Lies That Bind (8 page)

I could take it out and kill her and no one would be the wiser.

Jo would say I had been at the store. She would do that for me.

Not one person would miss her, if I had to guess.

But she didn’t act on that impulse, the one she justified in her mind. She held back the question that was on her lips: why hadn’t anyone told Maeve? Maeve, more than anyone, should have known the answer to that question, and when she thought about it, it was clear: her people didn’t talk about things, particularly ones that were unpleasant and required emotion. They preferred to sweep them away like crumbs on the table after Sunday breakfast, into the garbage, tied up tight, never to be seen or thought of again.

“Dead. Maybe.” Dolores rolled over the words, trying them out, seeing if they got to Maeve.

Maeve held her gaze, didn’t let her see that the idea of her sister being dead made her sick. “Thank you, Dolores,” Maeve said, standing. “It’s clear you have nothing else to tell me.”

Dolores pointed the empty water bottle at Maeve, her eyes narrowing so that they were almost closed. “See? You’re no better than us. You’ve got your secrets, too. Your perfect family,” she said, laughing. “Not so much, huh?”

Maeve started for the front door.

“There was never any difference between us, Maeve,” Dolores called after her. “You always thought you were better than us, but you weren’t. You with your cupcakes and your doting father. Your perfect life. You were no better than us.” Dolores followed her into the hallway.

Maeve put her hand on the door, gripping it until her knuckles turned white. Don’t tell her what you did. Don’t go to her level.

“You could have been a friend to my sister, but you weren’t,” Dolores said.

“I
was
a friend to your sister,” Maeve said, remembering holding the younger girl’s hand—only a grade behind Maeve—and taking her to the school nurse so she could get herself together before class, her squished bagged sandwich in the other hand. Maeve had given her part of her lunch, thinking momentarily that she shouldn’t, given what Margie had done. But she wasn’t like that, wasn’t raised like the Haggerty girls to be sneaky and, worse, mean.

Dolores went in for the kill. “They sent her away, Maeve. What parents do that to their child? A child like that?”

She didn’t know. And she didn’t want Dolores’s theories either. She closed the door behind her, breaking the top off of one of the garden topiaries as she walked by, if only to give a small measure of relief to the vengeance that was like a living, breathing thing pounding through her veins.

CHAPTER 12

Maeve turned onto Broadway, the blood still pounding in her temples, and pulled to the side of the road to take a few deep breaths. God, why did it have to be them, the Haggertys? Why did they have to come back into her life and bring with them all of the memories from a childhood she wanted to forget? She banged on the steering wheel. This wasn’t fair.

She picked up her phone, on the seat next to her, and saw three missed calls, all from the same number. A voicemail had been left while she was in Dolores’s house, and while she sat there, her car idling, she listened to it. It was the assistant principal at the high school; Heather hadn’t shown up that day.

She called the main number at the high school, and the secretary put her right through. “Mr. Jackson? Maeve Conlon. I understand we have a delinquent student?” she said, trying to keep her tone light but thinking that the minute she laid eyes on Heather, she was going to let her have it, although she didn’t know exactly what that meant. Corporal punishment was out and grounding was merely a ploy to make Maeve feel more in control. Heather was a second-story man, scaling the trellis in the back and leaving the house in the dead of night more than once. Heather thought that she lived in a gulag, where to her, what she considered rights were mistaken for privileges that were earned and the house rules weren’t fair because her older sister was a “loser” who had never had any friends anyway. Not true, Maeve had pointed out on more than one occasion; Rebecca had been an athlete and a scholar and had had plenty of friends from both endeavors. So what if her Friday and Saturday nights included her staying at home or going to a movie with a friend? It didn’t mean that she was a loser. And it didn’t influence Maeve unduly in following through with the rules and curfews she had set up when she didn’t know that Rebecca would be a homebody and Heather would be someone whose expertise at tapping a keg made Maeve’s heart sink just a little bit.

Mr. Jackson wasn’t as convivial as Maeve would have hoped. “I am very sorry for your loss, Miss Conlon, but I also get the paper and know that your father was buried several days ago. Therefore, unless you send Heather in with a note explaining her absence, the day will be a cut. An illegal absence.”

The little shit. “Thank you, Mr. Jackson. I’ll discuss this with Heather when I get home.”

“And the note?” he asked.

“As you said, the day will be a cut. My father was indeed buried several days ago.”

On the ride home, she didn’t know what made her angrier: her conversation with Dolores or the fact that Heather had cut school. She called Jo and begged her to do the close by herself; she had things to take care of. She pulled into the driveway with such velocity that she had to stop short before she hit the retaining wall, gravel spraying up and hitting a cat on the neighbor’s lawn. She wondered if that was the cat who used her backyard as a litter box. If so, nicely done, Prius.

She stormed in the house, marveling at how much better anger felt than sadness. Than grief. When she stepped into the front hallway, she heard voices at the top of the stairs, coming from one of the bedrooms. They were loud. And someone was crying.

She went to the second floor. Heather’s door was closed but she was inside with someone else. Maeve tapped lightly on the door, right over the Reflektors poster, and called out to Heather. “Heather? Are you in there?”

Whoever was in the room fell silent and the sound of shuffling feet and, eventually, murmured tones came through. She knocked again. “Heather? Open up.”

The door opened but it wasn’t Heather. Tommy Brantley, his skull-and-crossbones tattoo on full display on a small but bulging bicep, opened the door and gave Maeve a hard-eyed stare. “Mrs. Callahan,” he said, sounding much older than he was. Maeve was surprised to find that he was only a few inches taller than she was, but sturdily built; he hadn’t looked as imposing those times she had seen him from the safety of her living room when he sped up and picked Heather up for a “date.” If he wanted to, and it seemed that he might based on the flush in his cheeks, from where he was standing, he could have easily pushed her down the steps. She took a step to the right and looked into Heather’s room.

Heather sat on her bed, her head hanging. “Tommy was just leaving, Mom.”

Tommy gave her a hard look. “I was just leaving,” he said. He raced down the stairs and to the door in a split second.

She watched him go out the door, the screen slamming behind him. When she was sure he was gone, she went into Heather’s room. She knelt in front of her. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” she asked. Heather’s face was covered by her lank, dark hair.

“No!” she said. “How could you even think that?”

Maeve stood. “We’ve been over this, Heather. This does not seem like a good relationship. You never seem happy when he’s around, or after you’ve seen him.” She pulled her daughter up off the bed. “Tell me what’s going on, why you cut school today.”

Heather stood before her, mute.

“And who is Billy? He came by the store today, looking for you,” Maeve said.

“He’s no one,” Heather said.

Maeve stood there, looking at a kid who had sprung from her loins all piss and vinegar, a baby with an attitude. Not much had changed. “I’ll be downstairs,” Maeve said. “You have ten minutes.”

“And then what?” she asked.

“And then…” she started, and realized there was no “then.” She admitted it to herself, hoping it didn’t show on her face, and it felt weak. She had nothing. She couldn’t accuse him of anything; she couldn’t call the police. He had been in her daughter’s bedroom and she had been crying but that was all she had. It was horrible to feel so powerless.

She went down to the kitchen and poured herself some wine in a tumbler; a dainty wineglass wouldn’t do. She drank half of it down and slammed the glass onto the table just as Heather appeared in the doorway.

“Am I in trouble?”

“Unless you give me a reasonable excuse as to why you cut school today, then yes.” Maeve pushed her wineglass around on the table. “And a reasonable excuse is ‘I had malaria’ or ‘I was so sad about breaking up with my hoodlum boyfriend.’” That had pushed it too far and she knew it, but seeing her daughter cry, because her boyfriend had made her, made Maeve feel a little less than genial toward Tommy. “Is it Grandpa?”

“I can’t talk to you,” Heather said. “I will go back to school tomorrow.”

“Listen, Heather,” Maeve said, standing up and going to the refrigerator, “going to class and getting good grades are your ticket out of here. Don’t forget that,” she said, looking inside to see what she could make for dinner. “And you know our house rules; no one comes over unless I’m home.”

“But you’re never home,” Heather said.

Maeve didn’t have an answer for that. “House rules. They are always in effect.” She drained her wine. “Now, who’s Billy?” she asked, but Heather was already on the move.

“Who’s Billy?” she called after Heather, but she was gone. Christmas vacation was coming, and for all of her impotence in dealing with Heather’s transgressions, Maeve knew that if it took every ounce of strength she had, Heather would be staring at the four walls of her bedroom for those two weeks. She wouldn’t be leaving the house.

Maeve stood in the kitchen for a long time, looking at the closed front door at the end of the hallway. Finally, she opened the refrigerator. It was dinner for one, as it turned out.

CHAPTER 13

She dug through the remaining boxes, Jack’s things, for the next few days, whenever she had a free moment. In what was left, Maeve found nothing else to suggest that there was another child in her father’s life. Tonight she sat on her bedroom floor, items scattered around her, and scanned the detritus. She would keep the photo albums and some of the holy cards; forgive her if she wanted the one marking Martin Haggerty’s death out of her house as soon as possible. Why Jack had kept it was beyond her. She looked at the wallet-sized photos of newly married couples that must have come in thank-you cards throughout the years; she recognized a few of the couples but not the others.

Maeve crossed her legs and took a sip of wine from the glass on the floor next to her. She didn’t hear Cal enter the room, his old bedroom, and she looked up only when he cleared his throat.

“Is it okay that I’m in here?” he asked. He had taken to wearing glasses instead of contacts and looked like a “hipster.” At least that’s what the girls said. They were heavy, black-rimmed frames and made him look a little silly, in her opinion.

“It’s okay,” she said, patting the bed behind her. He sat down and she moved so that she was facing him. “What’s going on?” She hadn’t told him about the break-in or that she had been hit over the head; she found that the less Cal knew about unpleasant things, the better. She didn’t want news getting out about the break-in because she couldn’t have anything jeopardize her business. That, and she couldn’t stand the look of pity that would wash over his face, the one that told her that if she just had a man to take care of her, everything would be okay.

I did have a man, she always wanted to yell, and he left me for someone who smelled better and didn’t jiggle in all the wrong places when she walked.

He pulled an envelope from his pocket. “Here’s a check from one of your dad’s insurance policies. I knew someone at the insurance company in town and they pulled a few strings to get it cut quickly.” He handed it to her. “It’s a little one but it’s a nice chunk of change.”

She opened the envelope; three thousand dollars. That would come in handy, especially since the oven in the store was making a racket when she turned it up past four hundred degrees. “Thanks.” She handed him the glass of wine. “Here. Take this. You look like you’ve had a long day.”

“Thanks,” he said, looking around the bedroom. “This room still drafty?”

“Yep,” she said. “Maybe I’ll use some of this to get new windows.” She patted the envelope on her lap.

They sat in companionable silence, a state she couldn’t have imagined several years earlier when he had announced he wanted out of the marriage, his love for her now focused on someone else. Someone younger, prettier, and more successful. She hadn’t cried then and she wouldn’t cry ever because really, it was just a waste of time. It was clear when he told her, and even before that, that he had already moved on. There was no turning back.

But now, they were fine. Friends, even. Maybe they should have never married, staying the good friends that they had become when she was fresh out of the Culinary Institute and he was a lawyer at a firm in Hyde Park, the only job he could get at the time. They co-parented pretty easily these days, even if she thought he was too lenient and he, in turn, thought she was too strict. The girls likely saw them as two people who acted like grown-ups and if they couldn’t be together, that had to be good enough.

“Hey, I may need your help,” she said, lowering her voice. Heather’s bedroom was on the other side of Maeve’s bathroom and sound traveled. That’s how she knew that Heather had been deep in conversation on the phone with her sister when Maeve had entered her own bedroom an hour earlier, the hunger strike still in effect.

Heather would crack eventually. Maeve’s girls couldn’t go three hours without eating, never mind skipping dinner altogether.

“With?”

“Heather issue,” she said, relaying her conversation with Mr. Jackson, her run-in with Tommy.

“I hate that kid Tommy,” Cal said, and for him, those were pretty strong words. This from the man who was perpetually “disappointed” with bad behavior rather than stark, raving mad like his ex-wife. “He’s trouble. I thought they broke up?”