Changing Lanes: A Novel (21 page)

“It’s not even dark out yet,” Missy whined.

Too young to understand the workings of dementia and the way the impending night often increased agitation, my youngest sister’s only concern was in keeping Mick around as long as she could.

Mick kissed my mother’s cheek and shook my father’s hand. Then he gently hooked his mother’s arm through his and walked her through the kitchen and out the back door, talking to her all the while, telling her how lovely she’d looked tonight at dinner.

Suddenly, even though he had succeeded in ignoring me through the entire meal, I couldn’t think of a single person in the world I admired more.

A little while later, I stood at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes Frankie had cleared from the table. The last rays of sunlight sliced through the window above the sink, and my mother reached around me to hang a sun catcher.

The stained-glass piece, an intricate sun complete with rays of variegated length and width, combined color and design in a way I’d seen only in the windows of the Paris Gallery on Artisan Alley.

“Did you get that downtown?” I asked.

Mom shook her head and gave my shoulders a squeeze. “Mick brought it over as a thank-you gift for dinner.”

“Oh.” I tipped my head, studying the selection and play of color, so simple yet unexpected that it dared me to look away.

I thought of the beautiful stained glass hanging in the gallery’s window the night I’d walked past, but I also flashed back on the items in Mick’s basement.

His mother’s, he’d said. But the suspicion gnawing at the base of my skull wondered whether or not Mick had given me the brush-off to hide the fact he’d learned to make art of his own.

“He must have gotten it at the gallery,” I said, fishing for my answer. “They had several in their window the last time I walked past.”

Mom laughed, the sound light and musical. “Mick doesn’t buy them, dear. He makes them.”

I envisioned the objects I’d spied on top of the table in the O’Malleys’ basement—the leading, the glass, the green triangle I’d dropped and cracked—and I smiled.

Suddenly, I wanted to know what other secrets Mick O’Malley and his wall of silence held.

“Are you up there?”

I stared at the bottom rung of the tree house ladder and waited for Mick’s answer, even though I knew he was there.

I’d heard him talking softly—on the phone, perhaps—when I’d first stepped outside to find him.

I knew he sat in the tree house many nights, using a baby monitor to listen in case his mother should call out from her sleep. Frankie had told me as much.

His words about asking for permission flickered through my brain, but I pushed right through them.

I climbed the ladder, the wood rough against the bottoms of my bare feet. I winced when I heard the unmistakable clink of beer bottle against beer bottle.

My head cleared the top step and our gazes met. Worry flowed through me momentarily. Had he been drinking? Was he drunk? Had coming here been a mistake?

Then I realized he was pushing around full bottles of beer, much as he’d done the first night we sat up here and talked. This time, however, not one bottle top had been removed.

“May I?” I asked, pointing to the interior of the structure.

Mick nodded. “It’s a bit late to be asking permission now.”

I settled a few feet away from him, utilizing the limited space the tree house had to offer.

“I never apologized for last week,” I said.

But Mick only held up a hand to stop me. “Not tonight.” He shook his head, his features slack, traces of defeat dancing in his eyes.

Alarm washed through me. “What’s wrong? Is it your mom?”

“No.” He hung his head. “She’s as good as can be expected.”

“You look like your dog died,” I said.

“He did die.” Mick’s sudden grin wiped away much of my worry.

“Twenty years ago.” I pointed to the bottles. “You sure you didn’t drink some and put the tops back on?”

Mick’s expression grew sad. “Too dangerous.”

I narrowed my eyes, concerned, wondering if the call I’d overheard had anything to do with his shift in mood. “I heard you talking,” I said, hating the note of hesitation heavy in my words.

“And yet you climbed right up that ladder.” Mick ran a hand through his hair and squeezed his eyes so tightly shut crow’s-feet appeared at their sides.

“Sorry.” I spoke in little more than a whisper.

Mick drew in a slow, deep breath, as if undecided about engaging me in conversation. When he finally spoke, his answer deepened my confusion.

“Today is her birthday,” he said.

I frowned. “I thought your mother’s birthday was in the fall?”

Mick shook his head. “Not my mother.”

“Oh.” I straightened and sat back. “Your wife?”

But again he looked down, shaking his head.

“Who then?”

Mick looked down at his hand, and I realized he’d been palming something. He handed me the object—a photograph. Tattered and faded.

In the captured image, a toddler looked up at the camera, laughing, eyes bright, smile wide, two new white teeth gleaming from behind her bottom lip.

My heartbeat quickened. Was it possible? Was this—?

“Is this your daughter?” I asked, doing my best to brace myself for Mick’s answer.

He nodded and rubbed his forehead, keeping his eyes shut and his brows furrowed. “This is Lily.”

I refocused on the girl’s image. Matching dimples. Identical eyes. Soft brown hair. “She’s beautiful.”

For a moment, the photograph slipped between my fingers, my surprise weakening my grip. But then I caught myself and the snapshot.

I handed the image back to Mick, who looked from my startled expression to the happy smile of his child.

“Was she with her mother…?” My voice trailed off, and I found myself unable to finish the question.

Mick shook his head. “She was home asleep in her crib when Mary drove into the tree.”

The cold edge of his words sent a chill through my veins. While he might have once grieved for his wife, he’d apparently moved on to anger.

“Where is she?” I asked.

Mick uncapped the first bottle and poured beer over the side of the tree house. The amber liquid splashed against the lawn below, spattering against the base of the tree.

“I left her with her grandparents,” Mick said flatly, without a trace of life in his voice.

“Mary’s parents?”

He nodded. “They’d raised children.” He popped another cap. “I hadn’t.”

I drew in a slow breath and released it, wanting to take my time before I spoke. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted to argue, yet this was Mick.

He’d lived through thirteen years of which I had no first-person experience. I couldn’t begin to frame what he was telling me against the context of his life.

I did know Mick, though. Or at least, I thought I did. Based on his interactions with his mother—and with me—he hadn’t changed much from the Mick I’d known back in high school—the Mick who would do whatever it took to protect someone he loved.

I swallowed down my hesitation. “No one knows how to be a parent the first time.”

He lifted his chin and glared at me. Hard. “I realize that.”

“Did they ask for her?”

Several long seconds beat between us as his eyes locked on mine. He shook his head. “Worse. They expected her. They knew I’d be a lousy father.”

Nerves simmered in the pit of my belly. Much as I wanted to talk to Mick, his anger boiled just below the surface of his control.

“Would you be a lousy father?” I asked.

He nodded. “Absolutely.”

But I wasn’t so sure. “Why would you say that?”

I’d seen him with Frankie and Missy and knew he was being unfair to himself, but I wasn’t ready to push him. Not yet.

Mick stood up inside the tree house and paced. Not an easy feat. “Look at my role model.”

I rubbed my face, fatigue and emotion getting the best of me. “Your mother has always been the kindest woman in this town. She’s a wonderful mother. You could have brought Lily here.”

Mick shook his head again, this time allowing himself a soft smile. “I wasn’t talking about my mother.”

Now I scrambled to my feet. “Your father? He isn’t the one who shaped you, and you know—”

Mick held his hands up in the air, and I fell silent.

“I’m Ed O’Malley’s son and the boy who burned down the Paris Oak. They might as well have put my name on the damn rock. I wasn’t bringing my daughter back here.”

The force of his words hit me like a freight train. The guilt that had swirled inside me for years, exploded. What had I done?

His gaze locked on mine. I’d never seen anyone look so angry or heartbroken in all my life.

I forced myself to stay on the topic at hand.

“Were you talking to Lily earlier?” I asked.

He nodded. “I tell her a bedtime story every night.”

“When did you see her last?”

“A few days before I left to come back east.”

A few days before I left.

I thought about Mick’s words and realized that was how I’d remembered him for the past thirteen years.

Leaving.

One day he was here. The next he was gone.

Surely he wouldn’t want his daughter growing up to think of him the same way.

He cupped the photo in his palm, staring down at the image of Lily, and the sight lodged in my brain.

“Did you see her?”

Mick nodded. “Every weekend.”

Understanding clicked deep inside me.

It wasn’t that Mick hadn’t loved his daughter enough to raise her. He hadn’t thought himself capable of raising her.

Sadness welled up inside me. “But you love her?” I asked.

His focus snapped so sharply to mine, I gasped.

Love and longing shone in Mick’s eyes, doubt and remorse playing clearly across his features.

Could he have stayed? Should he have stayed?

Would he go back?

The thought of Mick leaving again pulled at me like a weight dragging me down from the emotional high I’d felt during dinner.

Mick had a daughter.

I said the words over and over in my mind, trying to add that piece of his life to the mental image I carried.

Mick had a daughter—a daughter he obviously loved and missed.

At some point, life—and Lily—would carry Mick O’Malley away from Paris again.

Then I thought of Detta, the sole reason for Mick’s return to the town he’d once fled. “Does your mother remember her?”

He shook his head. “I flew her out west once, just after Lily was born. I showed her where we lived and the business I’d built.” He drew in a sharp breath. “None of that exists for her now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“When I found out she was sick, I sold my half of the business to my partner and promised Lily I’d call her every night. I haven’t missed one yet.”

“Sounds to me like you’re a good father, Mick.”

He shook his head. “Too late for that now.”

Silence hung between us, and I found it difficult to breathe. I’d thought I’d be able to help somehow, but Mick had been right when he’d talked about the glass in the basement.

I couldn’t fix everything.

I couldn’t fix this.

Suddenly overwhelmed by our conversation, I backed toward the ladder, needing to be anywhere but here, and wanting to leave Mick alone with his photograph and his thoughts.

“Abby?” he called out.

I froze, one hand on the top rung, the other two rungs below.

“Do you love him?” he asked.

The shift in conversation took me so utterly by surprise that a nervous laugh escaped me. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

Then I realized there was a question I’d wanted to ask Mick ever since we reconnected. “Did you love her?”

“Mary?”

I gave a single, sharp nod.

Mick crossed to the ladder, kneeling down so that our faces were mere inches apart.

“I thought so once,” he said. “But now I’m not sure I ever did.”

Then he stared at me, as if memorizing every inch of my face.

“If you want to take my mom out again, you can,” he added. “Apology accepted.”

Then he straightened, turned away, and popped open another bottle.