The Good Daughter (13 page)

K
it slept so deeply that she overslept the next morning, and it had been a rush getting out of the house to make it to Mass on time. But now she was at St. Cecilia, seated between her parents in the pew.

St. Anne was closer to their house, but St. Cecilia had been her father’s parish church when he was a boy and he’d wanted to raise his children there, too. Even today the church retained much of its Irish flavor, despite its Spanish Colonial design with the stenciled oak-beamed ceiling and rich red stucco walls.

With the hectic rush to church behind them, Kit exhaled, at peace. She knew the service forward and backward—every word, each pause, every prayer and response. And because she’d just attended Mass on Friday with her students, she didn’t feel guilty allowing her thoughts to wander, and wander they did, jumping from Mass to Michael and then, suddenly, the biker from Capitola popped into her mind.

Jude. Just Jude. No last name.

She almost smiled remembering, and she could see him sitting on his big burnt-orange bike with the massive handlebars, picture clearly his firm mouth and chin, his worn denim jeans, and the scuffed toe of his black boots. He was definitely sexy in a disreputable sort of way, and not the sort of man she’d date, but she had found him intriguing. Appealing. He was different. She liked that.

But Jude wasn’t someone she could ever bring home. No one in her family would approve. Well, Brianna might, but that’s only because Bree loved being contrary.

No, her family would definitely choose Michael over Jude for her. They’d like Michael’s clean-cut, all-American-boy good looks,
his successful corporate career, his love of sports, and she doubted he would have any problem winning them over. Provided he didn’t talk about his ex-wife or divorce. Dad and Mom didn’t believe in divorce. Kit didn’t either, but it was hard, if not impossible, to meet a man in his late thirties or forties who hadn’t been married before.

But she’d felt no chemistry with Michael, not that chemistry was everything…

With the reading finished, the congregation sat for the sermon. Dad smiled at her and she smiled back, and Kit tuned in to the sermon for the first few minutes before letting her thoughts drift again.

She hadn’t been to this church since Christmas morning when the entire family had gone to Mass together. They’d filled two pews—Mom, Dad, Meg and Jack, Tommy and Cass, Sarah and Boone, Kit and all the children. The only one missing was Brianna, as, at the last minute, she couldn’t find a replacement for her at the hospital and couldn’t fly home.

The rest of them were together, though, and it’d been a beautiful service, poignant, but heavy with meaning. During the service, Kit, Meg, and Sarah had caught one another’s gaze time and again. Each knew what the other was thinking. No one needed to say aloud what the other was feeling. It was their last Christmas as a whole family. The last Christmas with Mom.

After the service, they’d returned home and opened packages and had their traditional Christmas-morning brunch. Later Dad’s brothers had arrived—Uncle Joe and Aunt Megan, and Uncle Pat, who’d never married but had been with his girlfriend Rosie for almost twenty years—and Mom’s only living brother, Uncle John, and his wife, Linda. There’d been more packages and more food, phone calls from Dad’s three sisters, who lived in other parts of the country, and then carols and games, and they’d stayed together in the living room until late, not wanting the day to end.

But of course it finally did end with Mom reaching for Dad’s hand at ten, quietly telling him she was tired, and she hated to break up such a wonderful evening but she really needed to go lie down. She’d been so apologetic at breaking up the party and it’d almost broken Kit’s heart. Mom was so strong, with such a beautiful, fierce spirit.

Kit turned her head to look at her mother now. It’d been only three and a half weeks since Christmas but Mom was already smaller and frailer, her brown eyes too big above cheekbones that had become too prominent. Kit’s breath caught in her throat. Mom was disappearing before her eyes and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing she could do but love Mom till the very end.

Kit’s throat ached, and her eyes stung, and she had to look away, to the tall windows with the sunlight pouring through the stained glass to hold the tears back.

How could Mom be defeated by cancer? How could there be no cure?

Suddenly Mom’s hand covered hers and held tight. Kit’s heart squished in her chest. Her mother’s hand felt cool and frail, her skin delicate and thin, and yet her grip remained tight. But wasn’t that Mom?

Her mother was both angel and warrior; she’d lived her life with dignity and grace, and now she was dying the same way. It would be hard, if not impossible, to let her go at the end, but at the same time Kit knew she’d been blessed.

Gently, she squeezed her mom’s hand, letting her know how much she loved her, even though she couldn’t look at her, not now, not when tears made it impossible to see, and so she did the one thing she’d done her whole life when overwhelmed. She prayed.
God is good. God is great.

M
ass over, they escaped the parishioners still milling in the courtyard and on the front steps and went to brunch. Kit had wanted to cook, but it was such a beautiful morning, the kind of morning that made San Francisco utterly unforgettable with its deep blue sky, cloudless except where the blood-orange towers of the Golden Gate Bridge jutted against the blue, that Dad insisted they go to the Cliff House.

The Cliff House, perched high on the bluff overlooking both the bay and the Pacific Ocean, was one of San Francisco’s crown jewels and famous for its elegant Sunday brunch. And because Dad was also Firefighter Brennan, he knew everyone, literally
everyone,
and was able to book a last-second reservation for eleven-thirty.

Seeing as it was a last-minute reservation, Kit had expected a table in a corner, or hidden behind a massive palm, but they were seated at a spacious table in a prime location at one of the big windows with a stunning, unobstructed view of the sea and rocks.

“How nice to be Firefighter Brennan,” Kit teased her dad as the waiter poured them champagne while they perused the menu.

“I’m retired now.”

“But look at this table. They still remember you.”

“It’s the Brennan name. They remember my dad, Thomas. And your great-uncle Pat, the one your uncle Patrick was named for.”

“Not your uncle Liam?”

He folded his arms across his big chest, leaned back, getting comfortable. “If they remember Liam, it was for the wrong reasons.”

“But wasn’t he a fireman, too?”

“That doesn’t make you a saint, Kit, just means you’re strong and you don’t mind when things get hot.”

“Tell me about him,” she said, encouraging him to talk, knowing he loved telling stories, especially if they had to do with his firefighting days or his family.

“He was a hothead. Drank a lot. Took offense at everything. And nearly destroyed this place one weekend after someone made the mistake of chatting up his girl.”

“I can see why he didn’t like that.”

“Only she didn’t know she was his girl. He’d only just met her himself, and from what we learned later after getting ahold of the police report, the girl preferred the other fellow.”

Kit leaned forward. Her favorite stories seemed to revolve around Uncle Liam. “Did Liam know she liked the other guy?”

“My uncle Liam wouldn’t have cared. He didn’t play by any rules but his own. He did what he wanted and the rest be damned.”

“Sounds like Brianna.” Kit laughed.

Dad grinned. “I’ve told your mother that many a time. When Brianna was a toddler and she’d have one of her tantrums—and no one had tantrums like your sister’s; they lasted for hours—I’d look at your mom and say, ‘We’ve got a little Liam here.’”

“He did,” Mom agreed. “And scared me to death.”

Dad’s blue eyes were twinkling. He was happier than Kit had seen him in a long time. “The only person who could manage Liam was his brother, my uncle Pat. Uncle Liam was a damn good fighter. But your uncle Pat was better. Whenever Liam got into trouble, they’d call my grandfather, Malachi, and Grandfather Malachi would send Pat to collect Liam. Liam didn’t like it.”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“You know, Liam had two inches on Pat, but Pat had a mean right hook, and the only way he could sort Liam out was by knocking him out cold.”

“He hit him?”

“Hard.”
He saw Kit’s face and shrugged. “Kit, somebody had to. The family couldn’t let Liam go around picking fights, breaking furniture, getting carted off to jail. That’s how we’ve always done it in this family. We look out for each other. Never leave a
man behind.” He abruptly stopped talking, and a wistful expression crossed his face.

Kit exchanged glances with her mom. Marilyn shook her head but Kit wanted to know why her dad had grown quiet. She wanted to know her family history. It was an important history. It was her history. “What are you thinking about?” she asked him.

He didn’t immediately respond. She waited. Her mother waited. One of the uniformed servers stopped by the table and topped off the champagne, then silently slipped away.

“Are you thinking about your dad?” Kit persisted gently, wanting to hear more about her grandfather, her father’s father, Thomas Brennan—never Tom or Tommy—and the one person her father never discussed.

Her grandfather Thomas Brennan had perished in a hotel fire when Kit’s father was fifteen and just a freshman in high school. Three firefighters, Thomas Brennan a twenty-year veteran with the fire department, and two young firefighters, one still just a probie, died that day. The entire city of San Francisco had turned out for the funeral. The family never discussed the fire, and so Kit had only learned that her forty-three-year-old grandfather Thomas had died a hero by reading newspaper clippings in a scrapbook her late grandmother had made.

Kit had found the scrapbook while in high school. She’d been helping clean Gramma’s house and had been determined to organize some of the clutter. And Gramma was a pack rat. She kept everything—old magazines, newspapers, wrapping paper—and so at first Kit didn’t even bother to look at the scrapbook, but then as she dusted the leather cover, a card fell out. And then more cards. She sat down with the scrapbook to put it back together and that’s when she began reading the newspaper articles and poring over the photographs and sympathy cards and letters—dozens and dozens of letters—nearly all from strangers, people
who felt compelled to reach out to her to say that they wished they’d known him, that they were so terribly sorry, that they were praying for her and the children and holding them in their hearts.

“We never do leave a man behind,” her father said roughly, breaking the silence.

Kit nodded.

That summer, at her grandmother’s, she discovered the truth about her grandfather—that he’d had a choice. He could have saved himself that day. But he hadn’t. Instead, he went deeper into the fire to try to rescue the two younger men from his engine. Because those men weren’t just men to him. They were his team, his brothers, his responsibility. His other family.

Kit cried when she’d read all of the articles and condolence letters from friends and strangers, and they’d been tears of anger. She wasn’t proud of her grandfather for sacrificing himself. She was angry with him. He’d made the wrong decision. How could he sacrifice himself when he had six children? How could he do that to his wife? How could you allow your work family to come before your own family?

And yet how could she say any of that to her father? He’d followed in the family footsteps. He’d become a fireman, too.

They talked then of other things, and as Kit sipped her champagne, it was easy to imagine people sitting here, in this very same spot, one hundred years ago, looking out on the same glittering water and wind-whipped waves. A true city landmark, the Cliff House first opened its doors in 1863 and immediately became a popular destination until a fire destroyed it in 1896. Adolph Sutro, the “Comstock King” and a wealthy San Francisco entrepreneur, rebuilt the place, turning it into a stunning eight-story four-spire confection that survived the devastating 1906 earthquake, only to burn down in 1907 in less than two hours.

The Cliff House was reborn in 1909, this time in a neoclassical
design, and was the same Cliff House they were enjoying brunch at now.

“So what are your plans for next weekend?” Dad asked in his big booming voice, a voice that would carry in the firehouse whether he was browning onions in the kitchen or lifting weights in the gym.

Kit smiled and looked from his mouth to his blue eyes. She and Tommy were the only two to have inherited his blue eyes, but no one had Dad’s bright color. “Polly and Fiona are taking me out Saturday night, and Meg was talking about having me up to her house on Sunday for dinner, but I told her let’s just wait until we’re on the cruise and we can celebrate as a family together.” She glanced at her mom. “That is, if we’re still doing the cruise?”

“If?”
Mom said. “There’s no if about it. I have confirmation numbers for five cabins. We’re going.”

“So tell us about last night,” Dad said. “How was your date? What’s he like? How did you meet him?”

“He’s a friend of Polly’s ex-boyfriend,” Kit said.

“Oh?” Mom’s expression brightened. She’d always loved Polly. “Which boyfriend?”

“Jon Coleman. I don’t think you know him. He’s from way back in the past.”

“But you liked this boy?” Mom persisted.

Kit gurgled with laughter. “He’s not a boy, Mom. Michael’s in his forties. And he’s…okay…but there were no sparks.”

“Sometimes those develop later,” Dad said.

“Or not at all,” Kit answered.

“But you will see him again?” Dad asked hopefully.

“I doubt it.”

“Oh.” Her father’s face fell, disappointed. “Well, if you change your mind, you know we’re always happy to meet your friends. Feel free to bring him around anytime.”

K
it drove home to Oakland grateful she had a sense of humor, and rather amused by her father’s desperate desire to see her married. It was far better to be amused than offended. Dad meant no harm. It had always been his goal to see his daughters settled, married, with families. In that order. Dad wouldn’t be happy about her becoming a mother without being a wife first. Not even if she did it through adoption.