Take the Long Way Home (13 page)

She and her father didn’t talk while they
prepared the meal. Without conversation to distract her, her mind
wandered through the house. What did her parents’ bedroom look like
now? Did her father get a new bed when he’d gotten the new living
room couch? Were her mother’s dresses still hanging in the closet?
Or had Gus Naukonen moved her clothing into the closet? Why didn’t
Maeve feel her mother’s presence in this house anymore? Why did she
feel so empty?

Ten minutes later, the food was on the
table—the kitchen table, thank goodness. The dining room had always
been reserved for festive occasions: Thanksgiving, Christmas,
birthdays, gatherings of friends. This was not a festive occasion,
and the plain tile-topped table by the kitchen window suited
Maeve.

Her father offered her a
glass of wine, which she declined. She would be having a drink with
Quinn later—
don’t even think about
that,
she cautioned herself, realizing she
could handle only one stressful event at a time. She opted for ice
water and dug into her pasta, even though her appetite had
vanished.

“I wish Gus could have joined us,” her
father said. “I’d like for you to get to know her better.”

Maeve shrugged. She had nothing against Gus.
If her father wanted female companionship, she was relieved that
the companion he’d chosen was his own age and apparently sensible.
Maeve had liked Gus when she’d talked to her at the Faulk Street
Tavern a few days ago. The woman seemed solid and
unpretentious.

“It’s just that Friday evenings are really
busy at the bar,” her father explained.

“It’s okay, Dad.”

Another awkward silence. He lowered his fork
and gazed at her. “Maeve. I know this is hard. I wasn’t there for
you when you needed me, and I’m sorry about that. I wish I could go
back and change the past, but I can’t.”

Well, that pretty much covered things.
“Right,” she said. “We can’t change the past.”

“But we can make the future better. At least
we can try.”

“I’m here, okay?” She felt a shiver pass
through her, a combination of rage and anguish and regret. She and
her father couldn’t change the past. What more could either of them
say?

“It was all so fast, Maeve. From her
diagnosis to her death, what was it? Five months? I was so
unprepared. And those months—they were awful. She was suffering so
much. It was like driving off a cliff.”

“I know.” A sob bubbled up in her throat,
but she swallowed it back down.

“And you were just a kid. I was so busy
grieving, I just couldn’t give you what you needed. I don’t blame
you if you can’t forgive me.”

“I forgive you,” she said, although she
wasn’t sure if she was saying that because she meant it or because
she wanted this conversation to be over. “Let’s not dwell on it,
okay?”

They spent the rest of the meal talking
about her plans for her store’s grand opening tomorrow. Even with
all the spices she’d added to the pasta sauce, she barely tasted
her food, and when she finally gave up on eating, most of her food
still sat in her plate.

I survived,
she told herself as she helped her father clear
the dishes. “Do you want to take any of these leftovers home with
you?” he asked, gathering her plate and the serving bowls. She
shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d boiled an entire box of
spaghetti and heated an entire jar of sauce. Not only couldn’t he
cook a damn, but he couldn’t gauge portions.

“You keep it,” she said, moving unerringly
to the cabinet where her mother had stashed all her storage
containers. They were still there, plastic tubs of different sizes,
each with its own snugly fitting lid, probably not used since Maeve
had left home. She pulled out three and dumped the bowl of cooked
pasta, the extra sauce, and the leftover salad into them. “I know
how to cook spaghetti and meatballs if I want them. You clearly
don’t.” She’d meant the comment as a joke, not a criticism. Her
father’s smile assured her he’d taken it the right way.

He rolled up his sleeves to tackle the messy
pots. “I’m going to use the bathroom,” Maeve said, slipping out of
the kitchen and heading for the stairs. There was a powder room on
the first floor, but she didn’t really need to pee. She just wanted
to go upstairs.

She wondered if visiting the second floor
was a wise idea. Viewing her mother’s bedroom would be harder than
seeing the new couch in the living room, and remembering the old
couch. But she felt driven. She had to know if her father had
replaced the bed, and if he’d cleared away her mother’s
belongings—the clothing, the jewelry box, the hairbrush with the
smooth wooden handle, carved to fit a girl’s palm. Maeve used to
love pretending she was a hair stylist and brushing her mother’s
hair, piling it on top of her mother’s head or weaving it into
lopsided braids. Her mother had had such beautiful ash-blond hair,
before it all fell out from the chemo.

She stepped into the bathroom because that
was where she’d told her father she was going, but it seemed
unfamiliar to her, not the room where she’d bathed and brushed her
teeth for eighteen years. She didn’t recognize the towels. The
counter surrounding the sink held only a bottle of liquid hand
soap. The shower curtain was drawn shut across the tub.

She stepped outside and continued down the
hall to the master bedroom. It, too, was unrecognizable. Her father
had changed all the furniture. The graceful white French Provincial
furniture her mother had loved was gone, replaced by boxy modern
pieces in a dark-stained oak: a headboard of straight lines and
right angles, two cube-like night tables, a rectangular dresser and
an armoire that could pass as a coffin for a very fat person.
Standing in the doorway, Maeve felt nothing. This was no longer her
mother’s room.

She was glad. Her mother was gone, and her
bedroom was gone. Changing the décor had been a sane move on her
father’s part.

With a nod, she abandoned the doorway and
found herself facing the closed door to her own bedroom.
Impulsively, she pushed the door open.

He’d changed nothing in here. The starburst
quilt, the books piled on her desk, the stuffed animals nestled
into the child-size rocking chair in the corner. The framed print
of one of Renoir’s ballerina paintings hanging over her bed, which
her mother had hung to inspire Maeve during the few years she’d
taken ballet lessons. The collection of hair ribbons draped over
the closet doorknob, ribbons she’d stopped wearing once her mother
had died and she’d felt safer with her hair falling into her face,
hiding her eyes.

Oh, God. This was her life, here in this
room. The life she’d once loved, the life she’d grown to hate. The
life she’d left after her mother had left her. The life she’d
abandoned after her father had abandoned her.

She jammed her fist to her mouth to keep
from crying out. Spinning away, she stepped back into the hall and
closed the door, slowly and carefully, so it wouldn’t slam. Her
heart was racing, her stomach churning. What little she’d eaten of
her dinner threatened to return on her, but she swallowed it back
down. Once she was sure she wouldn’t scream, vomit, or faint, she
worked her way back down the stairs to the kitchen, where her
father was propping the last of the scrubbed pots on the dish rack
to dry.

“I can’t cook,” he said with a
self-deprecating smile, “but I sure can scour pots.”

Maeve nodded and crossed the room to fetch
her jacket from the chair where she’d left it. She had to say
something. She just hoped her voice would emerge steadily. “I’ve
got to go, Dad. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me.”

“It’s going to go beautifully,” he
predicted, tugging the dish towel free of his belt and wiping his
hands on it. “I know it is. I’ll stop by and spend some money. The
guys on Saturday shift will appreciate it.”

“I’ll see you then.”

He was waiting for
something—a hug, she suspected. She gave him a perfunctory one, and
his arms tightened around her. He was her father, she loved him,
and she
did
forgive him. But forgiveness didn’t magically make the scars
disappear.

“Drive safely,” he said, escorting her down
the hall to the front door.

She stepped onto the porch, forced a smile
for her father, then pivoted and walked to her car in a slow,
controlled gait. The night sky was a heavy black, speckled with
stars and a half-circle of moon. The chill in the air nipped at her
through her jacket. She settled behind the wheel, started the
engine, and glanced toward the house. Her father stood on the
porch, a silhouette in the yellow glow of the porch light. He
waved. She couldn’t see his face, but she was sure he was
smiling.

She backed down the driveway and steered
down the street. Just as when she’d traveled to the house, she
spent the entire drive back to her apartment taking deep, calming
breaths. She parked in the alley, let herself into the apartment,
and gathered Cookie into her arms.

Then she fell apart.

“I’m sorry I don’t still have my jersey,”
Quinn fibbed. He wasn’t sorry at all. “When my folks moved to
Maine, a lot of stuff got thrown out.”

Bill Marshall, Quinn’s former coach and the
current Athletic Director of the high school, sawed away at the
juicy slab of steak on his plate. “Not a problem. We’ve got extra
jerseys. You were number twelve, just like Tom Brady. No way we’d
forget that. We’ll put a new number-twelve jersey into the frame,
and after the ceremony, it’ll be on display by the trophy case.
Folks will wonder how come it’s so clean.” He chuckled at his
joke.

Ashley chuckled, too. Quinn managed a weak
smile.

Ordinarily, dinner at the Ocean Bluff Inn
would be a fine experience. The dining room at the historic inn
overlooking the ocean was lovely—heavy linen tablecloths and
napkins, silver flatware that felt heavy in your hands, elegant
china, crystal stemware, gourmet cuisine. But he really didn’t want
to be at this dinner, which Ashley had organized so the
participants in tomorrow’s extravaganza could nail down the final
details.

Dressed in a neat button-front shirt and
khakis, Quinn picked at the pink prime rib filling his plate. To
his left sat Coach Marshall—who had asked Quinn to call him Bill,
now that Quinn was ten years past his playing days at the school,
but Quinn just didn’t feel right using the coach’s first name. Next
to Coach Marshall sat Chuck Kozlowski, the president of the Booster
Club, which raised money for the school’s sports programs. He was
an overweight, over-the-hill good old boy who’d run the Booster
Club forever and could bore anyone into a coma reliving his own
gridiron glory days at Brogan’s Point High, back in the last
century. Next to Kozlowski sat the new football coach, a
bulldog-shaped, soft-spoken guy named Bart Sanchez. Next to
Sanchez, directly to Quinn’s right, sat Ashley.

She didn’t have to attend at this dinner.
She wasn’t going to be part of the ceremony. But she’d organized
the whole thing, so of course she deserved to be at the table.

The last time Quinn had
seen her, he’d declined her invitation to spend the night at her
place. He’d kissed her cheek goodnight—he couldn’t see a way to
avoid doing that, and a kiss on the cheek didn’t have to mean
anything. But Ashley could impose whatever meaning she wanted on
it, and apparently, the meaning she’d imposed was:
If he kissed me, it means there’s still something
between us
.

As far as Quinn was concerned the only thing
between them was a pile of memories, most of them pleasant, some of
them painful. Ashley was still a beautiful woman. He’d loved being
her boyfriend in high school. He’d loved having the prettiest girl
in the school hanging off his arm, baking him her cheerleader
cookies, hanging out with him, adoring him. He’d loved learning
about sex with her. He’d been a poor kid, the son of a fisherman,
and she’d been the rich daughter of an auto magnate. Laying claim
to her back then had been a victory as big as the wins he’d racked
up as quarterback of the high school team.

But once he’d quit playing
football, he’d learned that her love for him was really just a love
for his talent and stardom. She’d been all about prestige, all
about having a football star hanging off
her
arm, all about hitching her
fortune to someone who would ultimately make her even richer as a
wife than she’d been as the daughter of the owner of Wright Auto
Sales, Incorporated. Once Quinn was no longer a football star,
Ashley hadn’t been able to imagine him doing anything else grand—or
lucrative—enough to be worthy of her. So she’d dumped
him.

Now he was a doctor. Suddenly he was good
enough for her again.

Sorry, but that wasn’t the way love worked
in Quinn’s scheme of things.

He glanced discreetly at his watch. In less
than an hour, he’d be out of here, on his way to pick up Maeve. He
hoped she was enjoying her dinner with her father more than he was
enjoying this fancy meal.

“So after we present you with your plaque
and show the crowd your framed jersey—”

“The stand-in jersey,” Kozlowski reminded
everyone, as if that was important.

“Right,” Coach Marshall confirmed. “After
that, you’ll give your speech—”

“My speech?” Quinn lowered his fork and
scowled. “I have to make a speech?”

“Of course you do,” Ashley said in a sweet,
cooing voice. “I told you the other night at the Faulk Street
Tavern, you’d be expected to make a speech.”

Quinn honestly didn’t recall her saying
that. He’d been distracted by the song pouring out of the juke box,
and then by Maeve Nolan, by the way the song had transfixed her as
much as it had transfixed him. Everything Ashley had said after
“Take the Long Way Home” blasted out of the jukebox had passed
right through him, leaving nothing behind.