“Ew!” Dee and Michael sounded in unison. Seamus and Chancey broke apart, laughing and a little bashful. They turned in time to see the two youngsters high-five.
“You really mean it, Shay?”
“I do, Chance.”
<<< >>>
Lily and Jill’s living room was barely big enough to accommodate nine people all suffering from post-Thanksgiving-dinner lethargy. Dee and Michael sat on the floor in front of the muted TV, thumbs working frantically to kill all the baddies before the baddies killed them. Behind Michael, Jill’s brother perched on a footstool, watching their silent game with a great deal more interest than Seamus felt it warranted. Lily had half the sofa to herself so she could keep her swollen feet elevated—a state of affairs that had set Aidan on edge—and Paddy was a bag of pre-wedding nerves.
Chancey indicated he was going for a smoke; Seamus got up and followed him outside.
“Tense in there, huh?” Chancey remarked, lighting the pre-rolled cigarette.
“Aye, it is. Did I tell you about Aidan’s sister?”
“She died in childbirth, right?”
“That’s right. I think poor Aidan’s fretting about Lily.”
“And Paddy’s worrying about Aidan.”
“That, and tomorrow.”
Chancey took a long draw off the cigarette and blew the smoke upwards, watching it drift away on the breeze. It was a chilly day, but dry and bright. Seamus rubbed his bare arms to rid them of goose bumps.
“Want me to warm you up?” Chancey asked with a hint of a smile. Seamus raised an eyebrow. “I only meant we could share body heat.”
“Well, seeing as you’re offerin’.” Seamus stepped up close, and Chancey wrapped his open shirt—today worn over a t-shirt—around Seamus, using it to pull him closer still so that they were stood chest to chest, amongst other things. Seamus grimaced at the stirring in his jeans, which turned Chancey’s smile into a full-on grin.
“Three months is an awful long time.”
“It is,” Seamus agreed. “If I can get sorted any quicker, I will.”
“I’ll get by,” Chancey said with an exaggerated sigh.
“You might, I don’t know that I will,” Seamus grumbled. The stirring had turned into a full erection, and Chancey’s grin became a wicked chuckle. The door opened, and Paddy came into view.
“Phone call for you, Seamus.”
“What?”
Paddy walked over, his mobile phone in his hand. “It’s Marie,” he said, passing the phone to Seamus. He’d given Marie the number in case of any problems with Tess, such as he could do anything about it. Other than worry. He put the phone to his ear.
“Hello, Marie?”
“Ah, hello there, Seamus. Sorry to bother ye.”
“What’s up? Is Tess all right?”
“Oh, yes. She’s fine. Sorry, I should’ve said that first. But I’m afraid I am calling with bad news. Barry’s passed away.”
“Oh, no. That’s terrible news. What happened?”
“The postman found him yesterday morning. Collapsed in the yard, so he did. The police say he’d been there a couple of nights.”
“Jeez, that’s awful.”
“It surely is, but anyway, they were searching the house for his papers, to get hold of his next of kin, but they didn’t find any. What they did find, though, was his will. It turns out he didn’t have any living relatives.”
“Poor old fella.”
“Aye. Not so poor as we thought, at all.”
“What a shame. All those years of hard graft for it to go to the state.”
“No, Seamus, that’s why I’m calling. Because, you see, he’s left everything to you and Paddy.”
Chapter Thirty-One:
What About Ireland?
“We really can discuss this later,” Seamus said levelly. It was late, and Michael and Dee were in bed. Chancey, Patrick, Aidan and Shay sat around Paddy’s large kitchen table. The overhanging light bathed them in its gentle glow, creating a sense of isolation, what with all the other lights in the house out. “Shouldn’t you both be in bed, sleepin’ off all those spritzers and getting ready for tomorrow anyway? Barry and his will can wait.”
“It’s not like we’re having a gala with five hundred guests,” Aidan said calmly. “And this is important.”
“Aye, it is, Shay.” Patrick looked across the table at his brother. “Isn’t it what you’ve dreamed of all your life? A ranch of yer own?”
“It’s a farm, Paddy, not a ranch.”
“Ranch, farm, same difference. You’re splitting hairs.”
“I wasn’t going to bring it up until after the wedding, but there’s your share to consider too.”
“As if I know anything about herding sheep. I’ll gift you my half.”
“Shouldn’t I be the one makin’ the grand gestures? It’s your wedding. No, I’m not accepting your charity,” Seamus said stubbornly. “If anything, I’ll buy you out. It’ll give you two a bit of a nest egg to live on.”
“The gym is doin’ fine, thank you, and anyway I’ve got my job at the cemetery.”
“Well, I’m not takin’ it, Paddy.”
“You’re a stubborn ass, Seamus.”
“Says the donkey’s balls—”
“I’ll buy it from you.”
The words came from deep in Chancey’s chest and sounded low. He felt them more than heard them, but it seemed everyone else at the table had comprehended what he’d said. He raised his eyes and looked Patrick dead on. “I don’t have much saved up—but I’ve got the house I can sell and some mineral rights my daddy left me. They’ve almost dried up, but it’s something. What I can’t pay now, I can pay on in the future.”
“Chance?” Seamus said quietly.
“Are you thinkin’ clearly about this?” Patrick replied.
“It may seem rash, but it isn’t. This isn’t just Seamus’s dream, you know? I’ve wanted to be a rancher since I was a boy—wanted it more than anything. Well, almost anything.” Chancey licked his dry lips. “Seamus said he’d come back to Kansas to be with Dee and me. Why the hell wouldn’t I go to Ireland for him? Unless…” he turned his attention to Seamus. “Am I presumin’?”
“You’re not presuming at all, no.” Seamus’s voice was warm as he reached across the table and took Chancey’s hand. “But are you sure you’d want to move? Ireland’s a world away from Kansas.”
“But you’re there.”
“Ah, come on, you two, you’re as bad as soppy teenagers, so you are.”
“Would you sell to him?” Aidan asked his soon-to-be husband curiously.
“’Course I would,” Patrick agreed. “Though I’d much rather give my share than—” Seamus and Chancey both shot Patrick a look that brooked no reproach. “Stubborn feckers. You deserve each other.”
“So what does that mean for me, then?”
The men at the table turned and found Dee standing in the darkened doorway in her #Sleepy nightshirt and doggy pyjama bottoms. God, how the girl lurked in doorways. She’d put her hands on her hips and screwed up her face in warning. It was coming—an explosion of epic proportions. Or…tears.
Oh, the tears.
Fat, angry tears welled in her shining eyes, broke and rolled down her face as she demanded, “You’re just buying a ranch in Ireland, huh? Without even talking to me about it?”
“Dee.”
“What am I supposed to do? You going to leave me here?”
“Of course not!” Chancey said firmly. Where would she have stayed? With Kaylee and her new boy toy? Not a chance in hell! “You’ll come with me, of course, darlin’.”
Her eyes widened, but not with owlish shock. These were mocking, angry eyes, which narrowed suddenly as she bitterly spat, “That’s great, Daddy! Whatever the hell you want, right? Get a boyfriend? Go to Pennsylvania? Pick up and move to Ireland? And Dee doesn’t have even a little bit of say in it!”
“Deidra.” Chancey’s tone was warning, and he stood up from hi
s chair.
She snuffled and then a sob broke, cracking her voice. “I hate you!” And then she whipped her head towards Seamus. “And I double hate you! You’ve ruined everything!”
She turned and fled the room, the sound of her cries carrying down the hall. Thank God they weren’t staying at Lily and Jill’s, or Dee would have woken the pregnant lady. She did, however, wake up Michael. Chancey heard the groggy young man emerge from the guest room with a, “What’s going on? Everyone OK?”
Dee slammed the door to the nursery, where they had set her up with an air mattress.
“Quite well done, that.” Patrick tried for joking, but it fell flat.
Chancey scrubbed hard at his face, torn between sitting back down with another beer and marching to her room to make Dee face him. Seamus placed a heavy hand on his arm.
“Sit,” he said. “Anything you do now will make it worse.”
<<< >>>
He should leave them to their private conversation instead of eavesdropping, but Chancey found himself squatting near the door instead of walking away. Paddy and Aidan were so good with Dee, so comforting, when all Chancey wanted to do was shake her and say, for once in your life, can you think about me? Some adult he was. Some father! Think about him? She was the child. He was supposed to protect her from all these painful feelings. Especially given that her mother was a spoilt brat who had never wasted a second thought on Dee. He had to be both Mom and Dad, and offer her understanding for two. For the last thirteen years, that had meant putting Dee’s feelings before his own. So why was it so damn hard this time?
“Go away,” she grumbled, and Chancey imagined Dee had her head buried in her hands, elbows on her knees. She always sat like that when she was newly distressed. “I don’t want to talk.”
“That’s OK,” Aidan said quietly. “We don’t have to talk. But I didn’t want you to have to be alone. Everyone’s worried about you.”
Silence followed in which Aidan didn’t prod her for information, and she offered nothing.
Then all at once, as if by magic—or more likely the hormones of adolescence, the words began to spill out of her. “I don’t want them to worry about me. I want everyone to leave me alone! If they want to worry… Let ’em worry about Dad and Seamus.”
“They’re worried about them as well.”
“Of course they are,” she replied, contrarily. “Ireland? Ireland? He wants us to move to Ireland? Do they even have rodeo in Ireland? What about all my friends? What about Stills? What about my life here? I can’t just move to Ireland.”
“I’d love to go to Ireland,” Aidan said. Wrong move, Chancey thought.
“Then you go!” Dee practically yelled, and Chancey stood, ready to intercede. He couldn’t abide his daughter being rude to Aidan. But it was Aidan who stilled Chancey’s movement with his quiet, calm, and firm reply.
“You feel like you’re having your choices taken away from you. That happened to me once.”
“Yeah, right, you have no idea—”
“Something worse than moving to Ireland happened to me,” Aidan went on. “And I felt like I’d lost all control because someone took away my choice. I went around living a half-life, like a ghost. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t fulfilled, and I didn’t even try to get better, because…what was the point?”
There was another long pause before Dee said, “You seem happy now.”
“I am, Dee.” Chancey could almost hear Aidan’s smile. “I met Paddy, and he taught me that you always have a choice. You can choose life. You can choose happiness.”
“That’s…really corny.”
“Yep.”
“But…it works?”
“It works.”
“But the rodeo? My friends? My boyfriend?”
“Can’t be replaced,” he agreed. “You find new things that make you happy. You have new experiences. You choose—”
“Not to be a brat?”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
<<< >>>
Chancey and Dee still hadn’t spoken to each other the next afternoon when Lily and Jill came over. They’d arrived to help Dee get ready, because Aidan had invited her to stand in as Jr. Best Woman, right next to Lily.
Aidan, who should have been worrying about getting himself ready for his big day, was instead buzzing around Lily, insisting she get comfortable on the couch. He tried to cover her with a blanket, feed her, bring her the remote. As he doted on her, she looked up at him with a frown on her face and said, “I’m not glass, Aidan.”
“Lily,” Jill warned from the kitchen.
Chancey, who was polishing his boots near the fireplace, watched the interplay.
As Aidan turned to leave her be, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it, saying, “What I mean to say is…I feel fine, OK? But if I don’t, I’ll tell you. I promise.”
He looked at her and nodded.
“Hey, Chancey?” Jill called from the kitchen. “You busy?”
“Almost done,” he replied, finishing up the last swipe, and packing up the polish and rag. He walked into the kitchen. “What can I do for you?”
Jill worked methodically on Dee’s up-do for the ceremony. “If you aren’t busy, can you help me? I need you to hold these bits of her hair.”
Chancey could do a plain braid with the best of them, but anything so fancy that it necessitated two people to work it was far above his skill set. Still, if he were the one holding, and not the one braiding or twisting or looping or whatever, he figured he could manage it.
“Are you tender headed?” Jill asked Dee, gently brushing through the mass of dark waves. Dee insisted she wasn’t, and Jill set to work, handing Chancey parts of Dee’s hair to hold, before pulling them back and trading them out for others. She twisted, braided and pinned the pieces of Chancey’s daughter’s hair until it was all elegantly knotted on top of her head. Jill even stuck in pieces of baby’s breath at odd angles.
“Hey, Dee?” It was Lily. She must have escaped the cocoon Aidan had made for her on the couch.
Chancey knew it wasn’t very gentlemanly of him to think that she was waddling as she came into the room—and more than that, if she knew his thoughts, it might earn him a black eye. But what woman in her ninth month of pregnancy didn’t waddle? Even tiny-waisted Kaylee, had a bit of a penguin walk there by the end.
“I’ve got something for you to wear to the wedding, if you want.”
“What is it?” Dee asked, and Lily produced a small jewellery box and handed it to Dee.
“This was my first wife’s. She…passed away. Her name was Nadia.”
Dee opened the lid, and her eyes lit up. She looked up at Chancey and smiled for a few seconds before remembering he wasn’t her favourite person in that moment. She quickly looked away.
“It’s beautiful, Lily.”
“Want me to put it on you? I think Nadia would like that you were wearing it to her brother’s wedding.”
Dee nodded and let Lily clasp the delicate silver necklace, with its three emerald hearts, around her neck.
“She wasn’t much for fancy jewellery, but she wore this for me from time to time.” Lily stepped back to admire how it looked on Dee. “Beautiful.”
“You look nice, Dee,” Chancey offered, and Dee flushed, but didn’t look up at him.
Chapter Thirty-Two:
Never
Other than Paddy throwing up outside the door, Lily’s momentary panic that she was indeed going into early labour, and Dee’s refusal to speak to or look at her father or Seamus, the wedding ceremony went surprisingly well. The venue was a small, square building done up to look like a barn, and a perfect size for the twenty or so guests, most of whom Seamus didn’t know. He’d met Paddy’s boss from the cemetery at Aidan’s birthday party, along with Aidan’s mate—Ben, or Brian, or something beginning with B, Seamus thought, although his mind was circling around Barry’s demise, so the lad could’ve been called Zebedee for all he knew.
Then there was Maxine, looki
ng utterly stunning in a navy-blue figure-hugging dress. Seamus always had thought she was a looker, and with her hair cascading down over her bare, toned shoulders, she was a real treat for the eyes, he was sure. He glanced around, looking for a significant other, but it seemed she was still living the single life. Whatever, she looked tearfully happy to be attending her best friend’s wedding.
The Justice of the Peace was a small, pleasant man with no hair—no eyebrows, stubble, nothing. He must have conducted the ceremony more times than he’d had hot dinners, yet he made it feel special, unique. Seamus listened intently to the introductory welcome, his attention now entirely on his younger brother, who was dripping with sweat, as was his way when he was nervous.
Meanwhile, Aidan looked the picture of tranquillity, far removed from the bag of angsty nerves Seamus remembered. He’d been pleased, of course, that Paddy had found someone who made him happy, although back then, Seamus couldn’t quite figure out what he’d seen in Aidan. Then again, he’d had Chancey on his mind, which made thinking about anything else virtually impossible.
When they reached the bit where they made their vows, Aidan went first, and while Seamus heard every word, none of it made any sense to anyone other than the two grooms. Aidan finished, and Paddy began, his accent went west, and Seamus pursed his lips, suppressing the urge to shout at him to slow down. There was no chance of anyone but Seamus understanding a word of it, although Aidan played along convincingly—either that or he was filling in the details from their pre-ceremony rehearsals.
“Each of you now brings a symbol of your love,” the JP said, giving Seamus his cue to hand over the rings for the exchange, and it really was an exchange: they’d gone together to buy the Claddagh engagement rings, and now each would give to the other the ring he had been wearing for the past few months. Seamus could kind of see the logic in that. He’d never been a jewellery kind of guy, although he’d worn a nose ring until he started working the ranches. Chancey had worn a wedding band, he recalled, and he wondered, if they…
“Huh.”
The sound escaped before he could stop it, and Paddy and Aidan both turned and glared at him. Now he was blushing like Paddy. Seamus raised his hands apologetically and backed away, returning to his seat next to Chancey. Lacing their fingers together, Seamus held his tongue while the deed was done.
Seeds of Tyrone Box Set Page 42