All She Ever Wanted (28 page)

“The stainless steel diner is long gone, but it used to be right there. And that’s the funeral home across the street.” She saw that it was part of a larger chain of mortuaries now. Farther along, the Valley Food Market had disappeared, replaced by a new brick bank building.

Kathleen slowed the car as they crossed the bridge, approaching the house where she had grown up. Evening was fading to night and fireflies winked in the bushes along the river. But enough light remained in the sky for her to clearly see her old house, lit up from within. The sight of it shocked Kathleen. Someone had completely renovated it: vinyl siding, a new roof, the front porch had been repaired, and there was a lawn instead of the littered patch of dirt she’d grown up with… and flowers!

“That’s it?” Joelle asked. “It’s cute.”

“Yeah… it
is
cute,” Kathleen said in surprise. She never would have believed it was the same house if it weren’t for the fact that Uncle Leonard was sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair, smoking a cigar—a Cuban cigar, no doubt. He had to be in his eighties by now, but she would have recognized his mournful face and crane-like body anywhere. She pulled to a stop in front of the house before she could change her mind.

“That’s Uncle Leonard on the porch,” she told Joelle.

“No way! I want to meet him.” Joelle had her door open before Kathleen turned off the ignition. She followed her daughter up the steps, her feet dragging.

“Kathleen! You haven’t changed one bit,” Uncle Leonard said as soon as he saw her. “I’d know you anywhere.”

His voice sounded cheerful, but the frown never left his face. He didn’t stand up. Kathleen saw a walker parked nearby and wondered if maybe he couldn’t. Leonard reached for her hand and squeezed it briefly, but they didn’t hug or kiss. They never had and probably never would.

“Annie told me you were going to make an appearance at your father’s party tomorrow. I must admit I found the news rather surprising.”

“I surprised myself by coming. Uncle Leonard, this is my daughter, Joelle.”

“Hi,” Joelle stepped closer, stopping beneath the porch light, and the cigar dropped from Leonard’s mouth.

“Why, she’s the very image of Fiona!”

“I am?” Joelle asked. She looked pleased. “Wasn’t she my mom’s grandmother?”

“Yes, my mother, Fiona Quinn,” Uncle Leonard said. “You’re the spitting image of her! Except you have Donald Gallagher’s hair. Fiona was a breathtakingly beautiful woman. People used to say she looked like Greta Garbo.”

“Who’s that?” Joelle asked.

“A very famous movie star,” Kathleen told her. They talked for a while, their conversation stiff at first. But as Kathleen shared the details of her life with her uncle, they both began to relax.

“I still can’t get over how much your daughter resembles Fiona,” he repeated.

“Uncle Leonard, didn’t your mother have a family photo album way back when? I remember looking at it with Grandma Fiona when I was a kid.”

She then remembered her uncle saying that he’d gotten rid of all of Fiona’s things, and she was sorry she’d asked. He surprised her when he said, “I imagine Fiona’s album is around here someplace. Come on in.”

It took him a minute to haul himself from the chair, but he finally made it to his feet and led the way inside with the help of his walker. The house was surprisingly neat, not exactly a candidate for
Better Homes and Gardens,
but not the slum it used to be, either. It even smelled nice. The books that had once lain stacked on the floor in every room now filled several tall bookshelves. Kathleen recognized her uncle’s old girlfriend, Connie, seated in a recliner, watching TV.

“Why, Kathleen!” Connie squealed when she saw her. “Well, for goodness’sake! How are you?” She clicked off the TV and fought her way out of the recliner so she could pull Kathleen into her arms. Connie’s fair hair had turned white over the years, and her plump figure had grown noticeably rounder, but she seemed as good-natured as ever. Kathleen wondered if Uncle Leonard had ever married her. She took Connie’s hands in both of hers and was pleased to feel a wedding band on her left hand.

“And who is this with you?” Connie asked.

“This is my daughter, Joelle.”

“Who does she remind me of?” Connie mused. “Well, never mind. Would you like a cold drink? I’ve got—”

“Where is that old photo album of my mother’s?” Uncle Leonard interrupted.

“Why do you want that old thing? Let them sit down and visit, for goodness’sake.”

“Kathleen wants to see it. Her daughter looks remarkably like Fiona, doesn’t she?”

“Why, yes! That’s who she reminds me of. Except that Fiona was in her sixties when I met her, and Joelle is a beautiful young lady, for goodness’sake.”

“Connie—the pictures,” he said gruffly.

She smiled. “I’ll be right back.”

Connie returned with a huge cardboard box, which had probably been stored under the bed, judging by all the dust bunnies clinging to it. She set it in the middle of the living room floor and began pulling out yellowing scrapbooks, packages of photos, negatives held together with rubber bands, and envelopes full of newspaper clippings. The old black photograph album that Kathleen remembered was at the bottom.

“Is this it?” Connie asked. She turned her head to one side and sneezed. “Phew! Excuse me. Sometimes I think my old vacuum cleaner just pushes the dust around instead of picking it up. It’s getting so hard for me to bend over anymore and clean like I used to—”

“Connie… Connie,” Leonard said, interrupting again. “Kathleen didn’t come to hear a litany of your cleaning woes.”

Kathleen turned to him, ready to leap to Connie’s defense, but the tender expression on his face as he spoke to his wife stopped her short. She had seen that expression on him once before, when he’d greeted his mother. Then another thought struck Kathleen: Maybe it had been there all along. Maybe she had never bothered to study her uncle very carefully years ago.

“Will you look through this with us, Uncle Leonard?” she asked, sitting down on the sofa beside him. She felt a wave of nostalgia as she smelled the familiar aroma of cigar smoke on his clothing. It was as much a part of him as his Communist rhetoric. Joelle plopped down on the other side of him as if she’d known him all her life.

Uncle Leonard began paging through the album, explaining each picture as if he had taken it himself just a few days ago. Kathleen had forgotten how intelligently and articulately he spoke—like a college professor delivering an important lecture. Too bad his intellect had been wasted on his useless Communist causes. She longed to ask him how he’d adjusted to the downfall of the Soviet Union and the end of his dream—or if he still held out hope for China and Cuba to bring about a Communist revival. But now was not the time.

Leonard paused when they came to a page of old black-and-white photos of Fiona. Joelle did look remarkably like her: the same oval face and porcelain complexion, the same dreamy, slanted eyes—“bedroom eyes” people used to call them. In one photo Fiona looked like Joelle dressed up as a flapper for Halloween, wearing a raccoon coat and slouch hat, posed by the running board of a vintage car.

“Fiona was a beautiful woman,” Leonard said. “These were all taken after she moved to America, of course. She was much too poor to own a camera over in Ireland.”

He turned another page, and Kathleen saw Fiona with her children, Leonard and Eleanor. Fiona looked much too young to be a mother. In these and all the other pictures, she’d struck a graceful pose, looking as seductive and glamorous as a movie star. In fact, the poses reminded Kathleen of ones she’d seen in old movie star magazines from the 1920s. Fiona also looked extremely well-to-do—the clothing and cars, the jewelry and furs, the nice furnishings in the background all painted a picture of wealth and luxury. She couldn’t get over the fact that Uncle Leonard and her mother had grown up wealthy.

“Here we are after we left New York City and moved to Deer Falls,” Leonard said, turning another page. “It was during the Great Depression, of course, so there are fewer photographs. This is Eleanor at the lake. She was a lifeguard during the summer months when she was in high school.”

“A lifeguard…” Kathleen repeated incredulously. “I didn’t even know she could swim.”

“Oh yes. Your mother was as sleek and graceful as a seal in the water.”

Kathleen thought of the Eleanor she had known, lying weak and lethargic on the sagging sofa, and she found it impossible to visualize her mother any other way. She recalled what Joelle had said earlier about learning her mother’s story so she could understand her better, and for the first time that Kathleen could ever recall, she wanted to understand her. The picture that Cynthia Hayworth had painted of Eleanor seemed like a completely different woman than the mother Kathleen remembered. She ached to know who her mother had really been, why she had done all the things she’d done—and what had led to her murder.

Grandma Fiona’s life was another mystery that Kathleen had never bothered to unlock. Who was this glamorous woman in the photographs who had lived and loved a generation earlier than Leonard and Eleanor? What secret had Rick Trent used as an excuse to file for an annulment?

Kathleen ached to know it all, and as much as she hated to admit it, she knew that Dr. Russo had been right. She needed to follow that broken strand of yarn backward to see where it led. If she understood her mother, maybe she could begin to understand herself.

“What was Grandma Fiona like?” she asked her uncle.

“She was a remarkable woman. Eleanor and I never, ever doubted that she loved us. She gave her life for us—in spirit, if not in fact.”

“Uncle Leonard, do you know why my mother left home? And why she never visited grandma?”

“That’s not a simple question to answer. I’d have to back up and tell you Fiona’s story, first, because they are interconnected. My mother’s maiden name was Quinn—Fiona Quinn. She left Ireland with her father when she was only eighteen years old and started life all over again here in America. …”

Chapter
21

C
OUNTY
M
EATH
, I
RELAND—
1919

F
iona… Fiona, wait. …”

Fiona Quinn had just pegged the last bed sheet to the clothesline when she heard someone calling her name. She turned and saw Kevin Malloy hurrying up the lane toward her, tugging a donkey and a jaunting cart filled with hay. Fiona paused to watch him, admiring the easy stride of his long legs and the way his muscular body filled his clothes. Kevin was tall and sturdily built, thick-necked and thick-armed from his labors. He tethered the donkey to the clothespole and reached to pull Fiona into his arms.

“Not here, Kevin! Someone might see us.” She twisted away, blushing as she glanced up at the rear of the manor house. Kevin grabbed her hand and led her behind the blackthorn hedge, where they could kiss in private. She loved the strength of his brawny arms, the eager, fumbling way he held her, kissed her.

“I shaved this morning,” he said breathlessly when they finally pulled apart. “I was hoping I’d see you.” Fiona ran her hand along his square jaw. His usual dark stubble was gone. He bent and brushed his lips against her neck, sending shivers through her. Fiona didn’t want him to stop, but she didn’t want to get into trouble with the housekeeper, either, for abandoning her work.

“That’s all, Kevin,” she said, gently pushing him away. “Tomorrow’s my half-day. Meet me here at one o’clock, and we’ll have all afternoon together.”

His hand lingered on her shoulder. “Promise?”

“Of course. Who else would I be wanting to spend my half-day with?”

“You’re so lovely, Fiona. Any man in County Meath would be only too happy to spend the afternoon with you, if you’d let him.”

Fiona smiled at his praise. She wasn’t used to being told she was lovely.

“Well, I don’t want to be with any other man, Kevin. Just you.”

She smoothed her hair and straightened her apron, then glanced around as she ducked out from behind the hedge again. She hoped no one had seen them kissing. Kevin followed her back to the yard and picked up her empty laundry basket for her.

“Will your father be coming tomorrow to collect your pay?” he asked.

“Aye, he always does. Every Sunday. The money is still warm from the estate manager’s hand when it goes straight into my father’s. Why?”

“I can’t wait any longer, Fiona. When he comes tomorrow, I’m going to ask him if I can marry you. I love you.”

“Oh, Kevin…” Fiona didn’t know when she’d ever felt happier—or more afraid. “I don’t know…”

“Don’t you want to marry me?”

“Of course I do! More than anything in the world! It’s just that… well, I’m a bit frightened of my dad, you see. He fought in the Easter Rebellion.”

“I don’t care. I’m not afraid of Rory Quinn or any other man. You leave him to me.”

She felt a swell of love at Kevin’s courage. “All right,” she said, smiling.

“Tomorrow, then…”

Kevin nodded and backed away from her, his eyes holding hers as he untied the donkey. Then he waved and led the donkey up the lane toward the barn.