Final Call (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-eight

The next morning Mary woke in a
hospital bed.

“I hate hospital beds,” she
murmured. “People die in hospital beds.”

Faye appeared next to her bed, her
angled face sad and wistful. “Well, yes, but people die in theaters too,” Faye
said. “And you’re not going to stop going to plays or movies are you?”

Mary smiled. “No, I guess not.”

“I’m so sorry Rodney did this to
you,” she whispered. “I had no idea...”

“I don’t think anyone knew he was
this troubled,” Mary said.

“If I hadn’t pushed him, taunted
him,” she said. “Maybe he would have been a different person.”

“Or maybe he would have cracked
earlier,” Mary reasoned. “Besides, he didn’t just mention you when he was
ranting about people not letting him be in charge. And you gave him a chance.”

Faye glided across the room and
looked out the window. “Will you stop being nice to me,” she said. “I don’t
think I can take it.”

“I have a confession to make,” Mary
said.

“Do I look like a priest?” Faye
grumbled.

Mary laughed. “No, you don’t, but
you’re going to hear it anyway. I like you Faye McMullen. I’d like to be your
friend.”

Faye sniffed back a tear. “Oh,
sure, easy to say to the dead person,” she replied.

“Well, in my line of work, dead
does not necessarily mean gone,” Mary reminded her.

Faye moved back to her bedside. “It
kind of sucks that I learn to be a human being after I’m dead,” she said.

“I think you were a human being
before you died,” Mary said. “You just had your own unique way of doing it.”

This time Faye laughed. “I like the
way you phrase things, Mary.”

She started to slowly pace across
the room. “I need you to make a call for me,” she said. “I need you to call
Benjamin and tell him to bring my will along with him. I think I still need to
make some amends before I can move on.”

Within an hour, the meeting was set
up in Mary’s hospital room. She had also called Bradley to be an additional
witness. He arrived first, carrying a bag under his arm. “I brought you some
contraband,” he said, pulling out a bottle of Diet Pepsi.

Mary grinned.
“Much
better than flowers.”

Benjamin
arrived
a short time later, briefcase in hand. “I must say, Miss O’Reilly, I find this
request for a meeting most unusual,” he commented.

“Well, Benjamin, you
ain’t
seen
nothing
yet,” she
replied. “But before we begin our meeting, I have one question for you. Do you
believe in ghosts?”

“Ghosts, Miss O’Reilly?” his
eyebrows raised along with the pitch of his voice.

“Ask him about the time we went to
the Adirondacks for a company retreat and he forgot his suitcase and ended up
borrowing some of my clothing,” Faye suggested with an evil snicker. “That
ought to bring him down from his high horse.”

Mary smiled. “Benjamin, whether or
not you find this believable, I need to let you know that Faye McMullen is in
this room with us. To verify her presence, she asked me to remind you about the
time you went to the Adirondacks for a retreat and you borrowed some of her
clothing.”

“It was nothing but a pair of
sweats and she knows it,” he said, a blush spreading across his face. “Leave it
to Faye to put me in the worst possible...”

He stared at Mary. “Only Faye would
know about that,” he said, and then he looked around the room. “Faye, are you
really here?”

“No, I’m on a beach in St. Croix,
you dunderhead,” she snapped.

“Faye wants me to assure you that
she is, indeed, here,” she said.

This time Benjamin smiled. “Miss
O’Reilly, if you truly want me to believe that Faye is here, you need to repeat
what she says without translating it to polite conversation. I’ve dealt with
Faye for too many years to be put off by her comments.”

Mary sighed. “She said, ‘No, I’m on
a beach in St. Croix, you dunderhead.’” Mary repeated.

Benjamin’s eyes
widened in awe.
“She really is here,” he said. “What does she want me to
do?”

“Tell him to pull out the will,”
Faye said. “We’ve got a lot of changes to make before I can rest.”

An hour later, the will had a list
of bequeaths for many of the non-profit organizations in town, including a new
performing arts scholarship for the local community college. “Make sure Amy is
the first recipient of that one, Benjamin,” Faye had requested.

It also had listed Carl White as
her major heir. “He’s not going to be happy about this,” Benjamin said. “He’s a
man who sticks to his principles.”

“He really didn’t seem to want any
money,” Bradley agreed.

“I’ll handle him,” Faye said and
Mary repeated to Benjamin and Bradley.

Finally, it was time for the
attorney to leave. At Faye’s request, he left a copy of the changed will in the
hospital room and took the original with him. “I want you to know,
Faye
 
McMullen
, that I
figured you out a long time ago,” he said. “You’re as tough as nails on the
outside, but you have a soft heart.”

“Tell him he has a soft head if he
thinks that,” she snapped, her eyes misting with tears.

“She said thank you, Benjamin,”
Mary said.

Benjamin chuckled. “Miss O’Reilly,
you’re doing it again.”

He looked around the room once
again. “Faye, I don’t know where you are. But I want you to listen. First, I do
not have a soft head...”

Faye laughed.

“And second,” he continued. “You
will always be considered a cherished friend.
God Speed,
Faye.”

He left the room after saying goodbye
to Mary and Bradley. Faye glided to the window to hide her tears. “Well, isn’t
this a red-letter day,” she sniffed. “The dead girl makes two friends in one
day.”

A knock on the door prevented
Mary’s response. “Come in,” she called.

Carl White came into the room, a
bouquet of flowers in his hand. “I heard about Rodney and I just wanted to tell
you how sorry I am,” he said. “If I had known he was unstable...”

“No one knew,” Mary said. “And this
was not your fault.”

“Nevertheless,” he said, placing
the bouquet on the table next to her bed. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“Ask him what he thinks of me and
don’t you dare let him know I’m here in the room,” Faye said.

“So, tell me, Carl, how did you
feel about Faye?” Mary asked.

Carl walked over to the window and
Mary marveled at how his movements mirrored Faye’s.

“She was a tough lady,” he finally
said. “And she wasn’t above using blackmail to get her way. But, at least where
I was concerned, most of the time, the things she wanted to happen were good
for you. I think her pushiness was her way of showing love.”

Faye wiped a tear that had slipped
down her cheek.

“Of course, God knows she would
never be a diplomat,” he laughed. “And she would have never won Miss
Congeniality, but I think she was fair, if harsh, and devoted to the things
that mattered to her.”

He turned to Mary and Bradley,
astonishment on his face. “I actually think I loved her,” he said.

“Damn,” Faye said, wiping at more
tears. “He’s nothing but a wimp. I should have been meaner. Tell him about the
will, that’ll make him mad.”

“Carl, we were just meeting with
Mr. Middlebury, Faye’s lawyer,” she said. “And Faye made some changes to her
will that affect you.”

“I already said I didn’t want any
of her money,” he said.

“She left you twenty-million
dollars,” Mary said.

Carl immediately sat in the closest
chair, his face mirroring his shock.
“Twenty-million?”

“Twenty-million?” he repeated.

“Ha, let’s see him turn that down,”
Faye crowed.

Carl dropped his head into his
hands. “How do I turn that down?” he asked. “That could change my life, the
lives of my children. How do I walk away from that?”

“She added some stipulations to the
will about this bequeath,” Bradley said. “You are required to purchase enough
stock in McMullen Industries to make you a voting member of the board and, if
you choose, you can have the position of CEO.”

“CEO?” he asked. “But I’m just an
accountant.”

“A large portion of the money will
be held in a trust fund for your children,” Mary said. “It will be held in a
blind trust and Mr. Middlebury will take care of it for you.”

“And finally,” Bradley said. “An
actor will be hired to come to your house and announce that you have won the
money, so no one will ever be suspicious that Faye McMullen was your birth
mother.”

“Damn,” Carl said, wiping his eyes.
“She really did love me, didn’t she?”

Faye stood at the window, her
tear-filled eyes on her son and nodded. “Yes, she really did.”

“Yes,” Mary repeated. “She really
did.”

Faye glided over to Mary. “I think
it’s time for my final curtain call,” she said. “Thank you for your help.”

“Goodbye, Faye,” Mary whispered.

Faye walked past her son and placed
a kiss on the top of his head. “I love you,” she whispered and then she faded
into the light.

Chapter Thirty-nine

The sun reflecting off the snow and
shining through the kitchen window was so bright it almost hurt Mary’s eyes. She
took a moment and stood next to the window with her eyes closed, feeling the
sun warm her face. It felt so good to soak it up.

A heavy thump on her front door
brought a smile to her face and, without a shred of regret; she hurried from
the window to answer the door. Andy Brennan and two of his older brothers stood
on her porch, their sleds at their sides.

“You ready to go, Miss O’Reilly,”
Andy asked.

Mary nodded. “I just have to grab
my coat and mittens,” she said. “I ended up with a bunch of chocolate frosted
doughnuts I can’t eat. Would you boys mind eating some while I run upstairs?”

“Cool!” Andy said, dropping his
sled on the porch and clomping through her front room with his heavy boots,
leaving a trail of snow in his wake.

His brothers hesitated, looking at
the mess on the floor.

“I have to mop my floor later
anyway,” she said to them. “It really doesn’t matter if you track a little snow
in.”

They grinned and headed for the
kitchen table.

Mary went upstairs slowly. She
still wasn’t fully recovered from her experience at Winneshiek, but she
certainly wasn’t going to let a few bumps and bruises get in the way of
sledding on a perfect winter day. She gathered her hat and mittens and was
about to leave her room when her phone rang. She flipped it open to answer it.
“Hello?”

“Mary,
it’s
Bradley. I was wondering if I could come over today so we could go through
Jeannine’s case.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t,” she
replied. “I’ve already made plans for the day. But I would be happy to meet
with you on Monday, if that would work for you.”

She didn’t dare tell him she was going
sledding; she just knew he’d call Rosie and they would bully her into going
back to bed.

“Yeah, sure, that would be fine,”
he replied, wondering what her plans could possibly be on a bright, snowy
Saturday.

“We’re done,” the combined voices
of the Brennan boys called from below. It was almost
harmonic
,
Mary thought, the two older boys in that funny stage when their voices vacillated
between sounding like men and sounding like squeaky toys and Andy’s alto. She
placed her hand over the mouthpiece. “I’ll be right down,” she called back.

Bradley thought he heard the sound
of a man’s voice in the background.
Did
Mary have a date?

“I’m sorry, Bradley,” she said. “I
really have to go now. I’ll see you on Monday.”

Three hours later Mary dragged
herself up the porch stairs and threw herself against her front door. She had
very nearly paid the Brennan boys to pull her back from the park on their sleds;
however she decided she had a little more dignity than that – but it had been close.
She’d forgotten how much energy boys at that age had. If they could somehow
harness that energy, the world’s fuel problems would be over.

They would have still been there if
a phone call from their mother to the oldest boy’s cell phone hadn’t called
them home. Mrs. Brennan said another storm was brewing and this time it
promised freezing rain.

Mary looked at the container of
salt sitting in the corner of the porch and thought about tossing some on the
steps, but she decided the freezing rain would defeat the purpose.

She entered her house and made it
as far as her recliner. “I’ll just rest for a moment,” she said, sitting down
and relaxing still dressed in her coat, hat and boots. “Then I’ll take off my
coat.”

She sat back in the chair, lifted
the foot rest, closed her eyes and slipped into oblivion.

Mary opened her eyes; everything
was dark and she was really warm. It took her a few moments to realize that she
was still in the recliner in her coat and boots. “Wow, I must have been really
tired,” she said, sitting up in the chair.

She pushed herself out of the
recliner and took off her coat and boots and put them away. She pulled her
phone out of her pocket and while placing it on the counter in the kitchen, she
chanced to look up at the clock. It was after ten o’clock. She’d been asleep
for seven hours.

She opened the refrigerator, pulled
out the milk and brought it to the counter. Then she saw those lovely Brennan
boys had left two chocolate frosted doughnuts. “Sounds like a nutritious dinner
to me,” she said, as she poured a tall glass of milk.

“Ah, Sleeping Beauty has finally
awoken,” Mike said, appearing on the other side of the counter.

“I can’t believe I slept that
long,” she said.

“With the life you’ve been leading
lately, I can’t believe you’re awake,” he countered.

She smiled. “I had the greatest
time today,” she said. “I went sledding with the boys down the street.”

“Sledding? How old are you, Mary
O’Reilly?” he teased.

Her eyes twinkled. “I know, you’d
think I’d know better,” she said, taking a huge bite of the doughnut. “But I
suppose I’ll never grow up.”

“You’re going to make a great mom
someday,” Mike said.

Mary looked wistful. “I’d like to
be a mom,” she said. “But I don’t know if it’s in the cards for me.”

“Why not?
Is
this because Bradley is being so obtuse?”

She shook her head. “No, I mean,
yes, he’s being obtuse. But that’s not it. When I got shot, it messed me up
pretty bad inside,” she said, “The doctors weren’t sure what kinds of problems
the scar tissue would cause. So, I just don’t know.”

“I think that whether or not you’re
able to give birth, you will still be a great mom someday.”

“Thank you,” she said, with a wide
smile. “That’s very nice of you to say.”

He leaned over and placed a kiss on
her forehead. She could feel the waft of cold air. “You are a very nice lady,”
he said, “even when you tease me.”

“And you are a very good friend,”
she said, “especially when you tease me.”

He laughed. “So, do you want to go
clubbing with me?”

He demonstrated a dance move made
popular by John Travolta.

“Wow, that was very impressive,”
Mary laughed. “But I think I’m going to take a shower and go to bed.”

“You are such a party animal,” he
said, as he started to fade away. “Sweet dreams,
sweetcakes
.”

She giggled. “Good night, Mike.”