One Year

by Mary McDonough

  If only the others would see what Mary Bernadette now saw so clearly, that Wynston Meadows was a genuine threat to the goals of the OWHA! Then they might act together to form the unanimous vote the bylaws required to remove him from the board. And lose the promised millions as a result. Of course, there was no guarantee that while Meadows remained on the board he would use those millions for the good of Oliver’s Well, as he had promised. His word was not to be trusted.

  Mary Bernadette took a sip of the now-cooled tea. Only that morning Paddy had attempted to talk to her about the disastrous situation, but she had silenced him immediately. Now she wasn’t sure why she had, not when she felt so in need of support. Poor man, she thought now. He is so good to me. And am I so good to him in return?

  She had never given even a passing thought to committing an infidelity. For more than fifty years she had made his every meal, washed and ironed and mended his clothes. She had managed the household budget and raised his children to be respectable, hardworking, moral people of whom he could be proud. She had nursed him through the flu and colds and a hip replacement.

  But had she ever taken his hand, just to let him know that she loved him? Had she ever gently touched his cheek for no other reason than to see him smile? Maybe she had, a very long time ago, during the eighteen months of William’s life when the days had been filled with joy and wonder and laughter. And then, it was all over. With William gone, gone too was the warm and happy woman she had been so briefly.

  Banshee, in the way that cats have when their human companions were troubled, appeared at Mary Bernadette’s side and wound her long, sleek body around her legs. Absentmindedly, Mary Bernadette reached down to stroke her.

  It had been years and years since she had had to reflect on matters in the way she was being forced to now. For so long her life had been firmly under her control. Or so she had thought. Now Mary Bernadette suspected that she might have been assuming mastery over events that were essentially out of her realm. Overweening pride.

  “Banshee,” she said, looking down at her feline companion, for whom life was so blessedly simple. “Would you like a wee bit of milk?”

  Banshee replied in the affirmative.

  CHAPTER 69

  PJ was alone in the cottage. He didn’t know where Alexis had gone. She hadn’t left a note, and he couldn’t remember if she had mentioned that she had a doctor’s appointment after work or if she had needed to run to the bank or even, he thought, if she had planned to see Maureen Kline. She had mentioned once that she liked Maureen. Maybe they had become friends. PJ just didn’t know.

  He sat at the kitchen table, nervously drumming his fingers against it. Something was badly wrong. He could feel it. At the gas station earlier that day he had waved to Jim Toth, someone he had known since childhood. Jim, filling up his car two pumps down the line, had not waved back. On the way back to the office he got a text from a new client, canceling the job. And later, when PJ stopped in Cookies ’n Crumpets for a cup of coffee, he could have sworn that the other customers in the bakery had looked at him with suspicion and hostility.

  It was only on the way home that the awful thought occurred to him. Wynston Meadows might be a creep, but he was a smart man. Could he be right, after all, in implying that Mary Bernadette had behaved unethically during her tenure at the OWHA, resulting in Fitzgibbon Landscaping being awarded so many lucrative contracts?

  And there was something else. If Mary Bernadette were indeed guilty of professional misconduct, Paddy would have to know about it. How could a husband and wife keep such a thing a secret from one another, especially a pair like his grandparents, their lives so harmoniously intertwined for so many years?

  PJ jumped from his seat and stalked over to the window from where he had a clear view of his grandparents’ house. No. It was a ridiculous thought. But Paddy was the owner of Fitzgibbon Landscaping, and he had been its leader for forty years. How could he not know if something underhanded had been going on? And if he truly hadn’t known, why hadn’t he? What did that say about his abilities as a leader?

  Or, PJ thought, maybe I’ve fallen victim to the power of rumor. He remembered what he had predicted back when Wynston Meadows had demanded a reconsideration of Fitzgibbon Landscaping having been awarded the Stoker job. Even the hint of a scandal, however false, might ruin a good reputation. If he could doubt the honesty of his own beloved grandparents, then no wonder a stranger might, too.

  PJ rubbed his eyes. He wished there were someone with whom he could share his doubts. He certainly couldn’t talk to Alexis. These days he felt as if he barely knew the woman he had married. He hadn’t changed—he had given it a lot of thought and he was sure of that—but she certainly had. He just didn’t feel—he didn’t feel safe with her like he once had. Protected. Back when they had first started dating and all throughout their courtship and the first months of their marriage, Alexis had been the most patient listener, the most supportive person he had ever known, other than his grandmother and his mother. He had been so certain that Alexis would prove to be the perfect wife for him, that she would so easily become one of the family. He had been so certain that she would understand. But now, she had grown troublingly disloyal to the Fitzgibbon cause. To him. Who was to say that just for the spite of it she wouldn’t tell someone of his suspicions—Leonard DeWitt or even Wynston Meadows?

  And he certainly couldn’t turn to his father for advice or consolation. They had never been close, and the passing years seemed to be pulling them even further apart. For some reason, just plain stubbornness or something more twisted, Pat Fitzgibbon couldn’t appreciate—let alone accept—his son’s decision to work for the family business. Sometimes PJ wondered if the reason his father wouldn’t support him was because of the glaringly obvious animosity between Pat and his own mother. At times PJ had thought that his father actually hated her.

  PJ sighed. He had never felt so alone in his entire life. Not even in the weeks just after the twins were born when everyone seemed to forget his existence. Not even when his high school girlfriend had dumped him on the eve of the junior prom for someone he had thought to be his friend. Not even when Alexis had spent that one summer during college traveling abroad on her own, leaving him behind in Oliver’s Well living with and working for his grandparents. To this day he still didn’t understand why she had felt the need to be apart from him for two entire months.

  Yes, PJ thought now, turning angrily away from the window. That was it. His own scandalously disloyal thoughts had to be the result of his wife’s influence. She had never really fit into the world of the Fitzgibbons, and she had never really tried to. Her dislike of his family was infecting him with the disease of false and unsupported suspicion. And to think that his wife wore his great aunt Catherine’s wedding ring as her own. It was a travesty.

  Suddenly, PJ couldn’t stand being in the cottage for one moment longer. He grabbed his keys, went out to the truck, and pointed it in the direction of The Angry Squire.

  He did not leave a note for his wife.

  CHAPTER 70

  Mary Bernadette did not believe in caller ID. She found it only slightly less rude than call waiting. Still, at this moment, she wished she had known who was on the other end of the line before she picked up the receiver.

  “Hello, Mary Bernadette.” It was Joyce Miller, with that tinny, almost desperate note in her voice Mary Bernadette found so annoying.

  “Oh, hello, Joyce,” Mary Bernadette said, with just enough enthusiasm to be polite.

  “I have some rather disturbing news, I’m afraid.”

  Mary Bernadette allowed her usually dignified demeanor (which she made it a point to maintain even when alone) to slip just long enough to roll her eyes at the kitchen wall. What was it now? Joyce could make a mountain out of a molehill. She might have found a nail missing from a baseboard at the Wilson House and convinced herself the entire edifice was about to collapse.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Well, I’m
afraid that Alexis has abandoned the Day in the Life project.”

  Mary Bernadette felt a sharp twinge of pain behind her left eye. “What do you mean she’s abandoned the project?” she asked, careful to keep her tone even.

  “Just what I said. She hasn’t logged a photo in days and days. I suppose I could have gone straight to Alexis for an explanation, but I thought that I had better come to you first. After all, you were the one who gave her the job.”

  “There must be some mistake,” Mary Bernadette replied promptly. Silently, she damned herself for not having looked at the OWHA website in days. She might have spotted the absence and dealt with it without anyone else being the wiser.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Joyce said, with her thin laugh. “But then again, Alexis being your family, I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of this little mystery before anyone else on the board notices that something is wrong. Unless they already have.”

  “Yes,” Mary Bernadette said. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation. Good-bye, Joyce.”

  Mary Bernadette sank into a seat at the kitchen table. She was angry. She was hurt. She was embarrassed. She simply could not understand how her beloved grandson’s wife could care so little for her and by extension for the good name of the Fitzgibbon family. Why hadn’t the girl come to her if she wanted to leave the project? There was no excuse for such behavior. It was downright underhanded. Well, Mary Bernadette thought, no good deed goes unpunished, and that was for certain. And the thought of Wynston Meadows learning of Alexis’s act of treason (that wasn’t too strong a word for it) horrified her. Alexis’s bad behavior would only give the man more ammunition in his already powerful and inexplicable campaign against the Fitzgibbons.

  Mary Bernadette abruptly rose from the table. She would accomplish nothing by sitting there and stewing. She would deal with the situation immediately.

  CHAPTER 71

  Alexis opened the door only after Mary Bernadette had knocked several times. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

  Mary Bernadette resisted a very strong desire to slap Alexis’s face. “May I come in?” she asked.

  Alexis opened the door wider and stepped back to allow Mary Bernadette to pass.

  “PJ’s not here,” she said.

  “It’s you I’ve come to speak with. Let me get straight to the point. I’ve been told that you haven’t been keeping up with the Day in the Life of Oliver’s Well project. Is that true?”

  Color flooded the girl’s cheeks, and she turned away. “Yes.”

  “Why is that?”

  Alexis turned back to her and shrugged. “It was boring. I was tired of it.”

  “A Fitzgibbon,” Mary Bernadette said, keeping a tight rein on her temper, “does not just walk away from responsibility. You’ve sullied our good name and you’ve let down the Oliver’s Well Historical Association.”

  Alexis laughed a bit wildly. “Don’t be so dramatic. No one cares about that project, anyway. It was a bad idea in the first place.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that. And there is no excuse for not coming to me and asking to be let go of the task. The least you could have done was to stay on until I found someone to replace you.”

  “Come to you?” The girl’s voice was a shriek. “Are you kidding ? Like you would actually listen to me? God, Mary Bernadette, I am so tired of doing your bidding. Nothing I do is ever good enough for you. I just want to be left alone!”

  Mary Bernadette steadied her breathing before she spoke. “Well,” she said, “perhaps you should have thought of that before marrying my grandson. You’re part of this family now, for better or worse. You don’t have the right to be ‘left alone.’ You owe the family your active presence. We all do.”

  “Presence! Well, on that note, I want you to keep your presence out of my home. I want you to stop coming in to the cottage when I’m out and rearranging my things. I want you to stop snooping through my mail. I’ll have the lock changed, if you don’t!”

  Mary Bernadette felt as if she had sustained a physical blow. No one had ever had the audacity to speak to her so rudely. “I might remind you,” she said, “that I own this cottage.”

  Alexis laughed. “Oh, you never let me forget that! But you don’t own me, even if my last name is Fitzgibbon!”

  There followed a heavy, vibrating silence; Mary Bernadette could feel the weight of it pressing on her shoulders. “There are times,” she said, “when I regret that it is.”

  CHAPTER 72

  Alexis felt sick to her stomach as she waited for PJ to come home from work that evening. She knew without a doubt that Mary Bernadette would have waylaid him and told him her version of what had happened that afternoon. And she strongly suspected that she would have to fight for her side of the encounter to be heard.

  Finally, she saw him coming from his grandparents’ house, and when he was within a few feet of the door she threw it open. PJ’s face was dark with an emotion Alexis couldn’t identify. It frightened her.

  “I’ve just talked to Grandmother,” he said stiffly, walking into the cottage.

  Alexis closed the door. “I bet she told you her version of what happened this afternoon.”

  “The way I see it, there’s only one version of the story. You walked away from a job Grandmother was nice enough to give you without telling her—without telling anyone—that you wanted to quit.”

  “But there was a reason, PJ! Let me—”

  “And then when Grandmother confronted you about what you had done, you didn’t even have the decency to apologize. Instead, you threatened to change the locks against her.”

  “But she—”

  “You should never have shown such disrespect.”

  “Me?” Alexis cried. “What about her?”

  PJ laughed unpleasantly. “What sort of disrespect has she shown you? She gave you a job at Fitzgibbon Landscaping. She gave you a home. She gave you a special role in the OWHA. And look how you betrayed her.”

  “But I didn’t ask for any of those things. I didn’t—”

  “I’m disappointed in you, Alexis. I never expected this sort of thing from you, of all people. You used to be so . . . so good. So trustworthy.”

  Alexis balled her hands into fists at her side. “God,” she cried, “you sound like you’re my father, not my husband! What has that woman done to you?”

  “That woman helped raise me. That woman has been nothing but good and generous to me. And to think that I doubted her for even one minute . . .”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did she tell you she wishes my last name wasn’t Fitzgibbon ?” Alexis demanded. “She hates me, PJ.”

  “Can you blame her, when you do something so underhanded ?”

  Alexis felt her stomach heave. She was badly shocked. She wanted to tell her husband to leave the cottage. She wanted to leave the cottage. But the fear of no one coming to her rescue rendered her speechless.

  PJ shook his head and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “I’ll take care of my own dinner,” he said. He stalked out of the cottage, leaving the door to slam behind him. A moment later, Alexis heard his truck drive off.

  He had been gone for almost four hours.

  Alexis opened the front door of the cottage and peered out to Honeysuckle Lane. She listened for the sound of her husband’s truck. She saw and heard nothing. She went back inside and closed the door behind her.

  PJ had never gone off like this, not ever in all the years they had been together. Alexis was worried. She was still a bit angry, but she was scared, too. And she was weak with remorse. She should have behaved with more dignity when Mary Bernadette had confronted her that afternoon. Had she really threatened to change the locks on the cottage? Had she really meant what she had said about wanting to be left alone? Well, she had been left alone now, and it didn’t feel very good at all.

  With a shuddering sigh Alexis sank onto the couch and put her head in her hands. She hadn’t been ab
le to eat anything after PJ had stormed out and now vaguely wondered if she should make a cup of tea. But the effort seemed too great.

  Her husband had not listened to her side of the story. He had called her conduct underhanded. He had said that he was disappointed in her. He had told her she had acted disrespectfully. He had accused her of betraying the family. His family. And in a way, she had betrayed them. Alexis had known that from the moment she had stowed her camera in the trunk of her car and driven away from the sight of the Day in the Life project. She had known there would be consequences. And she hadn’t much cared. But now . . .

  Alexis lifted her head. Was that the sound of a truck’s engine slowing? She rushed over to the door and flung it open. The only sound she heard now was a call of a night bird. Please God, she prayed silently, let him be all right. Even though the thought of what PJ might say to her when he got home frightened her—what if he said he no longer loved her?—she wanted him home safely. With her. Where he belonged.

  She closed the door again and waited, painfully aware that only a few yards away PJ’s grandmother waited, too.

  CHAPTER 73

  “Mom? We have to talk.”

  Megan was glad that her older son had called. After mass on Palm Sunday she had reminded him that she was always available should he be in need of advice, but she hadn’t entertained a great conviction that he would indeed turn to her for help.

  Megan listened now as PJ recounted an extraordinary story about Alexis quitting her photography work for the OWHA without telling anyone, and then about the terrible fight that had ensued between Alexis and Mary Bernadette when the truth had come out. Everything about PJ’s tale bothered Megan, particularly her son’s obvious preference for his grandmother’s point of view.