One Year (26 page)

M
ary Bernadette did not believe in caller ID. She found it only slightly less rude than call waiting. Still, at this moment, she wished she had known who was on the other end of the line before she picked up the receiver.

“Hello, Mary Bernadette.” It was Joyce Miller, with that tinny, almost desperate note in her voice Mary Bernadette found so annoying.

“Oh, hello, Joyce,” Mary Bernadette said, with just enough enthusiasm to be polite.

“I have some rather disturbing news, I'm afraid.”

Mary Bernadette allowed her usually dignified demeanor (which she made it a point to maintain even when alone) to slip just long enough to roll her eyes at the kitchen wall. What was it now? Joyce could make a mountain out of a molehill. She might have found a nail missing from a baseboard at the Wilson House and convinced herself the entire edifice was about to collapse.

“Yes?” she said.

“Well, I'm afraid that Alexis has abandoned the Day in the Life project.”

Mary Bernadette felt a sharp twinge of pain behind her left eye. “What do you mean she's abandoned the project?” she asked, careful to keep her tone even.

“Just what I said. She hasn't logged a photo in days and days. I suppose I could have gone straight to Alexis for an explanation, but I thought that I had better come to you first. After all, you
were
the one who gave her the job.”

“There must be some mistake,” Mary Bernadette replied promptly. Silently, she damned herself for not having looked at the OWHA website in days. She might have spotted the absence and dealt with it without anyone else being the wiser.

“No, I don't think so,” Joyce said, with her thin laugh. “But then again, Alexis being your family, I'm sure you'll get to the bottom of this little mystery before anyone else on the board notices that something is wrong. Unless they already have.”

“Yes,” Mary Bernadette said. “I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation. Good-bye, Joyce.”

Mary Bernadette sank into a seat at the kitchen table. She was angry. She was hurt. She was embarrassed. She simply could not understand how her beloved grandson's wife could care so little for her and by extension for the good name of the Fitzgibbon family. Why hadn't the girl come to her if she wanted to leave the project? There was no excuse for such behavior. It was downright underhanded. Well, Mary Bernadette thought, no good deed goes unpunished, and that was for certain. And the thought of Wynston Meadows learning of Alexis's act of treason (that wasn't too strong a word for it) horrified her. Alexis's bad behavior would only give the man more ammunition in his already powerful and inexplicable campaign against the Fitzgibbons.

Mary Bernadette abruptly rose from the table. She would accomplish nothing by sitting there and stewing. She would deal with the situation immediately.

A
lexis opened the door only after Mary Bernadette had knocked several times. “Oh,” she said. “It's you.”

Mary Bernadette resisted a very strong desire to slap Alexis's face. “May I come in?” she asked.

Alexis opened the door wider and stepped back to allow Mary Bernadette to pass.

“PJ's not here,” she said.

“It's you I've come to speak with. Let me get straight to the point. I've been told that you haven't been keeping up with the Day in the Life of Oliver's Well project. Is that true?”

Color flooded the girl's cheeks, and she turned away. “Yes.”

“Why is that?”

Alexis turned back to her and shrugged. “It was boring. I was tired of it.”

“A Fitzgibbon,” Mary Bernadette said, keeping a tight rein on her temper, “does not just walk away from responsibility. You've sullied our good name and you've let down the Oliver's Well Historical Association.”

Alexis laughed a bit wildly. “Don't be so dramatic. No one cares about that project, anyway. It was a bad idea in the first place.”

“I'll be the judge of that. And there is no excuse for not coming to me and asking to be let go of the task. The least you could have done was to stay on until I found someone to replace you.”

“Come to you?” The girl's voice was a shriek. “Are you kidding ? Like you would actually
listen
to me? God, Mary Bernadette, I am so tired of doing your bidding. Nothing I do is ever good enough for you. I just want to be left alone!”

Mary Bernadette steadied her breathing before she spoke. “Well,” she said, “perhaps you should have thought of that before marrying my grandson. You're part of this family now, for better or worse. You don't have the right to be ‘left alone.' You owe the family your active presence. We all do.”

“Presence! Well, on that note, I want you to keep your
presence
out of my home. I want you to stop coming in to the cottage when I'm out and rearranging my things. I want you to stop snooping through my mail. I'll have the lock changed, if you don't!”

Mary Bernadette felt as if she had sustained a physical blow. No one had ever had the audacity to speak to her so rudely. “I might remind you,” she said, “that I own this cottage.”

Alexis laughed. “Oh, you never let me forget that! But you don't own
me,
even if my last name is Fitzgibbon!”

There followed a heavy, vibrating silence; Mary Bernadette could feel the weight of it pressing on her shoulders. “There are times,” she said, “when I regret that it is.”

A
lexis felt sick to her stomach as she waited for PJ to come home from work that evening. She knew without a doubt that Mary Bernadette would have waylaid him and told him her version of what had happened that afternoon. And she strongly suspected that she would have to fight for her side of the encounter to be heard.

Finally, she saw him coming from his grandparents' house, and when he was within a few feet of the door she threw it open. PJ's face was dark with an emotion Alexis couldn't identify. It frightened her.

“I've just talked to Grandmother,” he said stiffly, walking into the cottage.

Alexis closed the door. “I bet she told you
her
version of what happened this afternoon.”

“The way I see it, there's only one version of the story. You walked away from a job Grandmother was nice enough to give you without telling her—without telling anyone—that you wanted to quit.”

“But there was a reason, PJ! Let me—”

“And then when Grandmother confronted you about what you had done, you didn't even have the decency to apologize. Instead, you threatened to change the locks against her.”

“But she—”

“You should
never
have shown such disrespect.”

“Me?” Alexis cried. “What about her?”

PJ laughed unpleasantly. “What sort of disrespect has she shown you? She gave you a job at Fitzgibbon Landscaping. She gave you a home. She gave you a special role in the OWHA. And look how you betrayed her.”

“But I didn't
ask
for any of those things. I didn't—”

“I'm disappointed in you, Alexis. I never expected this sort of thing from you, of all people. You used to be so . . . so good. So trustworthy.”

Alexis balled her hands into fists at her side. “God,” she cried, “you sound like you're my father, not my husband! What has that woman done to you?”

“
That woman
helped raise me.
That woman
has been nothing but good and generous to me. And to think that I doubted her for even one minute . . .”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Did she tell you she wishes my last name wasn't Fitzgibbon ?” Alexis demanded. “She hates me, PJ.”

“Can you blame her, when you do something so underhanded ?”

Alexis felt her stomach heave. She was badly shocked. She wanted to tell her husband to leave the cottage.
She
wanted to leave the cottage. But the fear of no one coming to her rescue rendered her speechless.

PJ shook his head and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “I'll take care of my own dinner,” he said. He stalked out of the cottage, leaving the door to slam behind him. A moment later, Alexis heard his truck drive off.

 

He had been gone for almost four hours.

Alexis opened the front door of the cottage and peered out to Honeysuckle Lane. She listened for the sound of her husband's truck. She saw and heard nothing. She went back inside and closed the door behind her.

PJ had never gone off like this, not ever in all the years they had been together. Alexis was worried. She was still a bit angry, but she was scared, too. And she was weak with remorse. She should have behaved with more dignity when Mary Bernadette had confronted her that afternoon. Had she really threatened to change the locks on the cottage? Had she really meant what she had said about wanting to be left alone? Well, she had been left alone now, and it didn't feel very good at all.

With a shuddering sigh Alexis sank onto the couch and put her head in her hands. She hadn't been able to eat anything after PJ had stormed out and now vaguely wondered if she should make a cup of tea. But the effort seemed too great.

Her husband had not listened to her side of the story. He had called her conduct underhanded. He had said that he was disappointed in her. He had told her she had acted disrespectfully. He had accused her of betraying the family. His family. And in a way, she had betrayed them. Alexis had known that from the moment she had stowed her camera in the trunk of her car and driven away from the sight of the Day in the Life project. She had known there would be consequences. And she hadn't much cared. But now . . .

Alexis lifted her head. Was that the sound of a truck's engine slowing? She rushed over to the door and flung it open. The only sound she heard now was a call of a night bird.
Please God,
she prayed silently,
let him be all right
. Even though the thought of what PJ might say to her when he got home frightened her—what if he said he no longer loved her?—she wanted him home safely. With her. Where he belonged.

She closed the door again and waited, painfully aware that only a few yards away PJ's grandmother waited, too.

“M
om? We have to talk.”

Megan was glad that her older son had called. After mass on Palm Sunday she had reminded him that she was always available should he be in need of advice, but she hadn't entertained a great conviction that he would indeed turn to her for help.

Megan listened now as PJ recounted an extraordinary story about Alexis quitting her photography work for the OWHA without telling anyone, and then about the terrible fight that had ensued between Alexis and Mary Bernadette when the truth had come out. Everything about PJ's tale bothered Megan, particularly her son's obvious preference for his grandmother's point of view.

“I just can't believe she was so rude to Grandmother,” he said now. “What was she thinking?”

“I don't know,” Megan said honestly. “Have you asked her?”

PJ didn't reply to that question. Instead, he said, “It's like suddenly she doesn't want anything to do with my family. What have we ever done to her that's so bad?”

“Maybe,” Megan said carefully, “Alexis wants to make a new family, just with you. The Fitzgibbon dynamic can be overwhelming, even to those of us who've been on the inside for some time. Are you sure you've really considered her position in all this?”

PJ laughed. “Her position? Her position is that she's my wife. She should be my ally, my partner.”

“And you're her husband. You should be
her
ally and partner, not your grandmother's.”

“But—”

Megan pushed on. “Maybe I have no right to be quoting at you,” she said, “given the fact that I go to church only about three times a year, but you would do well to remember the words of the Bible. ‘A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife; and the two shall be as one.' Or something like that.”

PJ sighed. “Why are you taking Alexis's side in this?” he asked in a distinctly plaintive tone.

“I'm not taking anyone's side, PJ,” Megan replied patiently. “All I'm suggesting is that you take another look at the situation that's built up between your wife and your grandmother and consider whether you can do something to soothe wounded feelings.”

PJ didn't reply.

“Look, I know things are tough right now, with Wynston Meadows being a pain—”

“A pain? He's being a lot more than that, Mom! He's trying to make us out to be criminals! And I don't have the time to handle two major crises at once!”

Megan put a hand to her head. Her son was sorely trying her usually equitable nature. “Well, PJ,” she said. “You'd better make the time, because a marriage is not a joke. And crises don't happen all in a row, nice and neat. If there's one thing life has taught me it's that when trouble hits, it hits hard and all at once.”

“But Mom—”

“Look, PJ, I've got to go.”

“All right.”

“One final word of advice, though you probably don't want to hear it.”

“You're right,” he said. “I don't.”

“Keep your grandmother out of this situation between you and Alexis.”

Megan didn't wait for her son to respond. Instead, she pressed the End button. She hated to feel disappointed in one of her children, even for a moment, but she
was
disappointed in PJ. His behavior was immature and selfish. Megan's eyes found the Prayer of St. Francis on the wall above her desk. PJ, she thought, would be well advised to learn how to work for pardon and for love, rather than for injury and hate.