Days Like This

by Laurie Breton

  Veilleux exchanged glances with Scotty Deverell. Scotty cleared his throat again. “It’s up to you, Lynn, whether or not you want to press charges.”

  “We did recover the merchandise,” Veilleux said. “And the total value was less than twenty dollars. And since neither of them has any record—” She paused. “But I don’t believe it should be overlooked and forgotten. If the girls aren’t dealt with appropriately, they’ll never learn anything from this.”

  “I’m in total agreement,” Casey said. “Maybe a little community service would be in order. Raking leaves, washing the police cruisers, picking up litter from the sidewalks.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Veilleux replied. “How about the next four Saturdays from nine to three?”

  Scotty Deverell nodded his approval. “I can supervise. Biff?”

  “Fine,” Norton said curtly. “Can I take my kid now?”

  “Go.”

  He went, and a visible wave of relief rolled around the room. Casey raised a trembling hand and massaged her temple, her stomach roiling with nausea, the end result of every nasty confrontation in which she’d ever been involved. “Just so you know,” Lynn Veilleux said, “I have met your husband, and Norton is way out of line. The guy owes you a debt of gratitude, because if you hadn’t been here, I would’ve pressed charges against his kid, just because of his attitude. What an ass.”

  “Let’s hope,” Scotty said, “that in this case, the apple does fall far from the tree. Casey, you okay?”

  “Give me a minute. I will be.”

  “My cousin,” Teddy said, sounding like a proud parent. “She’s quite the pit bull when she has to be.”

  “Next Saturday,” she said. “Nine a.m. I’ll have her here. Thanks, everyone. Lynn, it was nice to meet you. Hopefully the next time we see each other, it will be under more pleasant circumstances.”

  Paige waited alone on the bench in the reception area. Without speaking, Casey tilted her head in the direction of the door. Her stepdaughter sprang to her feet and followed her out the door and to the car. When they were safely inside, Casey placed her hands at ten and two on the wheel, took a deep breath, and said, “Where’s your bike?”

  “Lissa’s house.”

  “It’s staying there until I can find somebody with a little testosterone to go over and pick it up. Maybe Bill can do it for me. Or Jesse. I am not dealing with that man again today.”

  “So, am I about to get the ‘Just wait until your father gets home!’ lecture? Because if I am, it could be a long wait.”

  “No, you’re not. Would you like to know why?”

  Paige squirmed in the passenger seat. “Why?”

  “A couple of reasons. First, because I’m quite capable of dealing with the situation myself. Probably better than your father, who has zero parenting experience. I may not have spent much time with teenagers, but in a previous life, I had plenty of hands-on experience dealing with a spoiled five-year-old. Second…I don’t believe lecturing you is the answer.”

  Paige reached out a finger and fiddled with the dashboard air vent. “No? So what’s the magic answer?”

  Casey turned her head and studied the kid. Paige threw her a sly glance, then quickly looked away. “Well, now,” Casey said, starting the car and putting it into gear, “If I told you, I’d be stacking the deck in your favor, wouldn’t I?”

  Paige

  The cemetery sat at the water’s edge, overlooking Boston Harbor, where gulls circled and boats scurried across vivid blue water. In the distance, she could see a line of planes waiting to land at Logan, stacked one after another, lined up like dominoes in the sky. This was the first time she’d been here since her mother’s funeral, and right now, her stomach felt like she’d been drinking battery acid. Her mom’s headstone, made of polished Quincy granite, bore a heart with the word mother at the center. That had been her idea. It seemed fitting. Especially since there was nobody left to mourn Sandy Sainsbury except her daughter.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Eyes hidden behind dark glasses, her father’s wife leaned against a nearby monument, her arms folded across her chest. Close enough to keep watch, but far enough away to allow Paige privacy. She couldn’t figure out this woman he—her father—had married. After this morning’s fiasco, she’d expected a severe tongue lashing. Possibly a grounding. Instead, Casey had returned to the house, phoned her brother to retrieve the bicycle, loaded Paige and Leroy in the car, and driven here. A three-and-a-half-hour drive to visit a dead woman. Her stepmother moved in mysterious ways, and despite her apparent kindness, Paige was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Casey stepped away from the monument, approached her, and crouched beside her. “After Danny died,” she said, one hand braced against the ground for balance, “it was six months before I went to the cemetery. Even then, I wouldn’t have gone if your father hadn’t dragged me there.”

  Paige hazarded a glance at her stepmother, but Casey was looking at the gravestone instead of her. “I’ll tell you something about my mother,” Casey said, “if you’ll tell me something about yours.”

  Their eyes met. Paige shrugged. Casey nodded. “Fine. I’ll go first. When my sister Colleen and I were little girls, my mother used to dress us up in these stupid sailor dresses. Navy blue with big white collars and red bows. She’d fix our hair in tight ringlets, and then she’d drag us to church meetings and the Grange Hall and the county fair, and make us sing for people. You Are my Sunshine. The Old Rugged Cross. How Much is That Doggie in the Window? Everybody thought we were adorable. Coll and I hated it.” Casey shifted position. “Your turn.”

  “We used to go to the beach together. In the winter, when nobody else was there, and we’d just walk. It was our special place.” She wasn’t sure what had made her open up to this woman she barely knew. The beach had been something she shared only with her mom, something she’d never told anybody.

  Casey nodded solemnly. “My mother and I used to bake cookies together. For Christmas. Thanksgiving. Halloween. Easter. All the big holidays. She’d put me in one of her aprons—which were always miles too big for me—stand me up on a chair, and let me do the mixing. Colleen was always too much of a tomboy to care. I was the one who loved to cook.”

  “My mom used to put music on, turn it up loud, and dance me around the living room.” Paige closed her eyes to savor the memory. “I remember her holding me in her arms and dancing with me when I was too young to even understand the words. She bought every album Danny Fiore ever recorded. All the ones you and my father—” She paused, realized this was the first time she’d referred to him that way without a second thought. “—wrote and produced.” She opened her eyes, looked straight into Casey’s. “I’m pretty sure she was still in love with him.”

  “Really? Well, he is pretty special. He’d be a hard act to follow.”

  “I mean, she had boyfriends. But none of them lasted. Every time she’d end things with the latest boyfriend, she’d pull out a Danny Fiore album and listen to the music my father wrote. I think it was her version of crying in her beer.”

  “You miss her.”

  Paige’s lower lip trembled, and she willed it to stop. “Yeah.”

  “I miss my mom, too. It doesn’t matter that it’s been twenty years. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her and remember some little thing I thought I’d forgotten. How she wore her hair. The goofy songs she used to sing to me. The wise advice I generally ignored.” Casey paused. “The way she played the piano. She was an amazing pianist. That’s where I got my musical talent. Dad doesn’t have a musical bone in his body.”

  “Neither did my mom. She just loved to listen to it.”

  They were silent together for a time. Out on the water, a ship’s horn sounded. “What was it like,” Paige asked, “being married to Danny Fiore?”

  Her stepmother’s face grew taut with an emotion she couldn’t decipher. Staring out over the harbor, Casey said, “Have you ever been in love?”

 
Thinking of Mikey, she said, “I’ve been in like a couple of times, but not love.”

  “I was so in love with him. I was only three years older than you are now when I met him. I was just eighteen, and he was…magnificent.” A soft smile lit her face, changing it completely. “That probably sounds silly, but it’s true. He was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, and there was this intensity about him that sucked me right in. He was smart, and edgy, and cynical. So talented. And absolutely certain of where he was headed. I’d never met anybody like that before. He just swept me off my feet.” She grew pensive, a little wistful. “I was engaged to another man. Four weeks away from my wedding day. Danny and I eloped three days after we met. I walked away from everything, without a backward glance, to be with him. I was so in love, I would have gladly lain down on the ground and let him walk all over me.” She let out a soft laugh, but there was very little humor in it. “In retrospect, I can say that’s pretty much what I did.” Her expression changed, grew intense, almost angry. “It was not a healthy relationship.”

  Surprised, Paige asked, “Why?”

  “Because he always held the upper hand. Don’t ever let a man do that to you, Paige. Don’t ever let a man’s ego crush yours.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Danny wasn’t always a good husband. I’m not saying he deliberately hurt me, or that he didn’t love me—because he did—but he had his failings. His career always came first. He had tunnel vision. He could see only one thing, and that one thing wasn’t me. It’s not like he didn’t warn me. I was simply too naïve and too dazzled to listen. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t always bad. We had some very good years, especially after Katie came along. And some very bad ones. He lied to me. He cheated on me. Sometimes he withdrew, and I couldn’t get through to him. But I just kept on loving him, no matter what. It wasn’t until after Katie died, and he did something unforgivable, that I began to understand what I’d let him do to me. We separated, for almost a year. I grew so much in that year! But in the end, I took him back. I don’t really understand why. Not fully. Because by that time, your father and I—” She stopped abruptly. “I had to make a choice. I’m still not sure I made the right one.”

  “What did he do?” Paige said. “The unforgivable thing?”

  Mixed emotions flitted across Casey’s face as she appeared to debate whether or not to respond. “He had a vasectomy,” she finally said. “Behind my back. It was an out-and-out betrayal, because he knew how much it meant to me to be a mother.”

  “Jesus. That had to suck.”

  “Yes. It did suck.” Casey hesitated, lost in thought. “It was a pain I really didn’t need on top of what I already had. I’d just lost my only child, and here he was, making sure that I’d never have another. Not that I could’ve replaced Katie—”

  “Of course not!”

  “But I wanted more children. I needed to be a mother. And he took that possibility away from me. I wanted to kill him.”

  “Wow.” She tried to imagine what it would feel like. How hard it must be to lose your kid. Even worse than losing your mother, and that was the hardest thing she’d ever known. She felt a twinge of something that felt remarkably like empathy for this woman she’d been so determined to hate.

  “Maybe now you’ll have a clearer understanding of the relationship I have with your father. It’s genuine and open, based on love and mutual respect. We deliberately avoid doing hurtful things to each other. I know you have issues with him, but for me, life with your father is like the sunshine after the clouds.”

  Paige didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure what to say. Her father was the villain in this piece, and she didn’t want to even consider any other view of him. Her mom had died of a broken heart, and it was all his fault. If he hadn’t left, she would have been strong enough to fight the cancer. But he had left, and Sandy had died. How could she ever forgive him for that?

  Casey rubbed her hands against her thighs and cleared her throat. “So,” she said briskly. “You ready to leave?”

  Paige nodded, and they got up and began walking back toward the car. Even from this distance, she could see Leroy jumping at the window and barking. “Are we going home now?” she asked, and realized that for the first time, the word home meant Maine, and not South Boston.

  “Not yet. We have somewhere else to go first.”

  ***

  The house was big and rambling, a little past its prime, and sat on its own postage-stamp-sized lot on a quiet street on the outskirts of Southie. The driveway was full, so Casey parked on the street in front. “Whose house is this?” Paige said.

  “This,” Casey said, taking the keys from the ignition, “is Mary and Patrick’s place. Your grandparents. This is the house where your father grew up.”

  As they approached the side door, she could hear a small dog making a big racket inside. Casey knocked once, then opened the door and stepped inside the house. “Hello!” she called. “Anybody home?”

  A black pug raced into the room, yapping and jumping with excitement. Casey leaned to pat him, and the look of rapture on his face was comical. “Hello, Pugsley,” she said, rubbing his ears. “Where’s your mother?”

  The dog rolled his huge eyes, panting and dancing around Casey’s feet. Beside Paige, Leroy whined. The pug approached him, and they sniffed each other warily. Mary MacKenzie came into the room, wearing a flowered apron, her reddish-gray hair a mess, her face aglow.

  “Well, well! If it isn’t my favorite daughter-in-law!”

  The two women embraced. “Don’t let her kid you,” Casey said to Paige. “I’m one of four, and she says that to every one of us. We all just play along.”

  “Oh, you,” Mary said good-naturedly. “And Paige, darling of my heart, it’s so nice to see you. Come give your old Grandma a hug.”

  Since there was no way to graciously escape, Paige stepped forward and let the matronly woman wrap her in a bear hug. It wasn’t so awful. Actually, it felt kind of nice. Her grandmother was soft and pillowy, and she smelled like vanilla. It wasn’t Mary’s fault that her son had ruined Paige’s life. Mary released her, reached out and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “You’re a lovely girl,” she said. “Just like your mother was. You certainly didn’t get it from your father. Speaking of which.” She turned back to Casey. “Where is that hard-headed husband of yours?”

  “He’s away. On tour.”

  Mary raised her eyebrows. “He didn’t tell me he had a tour scheduled.”

  “He didn’t. He’s helping out an old friend who was in a bind. It wasn’t planned. You know how he is.”

  “Just getting to know his little girl, and already he’s gone off and left her?” She gave Paige another hug. “You poor thing!”

  “He’s a musician,” Casey said. “Musicians spend a lot of time on the road. But we’re a family, and he knew Paige and I would be fine together. Right, Paige?”

  She shrugged, not knowing what to say, because to side with either of them would seem disloyal to the other. Her grandmother was right; her father shouldn’t have gone off and left her. But Casey had bailed her out of some pretty hot water this morning, and she probably owed the woman something. Paige was starting to warm up to her stepmother, something she never would have imagined when she first arrived in Maine. On the other hand, Casey had married Rob MacKenzie, so her judgment was clearly flawed.

  “Don’t put the poor girl on the spot. Although it warms my heart to see you defending my son. Well, never mind him. You’ll stay for dinner?”

  “I don’t want to impose.”

  Mary snorted. “As if either of you could ever be an imposition. I have enough food to feed an army. I think we can get by. Patrick! Michael! Get out here and say hello to Casey and Paige!”

  Her grandfather was a tall, lean man, with a quiet demeanor and a twinkle in his eye. Michael, her father’s younger brother, kissed Casey’s cheek and shook Paige’s hand. The family resemblance was strong. Michael wasn�
��t quite as tall as her father, or quite as slender. But he had the MacKenzie green eyes, and the same wavy blond hair, except that his was neatly trimmed in a conventional cut.

  While the men focused on eating, the two women kept the dinner conversation going. Paige remained quiet, following their conversation but not taking part. While Leroy lay on the mat by the door, Pugsley spent the entire meal sitting next to her grandfather, who kept sneaking him bites of food under the table. The meal was amazing: a perfectly-seasoned beef stew, accompanied by fresh-baked biscuits. Paige ate until she feared she would burst, and then her grandmother brought out the pièce de résistance: a six-inch-tall chocolate cake, smothered in chocolate frosting. Nobody turned it down, although by the time she’d finished the gargantuan piece her grandmother cut for her, she was certain she’d be rolling out the door like an overinflated beach ball.

  When the meal was over, her uncle threw on a jacket, kissed his mother good-bye, said, “Paige, it was nice to meet you,” and left. Her grandfather spirited Casey off to some other part of the house, intent on showing her the latest acquisitions to his stamp collection.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me left to clean up,” her grandmother said. “That’s fine, we can talk while we wash dishes.”

  While Mary put the leftovers in storage containers, Paige cleared the table and ran hot, soapy water in the sink. There was no dishwasher, so she rinsed the dishes, slid them into the sink, and washed them by hand. “So,” Mary said, picking up a plate and drying it with a fluffy dish towel, “are you getting settled in up there?”

  “I guess.”