The Widow's Son (4 page)

I was in a much better mood after that, but before returning to the shop I decided to take another look at the books Ted Follis had donated to the Celtic Center. Seeing all those bright, ardent students at Green Hall had rekindled fond memories of my days on Law Review at Northwestern. A leisurely hour or two sorting through the works of great Irish writers and patriots was just what I needed to restore my belief that I hadn't been a fool to give up my law career.

I also wanted to check on Natalie Phelan's state of mind after O'Halloran's tragic demise three days earlier. Even under normal circumstances, the redhead could be energetic and delightfully witty one moment, then retreat the next into a shell of silent brooding for no particular reason—a potent mixture of Maureen O'Hara and Edgar Allan Poe. I'd seen enough of my mother's struggles with manic depression to recognize that Natalie was a prime candidate for a breakdown.

Josie and I had gotten to know her when she served as a manager next door at Café Provence. Divorced and the sole support of Claire, Natalie struggled with old student loan debts. But she was smart as a whip and the very definition of “multitasker,” who never did one thing if she could accomplish four at the same time. We had helped get her the job at the Celtic Center when the president of its board mentioned to Josie that he had fired their executive director and was desperate to fill the spot.

It turned out to be a good match. Natalie, who had a degree in finance to go with her natural pluck and ability to charm the socks off the meanest Scrooge, held the line on expenses while adding cultural events to make the Center more relevant. But with Union Station's continued popularity, rents had risen, so she spent three fourths of her time scratching for contributions. The local Irish community, a generous bunch when the plate was passed at Mass, was tight as a tick outside church doors, albeit for good reason—it's hard to press Catholic parents who are paying thousands a year for private school tuitions.

Thirty-five years old, Natalie was gorgeous. Besides having the emerald eyes of a Druid princess, high cheekbones (sprinkled with just the right amount of freckles), and shimmering auburn hair that cascaded down a swanlike neck, she possessed the kind of willowy, athletic body capable of spiking volleyballs through a hardwood floor.

It was a little before noon when I walked into the Center. A middle-aged volunteer sat at the front desk chomping on a tuna fish sandwich while reading a Maeve Binchy paperback. She looked up, licked a dab of mayonnaise from her lower lip, and nodded toward the conference room.

I thanked her and walked across a frayed carpet to a pair of open sliding doors. Directly opposite the entrance to the boardroom was a wall featuring three rows of Irish crests that represented the family names of those who had contributed generously to the Center.

On the north and south walls were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, with a few sets of tooled leather bindings behind the glass cases. Nice stuff, but no match for what I hoped to find in Ted Follis's cardboard banker boxes.

Natalie and her daughter sat facing each other at the end of a long oak table close to the south wall. Claire, wearing her school uniform, gazed in silence at her mother, who was giving her a quiet but heated lecture.

The pale-haired child looked pensive, but not particularly concerned by the admonition. I assumed the speech was about her performance at school. Natalie had mentioned once to Josie that the principal had threatened to hold Claire back a grade for what the school psychologist had described as “behavioral idiosyncrasies.”

It certainly wasn't for lack of intelligence. During weekends and school holidays she could be found at a table in the front of our store devouring books from the history, science, and even philosophy sections. Josie had cultivated her trust by suggesting titles such as David Lindberg's
The Beginnings of Western Science
and listening when the young teen seemed particularly vexed about something. But we hadn't seen her at the shop since the beginning of summer.

I've mentioned Claire's long, wispy hair, which was almost white, and the pale skin that seemed to scarcely cover the blue veins in her forearms. She was slender to the point of being anorexic and small-boned. She was reserved as well, but none of these things made you think she was delicate.

In fact, there was an odd self-assurance about her as if she saw things through those piercing dark orange eyes that other people couldn't. She had some boyish features—a strong brow, jutting chin, and small hips. The same characteristics, viewed from a different angle, however, could seem very feminine, even beautiful. To that extent there was a lot of her mother in her. But something else, too. Her father must have been an interesting-looking man.

Claire attended Ursuline Academy, a Catholic girls' school, at great financial sacrifice to Natalie. To help her mother with the costs, the fourteen-year-old worked three evenings a week at an assisted living home where she collected and washed soiled bedsheets. According to what she told Josie, she loved being among the old people, particularly when she could comfort those about to die.

The Phelans lived in a rented single-story bungalow just east of Troost Avenue, behind Rockhurst University. The neighborhood had two sides to it—one moderately poor, the other moderately well-to-do. The part nearest the college was populated by caring families who were clean and gentle and well mannered. The other was rougher—dark alleys, the rat in the road, mysterious, vaguely threatening, shabby houses sheltering wife-beaters.

It was on this unpleasant side where Claire had been raised. It was also two blocks from where I'd lived before my grandfather rescued me from my abusive dad.

I was thinking of this when the girl's head turned slowly and she locked her X-ray eyes on mine. Natalie, having followed Claire's gaze, jumped up and rushed over to me.

“Michael, darling!” she gushed as she seized my arm. “I'm so glad you weren't scared away after the O'Halloran fiasco.”

“On the contrary. I wanted to see how
you
were doing.”

“Oh, bosh. I'm fine. Major catastrophes I can handle; it's the paper cuts that get me down.”

“I know this place can provide plenty of those, but you're doing a great job. Mind if I take another peek at the Follis collection?”

“Go for it!” she urged, drawing close enough for me to detect the scent of cinnamon in her hair. “Are the books of any real value?”

“Hard to say until I'm able to dig into the rest of the boxes. From what I've seen so far, however, it's promising.”

Her nostrils flared a little and she tightened the grip on my arm. “How promising? The Center is six months behind in rent and the bank is threatening to call our loan if we don't start reducing the principal. Simply paying interest isn't cutting it anymore.”

I furrowed my brow just enough to show my hesitancy at guessing, followed by my normally tried-and-true stall tactics.

“Yesterday I noticed a religious tract by the Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, dated 1631, and a nice work by Edmund Burke. Then there was a charming
Darby O'Gill and the Good People
that included an inscription by the author, Herminie Templeton Kavanagh. It was the McClure Company edition dated 1903, making it a true first and not the Reilly and Lee reprint…”

Natalie's eyes glazed over—a common occurrence among listeners when I start prattling about rare books or rugby union football—but when her fingernails began to draw blood from my arm I cut to the chase and gave her what she wanted to hear: “If there is more such gold in the other boxes, I can see my appraisal going into six figures.”

That stopped the glazing.

“You'll think this blasphemous, Michael, but I intend to recommend that the board sell the collection if fund-raising doesn't improve.”

I winced. “God, don't even think it. It's not necessary if the bank considers the books sufficient collateral.”

She regarded me with a narrow smile before purring, “Then I presume your valuation will be generous.”

The air got cooler as I realized my mistake in prematurely suggesting a figure. It didn't matter whether I'd mentioned hundreds of thousands of dollars or twenty-five. It was foolish and unethical to set a client's expectations without having done a complete evaluation of the stock.

I began to retract my earlier statement as to the presumed value, but Natalie wasn't listening. She had something else on her mind now.

Releasing my arm, she turned to her daughter. “Honey, could you give Mr. Bevan and me a few minutes?”

The girl rose, performed what seemed to be a curtsy in my direction, and drifted from the boardroom.

“I'm really worried about her,” Natalie confided when we were alone. “She's become so withdrawn. She seems to enjoy only being around older people. And that caterwauling! The episode before poor O'Halloran died was just one example.”

“Don't you think you're being too critical? I find it refreshing that a girl her age respects the elderly. Plus, Claire certainly has a remarkable voice.”

“Bullshit. It's creepy the way she hangs around the dying. Crooning them on their way to eternity! She never sang so much as a nursery rhyme until six months ago.”

“Have you taken her to a doctor?”

“If you're referring to a shrink, I did. He said it's an adolescent phase she's going through.”

“He's probably right, Natalie. We were all a mess at that age.”

“This is different. I don't recognize my child. Despite her isolation, I don't even think she's unhappy. But something has poisoned her soul.”

Natalie was prone to saying things like this—a dark power always lurking about, waiting to strike when one is happiest. It comes with red hair, I suppose.

“Has anything happened to disturb her?”

A peculiar stillness came over Natalie's face. “Possibly. I recently mentioned to her an upcoming change in our circumstances.”

“What's that?”

“Emery Stagg and I are getting married.”

I tried not to look shocked, but it was impossible. Lately, I had seen them dining together at Café Provence and once or twice discussing something while strolling through the bookstore, but the two were total opposites. Whereas Natalie was a lissome Celtic goddess, as good with a joke as with a song, her fiancé appeared to me to have all the charisma of a speed bump.

When he first entered Riverrun Books two years earlier there had been nothing notable about Emery other than that he looked like a pair of pliers. He was slightly less than six feet tall and lean, with sandy brown hair too dull to be properly described as blond that was cut in what used to be called a flattop. His thin face was characterized by sharp, angular features. An upturned nose deviated a half inch to the left; thin lips turned down at the corners; and closely spaced walnut-colored eyes carefully studied the world behind nondescript wire-rimmed glasses. I sensed he was physically tough, but also sensitive to perceived slights. The guy had “lonely childhood” written all over him.

Everything about him seemed practical and functional. There were no adornments, no wasted words or actions, no fiddling or fussing. He dressed simply and consistently in a white button-down shirt, black trousers, skinny black belt, dark gray socks, and brown Hush Puppy Mall Walkers. Offered a cup of coffee by Josie his first day in the bookshop, he politely declined, stating that caffeine was off-limits for a Mormon. I recall him having only two expressions at the time: a questioning gaze and purse-lipped indigestion.

All this combined to make him appear distant or disconnected, and the impression was magnified by his somber presence. I decided he was somewhere on the high end of the autism spectrum, as socially awkward as he was intellectually astute.

In those days Natalie was waitressing part-time at Café Provence while trying to finish her business degree at Avila College. I noticed that when she was on duty a different Emery Stagg emerged. She must have seemed completely alien to him with her gaudily painted fingernails, dangly earrings, piles of jewelry, and long, scarlet hair done up differently on any given day, but he obviously found the contrasts irresistible.

He would borrow a mathematics book from our shop, take it into the café, and pretend to read it until she arrived at his table to take an order. Then an amazing transformation would occur—his melancholy face would turn into one of fawning appreciation, like a puppy anticipating a biscuit from its mistress. If she left to serve other customers, his eyes followed her with a gleam that was a weird cross between adulation and guilt.

Perhaps, like me, Emery had been intrigued not so much by Natalie's adornments as by the subtle melancholy in her eyes when she wasn't bounding through the restaurant, bantering lightheartedly with her customers, creating good cheer at each table.

But I'm guessing.

What I knew for sure was that apart from the fact that they shared high IQs, Natalie was everything Emery was not—extroverted, comfortable with everyone, volcanically spirited, willing to take risks and laugh off mistakes. She had always shown him polite consideration, but I never dreamed there could be more to their relationship.

“Congratulations,” I managed to mutter after Natalie found it necessary to repeat the wedding announcement. Then I hastily followed with the only compliment that came to mind: “He'll be a good provider.”

Rather than thanking me, she went to close the conference room doors, then returned to the table where I had taken a seat next to a stack of books from the Follis collection. Leaning over, she took my hands in hers.

“I know you don't think much of Emery. I suppose no one does, other than those who respect his work at Becker Systems. But I adore him.”

“Mind if I ask why?”

“He has poise, an air of competence, and a resolute calmness.”