no one had cut the dead heads off, the wilted dark red remains giving the bushes a sad funereal look. She had always been the one who did that. It looked like no one was doing anything in the yard now. It had been Jill’s job to deal with the landscapers. Scott always said he was too busy to think about it. It appeared no landscapers had been there in months.
She stood and crossed the yard to rummage in a small shed, finding her pruning shears. Carefully and lovingly, she removed all the faded blooms off the rose bushes, finding a sort of comfort at doing something so familiar again. The past few months had been fraught with excitement and new things for her, but it had been nerve-racking also. Pruning her rose bushes gave her back some control, a sense of knowing what she was doing.
Her cell phone started ringing somewhere in the house. Jill dropped her shears and ran in the back door to answer it. Picking her phone up off the kitchen counter, she saw that the readout on the phone showed that it was an unidentified caller, which she tended not to answer, but with the funeral and all the relatives coming into town, she’d been getting a lot of those.
“Hello?”
“Jill, it’s Collie,” the friendly and familiar Irish lilt of her friend came through the receiver.
“Oh, Collie, it’s so good to hear your voice,” Jill said with a rush of emotion welling up in the back of her throat. “How are you?”
“I’m still in there,” Collie said. “The doctor says I’m fit enough to get through the rest of the tour as long as I don’t fly. Easy enough since we’re staying in the UK.” She paused. “We miss you though, Jill. Are you going to be rejoining us soon?”
Jill hesitated answering. When she had left Ireland to come back for the funeral she had been sure she’d be returning. But now that she was back home in Phoenix, in the house that she’d lived in with her family for years, with her husband who seemed to really need her for the first time in a very long time, she just wasn’t so sure now. And there was the whole thing with Coyle and his wife.
/> “I don’t know, Collie. I have some things to take care of here,” Jill said. Her eyes lit upon a manila envelope that sat on the kitchen table. A courier had delivered it that morning. It was the divorce papers that her lawyer had drawn up and sent over when he had discovered that she had returned from Ireland. Jill hadn’t shown them to Scott yet. They hadn’t spoken about it, about their marriage, since she came back. The two of them had just fallen back into their roles, comfortable and comforting. Although, Jill had to admit, Scott seemed changed. Since her return, he hadn’t said a single cruel word to her.
“Hang on, a second,” said, and Jill heard some muffled conversation. When Collie returned to the phone, she said, “There’s someone here that wants to talk to you.”
“Oh, Collie, I don’t want to talk to Coyle,” Jill said pleadingly.
“It’s not Coyle. You need to listen to her, okay? Promise me?” Collie waited until Jill agreed, then said, “Here she is.”
Jill waited, wondering what this was about.
“Hello?” a pretty Irish-accented voice asked.
“Hello,” Jill said.
“Ah, um, Jill?”
“Yes, this is Jill.”
“This is Sharon.” The woman didn’t elaborate, but Jill knew who she was. It was Coyle’s wife. Her heart sank. She didn’t need this, not on top of everything else – a scorned wife warning Jill off her husband.
Jill sat down and willed the building tears to go away. She didn’t need this kind of pain. She thought about the past few months, months where she had gone from being miserable in her marriage to Scott to elated in her relationship with Coyle and joining the band, and then heartbroken and miserable again when she’d realized that Coyle and his wife still had feelings for each other.
The Replacement Bridesmaid Page 19