The Last Will of Moira Leahy

by Therese Walsh

  “Scusi,” a woman said, brushing past me.

  The bags were in; I spied my blue beast on the conveyor. I made to grab it, but another hand got there first.

  “Hey!” I spun around, and there was Noel, smiling at me. He set my bag down beside us.

  “Rome’s full of relics,” he said with his hint-of-British voice. “You didn’t have to bring your own.”

  Memories of a night so many months ago rushed back at me: opening a second bottle of Shiraz; me calling him a ninny, explaining that the word was derived from the Latin innocens; his hilariously garbled expression as he called me sozzled; me denying it, announcing that I was high on life; snugging my cheek against him to say good night; the almost kiss.

  Is it me, Maeve? Or is It … just?

  Just. Just.

  “You’re really here,” I said.

  “I really am. And so are you.” He kissed me, quick on the mouth, then laughed at my speechlessness. “My chariot awaits,” he said, with a little jerk of his head. “Unless you’d like to go and stand outside for a while, maybe work up a good taxi-fume high.”

  “Tempting,” I said, recovering myself, “but I think I’d like to get out of here.”

  We settled my luggage in the trunk of a white car with an official-looking light on top, and got inside. The cab lurched onto the roadway.

  “Sorry I was late,” he said in a low voice. “Cabbie went to the wrong airport. Not the brightest bulb on top of this heap.”

  We laughed almost giddily. The whole situation seemed surreal. We were together, in Rome! I looked him over, took in his dark jeans and coffee-colored sports coat. Had I ever seen him look so comfortable? “You look great!”

  “Well you look bloody great,” he said.

  I remembered my baggy sweater, the faded jeans, and tucked wayward strands of hair behind my ears. “No, I’m a wreck.”

  “Who’s looking at you?”

  He was, all right—until the cab bucked and nearly sent us both through the windshield.

  “Told you,” Noel mouthed. “No seat belts, either.”

  I gripped the vinyl. “Where are you coming from?” I asked. “Tell me everything.”

  “Paris. Hang on.” He leaned forward and spoke to the cabbie, gave him the address of my hotel. I interrupted him.

  “Would you mind if we stopped at Sri Putra’s first? I’m anxious to see him. Sorry, I thought Kit would’ve said,” I explained, when his thick brows bunched. “I’m here to take a keris to see an empu. Sri Putra.”

  “An empu here in Rome? A Roman empu. You came for a keris?”

  “What did you think?” I asked, hyperaware that our darting cab had become the vehicular equivalent of a hummingbird.

  “My grandfather called yesterday with a message from Kit and the name of a hotel. ‘Merry Christmas. Maeve needs you. Meet her in Rome, 7:45 a.m., Fiumicino Airport.’ Over and out.”

  “Well, I do need you. You can help me.” It was the wrong thing to say—that was clear from the quick retreat of his every expression. “And of course I’m happy to see you again! C’mon!”

  I pulled Sri Putra’s card from my pocket and read it to the driver, and he spun us onto a roadway we’d nearly passed. I bumped into Noel as I slid across the seat.

  “So,” I said, inching back to my side. “You were in Paris?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Paris.”

  “Did you find her? Is your mother in Paris?”

  “No.” He laughed humorlessly and turned to stare out the window. “At least I don’t think so.”

  “I thought maybe you’d been out of touch because you’d been with her, you know, catching up or—”

  “I’ve been busy, Maeve. Scouting antiques, taking day trips.”

  “No luck at all then?”

  “No. No luck.”

  And then I stopped pushing, because our driver turned into a suicidal-homicidal maniac. Alarm spindled through me as he weaved ever faster between cars. I tried to say, “Slow down!”—Rallenti, per carità!—but my tongue was too busy cowering in the back of my mouth to form words.

  MY KNUCKLES LOOKED as bleached as my hair by the time we jerked to a stop alongside a gold-washed building with black shutters. Beside the entrance, a flag bearing basil, ripe tomato, and mozzarella-cheese stripes rippled from a long pole.

  “Let’s have him wait for us,” Noel suggested, after the cabbie stepped out to remove our luggage.

  “Let’s not,” I replied, opening the door. I pulled the smaller of my bags from the trunk as the cabbie dragged out Goliath. Before he could retrieve Noel’s sleek black valise, though, my friend stopped him.

  “Wait for us,” Noel said. A scar near one of the cabbie’s eyes puckered in confusion, but then Noel handed him a wad of bills and the driver smiled. “Per favore.”

  I tried logic. “We might be a while.” Lowered my voice. “What if he takes off with your stuff?”

  “He didn’t at the airport. Come on, Maeve. What if we can’t find another cab? I don’t want to carry that thing around the city.” He glanced at my bag. I grunted as I hoisted it onto my shoulder, grabbed my smaller case, too. “You’re being a little paranoid,” he said, which shut me right up.

  We stepped inside, into a foyer that smelled of stale bread. I spied two narrow halls, a broken light, and a stairwell that led to darkness.

  “Exactly how I’d expect an empu to live,” Noel muttered.

  I ignored him, though admittedly this interior didn’t jive with what I knew of the artsy and well-kept homes in Trastevere. “Look for apartment forty-seven. It should be on this level.”

  It didn’t take long. We turned a corner and found a door bearing three nails, a few notes, and more wood scars than I could count. Number 47. I knocked, waited. When I knocked again, the door creaked opened. I heard a tinkling noise, bells or chimes. “Empu Putra?” I called. “Hello?”

  “The lock’s dead,” Noel said, indicating severe damage to the wooden frame near the handle and around the latch. “We should go.”

  “Maybe.” Scent made me do it, a rich spice that drifted from the room, a fragrant match to my silk bookmark. I pushed at the door, stepped across the threshold as Noel tried to grab my arm, missed.

  Inside, dozens of puppets made of golden metal, leather, and wood hung from the high ceiling, their bodies cloaked in tribal costumes—painted skirts, headgear, and thick collars dotted with red and blue faux gems. Skinny brass tubes dangled from the figures’ thin hands like ski poles.

  “We can’t stay here,” Noel said behind me, but I knew by his awed tone that he wasn’t eager to leave, either.

  In one corner, a foot-long bronze lion sat beside a large metallic bell and a miniature temple. Along the wall, a triad of shelves bowed, overstuffed with a variety of wooden human figures—small, large, regal, and wild.

  A curtain of hot air poured from a ceiling vent, tickling strands of wooden and metallic spheres into music. I walked through it, and into another room covered in relief panels—carved pictures depicting kings and queens and forest animals, wide-eyed villains, battles and victories. Propped against one of the panels stood an instrument with a long, slender neck, three strings, and a skinny pot at its end. I leaned toward it, curious over its sound, but stopped short.

  There, on a carved armchair, lay the straight keris whose bold oval pattern I’d last observed in a case at Time After Time. Jackpot, I thought, just before a reverberating crash sounded out in the other room.

  “Christ!” Noel said. “Are you the empu?”

  “Empu?” Deep sardonic laughter filled the air. “No. No. Non sono empu. Eppure, questo è il mio edifizio. Lei trapassa!”

  The landlord, not the empu. And yes, trapassa, we were trespassing.

  “Sorry, then. Scusi. We’ll go.” Though I doubted Noel had understood every word, he’d comprehended enough: time to leave.

  I crossed, tentatively, back into the room to find Noel restoring a tipped bronze gong. A man, tall and with a
thick head of unruly black hair, stood beside him in a posture of intimidation, and when he turned his head, his eyes laser-focused on me. Handsome. Dark. Ageless as a Roman god.

  “Non bastano mai.” A grimace formed around his lips. I noticed he gripped a small sledgehammer, that his fingers were tightening around it. “La velocità non basta mai. Non basta mai la buona sorte.” Never enough speed, never enough luck.

  I spoke quickly in Italian, told him we were looking for Sri Putra, the empu.

  “Lei dovrebbe cercare me.” His eyes tracked my body, my face, my bag. “Non lui. Me.” You should be looking for me. Not him. Me.

  “What did he say? Translate.” Noel’s eyes fixed on the man whose words had confused me into silence, and his voice carried a rare edge when he spoke, made me think not much had been lost on him. “Do you speak English? Does Putra live here or doesn’t he?”

  “He does,” I said, thinking of the keris. “I just found—”

  “I understand your language.” The Italian seemed to hover over Noel, though he was only an inch taller. “You do not know mine? That is too bad. Chi va dicendo che io non sono Putra?”

  “Who says you’re not Putra?” I repeated his question for Noel’s benefit, then answered it. “You said you weren’t the empu.”

  The man bowed grandly at the waist, tucking in one arm but lifting the other so high behind him that the sledge struck the gong and filled the room with a hollow peal. “It is true. I am no empu. Merely a man and a fool. Il tempo dirà quant’è scemo. Il tempo dirà quant’è bravo.” Time will tell how big a fool. Time will tell how big a man.

  I didn’t know what to say to that, was too busy trying to figure the guy out. Beautiful as Noel, but bizarre, a puzzle. He seemed to enjoy my confusion, smiling to reveal a line of straight, white teeth.

  “We’re looking for Sri Putra,” I repeated, handing him the empu’s business card. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “Did you bring a keris?” he asked, his eyes brightening.

  “Yes!” I said. “All the way from America.”

  The man tapped the card in his closed palm. When he opened his hand again, it was empty.

  “I’d like that back,” I said.

  “Mi dispiace. It’s gone.” He showed me his sleeves.

  “Let’s go, Maeve,” Noel said, urging me toward the door. “We don’t need it.”

  True, but I still felt irritated as we returned to the musty hall.

  “Why not leave a message for him?” the man asked me, trailing behind us. “Yes, yes, you should. Leave an address where you can be found in Roma. I’m sure he will want to meet you. Certo che mi piacerebbe!”

  I turned away from him and his subtle innuendo—I know I would—as Noel found a pen. He wrote on the back of one of his business cards.

  About the keris from Betheny. Contact Maeve Leahy at

  “Not my cell. I forgot it.” It probably wouldn’t have worked overseas, anyway. “I’m staying at—”

  “We’re staying at the same place.”

  “Oh, good.” I nodded, distracted, but still a question registered: Exactly how far would Kit go to play matchmaker? No. Even she wouldn’t cross that line.

  When Noel finished writing, the Italian snatched the card from his hand and speared it over a nail on the door. Another paper fluttered to the ground.

  “Thanks for the help, friend,” Noel said.

  The landlord genuflected in a way that seemed just as sarcastic while I stooped to pick up the dislodged piece of folded paper. My last name, Leahy, was scrawled on the front. I opened it—

  Visit Santa Maria in Cosmedin

  —then, before the Italian might see, stuffed the note into my pocket. Too fast. My luggage strap free-fell from my shoulder to the crook of my arm with bruising force.

  My groan must’ve caught the stranger’s attention. He stood erect, reached forward, and replaced the bag onto my shoulder with a lingering hand. “Be sure to come back again when you are less”—he looked at Noel—“carica.” Burdened.

  Noel pushed the man’s hand aside, took my bag. “Let’s go.” He trailed me down the hall, out onto the street. The flag snapped over our heads. “What an ass!” he said. “What did he say, at the end?”

  I was trying to figure out a diplomatic way of telling him when I noticed … “Noel, where’s your cab?” But it was gone, had left us—and Noel’s bag on the stoop—in a cloud of Roman dust.

  IT WAS LOVE at first step—winding cobblestone streets, the scent of baked bread and sauce permeating the air. Never had a stereotype been so welcome. My stomach rumbled in time with our luggage wheels as we walked by a wall of homes and businesses—a hodgepodge collection of ancient architecture and newer structures, melding together to create a seamless passage of time. The weather was an unexpected pleasure. Though overcast, it had to have been about sixty degrees, reminiscent of a New York autumn or spring, and a vast improvement on the sleet I’d left behind.

  Noel stopped and my bag slid from his shoulder. “We’ve been here before.”

  “I don’t think so.” I looked at the map.

  “I remember this shop and that marble bust in the window. And we’ve seen that tower, that church.”

  Maybe they did look familiar.

  “You’re reading the map, right?”

  I nodded, mentally crossing my fingers; I knew I’d been slacking off, making some guesses. I used to have a good nose for this sort of thing.

  He looked over my shoulder. “Where do we think we are?”

  I pointed to a dot that was a church and hoped for the best.

  “And where do we need to go?” he asked.

  I pointed at what I hoped was the vicinity of our hotel.

  “Let’s turn around then.” He hoisted my bag back onto his shoulder and grabbed for his wheeled one. “What did you pack, anyway? Rocks?”

  “Only a few,” I said. “Look, I told you I’d carry that—or at least pull your bag along with mine. Which do you want?”

  “What I want is a bloody cab.”

  We redirected ourselves. The slender paths were surprisingly free of cars, though motorbikes in every conceivable color zoomed all around us. My heart marked time with the city as I took in the scents, the sights, the sounds.

  We were following behind two women who were joking about the shape of their boss’s derriere when we stepped before the same marble bust in the window.

  Noel dropped my bag again, his face sporting a thin trickle of sweat, and squinted at me. “Time to ask for directions.”

  “Wow, I didn’t think men did that.”

  “Let’s see. One of us speaks like a local,” he said darkly, “and it isn’t me.”

  Right. Not the ideal time for jokes. I ducked into a nearby shop and learned our hotel was, in fact, just around the corner.

  “I thought so,” Noel said when I told him.

  “Sure you did.”

  And that time, I know I caught the edge of a smile.

  Out of Time

  Castine, Maine

  OCTOBER 2000

  Moira and Maeve are sixteen

  “Can you wash the dishes tonight, Moira?”

  Moira looked up from the table, where she had ostensibly been reading Jane Eyre but was in truth thinking about what she’d say later to Ian. “Sure, Mom,” she said. “You look tired.”

  Hair hung in her mother’s face, and her cheeks were flushed. “It’s been a hard day with Pops. No words.” The fine lines around her eyes wrinkled in misery even as her jaw hardened, and Moira knew she’d work twice as hard tomorrow.

  “You should take a bath. That’ll make you feel better.”

  Her mother nodded and left the room. Moira closed her book.

  “I’ll wash.”

  Moira turned to find her sister standing near the stove. How long had she been there? “I’ll do it,” Moira said. “I told Mom I would.”

  “You can dry.”

  I don’t want you here. Go away. Th
e words almost spilled from her mouth, but she shored up her thoughts and retrieved a towel as Maeve filled the sink. It would be stupid to make her sister suspicious tonight. She would meet Ian in just over two hours, at midnight.

  Midnight. That had been when Cinderella’s ruse fell apart. Moira shouldn’t have chosen such a doomed hour. She should never have sent that note. Now she would have to face the consequences as her ruse fell apart, when she told Ian the truth.

  It’s what she had to do.

  Deception made her feel like an outsider in her own skin and made her stomach ache—as did the question of how to explain it all now that she’d sent the invitation. She’d considered just not showing up, letting the note become an anomaly. But what if Ian asked Maeve about it? If he showed her the note, Maeve would recognize the writing, so much like her own, as Moira’s. That would be the worst. No, tempting as it was to forget everything, she had to come clean. Maybe things would work out. Prince Charming found the right sister eventually, despite her threadbare appearance. Moira would tell Ian how she felt, and maybe he’d see she was as good as Maeve, even if she was less outgoing.

  Maeve shut off the water and leaned against the counter. “What’s going on?”

  “Stop it,” Moira said. She could feel Maeve’s attempt to probe her thoughts.

  “Why do you block all the time now?”

  Moira didn’t know how to answer that. She stared at the sill, at the young dieffenbachia she’d started in a pot. “I just want my thoughts to stay private. Are you going to wash or not?”

  “Daddy told me, you know.”

  Moira’s head snapped back around. “Told you what?”

  “That you asked Mom for sax lessons,” Maeve said, watching her closely. “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to learn?”

  “Because I knew it wouldn’t matter. You won’t teach me.”

  “Why won’t I? Besides, you’re as good on the piano as—”

  “Are you deaf? Maybe if I’d had a chance with the sax I could’ve been as good as you, but we’ll never know, will we?” Moira yanked a string from the towel’s fringed edge as Maeve cocked her head.

  “Why do you act like you have no choice? If you want to learn, then learn. Who says you can’t? If you want me to help, ask. Or have Ben Freeman teach you.”