One Year (28 page)

“W
here's your brother?” Alexis asked.

“At home with Dad,” Danica told her. “They're going to someplace where they've got pool tables and video games and pizza and beer. Well, the beer is for Dad.”

Alexis and Danica were sitting at the picnic table behind the cottage, a picnic table she and PJ never used these days. They were eating tuna salad sandwiches.

“This is a really good sandwich,” Danica said around a mouth full of food. “Grandma's tuna is so bland.”

“She doesn't add fresh dill. Or onions, for that matter.”

Danica took a long drink of water and smacked her lips when done. “Don't tell anyone, but I hate when I have to eat lunch at her house,” she admitted. “She never lets me have dessert. I have to wait until after dinner.”

Alexis smiled. “Don't worry. I know where PJ keeps his secret stash of M&M's.”

“Awesome!” Danica took another huge bite of her sandwich, chewed, and swallowed. “And another thing,” she said. “Grandma tried to give me this old blouse of hers. I mean, I guess it's nice of her to give me stuff but . . .” Danica lowered her voice to her loud whisper. “It has a
bow
at the neck. What's that about?”

Alexis bit back another smile. “What did you say?”

“I didn't know
what
to say! Luckily, Mom was there too, and she said something like, oh, thanks, Mary Bernadette, but Danica has too many clothes already—which I do
not
!—and why don't you give it to the charity shop.”

Brave woman, Alexis thought. To say no to Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon! “Was your grandmother upset?” she asked.

Danica shrugged. “I don't know. I just ran out here!”

Now Alexis did laugh. “Well, I'm glad you did.”

Danica finished the sandwich Alexis had made for her and wiped her mouth with her sleeve, ignoring the paper napkin by her plate.

“You know,” she said. “I usually think of PJ as my uncle, not my brother. It doesn't really make a difference, right?”

“I guess not.”

“And I think of you as my aunt. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” Alexis said. “I mean, it's nice that you consider me family.”

“Of course you're family! You're married to my brother. You have our name.”

Yes, she did now have the privilege—or the burden—of the Fitzgibbon name, that much was true. But it didn't really make her Fitzgibbon material, did it? Maybe she simply wasn't meant to be a part of this family. After all, she had come to suspect that in some way she had married PJ under false pretenses—her own, not his. In spite of her genuine love for him, she had married PJ while under the delusion that he and he alone would provide a fulfilling life for her.

“You don't have a boyfriend, do you?” she asked Danica.

Danica grimaced. “No way! And I'm not ever getting married, either. I'm going to live all by myself in a huge mansion with lots of dogs. We can't have a dog now because David's allergic—not superallergic but sort of—but when I grow up I'm going to have at least ten. Maybe a few more. And definitely a pug and a husky.”

“It sounds like heaven,” Alexis noted. “Animals are a lot less trouble than people.”

Danica nodded. “Oh,” she said, her tone quite serious, “they are
way
less trouble. Um, can we get the M&M's now?”

M
ary Bernadette had just finished stocking the drawer under the toaster oven with clean dishtowels and was now busy straightening the knives on their magnetic rack. Ordinarily she took some pleasure and satisfaction from such simple domestic chores, but today her spirits simply refused to rise above a level very close to depression.

In fact, all week her spirits had been low. Megan and Danica had visited the day before, and while Mary Bernadette usually welcomed a visit from her daughter-in-law and granddaughter, on this occasion she had found herself eager for them to leave. And it had occurred to her that her granddaughter might not like her very much. Danica had darted out of the house just before lunch without an explanation of where she was going. Alexis had called a moment later to say that Danica would be having lunch with her. And Megan hadn't seemed at all concerned that her daughter had so unceremoniously fled. Well, other people's parenting choices had always been a mystery to Mary Bernadette.

A knock at the front door dragged Mary Bernadette from her thoughts. She opened it to find Katie Keefe on the doorstep.

“I hope I'm not disturbing you,” Katie said. “I know you're always so busy.”

“Not at all,” she said. “Come in.”

Mary Bernadette led Katie to the kitchen and offered her a cup of tea.

“Oh, no, thank you, Mary Bernadette. I've only got a moment but I just had to tell you the most appalling thing, and it isn't fit for the phone.”

Mary Bernadette frowned. Was there no end to bad news these days? “Has anyone been hurt?” she asked. “Is Bonnie all right?”

“Oh, Bonnie is fine, but she's part of my story! Bonnie ran into Eve Hennessy yesterday afternoon at the library. And Eve had the nerve to march up to her and say right out of the blue that your not entering the garden contest this year was a sure sign of guilt, a downright admission of past wrongdoing. That was the exact phrase she used, ‘past wrongdoing.' Can you imagine!”

Yes,
thought Mary Bernadette with a sudden sense of great weariness.
I can imagine all sorts of things.

Katie went on with her tale. “Bonnie told her what's what, you can be sure of that. She said the librarian, you know, Lillian Ross, threatened to ask her to leave if she didn't lower her voice!”

“Yes,” Mary Bernadette said, trying and failing to find a polite way to ask her neighbor to leave. “Bonnie can be excitable.”

Katie sighed. “There's some in this town who just love to make mischief, and Eve Hennessy is one of them. Do you know what I heard about her?”

“How could I?” Mary Bernadette replied. Really, Katie could be such a trial.

“I heard, and it was from a good authority, that she ran off with a much older man when she was in high school and had to be dragged back by the police. After that, her father put her in a private boarding school so there was always someone to keep an eye on her.”

“Who was the good authority?” Mary Bernadette asked, though she had no interest in the answer. She had come to know all too well how damaging gossip could be.

“Well, I shouldn't say, but it was Kris Nelson from the post office.
She
had the story from Sara Gates, Marilyn Windsor's housekeeper. It only goes to show that some people are bad news from the start.”

“Yes,” Mary Bernadette said. “Some people are troublesome.”

Katie put her hand on Mary Bernadette's arm. “You know,” she said, “Bonnie and I will stick by you till the end, no matter what.”

Mary Bernadette managed a smile. “Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate your loyalty.”

When Katie had finally gone off, Mary Bernadette sank into a chair at the kitchen table. She wondered if Lillian Ross had overheard the details of Eve's conversation with Bonnie. And who else had Eve approached with her poisonous accusations and lies? Had Wynston Meadows himself heard this latest calumny?

Katie had sworn her allegiance “till the end.” Now Mary Bernadette found herself wondering what that end would look like. She wondered if that end was near. She wondered if Wynston Meadows would indeed be the death of her.

“M
agnolia, gingko, dogwood, and lacebark pine,” Alexis said, pointing to each tree in turn. “Paddy Fitzgibbon taught me their names.”

“Impressive! I can hardly tell a rose from a daffodil.”

Morgan had invited Alexis to a picnic lunch in Oliver's Grove. Alexis had brought sandwiches from the Pink Rose Café, and Morgan had contributed bottled water and a monstrous blondie from Cookies 'n Crumpets for them to share.

The meeting was perfectly innocent. Still, Alexis knew it would be a disaster if any member of the Fitzgibbon family should happen to spot them. But she hadn't been afraid enough not to come.

“Do you remember the challenge I gave you when we were in Somerstown?” Morgan asked, unwrapping his sandwich.

“To tell you three things about myself. True things.”
Things that have nothing to do with the Fitzgibbons
.

“And?”

Alexis laughed uncomfortably. “I'm still thinking about it.”

“It shouldn't be difficult to know yourself, should it?”

“No,” she admitted. “It shouldn't be. Still, I need a little more time.”

“I had an idea the other day,” Morgan said a few minutes later.

“Why don't you come to work for me at the gallery.”

Alexis almost choked on her sandwich. It was the last thing she had expected to hear from him. “Are you kidding?” she said when she had swallowed.

Morgan shrugged. “Why would I be kidding?”

“But what would I
do
?”

“Well, you'd start out as an assistant, help me with the business end of things. Over time, you'd learn about the objects themselves—how to recognize real from fake, how to identify makers' marks, how to date unmarked pieces. It would be a great education.”

“Well, it certainly would be different from writing checks and taking complaints, which is pretty much all I do at Fitzgibbon Landscaping,” Alexis admitted. “And learning about antiques sounds really
interesting
.”

“I think it is, but then again, I'm an antiques nerd.”

“I wouldn't say you're a nerd. You're an expert.”

Morgan laughed. “Or so I make people believe. Seriously, Alexis, you're wasting your artistic talents being an office manager.”

“Well, I can't argue with that.”

“I could teach you the business from the ground up. Someday, if you wanted, you could open your own gallery. As long as you don't compete directly with me!”

Alexis took a deep breath. The idea was immensely appealing. But it was impossible. “She'd never let me leave,” Alexis said, putting her sandwich on the bench by her side, all appetite gone. “Mary Bernadette, I mean. It's not that she likes me. I'm sure she'd love me to just disappear from her life. But as long as I'm here she wants to control me. No, it's more than that. She wants to
break
me.”

“That bad?” Gently and briefly Morgan touched her hand.

“You have no idea,” Alexis said, her voice ever so slightly cracking.

“Your husband's grandmother doesn't own you,” Morgan said. “You're an adult. You're your own person.”

“Of course. But you don't understand. It wouldn't be possible to leave Fitzgibbon Landscaping. My husband . . .”
My husband,
she thought,
has already scolded me for defying Saint Mary Bernadette
.

“What?” Morgan pressed. “What about him?”

Alexis shook her head. She couldn't talk about PJ with Morgan. She wouldn't. “The family would think I was being terribly disloyal,” she said carefully. “They've never had a stranger working in the office.”

And PJ would leave me,
she thought.
He would take his grandmother's side, again. He apologized the other night—and so did I—and we meant it, but nothing has really changed. And do I care?
At that moment, Alexis truly didn't know the answer to that question.

Morgan sighed. “I hate to see you so unhappy, Alexis.”

She turned away and stared blindly at a sweetbay magnolia tree. Its blooms, Paddy had told her, smelled like lemons.
Oh God,
she thought.
What am I going to do?

“Well,” Morgan said after a moment, “just think about my offer, okay?”

She turned back to him. “Thank you, Morgan,” she said. “Really.”

Morgan bundled his trash into his paper bag and got up. “I'd better run. Someone's coming to the gallery at two to look at a set of flatware. Take care of yourself, Alexis.”

Alexis sat alone for some time, staring ahead and seeing nothing. She could no longer deny that her feelings for Morgan had deepened into something that felt a lot like love. She wanted very badly to kiss him and to be kissed by him. Beyond that she didn't dare allow herself to imagine.

She wondered if Morgan had offered her a job as an excuse to be close to her and realized that she didn't care if he had. She would like to be close to him, too. Working side by side with someone she cared for.... Once she had thought she would find that sort of perfect companionship with PJ. Once she had harbored the fantasy of being part of an old-fashioned family business, part of an old-fashioned
family
. But what a fool she had been, thinking that PJ could give her a ready-made life. No one could do that. Not even Morgan Shelby.

Alexis sighed, gathered the remains of her lunch, and walked slowly back to her car. Fitzgibbon Landscaping was waiting.

A
lexis checked her watch. It would be at least forty minutes before PJ got home from work. There was plenty of time to make a call to her mother, but she did not want to make the call from the cottage. Mary Bernadette might have planted a listening device in the bookcase. PJ might be lurking under a window, just out of sight. Yes, Alexis knew she was being ridiculously paranoid, but she couldn't shake the feeling that her every move was being scrutinized. She scribbled a note for her husband. She told him she had gone out for a walk. Well, that was true as far as it went.

She left the cottage and walked down Honeysuckle Lane. At the end of the street she turned on to Austin Road, where she made the call on her cell phone. She continued to walk away from the cottage as she talked to her mother.

“I don't know how it happened, Mom,” Alexis said after they had exchanged greetings. “For a while everything was fine. And now, I just feel so—so trapped.”

“I told you marrying that boy was a bad idea,” Olivia Trenouth replied.

Alexis laughed in surprise. “You never said anything of the kind!”

“Well, I certainly thought it. I still do. And your father agrees with me. We both feel that he's immature. We both feel that he relies on you to agree with his every whim without protest. Not that we think he's a bad person. Just a little too self-centered.”

“I can't believe I'm hearing this,” Alexis said. “Why
didn't
you say anything to me? Why didn't you
warn
me?”

Olivia Trenouth sighed. “Because you wouldn't have listened to me. You know I'm right about that, Alexis. Young love is blind and stubborn.”

Yes, she admitted. It was. “But what am I supposed to do now?” she asked.

“I don't know, Alexis. Get away from that little town for a while. Come back to Philadelphia. Do you know who was asking for you? Damian Branson, that wonderful young doctor who treated your father a few years back. He couldn't believe it when he heard you'd married and moved to the country.”

“It's not entirely rural,” Alexis replied lamely. A vague image of Dr. Branson passed before her eyes. He was tall, she remembered. And he had kind eyes. Was her mother attempting to play matchmaker?

“But it's not the metropolis! What sort of career opportunities can there possibly be for you in Oliver's Well?” Olivia Trenouth asked.

A career as a gallery owner? But was that what
she
really wanted, or was it only what Morgan wanted for her? “I don't know,” she said honestly. “Look, I should go now. Thanks, Mom.”

Her mother laughed. “I don't know that I've done anything for which I deserve thanks. Be well, Alexis.”

Alexis tucked her cell phone into her pocket. Well, at least she knew that her parents were willing to take her in if she separated from her husband. That was something for which to be grateful. They might feel that she had made a mistake by marrying PJ Fitzgibbon, but they had no interest in punishing her for it. Alexis sighed and turned back toward her narrow little life on Honeysuckle Lane.