She grinned and punched his arm. “Liar.”
He turned on the radio and flipped through the preset stations. Miranda’s taste ran to soft rock and easy listening. Billy Joel was singing “An Innocent Man.” As they came into Belmont Shore, the traffic congealed into a slow-moving mass. Trendy little shops lined both sides of the street.
Liam thought of the pink stucco cottage Hannah had called her dream house. There’d been a strip of blue ocean at the foot of the street, the powdery dust of sand in the air. And flowers everywhere, the colors like a kid’s box of crayons. Purple bougainvillea and red geraniums, bright blue daisies with yellow centers and pink-and-white-striped petunias spilling out of terracotta pots. “Could you see us living in a place like this?” she’d asked him.
“I think you should have phoned her first,” Brid said. “It might be a bit awkward, just showing up.”
“I’ll take my chances.” Second Street ended and merged into Ocean Boulevard. A street—whose name he couldn’t make out—forked to the right. He waited at the stop sign, unsure which direction to take. A car honked behind him. Liam rubbed the back of his neck, let the clutch out too soon and killed the engine.
“You’re nervous, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be daft.” He craned his neck to read the street sign. There was a supermarket at the foot of Hannah’s street, he remembered. They’d walked from her house to a long pier with a fishing tackle shop at the end. “Nervous about what?”
Brid laughed. “Come on, Liam, it’s me you’re talking to. I mean about seeing your daughter. You’re scared to death.” She reached over and put her hand on his arm. “You don’t have to do this, you know, Liam.”
“I can’t remember the name of her street,” he said.
“That’s why you should have phoned.”
“I’ll know it when I see it.” To his right, he saw a street with large two-story homes winding up a hill. He craned his neck to get a better view. “This is the one, I think. It’s a big brown house with turrets in the front like a castle. When I used to visit Hannah, I’d half expect them to pull up the drawbridge.”
“That one?” Brid pointed to a turreted structure several houses up the hill with long, narrow windows and a heavy wooden door. “Looks like money,” she said as Liam pulled up outside.
“They do well enough,” he said. “Or they did.”
“They must have been thrilled with you.”
He shrugged and stretched across Brid to peer at the house. Everything looked much as he remembered. The house was built on a slight incline so that it sat about six feet higher than street level. Sixteen steps led up from the street, made a turn, then twelve more ended in a meticulously clipped lawn edged with orange tropical flowers. Her father had been an avid gardener. Hannah had given him a tour of the old man’s rose garden. Every rose, she’d told him, marked a special occasion in her or her sister’s lives. She’d told him she’d argued with her father because he hadn’t planted a rose for her marriage.
“Are we just going to sit here then?” Brid asked.
“No.” As he opened the car door, he could hear children’s voices and laughter coming from the back of the house. A bunch of colored balloons bobbed from the mailbox on the street.
Brid put her hand on his arm. “Liam…”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve come this far…”
BY THREE, the party was in full swing. Hannah watched her daughter, who sat at one end of a long trestle table covered with white paper. All around her, a dozen or so children with newspaper aprons were applying spots of black paint to cardboard dalmatians. Aunt Rose, sporting a pair of faux fur dalmatian ears, supervised the activity, regaling the kids with a tale about a dalmatian who’d managed to misplace his spots.
“Any ideas what he might have done with them?” Rose asked.
“Maybe they got dirty and he had to wash them off,” Douglas suggested.
Hannah smiled and headed across the yard to where the food was being set up. A neighbor, in a tall white chef’s hat and a navy-blue apron presided over the barbecue; Margaret and Aunt Helen were filling Tupperware bowls with chips and cheddar cheese goldfish. Smoke from the grill hung in the air and mingled with the laughter from the children. Margaret leaned over to say something to Helen, then all three turned and smiled at Hannah.
Her throat suddenly thick, Hannah bent down to adjust the strap of her sandal. The image of the picture-perfect happy family—something she’d seen countless times—suddenly seemed false. She could tell herself she’d forgiven her mother for lying to Liam, but something had changed. This house—filled with people who loved her—suddenly didn’t feel like home.
“Hannah.” Margaret waved her over, then smiled conspiratorially at Helen. “We both think Allan is a doll.”
Helen smiled broadly. “Nice, too. Very polite and friendly.”
“He said I looked too young to have a thirty-one-year-old daughter,” Margaret said.
“That’s all it needed for your mother to fall in love with him,” Helen added.
“Not true,” Margaret protested, pink-faced. “I liked him the moment I saw him in the kitchen wearing my apron and whipping up a salad. I thought, there’s the guy for Hannah. Now if only we could find someone like that for Deb.”
“Where is Deb?” Hannah asked.
Margaret’s happy expression faded. “We argued again this morning, and she stormed out. I don’t know if it’s the pregnancy that’s making her so touchy or what. All I asked was whether the baby was going to have Dennis’s last name.”
“Maybe she thinks that’s her business,” Hannah said.
“I’m her mother,” Margaret said. “If she’s living in my house, I think I have the right to ask a simple question without her jumping down my throat.” She sighed. “If you could have a little talk with her, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Where’s that guy of yours?” The man tending the barbecue waved a spatula at Hannah. “Tell him to come and give me a hand. I could use a little break from women’s yak-yak-yak.”
Margaret peered across the yard. “I see him over there with his little boy. Allan,” she called. “Get over here. We want to put you to work.” She smiled at Hannah. “He is so cute.”
“Goodness.” Tupperware bowl in hand, Helen stared out at the crowd on the lawn. “Is that who I think it is? Over there by the steps.”
“Damn.” Margaret exhaled loudly, then turned to look at Hannah. “I thought you said he wasn’t coming. I’ll go and talk to him—”
“No, Mom.” Hannah put her hand on Margaret’s arm. “I will.”
CHAPTER SIX
“I THINK THIS IS WHERE I go find the ladies’ room or something,” Brid told Liam. “Good luck.”
As he watched Hannah approaching, Liam had an irrational urge to bolt. To drop the presents, wrapped by Miranda in silver paper with big yellow bows, and return to a place where he knew what he was doing.
Beyond Hannah, he could see a group standing around a barbecue. One of the women might have been Mrs. Riley, he wasn’t sure. And then Hannah was standing in front of him, color flooding her face. She wore a short white skirt and sandals. Her pale pink lipstick was almost the same color as her sleeveless blouse. No smile.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” she said.
“Neither did I.” The three square boxes were stacked one on top of the other, the top one brushing his chin. Hannah’s brown hair curled around her face. She looked very young, hardly old enough to have a six-year-old daughter. The group at the barbecue were watching with undisguised curiosity. The woman in the blue dress was Hannah’s mother, he was sure of it now. He shouldn’t have worn a tie. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, beaded on his forehead. He should have bought flowers, chocolates or something. “These are for…I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing she’d like. The girl in the shop had a little girl though…”
Hannah gave him a faint smile, then seemed to mentally shake herself. “Here, I’l
l take them.” She reached for the boxes, held them against her chest, but kept staring at him as if she thought he might be a figment of her imagination. “I’m stunned, Liam. I don’t know what to say. I haven’t… Faith doesn’t know. I mean, I haven’t said anything. Why did you change your mind?”
“I don’t know.” He followed Hannah’s glance to a long trestle table, where a dozen or so kids sat daubing black paint on paper and each other. He saw Faith. A little older than she’d looked in the pictures Hannah had given him, a pair of white fur dog ears on her head. Hands raised like claws, she was barking at a boy in a pirate’s outfit. Liam grinned. My daughter.
“You spotted her,” Hannah said. “Looks like she’s getting in a little practice for a game of My Dog Says. It’s like Simon Says,” she added after Liam gave her a puzzled look. “But the kids bark and growl instead.”
Liam watched Faith chase the pirate across the grass. Groups of adults in summer clothes stood around the yard, talking and watching the kids play. Hannah tapped his shoulder.
“I’m going to take these inside.” She indicated the presents. “Do you want to come with me?”
He followed her into the kitchen.
“The wallpaper’s different,” he said. “It used to be little yellow teapots.”
Hannah set the presents down on the table and looked up at him. “You remember?”
“And the cooker and fridge were green.”
“Avocado,” she said.
“And the fridge was covered with snapshots and newspaper clippings. You could hardly see the space between them.”
“Yeah, well…” She gestured at the front of the current fridge, a pristine stainless steel, unmarred by even a magnet. “My mom finally moved out of the sixties. Want something to drink? Soda? A beer?”
Liam shook his head and saw disappointment covered by a quick smile. “Changed my mind,” he said. “A beer would be nice.” He moved to the window and stared out at the kids on the lawn. Faith appeared to be issuing commands to the other kids who were tearing around the yard on all fours. As Hannah handed him the beer, he caught a whiff of something familiar.
“Your hair,” he said. “It still smells the same.”
She touched her hair, blushed a little. “Same shampoo. I’m a creature of habit.”
“It’s nice. Brings back old memories.” Back in Ireland, after they’d split up, he would lie in the dark and think about her and remember exactly the way her hair had smelled, the way traces of the aroma had lingered on her pillow. Once, in a particularly low moment, he’d gone out and bought a bottle of the same shampoo she’d used. And then he’d felt like an idiot for moping over a woman who’d aborted his child.
He stayed at the window, Hannah beside him. Watching his daughter. Their daughter. With something that felt a lot like envy, he watched the pirate’s dad come to the rescue of his son. Faith, he noticed, was now wearing the pirate’s hat.
“Oh, God.” Hannah, who had apparently caught the switch, too, started laughing. “Faith’s never been the shy type.”
“That’s good.” The surge of pride he felt surprised him. “She goes after what she wants.”
“Yeah…” She nodded, still smiling.
“Do you remember the last time we were at a birthday party together?”
“Yep,” she answered. “The one you had for me. My twenty-first.”
“And I forget to post the invitations so no one showed up.”
“Yeah, but you made a great cake.”
“If you like them flat as a pancake. And burned.”
“Well, it was your first try.”
“I’m not sure I’d have done any better after a dozen tries,” he said. “You can’t have forgotten the chicken?”
“The chicken?” Her expression puzzled, she looked at him for a minute. Then she clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh, the chicken,” she said, laughing now. “I remember.”
He’d been trying to cook dinner for her. But he’d forgotten to look in the oven before he turned it on and hadn’t seen the bags of potato chips she’d kept there to keep them from the mice that had overrun the apartment. After he’d put out the fire, he’d stuck the chicken back in—its innards still wrapped in plastic—and turned the temperature up high.
“God, the smell.” Hannah was still laughing. “I mean, it would have been hilarious if we hadn’t been so broke. I can still see you standing by the stove with this little tiny black thing the size of a sparrow.”
“But the gravy was all right though. Nothing like a nice gravy dinner. Ah, well…” he said a moment later.
Hannah’s smile faded and she stood looking out of the window at the children on the grass. A few seconds passed, and then she turned to him. “I’m glad you decided to come, Liam. It feels strange to be standing here with you, watching Faith. But it feels good, too.”
“It does.” He looked down at the beer can in his hand. “Strange but good.”
“How long will you be around?” she asked.
“It depends on Brid. My singer. She’s out there talking to the tall blond guy. She’s had a few problems. If she’s well enough to tour again we’ll leave in three or four days. We have a gig up near San Francisco next week. A big music festival. I’d like to make it.”
“So the band’s doing well?”
“It is.” He glanced at her. “We made the UK charts a couple of years in a row. And we’ve got a European tour coming up soon after we get back.”
She smiled. “Fantastic. I’m happy for you, Liam.”
“Thanks.” Something in her eyes told him she meant it. “And yourself? Things are going well for you, too?”
“Yeah…pretty good. I teach in a preschool.”
He caught the hesitation in her voice. “And you’re happy doing that?”
“Sure, it’s great.”
He looked at her. “That’s not really what you want to do, is it?”
She grinned. “No. I have this dream about doing landscaping design. Drought-tolerant plants. Rosemary, lavender, sage. Things that grow well in California.” Her face grew animated. “People are always surprised at how colorful that kind of garden can be.”
“So why are you teaching preschool if what you really want to do is grow plants?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, lots of reasons.”
“That’s a mistake, Hannah. You only live one life. Don’t waste it doing things that don’t make you happy.”
“That’s a nice thought, Liam,” she said, an edge to her voice now. “And it’s an easy thing to say, it’s just not so easy to do. Happiness isn’t always about just doing things for yourself. There are other people to consider.”
“You’re right,” he said. “As long as you don’t make other people an excuse for not taking responsibility for your own happiness.”
“Well,” she said brightly, after a moment of heavy silence. “I guess I should get out there and do my hostess duties.”
“Right.” Liam drank some beer and Hannah didn’t move. They stood watching the children, queuing up for hot dogs. Brid and the pirate’s dad were at the edge of the crowd, laughing about something. Faith had made her way to the front of the food line. He wondered what Hannah was thinking. He wondered if she was in love with the pirate’s dad. He wondered if she’d had any thought of telling Faith that her daddy wasn’t in heaven after all. He wondered if he needed his head examined. He decided he didn’t care.
“Does she like…” He started to ask, and then Hannah’s mother walked into the kitchen, holding the arm of the pirate’s dad. For a moment, they all stood looking at each other. Hannah’s face was like thunder; Margaret’s all flustered surprise—real or not, he couldn’t be sure. The pirate’s dad looked slightly amused and perfectly at ease. He had the kind of haircut that the men in the magazines Brid read all sported. In fact he looked a bit like someone in one of the ads—tanned and expensively dressed. Definitely a son-in-law candidate. Liam decided it was time to make his exit.
“OF COURSE I DIDN’T PLAN IT.” Margaret held a glass of pinot noir as she moved around the kitchen, putting away bowls and serving platters. “Allan suggested we all have dinner at Kelly’s tonight, I’d told him I love the steak there, and we came to look for you to tell you about it. How would I know you were with Liam?”
“I wasn’t with Liam, Mom. You make it sound like… We were talking.”
“Excuse me,” Margaret poured more wine into her glass. “I don’t think I suggested you were doing anything other than talking. I just said—”
“I know what you said. It was the way you said it.” Hannah scooped leftover potato salad into a plastic container. What was the point of arguing? Margaret would continue to claim innocence and Hannah would continue to believe that her mother knew exactly what she was doing when she brought Allan into the kitchen. She put the container into the fridge and picked up a bowl of baked beans. “You want to save these? There isn’t much left.”
“Toss them,” Margaret said. “Listen, I can finish cleaning up here, if you want to go and get ready. Allan said he’d be here at seven.”
Hannah scraped the beans into the trash. Faith had gone home with Allan and Douglas. This had also been arranged while she’d been talking to Liam. Allan would return with the kids, pick up Hannah and Margaret and drive to Kelly’s, where they’d meet Rose and Helen. In the span of one afternoon, Allan had become part of the family.
“Who was that woman with Liam?” Margaret asked.
“His singer.”
“She was all over Allan,” Margaret said. “Not that he was doing anything to encourage her. Actually the opposite, I think he was a little embarrassed.”
“He’ll get over it.” Why had Liam brought Brid to the party? And what was his relationship with the singer? And why the hell did any of it matter? Once again, Liam had just walked away. Not a word about wanting to see Faith again or keeping in touch. Nothing, just that faint, inscrutable Liam smile and then he was gone—down the road in a yellow Mercedes. With another woman.
“I suppose he didn’t say anything about wanting to contribute to Faith’s support,” Margaret said.
Keeping Faith Page 8