No problem there, either.
* * *
For the first two hours of the celebration, Deirdre played the kind of watery, dreamy music most people associated with the harp. Guests had drifted off into small groups—she saw Ellen talking to Claudia Galloway near the punch bowl—and the general vibe was getting kind of sleepy.
Time to show them what a Celtic harp could do when the harper put her mind to it.
She slid from a sleepy “Greensleeves” into a Chieftainsesque jig that caught their attention in record time. One of the co-op’s artists knew a little about percussion, and she began tapping out a rhythm on the workbench. Sweeney, the guest of honor, had played folk guitar back in the late sixties, and she borrowed an old acoustic from one of the other women and started to improvise alongside her.
Next thing she knew Annie and Susan cleared a spot in the middle of the store and began to stage a Riverdance revival right there. Claudia and Roberta claimed their old bones couldn’t take the pounding, but before long they joined the chorus line next to Ellen, who was laughing too hard to do anything but stomp her feet when they pointed to her. Her hair was wild and curly. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes glittered with an almost manic light she had only noticed once before. She hadn’t seen this side of her sister since the summer they were sixteen and sneaked out to the Cape for what Billy had called a weekend of “debauchery.”
When they were sixteen they would have sold their souls to be even within shouting distance of debauchery. The fact that their father used the word to describe what had turned out to be a weekend of drinking beer and watching while other girls went off with the cute guys had delighted them. It had almost made up for the fact that they had returned home as virginal as they had been when they left.
She could see Ellen dancing alone, moving in and out of the dying light from the fire they had built on the beach. Her fierce, beautiful, ambitious sister looked like a warrior preparing for battle. Ellen was so self-sufficient, so unlike Deirdre, whose need was almost a second self. Ellen didn’t care what any of them thought about her. She enjoyed the campfire, the surf, the sand, the music, and if none of the guys fell over dead at her feet, it was their loss.
Deirdre had always needed validation. A boy’s approval meant more to her than a scholarship to Juilliard. Not that Juilliard had come calling, but if they had, she probably would have said no thanks if it meant being separated from her love of the moment. That was the way it was supposed to be, wasn’t it? Love came first even if you couldn’t remember his name.
“C’mon, Deirdre!” Ellen called out. “Put down that harp and dance with us!”
She rested the harp on its stand, kicked off her shoes, and joined them as they started improvising one of those country-western line dances that had been popular a few years back.
Stanley, who had been amusing himself in the yard behind the store, decided he couldn’t stand being left out another second and he burst through the back door and galloped toward them, all one hundred fifteen pounds ready to boogie.
* * *
“You don’t know how much I wish I’d had my camera with me,” Ellen said for easily the tenth time as they were getting ready for bed. “If you could have seen yourself riding poor Stanley down Shore Drive—” She started laughing again; that slightly out-of-control note Deirdre had noticed earlier was even more noticeable. “You and Stanley have achieved legendary status.”
Deirdre twisted her long hair into a knot and pinned it to the top of her head with a chopstick. “Back in Boston it takes at least three sailors, a runaway fire truck, and a quart of Scotch to even begin to qualify for legendary status.”
Ellen sat cross-legged on the bed. Her long slender legs were bare beneath an old Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt.
“Just tell me why 1 couldn’t inherit your thighs,” Deirdre said as she sprawled across the bed next to her sister.
Ellen laughed and swatted her with a pillow. “I have my mother’s thighs.”
“So do I,” Deirdre said. “My lucky streak remains unbroken.”
“Mary Pat called this evening.”
She picked a fuzzball off the coverlet. “Glad I wasn’t here. I’m over my limit on sanctimonious bad advice.”
“They’re checking Billy into the hospital on Wednesday.”
Deirdre felt as if she had been sucker-punched as she doubled over. An implosion of pain that pulled her into it and wouldn’t let go. The simple act of drawing in her next breath seemed impossible for a long time. “He’s really carrying this act of his all the way, isn’t he?” she said at last.
“It’s not an act this time, Dee.”
“You don’t know him the way I know him.”
“Mary Pat said he’s been asking about us.”
This pain was different, all too familiar. “You, maybe.”
“She specifically said he mentioned you.”
“Are you going?”
Ellen’s cheeks reddened. “My workload is intense right now. I can’t get away.”
“Same here,” she said, closing her eyes. “I’m afraid I just don’t have the time.”
* * *
“I think I’m going to write one of those mystery series and set it in Shelter Rock,” Ellen said to Hall over lunch at Cappy’s the next afternoon.
“We don’t have any crime.”
“That’s only because nobody has enough privacy to commit one. All a P.I. would have to do is grab one of these tables first thing in the morning and wait for information to come streaming through the doors.”
He glanced around and started to laugh. “You’re right. Sooner or later everyone in town shows up here.”
The crew from Admissions was sitting over there near the patio. Susan and two of her real estate colleagues were holding court near the door. The head of oncology was tearing into a lobster roll while two of their patients sipped glasses of lemonade and pretended to read the menu.
“I don’t know why they bother to hand these things out,” Ellen said, tossing her menu down on the tabletop. “We all have it memorized.”
“You’re beginning to sound like a native Mainer.”
“I don’t think the other native Mainers would agree, but thanks.”
Penny, their waitress, who was also one of Ellen’s patients, hurried up to them with steaming bowls of creamy clam chowder.
“Here you go.” She deposited the bowls on the table, then fished four packets of oyster crackers from the pocket of her apron. “You want anything else?”
“We’re okay for now, Penny. Thanks.”
“I think you should go,” Hall said as Penny raced back to the kitchen.
She took a sip of chowder. There was no point pretending she didn’t know exactly what he was talking about. “Thank you for the advice. I’m not going.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
She let her spoon fall with a clatter into her bowl. “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
“You’re getting it anyway, Markowitz. He’s your father and he’s dying. The decisions you make now will haunt you for the rest of your life.”
“You sound like one of those radio psychologists who think they have all the answers.”
“I have this answer,” he said. “Go down to Boston and see your father one more time.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Did he beat you?”
She looked up at him. “No.”
“Abuse you?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Do you hate him?”
“Of course not. I don’t feel much of anything.”
“So drive down there and see him. He can’t hurt you and you might help him.”
He had angered her many times, but never like this. It had never been personal before.
“I don’t see you flying out to Scottsdale to spend quality time with your parents.”
His face shut down. That was the only way she could describe it. Like he had flipped a switc
h and turned out the lights.
“If they ever ask, I’ll be on the first fucking plane out of here.”
All of the pretty fantasies she had constructed about his perfect privileged life came tumbling down.
“And here I thought you were one of the lucky ones.” Tall, gorgeous, kind, accomplished—any more gifts and you would accuse nature of playing favorites.
“I am,” he said. “I had the Galloways on my side.”
The Galloways, Sweeney, Annie, an entire townful of friends who had become family while his parents went about the business of living. He had no idea how lucky he was or how deeply she envied him.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about your sisters or Billy?”
“I never gave it a thought. Before Deirdre and Stanley showed up, they hadn’t been a big part of my daily life.”
“My parents haven’t been part of my daily life since I started grade school.”
She pushed her bowl of soup away from her. “I wanted you to think my family was as perfect as yours.”
“Maybe I wanted you to go on thinking that.”
“We have more in common than I figured, Talbot.” She linked fingers with him beneath the table.
“When Kate and Lizzy were born, I made a promise that I would be there for them. Not just for the big things, the school plays and birthday parties and graduations, but the small things as well, like waiting for the school bus and driving them to soccer practice and really listening to them when they wanted to talk, and especially when they didn’t. I wasn’t going to make my parents’ mistakes.”
“You couldn’t make those mistakes, Hall. Those girls are part of your heart.”
“It’ll be the same with our children. They’ll know their parents love them.”
They’ll know their father.
“I bought a test kit,” she said.
“We have an entire lab in the office.”
“I stopped in Westcliff Harbor so I wouldn’t bump into anyone I knew, and who was standing there but Sarah from Admissions.”
“Which proves my thesis that you can run from Shelter Rock Cove, but you can’t hide.”
“Do you think anyone knows we’re holding hands under the table?”
“Everyone knows,” he said. “Penny made a notation on the—”
Right on cue, Penny skidded to a stop next to their table. “You haven’t touched your soup, Dr. M.! Eat up. I have a blueberry cobbler in the kitchen with your name on it.”
“You’re always trying to fatten me up, Penny.”
“Just think of it as eating for two.”
She pulled her hand away from Hall’s so quickly that the table rocked, sloshing clam chowder across her paper placemat.
“You really do think like an OB,” Penny said, laughing at what Ellen could only assume was a look of total shock on her face. “I meant, you can eat the blueberry cobbler for me since all I have to do is look at the stuff and my butt starts to grow like a cellulite soufflé.”
“I thought I handled that quite well,” she said as Penny moved out of earshot. “I only spilled half of my soup, not the entire bowl.”
He handed her some more paper napkins. “Screw medicine,” he said, grinning. “With that poker face, you should head for Vegas.”
She polished off the remainder of her soup, then leaned back in her rickety wooden chair. “Would you be able to take over my patients if I went away for a few days?”
His gaze met hers. “When are you thinking of going?”
“Friday morning. I’d be back on Sunday.”
“The Bahamas? Cape Cod?”
“Boston,” she said. “I’m going to go see Billy.”
Chapter Twenty-six
“I think it’s the next left,” Deirdre said as they drove deeper into Cambridge on Friday afternoon. “Fourteen Hamilton Court.”
“I don’t see numbers on any of these houses,” Ellen said, squinting at the mailboxes and front doors as they drove past. “How do they find each other around here?”
“Mary Pat said for you to look for the house with gray shakes and a gambrel roof.”
They looked at each other and started to laugh.
“Do you have any idea what shakes and gambrels are?”
“You’re the one with the education,” Deirdre said. “I was hoping you did.”
“I studied medicine, not architecture. All that talk about crown moldings and turrets makes my head spin.”
“Slow down,” Deirdre ordered. “It’s not the next left. It’s a right, then a left.”
“I know I wrote down the directions. Look in my bag, would you?”
“We don’t need directions. I’ve been here before. It’s not like I won’t recognize it.”
“Mary Pat’s going to be surprised to see you:
Deirdre’s face was turned toward the window so Ellen couldn’t make out her expression. “Safety in numbers.” Her tone was light, almost as difficult to read as her expression. “I couldn’t let you face her alone. It would be cruel.”
So far that was the way Deirdre was playing it. No mention of Billy or the fact that he was dying. Nothing but jokes about Mary Pat, about her house, her neighborhood, her volunteer work, her taste in clothes and music and books and friends.
She knew it was Deirdre’s way of coping, but the constant barrage of one-liners was wearing on her nerves more with every second that passed.
“Nice of Hall to take on Stanley while we’re away,” Deirdre said as they turned left onto Hamilton.
“He said he needs the practice.” She told her about Hall’s plans to adopt a dog from the rescue shelter in Idle Point.
“Maybe he could adopt Stanley.”
“Stanley’s your dog.”
“Look!” Deirdre pointed toward a gray house at the end of the street. “I think that’s her Saab parked in the driveway.”
“Deirdre, I—”
“I’m not ducking the question, El. I was going to tell you when we got back to Shelter Rock. My agent found me a job playing the harp on a cruise ship out of Miami. I start June thirtieth.”
“What were you planning to do with Stanley? Leave him on the street?”
“I was going to ask you to adopt him, but if Hall is looking, it’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it?” Deirdre studied her. “You’re not mad, are you? I really was going to tell you when we got home.”
There wasn’t time to get into it, even though Ellen felt like the top of her head was going to separate from the rest of her body. Mary Pat was standing on her front porch with a toddler clinging to her leg.
“Declan?” she asked Deirdre.
“He’s a sweetie,” Deirdre said. “Another little redheaded O’Brien. I forgot you didn’t make it down for the christening.”
She sighed. “I figure Mary Pat will forgive me about the same time Social Security kicks in.” Not even a very healthy savings bond for Declan’s future had done much to break the ice.
The first thing she noticed as she climbed out of the Cruiser was that Mary Pat had gained weight. Her hips were a little wider, a little more womanly. Her breasts more prominent. Although she was sure the poundage was driving Mary Pat crazy, the truth was it suited her the same way it suited Deirdre.
Mary Pat was hovering right around forty and the look of the prosperous matron was all over her. She wore a beautifully tailored pair of black trousers with a deep green silk tunic that fell to mid-thigh. Her pale blond hair was cut short in one of those casual, choppy styles that Ellen would sell her curls to be able to wear. Small pearl earrings, a large watch with a leather strap, a blizzard of diamonds on the left ring finger. She was a well-groomed woman of a certain age and economic status who was deeply settled into a very comfortable life.
“I was getting worried,” Mary Pat said as they approached. “I thought you would be here in time for lunch.”
“Good to see you, too, Mary Pat.” Deirdre bent down and swooped Declan
into her arms. She rolled her eyes at Ellen over the little boy’s head.
“You’re looking well, Ellen.” Mary Pat’s dark blue eyes took inventory. “I hope you’re not trying to diet. You’re slim as a reed as it is.”
“You look wonderful, too,” she said as they gave each other a perfunctory hug and air kiss. “I love the new hairstyle.”
Mary Pat inclined her head toward Declan, who was tugging on one of Deirdre’s curls and laughing. “I needed something wash-and-wear. He’s a bigger handful than his brother and sisters ever were.”
Ellen opened her arms toward the little boy. “Hand him over,” she said to Deirdre. “It’s time we met.”
Declan fussed a little, but Ellen’s curls proved every bit as fascinating as Deirdre’s had. He was big for sixteen months, with soft light auburn hair that glittered with gold in the afternoon sun. He had the O’Brien dark blue eyes and long curly lashes and that perfect peachy skin grown women paid a fortune to try to replicate.
Mary Pat was watching with open curiosity. “He looks a lot like you.”
She felt a wide smile spread across her face. “You think?” A powerful surge of love seized her as she and Declan took each other’s measure. They shared a history, she and Declan, a wonderful laundry list of details that linked them with those who had come before and the ones yet to be. Nothing she had learned in the classroom about DNA and heredity had prepared her for the violent, primal satisfaction that came with seeing your own eyes looking back at you from the round sweet face of a little child.
If this was even a fraction of the love Cy had felt when he looked into David’s eyes, she owed him an apology. He had simply been responding the way nature had intended. You were meant to love your own.
“Same coloring,” Mary Pat said. “But I think he’s going to be cursed with the O’Brien thighs. He looked like a baby Sumo wrestler when he was born.”
“I remember that picture,” she said, laughing. “An eleven-pound baby is something to see.”
Girls of Summer (Shelter Rock Cove - Book #2) Page 31