One Perfect Love

by Jessie Evans

“I made a call this morning, too,” I say. “To the clinic in Michigan where I had my surgery. I’ll tell you all about it over coffee in a few.”

  Caitlin’s eyebrows drift up, but before she can speak, Emmie tugs on my shorts and says—

  “Come on, Gabe. Let’s play.”

  So we do, for another fifteen minutes, that turns into twenty when Koko is seriously injured right as I tell Emmie that Raff needs to take a break to eat breakfast. I finally convince Emmie to join me in the kitchen by agreeing that Koko and Raff can sit next to her on her stool at the counter. I carry Emmie and the animals into the other room and get them settled with a cinnamon roll, before turning to accept a coffee from Caitlin.

  “Thank you,” I say before taking a grateful sip of the barely warm liquid.

  Caitlin chuckles. “No one should have to play animals before coffee. It’s probably a form of torture in some parts of the world.”

  I smile. “I had fun. Koko has a lot of personality.”

  “Tell me about it,” Caitlin says, ruffling Emmie’s blond curls as the little girl digs into her cinnamon roll. “Once Koko, Raff, and Pooty started talking, we couldn’t get this one to stop.”

  “Pooty?” I lift an eyebrow.

  “You haven’t met Pooty?” Caitlin asks with a wicked grin. “Oh, but you will. Pooty is even louder than Koko. I’m sure you two will have a great time together.”

  “I can go get him,” Emmie says, moving to slide off her stool before Caitlin stops her with a hand on her knee.

  “Finish your breakfast first, okay? I need to talk to Gabe for a few minutes.”

  Emmie frowns and holds up one icing-coated finger. “One minute.”

  “Maybe more than one, but we’ll be done by the time you finish your cinnamon roll, I promise.” Caitlin takes my hand and leads me toward the balcony, past where the three boys are camped out on the couch watching TV while they eat, but a knock at the door stops her halfway across the room.

  “Who could that be?” Caitlin asks, turning back to Sherry, who’s still in the kitchen. “You expecting someone?”

  Sherry shakes her head. “No, I didn’t tell anyone where we were staying.”

  Caitlin’s lips part, but before she can speak the knock comes again, more urgent this time. I step in front of her, instinctively wanting to protect her from whatever trouble might be at the door.

  “Let me answer it.” I cross the carpet to open the door before Caitlin can protest, peering through the peephole to find a man in wrinkled khaki pants and a white polo shirt that’s a little tight across his rounded stomach.

  I open the door a few inches. “Can I help you?”

  “Good morning, is this Caitlin Cooney’s room?” the man asks with a benign smile. He looks harmless, but so did Ned Pitt, and I’m not about to let him at Caitlin until I know what he wants.

  “Do you mind telling me who’s asking?” I say. “And why?”

  The man pulls a manila envelope from behind his back. “I have a delivery. But I need to make sure it goes directly into Miss Cooney’s hands.”

  “It’s okay, Gabe,” Caitlin says from behind me. I feel her cool fingers on my bare stomach and shift to the side, opening the door wide enough for her to stand beside me. “What’s the delivery?”

  The man holds out the envelope, backing a step away the moment Caitlin has it in hand. “You’ve been served ma’am,” he says with another efficient smile.

  “What?” Caitlin’s eyes go wide. “But I can’t—”

  “Have a good day.” He turns, moving away down the hall, making a speedy getaway now that he’s dropped a bomb in the middle of our morning.

  Caitlin cusses softly and smacks the envelope with one hand before ripping into the top with shaking fingers.

  “Your sister already?” I ask, unable to think of anyone else who would be filing a legal suit against Caitlin.

  Caitlin pulls out the paperwork, paling as she scans the pages. “She’s suing for custody, and she’s managed to get an expedited motion to get us into court for an initial hearing before we fly back.” She squeezes her eyes shut, and leans back against the doorframe. “She’s got a court date, and I don’t even have a lawyer.”

  “I’ll make some calls right now,” I say. “I know a couple of people in Charleston that my father doesn’t care for, but who are supposed to be good. We’ll see if one of them will take the case. That way we can be sure they won’t carry the story back to my dad.”

  Caitlin sighs, and her eyes slide slowly open, as if it’s an effort to move even those small muscles. “He’s going to find out sooner or later.”

  “Let’s try to make it later, at least until I know how they convinced me to go to Michigan without calling to tell you goodbye.” I fill her in on my conversation with Bea, and watch her tired eyes grow troubled.

  “They had something on you,” Caitlin says, echoing my thoughts. “Something big.”

  “And I need to find out what before they try to use it again,” I say. “Assuming it’s the kind of blackmail that retains its effectiveness post brain-tumor.”

  Caitlin sighs again, a longer, heavier sound this time. “Can’t anything ever be simple?”

  I smile. “Yes. This morning will be. Go back to my room, and take a nap. I’ll take care of the lawyer, and start trying to dig up dirt on your sister.”

  Caitlin shakes her head. “I need to run over to the department store and buy a hat. Or a scarf and glasses, something to wear to the funeral. Or maybe I shouldn’t go, after all.”

  “I’ll take care of the hat, too,” I say, taking her by the shoulders and guiding her back down the hall. “You shouldn’t let my parents keep you from your father’s funeral if you want to go, and you shouldn’t start a day like today exhausted or every bad thing will seem worse.”

  She smiles tiredly at me over my shoulder. “Are you sure this isn’t an excuse to take me back to bed?”

  “Not this time,” I say. “But I will be reclaiming my shirt, so you’ll have to sleep naked.”

  She lifts a brow. “Are you going to be able to resist if you see me naked?”

  “No,” I confess as I open the door and urge her inside. “That’s why you’re going in, and handing the shirt back through a crack in the door.”

  She laughs, but the sound fades quickly, and when she turns back to me, she looks scared. “Aoife can’t take Emmie away, can she? I mean, surely even she can see that Emmie is better off staying with the only family she’s ever known, right? Maybe if I try to talk to her again today, and keep my temper in check…”

  I shrug. “It doesn’t matter. If Aoife sees that what she’s doing is selfish, great. If not, I’ll hire the best lawyer money can buy, and you’ll crush her in court. And I’ll start looking into her story this morning, see if I can find anything we can use to blackmail her into going away. No matter what we have to do, we’ll take care of it. Emmie is staying with you. Where she belongs.”

  Caitlin looks comforted, but I’m glad when she hides behind the door and hands out my shirt, and I’m spared looking into her eyes. I want her to get her rest, but I’m not sure everything is going to be okay. The more I think about what Bea said, the more I worry that whatever my parents had against me is something no amount of muscle or money or quick thinking it going to be able to make go away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Caitlin

  “Earth’s crammed with heaven…

  But only he who sees takes off his shoes.”

  -Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  You never forget your first funeral. Mine was for Great Uncle Tom, who had a heart attack in his peach orchard while checking to see how his new stinkbug poison was performing. He was dead almost two days before Great Aunt Maryanne finally went looking for him. She found him curled up next to his John Deere, bloated in the mid-summer heat, and attracting flies.

  The body was in terrible shape, but Maryanne insisted on an open casket. I heard the funeral home director tried to talk her
out of it, but Maryanne was a stubborn cuss—the only reason she was able to stay married to a cranky bastard like Uncle Tom for fifty-eight years. She insisted on an open casket, and on Tom being squeezed into the good Sunday suit he hadn’t worn since the day a decade previous when he’d told Maryanne he was too old to waste a perfectly good Sunday bruising his ass on a church pew.

  The funeral was held in a tiny country church out a long dirt road, somewhere close to Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary’s farm, though I can’t remember seeing it before, or since. But I remember stepping through the door, into the stifling heat of a one-room wood plank building with no air conditioning.

  I remember holding Aoife’s hand so tight the sweat building between our palms dripped onto the dusty floor, and the gray, lumpish face of Uncle Tom peeking up above the top of the casket, looking like something out of a horror movie. I remember the way his chin seemed to be sliding back into his neck, and how terrified I was that his mouth was going to open up and something was going to come flying out. Daddy had said something to Mama in the car about flies laying eggs in dead bodies. I was in the backseat with all the windows rolled down, and wasn’t meant to hear, but I did.

  I had nightmares for weeks after Uncle Tom’s funeral. I’d wake up shaking and sweating, feeling like something horrible was crawling up my throat and roll over and hug Aoife so tight she’d wake up groaning. But she never yelled at me. She would simply hug me, sweep my damp hair from my forehead, and tell me it was only a dream until I relaxed enough to go back to sleep.

  Once upon a time, Aoife was my rock. I loved her like a mother, a sister, and a best friend all wrapped up together, but that was a long time ago.

  Right now, watching her settle into a pew at the front of the church next to Veronica, Veronica’s two daughters, and all the Cooney cousins and second cousins, all I feel is angry and afraid. I wish she’d stayed in Florida. I wish I’d never been forced to see her face again, or realize I mean so little to the woman I once considered the most beautiful, perfect, necessary person in the world.

  Aoife is here for Emmie, not to mend fences with me. The fact that I rearranged my entire life and have worked, suffered, and sacrificed to pick up the slack when Aoife left means nothing to her. I mean nothing to her. I am just another person who has outlived my usefulness, and must now be cast aside. It’s the way Aoife works. She’s a lot like Dad that way, but this time I refuse to make discarding people easy for her. She’s going to look this ugly thing she’s doing in the face, and see how much damage she’s preparing to inflict.

  I stay at the back of the church during the service, the navy straw hat Gabe bought to match my navy sheath pinned into my upswept hair, my veil pulled over my face, and my eyes on the hands folded in my lap. I haven’t seen any sign of the Alexanders—Gabe said his dad was at work and his mom was consulting for new interior design clients at the country club—but I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry. I keep a low profile, and when the service is over and Chuck’s body is being carried out, I circle around the other side of the church, intercepting Aoife before she can start for the parking lot, where two limos are waiting to take family members on to the graveside service.

  “Can I talk to you?” I ask softly, stepping out from between the pews to block her path.

  She sniffs and wipes tears from beneath her eyes. “I don’t think we should. My lawyer says I shouldn’t speak to you until everything is settled.” She looks almost as tired as I feel, and for the first time I wonder if maybe this isn’t as easy for her as I’d assumed.

  Maybe, deep down, she knows trying to take Emmie away is wrong. Maybe if I can get her alone, and say the right things, this can all go away.

  “Please, Aoife,” I beg, ignoring the hard look Veronica shoots my way as she moves up the aisle to hover near my sister’s elbow. “We’re sisters. Let’s talk this out, okay? I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “Then you need to give the girl her baby back,” Veronica says, in a hard voice I haven’t heard from her before. “She’s Emmie’s mama. That’s her kid, Caitlin, not yours.”

  I’m tempted to snap that Emmie isn’t a possession, but if anyone is going to lay claim to my niece, it’s me. I’m the one who has loved her, paid for her, and cared about her for nearly four years, not Aoife. But that would be a waste of breath. Veronica’s opinion doesn’t matter, and picking a fight in church isn’t part of my agenda.

  Brawling at a funeral would be too typically Cooney, and I’ve always tried to rise above my family’s reputation, not lie down and wallow in it.

  “Please,” I ask again, holding my sister’s tired eyes. “Just give me two minutes in private. That’s all I’m asking.”

  I see Aoife wavering, but before she speaks, Veronica loops her arm through my sister’s and proceeds to voice her full twelve cents on the matter.

  “This girl has been to hell and back, and turned her life around. Do you know how hard that is?” She props a fist on her full hips, blocking the path of the two older men trying to move around her, making sure we have an audience. “You should be proud of her, and doing whatever you can to support her, not trying to tear her down and take her baby away.”

  I literally have to bite my tongue to hold back my response to that. I bite it hard enough to break the skin and send the bitter, salty taste of blood rushing through my mouth.

  “It’s okay, V. But thank you, I appreciate it,” Aoife says, already more cozy with our father’s ex-girlfriend in two days, than I am after years of acquaintance.

  But Aoife has always been good at making allies when she needs them. Back in seventh grade, she enlisted her own team of bodyguards from the girls’ track team, all with nothing more than a sob story about another group of girls threatening to beat her up after school, a delicate smile, and a few free manicures during lunch.

  “We can talk,” Aoife says, turning back to me. “But I only have a few minutes. I’m going with Veronica in her limo.”

  “You can ride with us, too, Caitlin,” Veronica says, moving up the aisle, allowing the people she’s trapped to move past her on the other side. “I’m not the kind to push someone out of the family because they’re doing something I don’t like. Love the sinner, hate the sin, that’s my belief.”

  Somehow, through sheer force of will, I manage not to roll my eyes until she’s turned her back, but then I roll them hard enough to send a flash of pain shooting through my eyelids.

  “I know, but she means well,” Aoife says, surprising me as we move between the pews, off to the right side of the church. “She’s a strong woman. I’m glad Dad had someone like her in his life at the end. It sounds like they got along a lot better than Mom and Dad ever did.”

  “Have you heard from Mom?” I ask as we reach the far aisle and stand beneath the stained glass windows illustrating the Stations of the Cross. The sun streaming through the colored glass casts Aoife’s pale face in a golden light, making her look even more angelic—and more like Mom—than usual.

  I used to think their physical similarities were the reason she and Mom were always close, but now I suspect it’s their mutual love of revising history that allowed them to maintain a relationship long after I cut Mom out of my life. I don’t like lies to begin with, but hearing miserable situations from my childhood filtered through my mother’s rose-colored glasses was especially torturous. Those months I spent with a horrible foster family weren’t “a good growing experience,” and the time she dropped me off at school on a Sunday and left me there all day wasn’t a “funny story.” Not any funnier than the other traumatizing events of my childhood.

  Aoife shakes her head. “Not for about a year. She came to visit me right after Mitch and I got the house, but then she brought home a six-pack of beer. Mitch flipped out and made her leave. He had my cell phone number changed after, so she hasn’t been able to call, and I promised Mitch I wouldn’t call her. He’s really committed to helping me stay sober, so…”

  “That’s good,” I say,
though I’m thinking that the guy sounds like a control freak. But maybe that’s what Aoife needs to stay clean. If so, I’m glad she found someone who meets her needs, I just don’t want Emmie growing up in that kind of environment. “I’m glad you’re so much better. You know that, right?”

  Her lips curve in a sad smile. “You just don’t think I can keep it up? Is that what you’re worried about? I’ve been clean for almost eighteen months, Caitlin. It’s going to stick this time. I promise.”

  “That’s not what I’m worried about,” I say. “I’m worried about Emmie. That’s all this is. She had a lot of developmental problems for the first few years after she was born, but she’s been doing so much better. I don’t want her to backslide, and I think being taken away from the only family she’s ever known would be really devastating for her.”

  “But I’m her mother, Caitlin,” Aoife says, pleading with her eyes for me to understand. “I know I screwed up, but that doesn’t mean I have to lose my daughter forever, does it? I mean…I’m different now, and I just want another chance. I’m tired of paying for all those old mistakes.”

  “I get it, Aoife, I really do, but life doesn’t work that way,” I say, throat tight with emotion. “You can’t just wave a magic wand and erase the things you don’t like about your past. Your actions affected people in dramatic ways, ways that have lasting results.”

  “Only if people insist on continuing to punish me for a crime I’ve already paid for.” Aoife crosses her arms protectively over her stomach. “I’ve already lost almost four years of Emmie’s life. I don’t want to lose any more.”

  “You don’t have to.” I don’t want to compromise with Aoife, but it might be the only way to get out of here without going to court. “We could split custody. I could have Emmie during the school year, and she could come stay with you every summer and Christmas, or something like that. We could make it work with your schedule.”

  Aoife’s brows draw together and she blinks at me like I’ve said something nonsensical. “I’m not going to split custody. Mitch doesn’t want that. He wants to adopt Emmie, and for all of us to be a family. We just want to be normal, Caitlin.”