Just Like Heaven (27 page)

“I will,” he said. Every hour, every minute, every second.

“I’m forty-one and I have to ask my mommy to drive me around,” Kate grumbled. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

“Have you heard me complain?” Maeve asked as they zipped along Route 1 toward Professor Armitage’s office.

“No, I haven’t,” Kate said, “and quite frankly I don’t know how you’re doing it. If I were in your position, I’d be bitching up a storm. You’ve been a total saint.”

“My tape recorder is in the glove box,” Maeve said. “I want this captured for posterity.”

“I don’t know what I would have done without you,” Kate said. “I—”

“Oh, stop that boo-hooing,” Maeve teased. “Servitude is a mother’s natural state of being.”

“Now I wish
I
had a tape recorder.”

Maeve flipped on her turn signal and moved into the slow lane. “I wouldn’t have wished that heart attack on you for the world, honey, but these past few weeks have been very special for me.”

Kate reached over and patted her mother’s hand. “For me too.”

“I feel like I’ve been there with you through some very important transitional moments.”

“English, please. I don’t speak self-help.”

“Gwynnie’s engagement.”

She groaned. “I’m trying not to dwell on that.”

“You’ve softened. Don’t tell me you haven’t. I saw you at the dinner party. You can’t fool me.”

“Just don’t spread it around. I have a reputation to uphold.”

“I think they’re truly in love,” Maeve said, “but it’s not going to be an easy road.”

“Right now poverty seems romantic,” Kate said, “but sooner or later the novelty is going to wear off and she’ll be thinking about all the things she gave up for love.”

“I don’t think Gwynn’s like that.”

“I don’t mean La Perla bras, Mom. I’m talking about her education.”

“There’s nothing you can do about that,” Maeve said. “She’s chosen a different path.”

“Were you this copacetic when I told you I was pregnant and trading my prom dress for a wedding gown?”

“I took Valium and cried on Grandma Natalie’s shoulder until a month after Gwynnie’s christening.”

“I didn’t know that. I thought you just rolled with it the way you seemed to roll with everything else.”

“You were seventeen, honey. I was invisible to you. It’s nature’s way of making separation easier on all of us.”

She could have argued the point with her mother. She had more than forty years of ammunition waiting to be fired at her number one target, but what was the point? Twenty years from now it would be Gwynnie’s turn to take aim and Kate would be the target. Maybe the truth was you did the best you could, did it with a full heart, and left the rest in the hands of fate or God.

William Rogers “Billy” Owens was twenty-nine years old, eight years married, three times a father. His wife, Marianne, had a Ph.D. in Theology and had been considering seminary herself before the first of their little girls made her appearance and she fell in love with motherhood. Billy was smart, kind, dedicated, and currently searching for a congregation to call his own.

“He’s officiating at the funeral,” Maggy said. “Father Winstead is still on the mend after his cancer surgery. I would have told you but—”

“You have enough on your mind,” Mark said. “He seems like a good man.”

“He is,” Maggy agreed. “He and Dad became friendly when Father Billy took over for Father Winstead last summer after his first surgery.”

The eulogy, written on the plane, was warmly received by the hundreds of people crowded into the church to say good-bye to Henry. But there was no denying the fact that the crowd belonged to Father Billy Owens. Billy was one of them. His kids played with their kids. His wife taught Sunday school and baked cakes for the PTA. His enthusiasm was infectious.

Mark was looking at Suzanne and himself if God had dealt them a different hand.

And it hurt.

He went back to Maggy’s mother’s house after the burial and offered what words of solace and comfort he could find to the family and friends gathered there, but he wasn’t fully present and he knew it.

What was worse, he was fairly certain they knew it too.

He was trying to find a polite way to extricate himself when he turned and saw Suzanne’s mother, Catherine, walking slowly up the driveway on the arm of a woman he assumed was a health care aide.

His first thought as he stepped out the front door to meet her was that she had aged. Losing her daughter and her husband in quick succession had taken its toll on her beautiful face. The lines were etched deeper. Her eyes no longer dazzled with life and joy. Instinctively he knew he was looking at a woman who had given up on life and was ready to say good-bye.

Their eyes met and for a moment the sorrow on her face dropped away, replaced by the kind of love and warmth that fed the soul.

“Mark.” Her voice was older too, less resonant, but the sound was pure music.

He was next to her in an instant, embracing her gently, carefully, aware of the fragile bones, the once-indomitable spirit there now only in memory.

She didn’t cry, but he came very close.

They found a quiet place to talk on the side porch and he waited while the aide, a lovely woman named Joyce, helped Catherine settle in.

“I saw you in church,” Catherine said as Joyce drifted inside to fetch some lemonade. “I was hoping you would be here.”

“I thought you were in Florida,” he said. “If I’d known you were in town I would have—”

She waved her hand in a gesture reminiscent of Charlotte Petruzzo. “I leave for the airport in the morning.” She glanced around and closed her eyes briefly. “Such a mistake.”

“Moving to Florida?”

Her eyes opened. “You.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You shouldn’t have come back.”

Her intensity surprised him. The Catherine he knew was a mellow, easygoing woman much as her daughter had been. “Henry was my friend,” he said carefully. “It was my privilege to deliver the eulogy.”

Again the wave of the hand in dismissal. “Of course you should deliver the eulogy. That isn’t what I’m talking about.”

Was Catherine heading down the dark road of dementia? He regrouped. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I don’t understand.”

Her exasperated expression would have been comical under different circumstances. “Your time here is over, Mark. It has been over for a very long time, same as mine. You’ve made a new life for yourself in New Jersey. I know you feel a debt of gratitude toward your friends here, but life is painfully short. Don’t waste a second of it moving backward.”

“They have a need; I’m grateful for the chance to fill that need.” He found himself struggling with an unexpected flare of temper. “It’s one year, Catherine. I can give them that much.”

“One year becomes five becomes ten and you’re still in the same place you were at the beginning except you’re alone.”

“This is my hometown. This is where I grew up. Would it be so bad if it’s where I end up?”

Catherine reached over and took his hand in hers. “Our girl is gone, Mark, and she isn’t coming back. If you think you’re going to find her here amid the memories, you are terribly wrong.”

Joyce emerged from the house with lemonade, and he made a show of looking at his watch.

“I’m taking the seven-twenty out of Manchester to Boston,” he said. “I’d better get moving.”

“Remember what I said,” Catherine murmured as he kissed her cheek. “I wasn’t a meddling mother-in-law when Suzy was with us, but allow me the right to speak my mind now.”

He made his good-byes, eager to get back into his rented car for the trip home.

Wherever the hell home was these days.

“Say that again.” Mark polished off the last of the western omelet Kate had made for him. “I don’t think I heard right.”

“Oh, yes you did. Maeve and Professor Armitage are going out on a date tomorrow night.”

“This is the same Armitage you were going to see the day you had your heart attack.”

“The very same.”

“Nasty little guy with beady eyes and a scruffy beard.”

“Nasty little guy who turned into Julio Iglesias the minute he shook my mother’s hand.”

“Your mother does have something,” Mark said, spreading orange marmalade on a perfectly toasted English muffin. “I can understand why he’d be smitten.”

“Smitten!” Kate clapped the heel of her hand to her forehead. “That’s the word I’ve been searching for. That mean-tempered old fool is smitten with my mother.”

“What about the box of letters? Did he stop flirting long enough to take a look?”

She told him about Armitage’s underwhelmed response to her find. “Basically the jury’s out. He’s going to run them over to the U of P next week and have a confab with some other foul-tempered historians and see what they come up with. I’m preparing myself for disappointment.”

“Did you pay a lot for them?”

She shook her head. “That’s why I go on buying trips to the U.K. twice a year. One dealer’s junk is another dealer’s treasure.” She poured herself a cup of herbal tea. “You’re going to laugh, but I actually thought those letters were going to be my ticket to early retirement.”

“You’d retire at forty-one?”

“Probably not, but wouldn’t it be nice to have that option?”

They talked a bit about their plans for the next few weeks, about small towns, about family and friends and the connections that strengthen with time and proximity and those that don’t, but as they talked she had the distinct feeling that something had changed.

“Are you okay?” she asked as they curled up together on the sofa. “You haven’t said anything about your trip.”

“The entire town came out for Henry’s funeral. He would have been happy to see how many people loved him.”

“And your eulogy?”

A second’s pause. “It was well received.”

She cast around for the right thing to say. “I’m sure it must have been difficult to say good-bye.”

“Why waste time talking,” he said, “when we could be kissing.”

She couldn’t argue with that even if she wanted to. He was a man and when men didn’t want to talk, they didn’t talk. His kisses were spectacular, sweet and hot and addictive. But kisses, even great ones, weren’t enough to erase the feeling that, like it or not, reality was waiting for them right around the corner.

Twenty-one

“Wait, Mom!” Kate flew out the front door and across the lawn toward the driveway. “You forgot your keyboard.”

Maeve hit the brakes near the mailbox and rolled down her window. “Thanks, honey! I’d be lost without that.”

Kate slipped the device through the open window and took the opportunity to hug her mother one more time.

“I’m going to miss you.”

“So you’ve said six times in the last hour!” Maeve gave her a return hug. “I’m only three towns away. I think we’ll be seeing each other.”