Keeping Faith

by Janice Macdonald

  “Some guy for Rose,” Margaret said.

  “I thought it might be Liam.”

  “Some guy for Rose,” Margaret repeated, her back to Hannah. “Next thing I know, she’ll be moving out, too. Then Deb, although at least Deb’s always likely to come back the next day. So is Liam moving in?”

  “Damn it.” Hannah glared at her mother. Anger, like a bucket of red paint, obliterated all other emotions. “Do you want to know a big reason I’m moving out?”

  “All I know is you never mentioned moving out before you-know-who showed up on the scene.”

  Hannah gritted her teeth. Margaret was going to drive her crazy. Any minute now she’d start gibbering. She paced the room, trying to calm down. “I want you to listen to me, okay? Just listen. This has nothing to do with Liam. Nothing to do with Allan. Nothing to do with Prince Charles, nothing—”

  “Prince Charles? What does he have to do with—”

  “Listen to me, Mom. Just listen. I’m trying to tell you this has nothing to do with a guy. I’m not pregnant. I’m not getting married. No one’s moving in with me. I just want a life of my own.”

  “Well, you have a life of your own now.”

  “No, I don’t. I have a life under a microscope. Everything I do is endlessly discussed—”

  “Discussed?” Her mother’s expression turned indignant. “If you think we sit around discussing you, you’re wrong. Like I said to Rose, Hannah’s life is her business.”

  “Mom, that’s exactly what I’m talking about…” What was the point? She peered into her mother’s face. “Be happy for me, okay? Think of all the extra time you’ll have not cooking and picking up after me and Faith.”

  Margaret managed a brave little smile. “You’re my life, honey, you and Deb and Faith. Whatever I do, I do willingly because I love you.”

  THE NEXT DAY WAS a school holiday, and Hannah came home from her run to find Faith in the kitchen crouched next to a wicker basket.

  “A late birthday present from me and Max,” Rose told Hannah. “My new sweetie. His dog had eight puppies. This little guy was the last one left.”

  “My whole life, I’ve always wanted a puppy exactly like this.” Faith held the tiny caramel color puppy up to her face, squealing as it licked her nose.

  Rose laughed. “Your whole life, huh? Wow, my whole life, I’ve been looking for Prince Charming.” She looked at Hannah. “Cute, isn’t he? The puppy, I mean.”

  Hannah cupped her hand behind her neck where a massive knot of tension had not been relieved by the run. The rental agreement she’d signed clearly stated no pets. She looked at Faith, stretched out on the floor, flat on her stomach in deep eye-to-eye communion with the puppy, and walked over to check the cork bulletin board on the wall where telephone messages were pinned.

  Allan had called. Liam hadn’t. Not that she’d expected him to. Except she had. And he hadn’t. No apology for disappointing his daughter. Nothing. She glanced at Allan’s message. “Just wanted to tell you I miss you,” it read. Rose was watching her, so she opened the refrigerator and hid her face among the cartons of yogurt and cottage cheese.

  “What did you have for breakfast?” she called to her daughter.

  “Ice cream,” Faith said.

  “Ice cream?” Hannah glanced over her shoulder at Faith. “For breakfast?”

  “My specialty,” Rose said. “That and boiling water, but water’s iffy. I tried to talk her into a jelly doughnut, but she wanted Ben and Jerry’s.”

  “Liam bought me doughnut holes,” Faith said. “And I ate three.”

  “No kidding,” Rose said. “I bet you really like Liam, huh?”

  “Uh-huh. He’s nice. He put me on his shoulders.”

  “Wow, that sounds like fun,” Rose said. “So are you guys going to do some more fun things with him?”

  “Maybe if Mommy calls him. I did a picture for him.”

  “Faith.” Hannah emerged from the refrigerator and glared at Rose. Then she addressed her daughter. “Go upstairs and get all your clothes out of the hamper and bring them down so I can start a wash.” She waited until Faith was out of earshot. “Don’t pump her for information,” she said. “If you want to know something, ask me.”

  “Oh, lighten up,” Rose said. “What’s the big deal? Liam’s some sacred topic no one can discuss? Your mother’s the same way. I mention Liam’s name and she screams at me that it’s none of my business. Excuse me? Aren’t we all family here?”

  Hannah put the kettle on for tea. One thing had just become a whole lot easier. If Liam still had any ideas about being part of Faith’s life and taking her off to Ireland, he could damn well forget them.

  “Hey, Mommy.” Faith ran into the room, a pile of laundry in her arms. “Guess what I’m going to call my puppy?”

  Hannah stared at the dog, her mind blank.

  “Spot?” Rose asked.

  Faith frowned. “But he hasn’t got any spots.”

  “I’m going to call him Raisin. You know why, Mommy?”

  “You okay, hon?” Rose interrupted. “You’re not upset about…” She nodded in the direction of Faith, now on her back, the puppy extended above her at full arm’s length. “I just thought since we all felt so bad when Turpin passed on, it was time for a replacement. And Faith’s been wanting a puppy forever.”

  “Forever,” Faith echoed. “And now I’ve got one. And his name is Raisin because he’s got eyes like little raisins. Hey, Grandma,” she called as Hannah’s mother appeared in the doorway. “I’ve got a puppy.”

  “A puppy.” Margaret shook her head slightly as though she couldn’t quite comprehend the situation. She looked from Hannah to Rose. “Where did he come from?”

  “Me,” Rose said, then she laughed. “Well, not me literally.”

  “No, Rose, I didn’t think you meant literally,” Margaret said. “Well, I just hope this apartment Hannah rented allows animals.”

  “Apartment?” Rose looked at Hannah. “You’re moving out.”

  “Mom.” Hannah gave her mother a warning look. Faith had been asleep when she’d gone on her run, so she’d decided to tell her later. That was before she’d learned about the puppy. The phone rang. Hannah watched her mother answer it. She could feel Rose staring at her, obviously dying to ask about the apartment. Margaret hung up and came to sit at the table.

  “Well, how about this for a piece of news?” She looked at Hannah. “That was Helen. She’s watching the local news.” She lowered her voice and leaned across the table. “Liam was in some kind of brawl last night. The cops had to break it up.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  LIAM SAT in a marina coffee shop eating a concoction of scrambled eggs, chili peppers and avocado. He’d walked over to the marina from Miranda’s house and brought a notebook with him, thinking about a song he wanted to write. He’d half finished it, then run out of inspiration. Another half-finished song to add to the pile. His life was full of half-finished things.

  A waitress in white shorts and a blue shirt smiled at him and held a coffeepot above his cup. He glanced up at her, nodded and waited for the inevitable remark.

  “Walked into a door, huh?”

  “Right,” Liam said. Since the fight the night before, he’d heard a dozen variations of the comment. “It was in my way,” he said. The waitress smiled and he watched her move on to the next table.

  The incident last night had turned out to be more of an embarrassment than anything else. He’d blacked out briefly but was fully conscious by the time the cops arrived. If the cop hadn’t recognized him and Brid from a publicity photo, the whole thing would have been just another bar scuffle. As it was, he’d been treated to a lecture from the cop and warned to stay out of trouble. The bar owner hadn’t pressed charges, but he’d obviously tipped off the media because the following morning, Miranda had woken him to say there was a reporter on the phone. He hadn’t taken the call.

  He ate a forkful of eggs, and speared a piece of avocado. He’d eaten more av
ocado since he’d been in California than he had his whole life. He pushed his plate aside and watched a gull make a dive for a bit of orange peel garnish.

  At the zoo, Faith had charmed him out of some change to buy birdseed. She’d held out her palm for the birds to feed, then retracted it, squealing whenever a bird swooped down. He’d watched Hannah watching their daughter and told himself he wanted a life like that. Sunshine and family outings. And then he’d returned to Miranda’s to hear that Brid hadn’t come home and it was as though he’d stepped out of one world and back into another. Now, thinking of Faith and Hannah again, it seemed he had a foot in each world.

  You have to make a choice, Brid had said.

  He finished his food, glanced at the check the waitress had dropped off and put some bills on the table under his plate. His thoughts still on his daughter and her mother, he made his way back to Miranda’s. Past a waterside bar, past a bagel shop and past a Realtor where the pictures pasted in the window showed million dollar properties with red-tiled roofs and ocean views.

  At a pay phone, he dug in his jeans for Hannah’s phone number. He listened to a phone ring three times, and then her mother answered.

  “Don’t hang up again, Mrs. Riley,” he said, expecting to hear the click of a disconnection. “It’s Liam. May I talk to Hannah, please.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Margaret Riley said.

  “She can tell me that to my face,” Liam said.

  “She’s not in,” Margaret said.

  He leaned his back against the wall. From where he stood, he could see the boats rocking in the slips. A middle-aged man in white shorts and a blue shirt wheeled a wooden cart down one of the gangways. “When do you expect her back?” he asked.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Look, I don’t want to cause a scene, Mrs. Riley,” he said, “but this is the third time you’ve given me the runaround. I intend to speak to Hannah one way or another, if I have to camp out on your front doorstep.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Margaret Riley asked. “Why are you trying to push your way back into Hannah’s life? She doesn’t need it, neither does Faith. If you had any feelings for either of them, you’d leave them both alone.”

  “If you’ll excuse my saying so, Mrs. Riley, that’s my business. And Hannah’s.”

  “Hannah’s my daughter,” she said.

  “And Faith’s my daughter.”

  She laughed, a humorless bark. “You can throw the term around, Liam, but you’re not her father in the real sense of the word—”

  “Because I was robbed of the chance to be.”

  “Robbed.” She gave another laugh. “Look, if you’re expecting an apology, you’re going to be disappointed. If you were honest with yourself, you’d admit you weren’t prepared for the responsibilities of taking care of a wife or child. And you’re still not. My daughter sat at home waiting for you last night, while you were out getting arrested for a bar brawl.”

  Liam thought of the day Margaret Riley had told him about Hannah’s abortion. She hadn’t asked him in—they’d stood at the front door talking. Her teeth had been chattering and she had worn a gray cardigan that had a bulge in the sleeve just above her wrist. A tissue, it turned out, with which she dabbed at her nose continuously. He’d been reminded of his Auntie Maude; always a hanky up her sleeve ready to swipe snotty little noses. And always candy in her apron pocket. One of the few good memories of his childhood. Margaret had been so distraught on the porch that day that he’d had an irrational urge to assure her everything would be all right.

  “You were a bad influence on her,” she was saying now. “Do you have any idea at all what a fragile emotional state she was in? If her family hadn’t stepped in, I hate to think what might have happened.”

  Liam shifted the phone to his other ear. Now, as he had back then, he wanted to hate her, but felt mostly sympathy. What did he know about the whole loving family bit? After his ma walked out, he’d been like an odd bit of luggage, carted around from place to place, no one quite sure where he belonged, or in any hurry to claim him. No big loss either if he went missing and never turned up again. For Hannah, things couldn’t have been more different.

  “Look…” he started. “That’s in the past, there’s nothing to be gained in going over and over—”

  “It was all over the news about your bar brawl.” Margaret went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Hannah was shocked, of course, although why it would surprise her I don’t know. It goes with your lifestyle, as far as I can see.”

  “Is Hannah there?”

  “Ever since you came back into the picture, nothing we do is right for her. She fights with me, she criticizes my sisters. We’ve bent over backward to make her happy and what does she do? Last night, she announces that she’s moving out.”

  Liam said nothing, but the news surprised him. He’d had the impression that Hannah and Faith were quite happy living in the family home. He tried to remember whether Hannah had said anything about moving during their trip to the zoo. He remembered her red eyes that morning.

  “It’s her life, of course, which is what I’m always telling her,” Margaret said. “Far be it from me to interfere. It’s just her reason for moving out that upsets me. She denies it, but I know it’s because she’s got this idea that you were wronged and now she doesn’t trust any of us, so she’s uprooting herself and my granddaughter…” Her voice cracked. “Look, I’m begging you, please leave her alone.”

  “I WANT TO MAKE Rocky something really incredible for dinner,” Jen told Hannah as they walked down the aisles of the Trader Joe’s on Pacific Coast Highway, checking out the bags of gourmet pasta and imported mustard. She held up a plastic bag for Hannah’s inspection. “Look. Squid pasta. See, it’s shaped like little squiddy things.”

  “But it’s black.” Hannah pointed out. “You think he’d go for black food?”

  “Yeah, good point.” Jen set the pasta back on the shelf. “They had this really cute heart-shaped pasta for Valentine’s Day and I knocked myself out making a great alfredo sauce to go with it. He wouldn’t touch it.” She shifted her basket to the other arm. “So what’s the word on Liam?”

  “Nothing… Well, I called the place he was staying in Huntington Beach and the woman who answered said he was out somewhere, so I guess they don’t have him locked up in jail.”

  “But he hasn’t tried to call?”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe he did and your mom didn’t give you the message.”

  “No, I don’t think she’d do that. She’d figure I would find out somehow.”

  “So how does Faith feel about moving?” Jen asked.

  “She isn’t happy. She doesn’t understand why we have to move if we can’t take the dog, and now my sister and aunts are giving me these lectures about being selfish.” Earlier that morning, as she’d left the house to drop Faith off at her friend Tiffany’s, Deb had asked Faith for a few minutes to “talk to Mommy about private stuff,” then angrily accused Hannah of putting her obsession with Liam in front of Faith’s happiness. And then Rose, who was thinking of moving in with her boyfriend, had begged Hannah to reconsider moving because it would leave Margaret alone. “I’m suddenly the monster,” Hannah told Jen.

  “Screw them,” Jen said. “It’s your life. Faith can go visit the dog at your mom’s house. Don’t let it get to you. What time do you have to pick up Faith?”

  “Not till six.”

  “Want to have lunch?”

  “Actually, I think I’m going to track down Liam.” She dug in her purse for her billfold, fished out a five-dollar bill for the parmesan cheese and pasta she’d picked up. “Not because I give a damn if I ever see him again, but we need to have a little chat about his intentions regarding Faith.”

  Ten minutes later, as she drove slowly along the street of expensive waterfront homes where Miranda Payton lived, Hannah tried to talk herself into actually parking the car, getting out, knocking on the door and a
sking Miranda if she could talk to Liam.

  The problem was, she didn’t want to do it. Didn’t want to see the beauteous Miranda, with her cleavage and hundred-watt smile. Didn’t want to look like some desperate groupie stalking Liam. Didn’t want to hear his justification for choosing Brid over Faith. Didn’t want to be so damned obsessed with Liam Tully that she’d allowed him to invade her every waking thought and pretty much take over her dreams, too.

  Faith. I’m doing this for Faith.

  Outside Miranda’s house, she peered through the tangle of bougainvillea to the front door. She lost her nerve and drove around the block again, past the house and back onto Pacific Coast Highway. At the next light, she pulled into the left-hand lane, made a U-turn and returned to Huntington Harbor. Miranda lived on a cul-de-sac. She drove past the house, parked two doors away outside a mansion with green-and-white awnings and a bubbling fountain in the front yard.

  The engine idling, she tried to talk herself out of confronting Liam. Since he hadn’t called, or come to see her, his talk about wanting to be part of Faith’s life was apparently just that—talk. One option was to simply accept it. Deal with it by not dealing with it. As she’d pointed out to Liam, Faith would quickly forget him. Why stir things up?

  A Mercedes convertible drew up behind her and parked at the curb. Through the rearview mirror, Hannah watched a tall blonde in white jeans and a black bikini top get out, then disappear into the tropical foliage.

  Hannah pulled down the mirror, and stared at her reflection. God, why did she have to look so damn wholesome? If they were casting her in a movie, she would be the girlfriend from Iowa. She dug into her purse for lipstick. She couldn’t let him just leave. Nothing had been resolved. If Liam walked out of her life again, it wouldn’t be until they’d cleared up a few things.

  As she pulled up outside Miranda’s, the front door opened and Liam walked out. He wore baggy khaki shorts and a black T-shirt. Liam. Blue eyes, wind-tussled hair.

  Once he’d been her life. Now he wasn’t. Her life would go on without him in it. But God, no one had ever made her heart beat as hard as it was doing right now. Her face felt hot as she stretched across the passenger seat to look at him through the open window.