One Year (32 page)

“A
nd Danny and Maureen are doing well?” Megan asked. She was sitting at her desk in her home office, eyeing an untidy stack of paperwork relating to a legal case on which she was currently working.

“Yes, just fine,” Jeannette replied. “It's Mary Bernadette I am calling about.”

I might have known,
Megan thought. “What is it?”

“I suggested to her that PJ might withdraw his bid from the competition for the Joseph J. Stoker House job. Just to calm things down a bit in the family.”

“Let me guess. Your suggestion didn't go over well.”

Jeannette sighed. “I'm afraid she's pretty angry with me right now. It's not the first time, though, and it certainly won't be the last.”

“I'm sorry, Jeannette.”

“I am, too. I've never seen Mary be so unreasonable.”

“Yes. She's more prickly than ever, that's for sure.”

“Could it be something as simple as high blood pressure?” Jeannette wondered.

“We'll never know. Not without Mary Bernadette agreeing to see a doctor. You know what she says. God will decide when it's her time to go, not the medical establishment.”

“Yes, but do you think she would be willing to take her pressure with one of those machines you can buy at the pharmacy?” Jeannette asked. “She'd be in the privacy of her own home.”

“Doubtful. But Paddy might have more luck persuading her than either of us.”

“Do you think so? I know it's probably terrible of me to say this, but sometimes I wonder if she's heard a word he's said in the past fifty years.”

“I wonder that, too. But who else stands a chance of getting through to her?”

“PJ?” Jeannette suggested.

“The problem with PJ is that he's in complete denial about his grandmother being a fallible human being. It's not very healthy, I know. When something does happen to prove her human, PJ is going to be hit very hard by the reality.”

“And I daresay what with the, well, what with the tension between PJ and Alexis these days—it's obvious to everyone, Megan, no need to deny it—he might be even less likely to consider that his grandmother needs help.”

“You're probably right,” Megan said. “I really worry about those two, PJ and Alexis. They're so on edge with each other.”

Jeannette sighed. “Do you remember how the year started on such a happy note? And now, so much seems to be at risk.”

“How are you holding up under the pressure at the OWHA?” Megan asked.

“Not all that well, I'm afraid,” Jeannette admitted. “I fear that I'm betraying Mary Bernadette by not speaking out against Mr. Meadows or by quitting the board in protest. But I'm not sure that either of those actions would really make a difference. Honestly, I'm not even sure the man knows my name. What would it matter to him if I walked out? He'd see it as one less minor annoyance for him to put up with. One less silly old lady.”

“It's a terribly frustrating situation.”

“I wish I could say that trust in God will see everyone through, but I'm afraid my faith isn't what it used to be.”

Whose is,
Megan thought. “Thanks for keeping me up to date, Jeannette.”

“She would hate it if she knew we were talking about her this way, you know. Worried. Concerned.”

“I know,” Megan replied. “Which is why she'll never find out. Bye, Jeannette.”

Megan frowned at the corkboard over her desk. Why, she wondered, was the board of the OWHA putting up with Wynston Meadows if he was causing them such distress? From all she had heard his behavior was far from professional, and the members had to suspect by now that he didn't care at all about historical Oliver's Well. Were they so overwhelmed by the Great Man that their courage and good sense had completely abandoned them? Didn't it occur to them that other people besides Wynston Meadows had money and that if they really wanted to purchase the Branley Estate they could go about it in some other way, step up their fund-raising efforts for one? No doubt Wynston Meadows had created a bit of a mess, but there were always methods by which a mess could be cleaned up. You just had to employ some creative thinking.

It's official,
Megan thought.
I'm angry at Wynston Meadows for his bad behavior and I'm annoyed with the board members who are acting like frightened children
.
Maybe I should stick my nose in where it might not be wanted and call Leonard DeWitt. He's got—

The buzzing of her cell phone interrupted this consideration. It was Alec Clare.

“Got a few minutes to talk about next year's CPEE budget?” he asked.

“Sure,” Megan said. All thoughts of the OWHA went out of her mind.

A
lexis felt that she had lived the last two days at breakneck speed. She had certainly lived them in the deepest secrecy.

The last time she and PJ had had sex was the night they had reconciled, and so much for reconciliation. Since then they had had that terrible fight when she had thrown her rosary at him. She was still appalled at her behavior and still angry with PJ for so thoroughly rejecting her suggestion that they see a therapist.

And now, this.

She had always been regular, so when her period failed to appear on its appointed date she had rushed to a pharmacy in Lawrenceville, a town where, she hoped, nobody would recognize her. The last thing she wanted was the rumor mill to get grinding. The test told her that she was pregnant. She had immediately called her doctor and made an appointment for that very afternoon. It had been hard to bring a smile to her face when the pregnancy was confirmed, hard to accept the congratulations of the nurse practitioner when she had given her a stack of informational brochures about prenatal health and nutrition.

Alexis, sitting at her kitchen table, pushed the pile of brochures away from her. She felt horribly torn between sorrow and joy. On her wedding day she had taken a vow to “accept children willingly from God.” At the time she had considered it worthy of a giggle, given that everyone over the age of eleven knew that God wasn't the one who made babies. Now, unexpectedly pregnant . . . well, there was absolutely nothing to giggle about.

One thing was for sure. She was in no rush to tell her mother. “What were you thinking,” she would say, “getting pregnant by a man with whom you're miserable.”

What
had
she been thinking? Why had she been careless enough to get pregnant now? Had she, unconsciously, been hoping to bind PJ closer to her? Had it been a desperate tactic to turn him away from his grandmother and toward her, the mother of his child? And what did the fact of the pregnancy say about any feelings she had had for Morgan Shelby? Could she really have been falling in love with him if at the same time she had allowed herself to get pregnant with her husband's child?

Alexis rubbed her temples. No. She had not been in love with Morgan. She had harbored feelings. She had thought that she needed him. But she had not loved him, and she knew this now without a doubt because in spite of her distress she was happy to be pregnant with PJ's child. Not Morgan's child. Her husband's.

But what if her marriage couldn't be saved? Alexis looked at her wedding ring—Aunt Catherine's wedding ring—and remembered the morning she had walked away from the Day in the Life project. She had gone to the office where she had browsed websites in search of a new wedding ring, but in the end she hadn't had the nerve to buy one. She might have been bold enough to turn her back unceremoniously on the OWHA, but she had not been bold enough to replace her wedding ring in such an underhanded manner.

Alexis reached for one of the brochures.
The Importance of Vaccinations
. Childhood disease wasn't the greatest thing she feared. The greatest thing she feared was bringing a child into a home rife with unhappiness, a home on the brink of destruction.

Slowly, she got up from the table and went into the bedroom. She took from the closet the box in which she kept the notes and small tokens of affection PJ had given her since the earliest days of their relationship. The earliest days. Alexis had been a college freshman and PJ a junior. A mutual acquaintance introduced them in the lobby of the movie theatre on campus. Alexis had fallen instantly in love. PJ Fitzgibbon was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. From that first moment there had never been any doubt in her mind that he was the one with whom she would spend the rest of her life.

But PJ hadn't felt the same way, at least not at first. He hardly seemed to notice her in the following weeks. More than once he had passed her on the quad without a greeting. He was rumored to be dating a girl at another college. But Alexis was steadfast. She vowed to wait for him to realize that she was his bride. She knew that someday he would. So she watched and worshipped from afar until one magical day he
did
notice her. And since that precious moment they had been inseparable. Until now.

Among the cards and dried flowers and ticket stubs and funny drawings, Alexis found a piece of paper on which, in PJ's familiar hand, were written the words with which he had proposed. “O woman, loved by me, mayest thou give me thy heart, thy soul and thy body.” He had taken the words from a book of native Irish wisdom and lore collected by Lady Wilde, mother of Oscar. To Alexis, his proposal had demonstrated the measure of the man that he was. Romantic. Thoughtful. Devoted. Yes, that PJ Fitzgibbon was the man Alexis had loved. He was the man she
still
loved. He was the man with whom she had pledged to spend the rest of her life.

Now the question was, did that man still exist?

T
wo days later Alexis stood at the kitchen window, watching for her husband's truck. She had decided that she could no longer carry the burden of her secret alone. And PJ had every right to know that he was going to be a father.

At a quarter after five he came through the front door of the cottage. He looked tired, almost haggard. For a moment Alexis hesitated. She didn't want to add to his troubles. But then she had to speak. For better or worse. In sickness and in health.

“I have something to tell you, PJ,” she said. “It's very important.”

PJ looked at her warily as he hung his jacket on the back of a chair. “What is it?”

“I'm pregnant.”

For a long moment PJ did not reply. Finally, just when Alexis was about to repeat her announcement, he said, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I've been to see the doctor. It's very early days, but I'm definitely pregnant.”

PJ ran his hand through his hair. “Wow.”

“I know we wanted to wait a bit,” Alexis said. “But . . . well, I guess God had other plans.”

PJ smiled and shook his head. “A baby.”

“You're not angry?” she asked hopefully.

“No,” he said. “Of course not.”

“It was what we wanted. A family.”

“Yes. A family. But maybe . . .” PJ looked down at the floor. “Maybe we shouldn't say anything right away. To—to the others.”

“Right. It's a first pregnancy, and there's always a chance I could lose the baby. . . .” Alexis felt tears choking her. This was supposed to be a joyous, shout it from the mountaintop moment. And it wasn't.

PJ looked back to her. “We'll wait until we're more sure. Until everything is—settled.”

PJ reached for her and she went to him. A hug had never made her feel so sad, and she began to sob. When the sobs quieted, they sat together on the couch.

“How do you feel?” PJ asked. “I mean, physically.”

“Fine.”

“Good. Is there anything I can get for you? Would you like a cup of tea?”

“No,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “But thanks.”

“We should be toasting the occasion with champagne.”

“Not me. Sparkling water.”

PJ reached for her hand and squeezed it gently. “Right. Do you remember how we used to talk for hours about baby names? Sean or James. Fiona or Allison.”

Alexis rested her head on PJ's shoulder. “That was fun, wasn't it?”

“Yeah. It was. And we used to argue about how many kids we would have.”

“You said you wanted six.”

“And you said you wanted five.”

“How silly we were,” Alexis whispered.

“No,” PJ said. “Not silly. Hopeful. Happy.”

“And now?”

PJ kissed the top of Alexis's head. “Hopeful,” he said. “And yes, happy.”

Alexis felt her eyes flood with tears again, but this time they weren't tears of sadness.

“Thank you for being my husband,” she said.

PJ turned to embrace her. “Thank you for being my wife.”

W
as it a universal truth that every family, no matter how loving, had its drama and its tensions? Was there really no such thing as a truly harmonious family?

Of course there's no such thing,
Megan reminded herself.
Be real
.

Megan was in her home office where she was supposed to be working on a matter for the CPEE. Instead, her mind was lost in thoughts of the family Fitzgibbon. Take Pat's admission that his apology to PJ had not gone over very well. “I don't think he believed I was genuinely sorry,” he had told her only the night before. “Well, I can't say that I blame him. I've been harping on PJ about his choice of career for years. I'll just have to prove to him that I've finally accepted his decisions. And that I respect them.”

Megan shook her head. What a weekend
that
had been! At dinner Saturday evening Mary Bernadette had acted as if nothing brutal had come out of her mouth only hours earlier, even complimenting Megan on her blouse, while poor Paddy had blushed and stammered his way through the meal. Pat, for his part, had glowered and grimaced.

Mary Bernadette and Megan had not talked since the morning after “The Incident” (it was what Megan had taken to calling it rather than using Pat's term, which involved a very graphic vulgarity). She did not feel badly about this, as time apart was often necessary in order for healing to begin. Besides, if they were to talk, what could they possibly say to each other? What topics would be safe enough not to elicit a fresh character assassination? Well, there was always the weather, but with Mary Bernadette behaving more cantankerous than ever, maybe even the weather wasn't a neutral enough topic.

Megan glanced at the photograph of her parents that sat to the left of her laptop. In almost every way you could imagine, Mary Bernadette and Kathleen Murphy were in stark contrast. Kathleen was one of the nicest people there was, easy to get along with and never critical or unkind. Left alone for more than fifteen minutes with Mary Bernadette, Kathleen would emerge shaking and chattering like a hiker who had just come face-to-face with a hungry puma on a deserted mountain trail. Megan grinned at her choice of dramatic imagery. Well, maybe that was a
bit
unfair. After all, the few times the two women had been in each other's company—for instance, at Megan's and then at PJ's wedding—there had been no spilling of blood.

Next to the photograph of Megan's parents sat a photograph of her brother Edward and his family. They lived only minutes from the elder Murphys. Edward's wife, Judy, got along splendidly with her in-laws. Kara and Jason, now teenagers, visited their grandparents without parental prompting.
Maybe my brother has succeeded in creating a truly harmonious family,
Megan thought now.
If so, he's a better person than I am
.

The truth was that Megan felt guilty that she wasn't available to her parents in the way her brother was. For better or worse she had chosen to devote her energies to Paddy and Mary Bernadette, though lately she wondered if she was doing a very good job of ensuring their well-being. Anyway, she knew this sort of thing often happened. Familial duties were divided, sometimes with intention and careful planning and at other times—well, at other times things just turned out the way they did.

On impulse, Megan reached for her cell phone and dialed her parents' number. (Like Mary Bernadette and Paddy, they had only a landline.) “Mom?”

“Meggie! It's so good to hear from you! I just got the latest pictures you sent through the e-mail. Gosh, the twins are getting so big!”

Megan laughed, happy to hear her mother's voice. “You should see our food bill!”

“And how's everything with PJ? I haven't heard from him in an age. He must be so busy running that company.”

Megan grimaced. She hated to lie, but she didn't want her mother to worry about her oldest grandchild. “He's fine,” she said. “Everything's going well.”

“Good. I sent PJ and Alexis a card for their anniversary. What a lovely wedding that was!”

“It was lovely, yes.”

“And how are Pat's parents?” Kathleen Murphy asked. Megan was beginning to regret this call. “Fine,” she said. “Mary Bernadette's very busy with the historical society. And Paddy's enjoying retirement.”

“Do tell them I was asking for them, won't you?”

Megan promised and listened as her mother began a very complicated story of what had happened at the last meeting of the parish council, of which she was a long-standing member. And as she listened she suddenly remembered thinking that she should call Leonard DeWitt about the current state of the OWHA. Or had she finally decided against getting involved in matters probably beyond her control?

“So,” her mother said, “what do you think of that!”

Megan scrambled for a suitable reply. “I think,” she said, “that it's quite—unbelievable.”

Her mother laughed. “That's exactly what I thought!”