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“I’ll take care of it.” Margaret removed plastic-wrapped chicken from the fridge and carried it to the stove. “Rose said she had indigestion all night after that last thing you made.”
“Tuna casserole?” Hannah looked at her mother. “How could she get indigestion from that? I used the same recipe you always use.”
Margaret grinned. “Well, doll-baby, no one ever accused you of being Julia Child. Faith made me promise that I’d never get old because she didn’t know who would make the kind of food she likes.”
“Little brat.” Hannah shook her head. “I tried really hard with those potato skins she wanted.”
“I know.” Margaret’s smile turned conspiratorial. The chicken breasts flattened out on a cutting board, she began slicing them into strips. “Don’t worry, Hanny, you have plenty of other talents, my love.”
Feeling disgruntled now, Hannah resisted the urge to ask Margaret to name the other talents. She knew Margaret would list qualities like sweet and generous, which had never struck Hannah as much to crow about. They certainly hadn’t been enough to keep Liam interested. Margaret was back on Deb again.
“…and she just didn’t sound happy about Dennis, so all I said was I’d like to see her married and she immediately flew off the handle and went on and on about how she’ll get married when she’s ready and she’s not about to do something stupid like…well, you know what I’m saying.”
“Yeah.” Hannah put her teabag in a cup of water, put it in the microwave and stood passively, watching the seconds count down. She knew only too well. Something stupid like Hannah did when she ran off with Liam Tully, then compounded the foolishness by marrying him in a Las Vegas chapel, only to return home three months pregnant and on her own.
Debra could run off with an Elvis impersonator and set up housekeeping in a Ralph’s supermarket parking lot and no one would be surprised. But not levelheaded, dependable Hannah. If she spent the rest of her life in chaste contemplation, she would never live down what the family referred to as her Liam Lapse. Her father’s death from a heart attack had been blamed on it and Margaret, who had never previously touched alcohol, dated the start of her evening consumption of wine to that time. “We all suffered,” her aunt Helen frequently reminded her.
“Just talk to Deb, will you?” Margaret asked. “At least she won’t yell at you.”
Hannah took her tea from the microwave. The temptation to remind Margaret that it was up to her to work out her problems with Deb blazed briefly, then died. Even feeling as she did right now, kind of let down and confused about Liam coming back, her inclination was not to cause an argument. Ms. Congeniality, Deb called her. The downside was that Hannah often did things she didn’t really want to do. Like last Saturday, when she’d gone with her aunt Rose to the World’s Largest Singles Mixer because Rose hadn’t wanted to attend alone.
God, what a nightmare that had been. A guy with a toupee that looked exactly like a small furry animal napping across his scalp had refused to believe Hannah didn’t want to dance with him. She’d stood her ground, though, and eventually he and his furry friend had disappeared into the crowd. It wasn’t quite so easy to say no to her mother.
“I’ll talk to Deb,” she said. “This time. After that, you’re on your own.”
Lately, Hannah reflected, it seemed as if she and her mother had reversed roles. As a kid, Hannah had needed constant reassurance from Margaret that one day boys would pay attention to her, that the pimples would go away and that, as unlikely as it had seemed at the time, she would actually get breasts. Now she was constantly doling out reassurances to Margaret and monitoring her mother’s wine consumption much as Margaret had once sniffed for signs of teenage drinking. She hoped to God that by the time Faith needed monitoring and reassurance, Margaret would need less.
She decided not to say anything about Liam.
AFTER THE GIG, Liam shoved the sweaty clothes and boots he’d worn during the performance into a duffel bag and joined the other musicians making their way to the bus. The equipment had been packed up and stowed while he and a few of the others had gone next door for a couple of pints. The mike stands, lights and speakers. The guitars and drums, the audio effects and mixing console, T-shirts and merchandise. Packed up, stowed away, ready to start all over again.
In the bus, he sat up front for a while chatting with some of the others, then made his way down the aisle to the lounge in the middle. Yawning, he stretched out on one of the couches, hands pillowed behind his head. As buses went, this one was pretty plush. Microwave cookers and hi-fi. Mood lighting and couches. A far cry from the VW van they’d use in the band’s early days. That one had been reliable only for breaking down at least once a day.
But now they were touring internationally. The Wild Rovers, all eight of them. No chartered jets yet, but this wasn’t bad. Three days out and, as always, he felt the rhythm beginning to develop. Another day, another town. Pile off the bus, pile onto the bus. Stopping sometimes in the wee hours to traipse into an all-night place in the middle of nowhere for hamburgers and chips. Blinking in the fluorescent lights, bleary-eyed and half-asleep. Then back on the bus, collapsing into the bunk to fall asleep, rocked by the motion of the road. Waking to blinding sunlight creeping in around the black window shades. On the bus, off the bus. Set it up, tear it down. Different day, different town. He loved it. If there was a better way to live, he didn’t know about it.
Someone pushed his feet off the seat, and he looked up to see Brid Kelly, long red hair streaming down her back and skin so white that in the murky light of the bus she looked luminous. She had on jeans and a thin sleeveless top. If there’d been enough light, he knew he’d be able make out the outline of every bone in her rib cage. Brid could be a poster child for famine relief. He worried about her and not just—as she sometimes claimed—because he’d never find another singer who understood his music the way she did.
She was holding a large plastic bowl and a beer, which she held out to him.
“Thanks.”
She smiled and dropped down beside him. “How you doing, Liam?”
“All right.” He sat up and eyed the bowl. “Is that cabbage salad you’re eating again?”
“It is.” She waved the plastic fork. “D’you want some?”
He drank some beer. “Have you eaten anything but cabbage salad in the last three days?”
“I have.” She grinned. “Yesterday, I ate a carrot and three radishes.”
He shook his head. She’d nearly collapsed after yesterday’s show and he hadn’t bought her excuse that it was the heat. “You’re a skeleton, already, for God’s sake. You’ll make yourself ill, the way you’re going.”
“Ah, come on.” With a wave of her hand, she dismissed his concerns. “I’ll be fine. Nice and slim for when I walk down the aisle with Tommy Doherty.”
“Tommy Doherty.” Liam swung his feet back up on the couch and over her lap. “You’ve been talking about walking down the aisle with Tommy Doherty ever since I’ve known you.”
“This time I mean it. I’ve had it with all this.” She dug her fork into the cabbage. “I’m ready to start making babies.”
“Another thing I’ve heard at least a hundred times.”
“Right, well, it’s time now.”
“I won’t hold my breath.”
“You’ll see, Liam. I’ve had enough of it. On the road for weeks at a time. What kind of life is it anyway? Always away from your friends and family.”
He didn’t answer. He’d heard her sing the same song so many times he could recite it by heart. She’d get back to Ireland and insist she was through. They’d have to find a new singer. But then plans for the next tour would get underway, and he’d see her wavering. The truth was, the music was as much a part of her life as it was Liam’s. She was every bit as addicted to the life.
“What about you then, Liam? You never feel like putting down roots somewhere? You don’t miss being close to someone?”
With an elbow on the windowsill, he watched the road. “If I do,” he said, “I take a couple of aspirin until the feeling goes away.”
Brid pushed his leg and he turned to smile at her, then went back to watching the white lines flash past. Only one time had he ever considered packing it all in. About six years ago now. A marriage, brief as a blip in time. She’d missed her family, hated the long absences and frenetic craziness of his life. Because he’d loved her, he’d seriously considered settling down. Until he’d found out what she’d done.
He’d channeled his anger into the music and the following year he made the UK charts for the first time. Betrayed. That was the name of the single. And now, in a nice bit of irony, his next gig was in her hometown, where it had all started.
CHAPTER TWO
THE DAY AFTER HANNAH read about Liam coming back, she was standing in the kitchen making a salad for dinner when her sister Debra announced that she was pregnant.
“Don’t tell Mom,” Deb said. “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do about it.”
“You’re kidding.” Hannah dropped into the chair opposite her sister.
“Well, God, you don’t have to say it like that. It was okay for you to get pregnant but no one else can?”
Hannah held up her hand. She wasn’t in the mood for Debra. “If you want to talk,” she said, “we’ll talk. Otherwise, you can take your damn attitude and leave.”
“Zowee.” Debra’s eyes widened. “Chill out, Hannah. What are you so steamed up about anyway?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on.” Debra peered at her. “It’s something. You had a fight with Allan? You had a fight with Mom? You got fired?”
“For God’s sake, Deb.” She got up from the table, filled a glass with water from the fridge dispenser and sat down again. “Tell me what’s going on with you.”
“I missed two periods and I threw up twice this week at work. Dennis freaked when I first told him, but once he got over the shock he thought it was kind of cool. Now he’s saying I can move in with him until the baby’s born. After that, who knows?”
“What do you want to do?”
Debra shrugged. “Not what I’m doing right now, that’s for damn sure. ‘Hi, my name’s Debra,’” she said in a mincing voice. “‘And I’ll be your waitress tonight.’ God. I am so sick of that job. I just want to have a decent job where I’m making some money and I don’t have some jerk telling me to push the desserts and smile more. At least if I have the baby, it’s something different, plus Dennis is being a whole lot nicer since he found out.”
Hannah counted slowly to ten. Where did she even start? She traced the moisture on her glass and looked up at her sister. “What’s happening with your classes at State?”
Deb rolled her eyes. “The instructors were such a bunch of idiots, I swear I couldn’t even listen to them. I mean, I could learn more from surfing the Internet.”
“But you’re not going to get a teaching credential that way.”
“Don’t start on me about that, I’ve already heard it from Mom.”
“Deb.” Hannah put her elbows on the table. “You hate working where you are now, you hated working at Marie Callender’s, you hated worked at Denny’s—”
“Shut up, Hannah.” Debra jumped up from the table, stomped over to the pantry in her clunky black waitress shoes and emerged with a bag of Oreos that she ripped open. “You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” A cookie in one hand, she regarded Hannah as though she’d suddenly recognized something that hadn’t been clear before. “You think you’re so damn perfect.”
Hannah snorted. “Right.”
“No, you do. And Mom does, too. I am so sick of hearing how hard Hannah worked to get her degree, how wonderful Hannah’s job is, what a great boyfriend Hannah has. ‘Allan’s an attorney,’” she said, mimicking Margaret’s voice. “‘And he lives on Riva Alto Canal and he’s just so wonderful and Hannah’s so wonderful—’”
“Maybe that’s your interpretation, but it’s not the way I feel…”
“Yeah, whatever.” Debra eased the top off a cookie and bit into the cream filling. “I don’t give a damn. Maybe you’ve got it figured out now, you know damn well the whole reason you got pregnant was to keep Liam around.”
“No, I don’t know that.” Her face suddenly warm, Hannah held Debra’s glance. She heard Margaret’s car pull into the driveway and lowered her voice. “Look, Deb, having a baby is a huge decision—”
“Well, duh…” Debra was up from the table again. “Like I don’t know it’s my decision, too? God, I don’t even know why I try to talk to you. Just because Liam was a jerk doesn’t mean all guys are that way.”
“Whoa…” Rose walked into the kitchen just as Debra stormed out. “What’s the matter with her?”
WHILE MARGARET WORRIED aloud about Debra all through dinner, Hannah thought about Liam. Twenty-eight hours since she’d seen the article. Twenty-eight hours of thinking about practically nothing else. She didn’t know his schedule—except for next Friday—but he was somewhere in California and it was making her crazy. Thinking of him in Ireland was one thing, thinking of him maybe just an hour or two away was something else. He could call. Of course, he could have called from Ireland, too. But he hadn’t called. And he wouldn’t call.
“Dennis is not a good influence on Deb,” Margaret was saying now. “I mean a bartender, for God’s sake. And he bleaches his hair. What kind of guy would do that?” Her brow furrowed, she dug a fork into the gooey custard on her plate. “What is it with my girls?” she asked, glancing at Helen. “Why is it they both seem to have this thing for irresponsible men?”
“Well, hey, bad boys are more fun, huh, Hannie?” Aunt Rose, in a loose black silk shirt printed with beer bottles from around the world, winked at Hannah. Rose, a cosmetologist, was divorced from her second husband and staying at the house just until she got her credit card bills paid off. She’d recently had her eyelids tattooed with permanent liner because, she confided to Hannah, she hated to wake up beside a man and look washed-out. Rose was absolutely certain Mr. Right would turn up one of these days—for her and for Hannah. Rose had her money on Allan.
Aunt Helen shot Rose a disapproving look. “I’m quite sure that Hannah has already learned her lesson with…immature young men and I have no doubt that, before long, Debra will, too.”
The youngest of the three sisters, Helen was small, pink and fair with a large soft bosom and a similarly proportioned bottom. Faith, who adored Helen, once confided to Hannah that hugging Aunt Helen was like hugging a great big marshmallow. Helen taught junior high school and everything she said had a sweetly reasoned tone as if she knew that, even under the most obnoxious and intractable behavior, goodness was just waiting to shine. Helen’s husband had died years ago in a freak lightning storm back in Missouri where they’d gone to see his mother. Afterward, Helen had moved into the small guest cottage on Margaret’s property and decorated it with Laura Ashley fabrics.
“What about that nice attorney?” Helen asked Hannah now. “Are you still seeing him?”
Rose shot up her hand. “If you’re not, I get first dibs.”
“Rose,” Margaret and Helen said in unison.
“Hey, I like younger men.” Rose grinned. “And he lives on Riva Alto Canal. What’s not to like? Do your old auntie a favor, Hanny. See if he has an older brother.”
“Well…” Helen smiled as if to say that particular subject was over. She looked at Faith. “Listen, sweetie, if you’ll go bring me my purse over there on the couch, I’ve got a little surprise for you.” Faith darted across the room and returned with a large canvas bag. “Let’s see what we have here.” Helen reached into the bag. “James and the Giant Peach and Sleeping Beauty.”
“Oh, wow.” All smiles, Faith clutched the books. “My absolute favorites.”
“I knew they would be.” Helen dropped a kiss on Faith’s nose. “Now why don’t you run off and read them? The grown-ups want to talk about really boring things.” She gave Faith a few moments to leave the room, then produced a newspaper clipping from the bag. “This is probably something we should discuss.”
Hannah felt her stomach tense. She watched Margaret, who was sitting next to Helen, reach for the clipping. Waited for the shock to register on her mother’s face. The room felt hot and still suddenly. Margaret carefully set the clipping down on the table. Fingers over her lips, she looked at Hannah.
“Did you know Liam was coming back?”
“I just saw the announcement in the paper yesterday.” She drank some water. They were all watching her. “It’s no big deal, Mom.” She looked at Margaret. “Really, don’t worry about it.”
Margaret drank some wine. “You’re not planning to see him, are you?”
“Of course Hannah doesn’t want to see him,” Helen said.
“Why would Hannah give a hoot about Liam?” Rose asked. “She’s got this hotty attorney boyfriend. Liam’s ancient history. Right, Hannah?”
“ANY PLANS FOR A WEEK, Saturday?” Allan asked Hannah Wednesday morning when he dropped off his son at La Petite Ecole. “I have symphony tickets.”
“Saturday?” She’d been sitting at one of the small painted tables selecting books for the afternoon’s story session and she stood so that he wouldn’t tower over her. Actually, she could stand on a table and he’d still tower over her. Allan was tall. She wasn’t. Flustered now, mostly because next Saturday was Faith’s birthday party and she was wavering back and forth about inviting him, she tried to find a way around the question. “Saturday.” She frowned as though trying to picture her extensive social calendar. “Let me think.”
Allan smiled indulgently. Allan always smiled indulgently. It was one reason she had trouble picturing them walking into the sunset together. That, and he called her “Kiddo.” On the plus side, he was thoughtful, patient and sweetly romantic. As her Aunt Rose would say, she could do a lot worse. And, as her mother would add, in a not-too-subtle jab, she already had.
Allan and his ex-wife shared custody of four-year-old Douglas, who was in Hannah’s class. A fastidious little boy, Douglas disliked getting his hands dirty and insisted on using a straw to sip his milk because he worried about germs on the glass. She’d been talking to Allan about his son’s phobias during a parent-teacher conference and then somehow they’d moved on from Douglas to foreign films and she found herself accepting Allan’s invitation to a festival. Half a dozen or so dates later, he was talking about moving in together. She felt him watching her, waiting for an answer.
“Actually, next Saturday is Faith’s birthday party,” she finally said, because she couldn’t think of any way around it. “If you weren’t busy…”
His smile broadened. “I’ll give the tickets away. I’d love to meet your family and get to know your daughter.”
“Well, I’m not sure you’ll have much opportunity to get to know her. At last count, I think there were about fifty kids coming.”
“Hey, it sounds like fun,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
She smiled back at him. He really was kind of sweet, even if he didn’t exactly make her heart turn over. “Okay, but don’t pay any attention to my mother and aunts. They have this thing about me getting married, so they’ll start asking you pointed questions about your intentions.”
His expression turned thoughtful. “Really?”
“Yeah, so tell them you’re just out for a good time and the last thing you’d ever want to do is settle down.”
“But what if that’s not true?” His eyes searched her face. “What if I tell them you’re exactly what I’m looking for?”
“Uh…” She felt her face go warm. “Please don’t, okay?”
He smiled. “Are we a little gun-shy, kiddo?”
“Not a little, and Allan…please don’t call me ‘kiddo.’” She picked at a piece of skin on her finger. “Look, I screwed up once. I’m not about to jump into it again.”
“Perhaps you just married the wrong guy.”
Hannah shrugged. Inviting him had definitely sent the wrong message, she could see that now.
