She knew it. She accepted it. But nothing could make her like it.
* * *
“I’m sorry you have to leave so soon,” Mary Pat said as Ellen finished packing her bag. “I was hoping you’d be able to stay with us a few days.”
“I wish I could,” she lied, “but I have surgery tomorrow morning, so I need to get back.”
“Declan’s going to miss you.”
Her smile softened into a more natural one. “Not half as much as I’m going to miss him. He’s so—” She stopped and shrugged, afraid that the emotions she had been blocking so successfully would leap up and betray her. “You’re his mother. You must know how terrific he is.”
“They’re all terrific,” Mary Pat said. “Even if you have to keep reminding yourself of that once they hit puberty.”
“Do you know if Deirdre’s coming with me?”
“I haven’t seen her since she went to put away her harp.”
The house had been filled with people when they walked through the door, friends and relatives, business associates, neighbors who had come to love Mary Pat’s father, the handsome and charming Irishman who told the best stories in town. Even Jeanne and her second husband Tom had shown up, driving all the way from Florida to be there to say goodbye to Billy. She had tendered Ellen a stiff hello, and then they had both retreated to separate corners for the duration.
Laughter rang out through the room as they shared memories of Billy, groaned over some of his old jokes, remembered the times he had blessed them with song. Deirdre, who had had little to say to anyone since Billy’s death, disappeared for a few minutes. Suddenly the beautiful, heartwrenching sound of her lap harp drifted through the rooms, drawing everyone out to the foyer where Deirdre sat on the bottom step, harp across her knees, offering up her thanks to the man who had given her the gift of music.
One of the men began to sing “Danny Boy” as Deirdre accompanied him. She played old drinking songs, songs of struggle and need, songs of love and broken hearts. Finally, when Ellen thought her own heart was about to split in two from the sheer beauty of her sister’s music, the first evocative notes of “Amazing Grace” sounded and Mary Pat’s voice lifted in song. Mary Pat possessed a clear and innocent soprano. Deirdre’s smoky alto added depth and emotion. Together they could break what remained of your heart.
“Billy would’ve been proud of his girls,” one of the O’Brien cousins said as the room burst into stomps and cheers of approval.
Nobody noticed when Ellen slipped quietly from the room to pack her bags.
Now Mary Pat watched while she zipped up her bag, then scanned the room for any forgotten items. “It must have been difficult, being thrust into the middle of so many O’Briens.”
She met her older sister’s eyes. “What was difficult was not knowing there were so many O’Briens out there.”
“We’re a big family.”
First cousins, second cousins, second cousins twice-removed. “I wish I had been able to meet Fiona and Maeve.” Billy’s widowed sisters were both recovering from what they called “female” troubles.
“You should fly down there one day. They have a lot of stories to tell.” Suddenly she did one of those forehead slaps and leaped to her feet. “How could I forget?”
Mary Pat disappeared from the room, then popped back in two minutes later with a thick brown envelope sealed with heavy tape. “They sent this up by courier,” she said, handing it to Ellen. “Per Billy’s wishes.”
She took the envelope, surprised by its heft. “What’s in it?”
Mary Pat shrugged. “For your eyes only, although I wouldn’t mind if you opened it right now so I could see.”
What difference did it make? She had no secrets from her sisters. They knew more about Billy and the rest of the family than she did. Why not open the envelope and get it over with.
The tape fought her, but she peeled it back and ripped open the envelope while Mary Pat watched with undisguised curiosity. She kind of liked that about her sister. You never had to wonder what Mary Pat was thinking: she would be more than happy to tell you.
“Oh great,” Mary Pat said. “Another envelope.”
“At least this one doesn’t have eight layers of strapping tape on it.” She slid her index finger under the flap and it gave way easily.
“Will you look at that!” Mary Pat met her eyes across the spill of letters and photographs that fanned across the bed between them. “What is it? A scrapbook without the scrapbook?”
“I don’t know.” She picked up a small square white envelope with her name on it and opened it.
“Is it from Billy?”
She didn’t answer. Billy’s flamboyant handwriting slanted across the page. He had always used a thick-nibbed fountain pen filled with vivid sapphire ink he said was the color of his mother’s eyes. A ridiculously over-the-top statement that now, in memory, made her feel like crying.
“It’s from Billy, isn’t it?” Mary Pat persisted. “You can tell me.”
She couldn’t speak so she handed the one-page note to Mary Pat who read silently.
For my daughter Ellen, who was always in my heart even when I couldn’t be in her life. Don’t ever think that because I followed your mother’s wishes and stayed away that I ever forgot you. Although you couldn’t see me, I was there with you every step of the way.
Billy
“He watched you,” Mary Pat said. “These are reports from a private investigator.”
“That’s my mother,” she said, pointing to a small color photo of a beautiful woman pushing a stroller through Central Park.
Mary Pat reached for the photo and studied it. “She was beautiful.”
Ellen nodded. Her throat felt tight, painful. “She turned heads everywhere.” Even as a little girl she had been aware of her mother’s star power.
“I never thought about her as a real person before,” Mary Pat said quietly. “She was always ‘That Woman’ around our house.” Her eyes filled with tears. “You must miss her terribly.”
“Even more now that I’m older,” she said. “There are so many things I wish I could ask her.”
They sat together, sifting through a lifetime of memories captured in snapshots and written reports that read more like a letter from home than a detective’s summary. Her first day at school. Girl Scouts. Riding her bike through the Park. Horseback riding lessons. Skating with her friends at the rink at Rockefeller Center. Letters from Cy, begging Billy to allow him to formally adopt Ellen, the “child of my heart.”
“I never really understood,” Mary Pat said quietly. She met Ellen’s eyes. “Maybe I didn’t want to.”
“Maybe you couldn’t,” she said. “Maybe none of us could.”
“Maybe we didn’t try hard enough,” Mary Pat said.
Ellen looked at her and her breath caught as she saw their father in Mary Pat’s eyes, she saw Deirdre and Declan, and for the very first time she saw herself as well. Past and future. All the mistakes, all the pain, all the promise.
“Do you think it’s too late to try again?” she asked.
Mary Pat reached across the bed and took her hand. “Not too late at all,” her big sister said.
* * *
Deirdre was waiting by the Cruiser. Her duffel bag rested at her feet. Her lap harp, protected by a leather carrying case, rested against her side. She had changed out of her funeral clothes and into a pair of softly faded jeans with a patch on the right thigh and a sleeveless sweater in a pale shade of lavender. Her wild mane of curls looked even more untamed than usual as the afternoon wind played havoc with them.
Ellen took in all the details as she approached her sister.
“Shades?” she asked as she unlocked the back of the car. “Since when?”
“I have a headache,” Deirdre said, then offered up nothing more.
They tossed their bags into the Cruiser, then hit the road.
Deirdre was asleep before they reached the Mass Turnpike.
She wasn’t much in the mood for silence. Silence left room inside her head for all the thoughts she didn’t want to deal with. She switched on the radio, adjusted the volume low, and settled on a call-in show that seemed to revolve around old movies and classic TV shows. Absolutely perfect.
They zipped through Massachusetts, sailing across the southern tip of New Hampshire, and had just waved goodbye to Portsmouth when the cramps started up. She tried to ignore them, but she knew that wasn’t a bright idea, so she exited the Maine Turnpike in Kittery and pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot. She turned off the engine and waited a second for Deirdre to rouse herself from sleep. Finally she placed a hand on her sister’s shoulder and shook her gently.
“Dee, wake up for a second. We’re at McDonald’s. I need to use the bathroom.”
Deirdre muttered something but didn’t open her eyes.
“Deirdre!”
Deirdre peered sleepily at her. “McDonald’s. Pee. I heard you.”
“I’ll be right back.”
* * *
How could you expect a woman to sleep when there were French fries less than fifty yards away?
Deirdre yawned, dug around in her duffel bag for her wallet, then stumbled sleepily through the parking lot to the entrance. French fries were ambrosia, manna from the gods, all-purpose, can’t-fail comfort food extraordinaire.
“Supersize diet and king-size fries,” she told the ten-year-old counter clerk.
She hid a yawn behind her hand and leaned against the counter for support. She hadn’t slept more than an hour since the night Billy died. Every time she closed her eyes she saw him lying in that hospital bed, and she jerked up from sleep as if she were escaping the jaws of death herself.
She paid the clerk for her bounty, then bumped into Ellen near the exit door. “Want some fries?”
“Thanks, but I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Oh, please don’t start with the cholesterol talk. I heard enough of that from Mary Pat. They’re using canola oil these days.”
“I meant, I’m not feeling too great. My period just started.”
“And you’re still vertical? Mine always knocks me flat the first day. Listen, if you want me to drive, I’ll—” She stopped. “Shit. I’m sorry. This means you’re not pregnant, doesn’t it?”
Ellen gave her one of those looks she had been perfecting since the summer they were fourteen. “Go back to sleep,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-nine
“They mean well,” Hall said as Ellen cuddled closer to him on the old leather sofa. “They want you to know they care.”
Ellen buried her face against his chest and breathed in deeply. “I know, I know. I wish I could find a way to handle it better. I feel like I just don’t seem grateful enough for their concern.”
“You’re handling it fine.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Her curls felt like swirls of silk against his lips. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
She had the idea that she wasn’t presenting the proper picture of the grieving daughter, and it bothered her. Deirdre went around pale and wan, settling into her grief as if it were a starring role in a movie while Ellen fought with her own natural inclination toward keeping her deepest emotions private.
“We really shouldn’t be doing this,” she said. “What if—”
“Fuck ’em.” She laughed against his chest and he grinned. “It’s lunchtime. This is our office. The door’s locked. They can all go to hell.”
“This is a side of you I’ve never seen before.”
“I have a lot of sides you’ve never seen.”
“Apparently.” She sighed deeply. “It’s so good to be home again.” She had been home for a week and she was still saying it.
“Home,” he said. “I like that word.”
“I do, too,” she said. “Now.” She told him again how much she had missed him while she was in Cambridge.
“Wait a second,” he said. “I want to get that on tape.”
She sat up, cradled his face in her hands, and kissed him. “You don’t need to get it on tape. I’ll tell you any time you want. I missed you, Hall. More than I ever thought possible.”
They fell silent for a while. They did quiet better than any couple on the planet. Their quiet hid a symphony.
She stretched a little, then placed a hand low on her stomach.
“Cramps?” he asked.
“Six days of them,” she said. “I have newfound respect for the power of stress on the human body.”
“There’s an opinion ready for The New England Journal of Medicine.” He placed his hand on top of hers. “Think there’s anything to touch therapy?”
“Your hand is warm,” she murmured. “It feels good.”
He slid his hand under the waistband of her trousers, then splayed his fingers across her bare skin. “That should feel better.”
“It does.”
His fingers crept lower, sliding under the waistband of her bikini panties. He could feel her heat rising.
“Are you disappointed you’re not pregnant?” he asked.
“I was, but it’s probably for the best.” She leaned back and looked at him. “How about you?”
“Disappointed. The thought of a little redhead had its appeal.”
“You could always adopt an Irish setter.”
He shook his head. “You’re a lot like your sister, Markowitz. Always the smart remark when the conversation gets a little too close for comfort.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“We can take things slowly now,” she said. “Get to know each other.”
“We know each other better than most couples who’ve been married twenty years.”
“Shh,” she said. “This is perfect. You don’t have anything against perfect, do you?”
She’d had a rough week. He didn’t want to push her, but the answer was yes. He did have something against perfect. Perfect didn’t last. He wanted messy. He wanted loud. He wanted passionately imperfect if it meant having her by his side. Seventeen hours a day weren’t enough. He wanted all twenty-four. He wanted seven days a week, four weeks a month, twelve months a year.
He wanted forever.
* * *
Janna gave her one of those appraising looks when she and Hall stepped out of the office after lunch, but Ellen found she didn’t really give a damn. Maybe he was right and it was time to start seeing each other publicly and let the chips fall where they may. Compared to the rest of her life, the opinions of a few rigid human beings really didn’t matter. Or they shouldn’t.
Tori and her mother had a three o’clock. They had decided to start her on birth control pills, a decision that churned up mixed feelings for Ellen. She had to make sure the girl understood that while the Pill, properly used, would prevent pregnancy, it still didn’t offer the necessary barrier protection against sexually transmitted diseases. Try explaining that to a girl just a couple of years away from playing Barbies.
And there was the problem of Patsy Wheeler. Patsy was stretching the limits a little bit more every day. That was just human nature at work, but it surprised her that Patsy, who so desperately wanted to carry her child to term, would take unnecessary chances. Explaining the dangers of sex to a sixteen-year-old girl was easy compared to explaining to a forty-something-year-old woman why sitting quietly at a desk for thirty minutes might be enough to end her pregnancy.
Add to those problems the fact that she felt like hell. The cramps were showing no sign of stopping. In fact, cramps might not be the right term for what she was feeling. The pain was sharper, less rhythmic, and it seemed to be settling on the right side of her lower abdomen. She wasn’t spiking a fever, so appendicitis didn’t seem too likely, but if it continued into the weekend, she would definitely have to see someone about it.
Deirdre was planning to leave in the morning for the long drive down to Florida, where she would board the cruise ship and embark on her la
test adventure. They had decided that Stanley would stay in Shelter Rock Cove with Ellen. They called it “temporary custody,” but they both knew there was little that was temporary about it. Stanley was there to stay.
* * *
Talk about leaving footprints in the cheesecake.
First rule of chasing a man: Don’t ask a pair of nosy women for directions to his house. She thought Annie and Claudia were going to pass out on the floor when she asked them if they had any idea where Scott the Mechanic lived. Annie was clueless, but that Claudia was a regular Columbo. She grabbed the latest edition of the local phone directory, flipped to P for Peretti, and there he was.
“We won’t ask,” Claudia said as she copied the address and phone number onto a sheet of Annie’s Flowers notepaper for her.
“That’s right,” said Annie. “We’ll just make up something juicy.”
They would, too, but she didn’t care. Tomorrow morning she would point her Hyundai south, and they would be nothing but a memory. And in another two weeks, she would be boarding a cruise ship where she would spend her days and nights playing the harp for a bunch of people who cared more about the midnight buffet than music. Still, it paid well and it came with room and board, which, considering the fact that she was technically homeless, was a pretty good deal.
Her manager had asked her if she got seasick, and she had laughed out loud. O’Briens didn’t get seasick. Billy used to say she was part mermaid, the way she’d stay in the water all day long during the summer.
Nope. Strike that. She wasn’t going to think about Billy. She had done enough thinking and crying over the last week and a half to last her a lifetime. Fiona had spelled it all out for her on the telephone when she called to let the aunts know their flowers had arrived. “Mary Pat was his firstborn,” Fiona said, “and a daddy’s girl at that. There isn’t a man alive who can resist. And Ellen is the spit of her mam. Every time he looked at her, he saw the woman who was the love of his life.”
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