Iris Avenue (22 page)

Maggie nodded and fresh tears fell down her cheeks.

“I keep telling myself he wasn’t who he pretended to be, that it was all a big lie,” Maggie said. “How could the love I feel be real when he wasn’t who I thought he was?”

“You can love someone and not know all there is to know about him. He could even love you and lie to you. Nothing is black and white in this world. No one is all good or all bad.”

“How did Brad break your heart? I mean, other than dying.”

“He slept with Phyllis and told me he liked it. He wasn’t like me; I knew I was gay before I knew what being gay meant. He was still trying to figure out what his preference was. For awhile that summer before he died, it was both.”

“That must have been terrible for you.”

“It was, but I accepted it. Because we were friends, and we were honest with each other about it.”

“But Gabe wasn’t honest with me. He’d been in prison before he met me, and started dealing to Eldridge students for Mrs. Wells so she wouldn’t tell me about it.”

“He probably thought he was starting over after prison,” Sean said. “He probably thought he could be a new person and change his whole life. Patrick said he was a great guy and was crazy about you.”

“I thought so, too.”

“Hannah told me what happened. I think Scott and Gabe were both trying to protect you.”

“Gabe went down to Florida and got a job at some boat business in the Keys. Brian found him there and talked him into going with him to do a drug deal. They sold the first batch in Miami and Brian sent Theo his money. Then they had a car wreck in Fort Lauderdale. Brian took off and left Gabe pinned in the car. Gabe says he was just being paid to drive the car, but who knows what really happened? He got arrested with a boatload of drugs in the car. He wrote that letter to me from the county jail before he went to prison.”

“If you’d received the letter, would you have gone to him?”

“Oh, probably; I was such an idiot.”

“So, what’s different now?”

“I don’t trust my own judgment,” Maggie said. “I think one thing but I feel something completely opposite. What should I do?”

“I think if you don’t face him you’ll be stuck at this same point forever, and might waste the rest of your life wondering what if.”

“I’ll wait until later to listen to the message. I’m not ready right now.”

“Then if you don’t mind, I’m going to check my messages and do some e-mailing.”

“Go right ahead. I’m going for a walk.”

Maggie put on her coat and boots and went out the back door of the bookstore into the alley. The night was crisp and clear; the black sky was filled with stars and a fat crescent moon. She walked down to the corner behind the bank and crossed Pine Mountain Road, then continued down the alley to where it made a T with the alley between Sunflower Street and Pine Mountain Road. She turned up this alley, which went past the back of the bed and breakfast on the right. There were several cars with Maryland and Virginia license plates in the back parking lot next to Ava’s mini van, so Maggie knew she had a full house.

Further up the alley on the left was the back door to Scott’s house. She knocked, and he must have been in the kitchen, because he let her in right away. He was surprised to see her, she could tell. He had paperwork spread out on the kitchen table.

“I’m interrupting,” she said.

“I’m glad you did,” he said. “Have a seat. Do you want some coffee or tea?”

“No, nothing for me, thanks. I’ve had enough coffee and tea today, not to mention whiskey.”

Scott offered to take her coat but she declined, saying, “I can’t stay long.”

Scott gathered up his paperwork as Maggie sat down at the table.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Maggie felt a rush of affection for Scott, who was sitting there looking at her with such tenderness and concern. She realized again how much she missed him, and how good it was to feel how much he cared. It made her feel even worse about what she was about to do.

“I have a terribly rude question to ask you,” she said.

“Rude?”

“Maybe rude is not the word. Impertinent, maybe. Amazingly insensitive would be even more accurate.”

“Okay. I’ll brace myself.”

“Before I ask you this rude question, though, I want to say something else. Something nice.”

“Alright. I’ll brace myself after you say the nice thing but not before.”

“You and I have been having this weird, on-again, off-again, whatchamacallit between us for a year or so now. But before that, what we had was a friendship, a good one. Would you agree?”

“Absolutely.”

“The reason I’m going to ask you this amazingly insensitive question is because I trust you to give me an honest answer, as my friend, even if you would rather not say anything; even if you would be tempted to lie.”

“I’m prepared to be offended and still answer truthfully.”

“I want to apologize in advance for the temerity to even ask this.”

“Just ask me, Maggie. I won’t lie to you.”

“Do you think Gabe really loved me, or was he only pretending to?”

Scott blinked and took a deep breath. Then he looked at Maggie, and she could see she’d hurt him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You were his closest friend. You are the only person I can ask.”

“I believed he loved you,” Scott said.

“Thank you for that,” she said, and stood up.

“Maggie,” Scott said. “There’s something I want to say to you.”

“Fair’s fair,” she said, and sat back down.

“I know Gabe is coming back to testify against Mrs. Wells. I know you’ll see him and there’s a chance you may get back together. I know how much you loved each other. I just want you to remember one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I love you, too.”

“I know that. I do.”

“I love you enough to stand by and watch you go through this next part, and if you don’t end up with me, I’ll understand. Even though I’ll be sad, I won’t hold it against you.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Maggie said. “You’re either the kindest or the stupidest man I’ve ever met. Either way, I’m lucky to have you in my life.”

“Don’t forget what I said.”

“I won’t.”

Scott watched her walk down the alley until he couldn’t see her anymore. Then he sat down and spread his paperwork back out on the table. He couldn’t read it for a minute or two, because his eyes were a little blurry, but eventually he got back to work.

Ed waited up for Mandy to come home from working at the Rose and Thorn. He knew she would be exhausted after covering the bakery all day and going straight to the Rose and Thorn without a break. When she walked in the door, Ed could see dark shadows under her eyes. He hugged her and helped her take her coat off.

“This is a nice surprise,” she said. “You’re usually sawin’ logs in the recliner by now.”

“Can I get you anything?” he said. “Something to eat, maybe?”

“Naw,” she said, as she slumped down on the couch. “I did nothin’ but pick at the bakery all day, and Delia brung me some soup this evenin’. Did you go over to Bonnie’s?”

“Yes, I did. Then I picked up Tommy, brought him home, gave him some dinner, and helped him with his homework. We played scrabble, watched some television, and he was in bed by nine.”

Ed sat down and put his arm around Mandy. She snuggled close and rested her head on his shoulder.

“I sure do appreciate havin’ you around,” Mandy said. “The Fitzpatricks are always willin’ to take Tommy when I gotta work, but they’ve got their hands full right now. It’s so good to have a man to look after him. He loves you, you know.”

“I love him, too,” Ed said. “I enjoy taking care of him.”

Mandy yawned.

“I don’t think I’ve ever talked to you about when Eve and I broke up,” he said.

“Huh uh,” Mandy said. “You never have.”

“We were together six years,” Ed said. “From graduate school until the year after my dad died. She didn’t belong here in Rose Hill. She tried her best, but it just made us both miserable. I thought after she left that eventually we might get back together, but I haven’t thought that for a long time. The reason I mention this now is because I don’t know if I ever told you that we never got divorced. There was no reason to do it, and neither of us ever wanted to marry anyone else. Except now I think you and I should get married and give Tommy a stable home. I think he’d like that. What do you think?”

Mandy was sound asleep. It had taken Ed a long time to compose that big declaration, and he’d been proud of how he got through it. He guessed he’d have to do it again tomorrow.

Maggie spent most of the night picturing various scenarios that ended with her reuniting with or ending things with Gabe. Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, she dug out all the memories she’d stored in the furthest recesses of her mind, somewhere she never liked to go if she could help it (alongside: her father falling off the ladder; cousin Liam dying of leukemia; and climbing out the second floor window of her beloved house as it burned to the ground).

At the time she believed Gabe had saved her from a sad, lonely life working in her family bakery and living in her parents’ house. Like a one-man demolition team, he’d persistently chipped away at the wall of smart-ass she hid behind until she was brave enough to show her true self to him. And then he loved her. A love she could feel, taste, smell, and see, every day they were together. After so many years of feeling like she came first with no one, and that no one would ever love her the way she wanted to be loved, Gabe had wooed her with patience and tenacity, and had made her feel cherished.

It helped that he was handsome, charming, and kind. He loved people; he was willing to help anyone do anything. He was the kind of man who made people feel good just by being around. Everything Gabe did he seemed to enjoy doing, seemed to savor more than anyone else. Even ordinary things, like warm, clean towels right out of the dryer; he would bury his face in them, wrap them around his neck and hum with delight. Gabe’s deep appreciation for simple pleasures created an atmosphere of joy in their house that was contagious. Maggie realized now that was probably how a man just released from prison might demonstrate his gratitude for the small pleasures in life that other, un-incarcerated people might take for granted.

Gabe made her a better person. He refused to let Maggie hide her fears behind sarcasm and sharp comments. He demanded that she be compassionate when she wanted to judge. He taught her how to be generous without expecting something in return. Maybe most importantly, he made her feel, as Aretha so aptly put it, like a natural woman. Over the three years they were together, he opened her up like a beautiful flower, and made her believe her life could be happy and full of love. Then he left her in the middle of the night without saying good-bye.

Maggie couldn’t reconcile the Gabe of her sweet memories with the Gabe selling drugs to college students, going to prison for drug trafficking, and lying to her about his past. How could he be both? Her Aunt Delia had once warned Maggie that she idealized Gabe so much that no man could ever replace him. Maggie wondered now if even Gabe himself could replace the man she thought of as the great love of her life.

By morning, after very little sleep, she hadn’t come to any definitive decision, but she felt she was ready to listen to his voice mail message. Unfortunately, Sean was using her phone for a conference call. She took a shower and got dressed. She had this irrational feeling Gabe was coming any minute, so she put on clothes in which she felt she looked her best and took some trouble with her hair and makeup. She’d just put the kettle on for tea when there was a knock on her apartment door. Unreasonably, she thought it might be Gabe, and her heart began to pound. It was her mother.

Bonnie Fitzpatrick had been in her daughter’s apartment maybe three times in the five years she’d lived there. She hadn’t approved of Maggie living in sin with Gabe in the farm house up Possum Holler. After Gabe left and Maggie’s house burned down she’d gone back to her parents’ house to live, and even though she and her mother fought the whole time, still her mother refused to help her set up the new apartment. She hadn’t approved of Maggie buying the bookstore and leaving her job at the family bakery. She took to her bed with a “killing headache” on the day Maggie moved out.

Bonnie had a determined look on her face.

“Is your brother here?” she asked, in an irritated tone.

“He’s on a conference call in the kitchen. Do you want to come in and wait?”

Bonnie came in, looked around the front room and sniffed a little.

“I’ve been trying to call you all morning and the line’s been busy.”

“Sean’s trying to do his work from here,” Maggie said.

“His grandfather died. You’d think they’d understand he needs to be with his family right now.”

“Is the bakery open today?”

“Of course it is. If you think I’m going to sit home and watch your father drink himself to death you’ve got another think coming. I could have used your help this morning.”

“I’m sorry, Mom, how are you doing? Let me take your coat.”

Bonnie refused to take off her coat and perched on the edge of Maggie’s deep reading chair. She looked all around at everything, as if searching for something to criticize, until her eyes lit on Maggie’s photo albums.

“Do you mind?” she asked, pointing to them.

Maggie brought over a stack of photo albums, and pulled the ottoman over so she could look at them with her mother. There were many photos of Grandpa Tim in them. He was always smiling. You could mark time passing by the color of his hair: bright red, then a little duller red shot with white, then all white, then sparse and white over a bald head. He seemed to get smaller too, and then stooped over. After his cancer treatments, he seemed shrunken and pale, but still he smiled.

“He was so proud to be Scottish, to have come over as a child so he could still remember what it was like back there,” Bonnie said. “I’m sure he romanticized it in his memory, but maybe that’s better. If he’d gone back, he might have been disappointed.”

“He always said he didn’t mind you marrying an Irishman, that they were just refugees from Scotland.”

“He asked your father if he would consider taking the MacGregor name. Fitz knew a compliment when he heard one, meant only with the best intentions, but his mother had an absolute fit. Can you imagine? He would have been Fitz MacGregor.”

“Grandma Rose told me she felt sorry for me because I had this awful ginger coloring,” Maggie said. “She said it was a curse, and that I’d always be looked down upon because I had it.”

“She said the same about your brother Brian,” Bonnie said. “Did I ever tell you she refused to let your father name our first born after himself? She said he couldn’t be sure it was his child because of all that red hair. When Patrick was born, she was beside herself. ‘That one,’ she said, ‘is a Fitzpatrick.’”

“What an awful old witch.”

“She was that, our Rose.”

“Her three boys loved her, though. You couldn’t say a word against her.”

“Even though she hated their wives and picked on their children,” Bonnie said. “When poor little Liam died she blamed Delia, said she had that French blood in her, and had poisoned the boy with it.”

“How could they defend her when she was so wicked?”

“Because she raised them without any help. Your grandfather Fitzpatrick was a horrible drunk and was always jumping trains to who knows where. There was even a rumor he had another family somewhere, in California, I think. Rose was left with three boys and no money. Before she opened the bakery she baked at home all morning and delivered orders every afternoon. The boys helped her clean the bank every night. She worked all hours of the day and night to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. In return she demanded complete loyalty. When Fitz married me she saw me as a threat, a rival for her affections. She never accepted me.”

“I don’t know how you stood it; working with her every day, living in the same house with her all those years.”

“I think your father picked someone who was just as stubborn as his mother was. Neither of us was going to let the other one win.”

“Did you ever feel like you won?”

“No one wins a tug of war like that. There’s your father, a broken down old drunk just like his father, only too crippled to run off. Brian seems to have gone to the devil. Patrick won’t settle down; he’s broken the heart of every nice girl in this town. Sean couldn’t wait to get away from us, and I can’t even talk to my only daughter without making her hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“What was your mother like?”

“Just like me. We fought all the time, too.”

“Maybe that’s what all mothers and daughters do.”

“Father Stephen says we each have to bend a little more. I don’t know about you, but bending feels like giving in to me.”

Maggie laughed, “Me too.”

“Well, I guess we’ll both just have to try harder,” Bonnie said, “only you go first.”

“Mom, I love you, but I’m going to lead my own life and make my own decisions, and I’m not going to do everything on your terms just to get along with you.”

“You’re a stubborn, pig-headed girl, just like I was. I just worry you’ll end up alone, with no children.”

“And marriage and children worked out so well for you?”

“It hasn’t all been bad. You know, it’s the grandchildren who are the real reward. You need a husband long enough to get the children who give you the grandchildren. Brian’s given me some beautiful grandchildren, but Patrick and Sean need to get busy.”

“Hi, Mom,” Sean said as he entered the room. “What is it I’m supposed to get busy doing?”

Bonnie jumped up and hugged her youngest son.

“I need you to help me pick out some clothes for your Grandpa Tim to wear. Then I need you to take the clothes to Peg Machalvie, and help me set up the Community Center for the funeral reception. Patrick has to work at the station and pub all day so he’ll be no help at all. I also need some help getting the reception baking done since your sister can’t be bothered. Your father has some fool notion of a wake at the pub tonight, but I doubt he’ll be conscious by the time it comes to go.”

Sean put his coat on and followed Bonnie out the door. She was still telling him all the things she needed to do before the funeral the next day, and he waved to Maggie over his shoulder as he closed the door. Maggie’s mother didn’t look back or say good-bye to her; when one of Bonnie’s sons was present Maggie always felt as if she’d disappeared.

The phone rang and it was Jeanette downstairs, saying Lily Crawford was in the café and wanted to talk to her, so Maggie went down to the bookstore. On the way over to the café side Maggie saw a young boy looking through the online role-playing game books.

“Do you need some help?” Maggie offered.

The boy had dark curly hair and big brown eyes. He was at that age that to Maggie seemed so bittersweet; she could see the boy he still was and the man he would be. He had a beautiful smile.

“I can only have one and I don’t know which is best,” he said.

Maggie reached around to an end cap and handed the boy a magazine that she kept stocked there.

“Here’s a magazine that reviews all the games. If you’d like to look through it we don’t mind. Or, if you can come back after three, Jeffrey will be here and he’s into all this in a big way. He can tell you all you need to know about it. I’m sorry I’m not more help.”

An attractive woman came up and put her arm around the boy, then said something to him in Spanish. Maggie assumed it was his mother. She had the same dark eyes and hair, the same smile. The boy said something to his mother in Spanish and the woman said “gracias” to Maggie. The boy thanked Maggie as well. Maggie thought to herself as she walked away that she wished more young customers had such good manners. That woman had done a good job raising her son.

Lily was sitting at a table by the window, looking out. Maggie had been hearing bits and pieces of what had been going on at Ava’s, and she knew Lily was involved somehow because Gabe was coming to stay with her, but she hadn’t had a chance to talk to her about it. She sat down and tapped on Lily’s arm.

“Hey, come back,” Maggie said. “You look like you’re a million miles away.”

“Oh, Maggie,” Lily said, as she looked around the store as if she was trying to locate someone. “I need to talk to you and it’s going to have to be quick and painful, I’m sorry to say.”

“What is it?” Maggie said.

“You know that I’m involved in this investigation that Ava’s involved in.”

“Someone told me that and I meant to come and see you, but it’s been super crazy around here the past couple days.”

“Forgive me, Maggie,” Lily said. “I should have said first how truly sorry I am about your grandfather.”

“That’s okay,” Maggie said. “He never really recovered from his cancer treatments, and we knew it would happen some time.”

“Oh, no,” Lily said, looking over Maggie’s shoulder.

Maggie turned around to see what she was looking at. The young boy and his mother were walking toward them, smiling. They seemed to know her.

“Is this your store?” the woman asked Maggie.

“Yes,” Maggie said. “Are you vacationing here or visiting someone at the college?”

“We’re waiting for my father,” the boy said.

Maggie looked at Lily, curious to learn how she knew these people.

Lily looked aggrieved; there was no other word for it. She reached for Maggie’s hand and squeezed it.

“Maggie, I want you to meet Luis and his mother Maria. They’re going to be staying with me for awhile. Maria, Luis, this is Maggie Fitzpatrick. She owns this bookstore.”