Lilac Avenue (9 page)

“Sarah’s not going to be pleased about that,” Scott said.

“That’s not your fault,” Claire said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Scott said. “Sarah will think it is.”

“Do you need me to stick around?”

“No,” Scott said. “You’ll be home, right?”

“Yeah, until eight, when you and I are supposed to be at the Thorn for the pub quiz,” Claire said.

Before she left, Claire looked around the room again, still avoiding looking directly at Mamie. There was something else that was different about the room, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Claire’s mother, Delia, played with the kitten while Claire put clean kitty litter in a plastic pan and placed it in the mud room that led to the back door.

“Chester’s not going to be happy about this,” Delia said.

Chester was the huge, mean, black-and-white cat that belonged to Claire’s father.

“I’m not happy about this,” Claire said.

“I wonder what Mackie Pea will think.”

Mackie Pea was ostensibly Claire’s
Boston terrier, although she had attached herself to Claire’s father and went everywhere he went.

“Mackie Pea’s afraid of cats,” Claire said. “She’ll just avoid it.”

“Does this cat have a name yet?”

“No,” Claire said. “I don’t want to get attached to it if I’m not keeping it.”

“Kittens are so cute,” Delia said.

The kitten batted at Delia’s shoelace, attacked her shoe, hopped sideways, rolled backward, righted itself, gingerly washed a paw, and then shot down the hallway.

“It’s false advertising,” Claire said. “They look like that for five minutes and then it’s twenty years of dead birds and decapitated squirrels on the back porch.”

“Those are gifts,” Delia said. “It’s what cats are supposed to do.”

“All those pretty birds,” Claire said.

“You eat chicken,” Delia said. “Chickens can be pretty.”

“I think I had some bad chicken today,” Claire said. “Or I’m getting the flu.”

“I hope it’s not what I had the week after you got home,” Delia said. “That was miserable.”

“I’m supposed to play pub quiz tonight at the Thorn,” Claire said. “Can you kitten-sit?”

“I’ll be glad to,” Delia said. “Shouldn’t you stay home and rest if you’re not feeling well?”

“I have to be there,” Claire said. “We’re in the finals. It’s me, Ed, and Hannah against Maggie, Scott, and Sam. Hannah’s lots of fun, but she can only correctly answer the pop music and classic rock questions. Ed knows history, literature, and current events, and I know pop culture. Together we make an awesome team.”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Ed,” Delia said.

“We’re just friends, Mom,” Claire said. ‘That’s all.”

“Mm hmm,” Delia said.

“Really,” Claire said. “Don’t get any ideas.”

“Mm hmm,” Delia said. “Whatever you say.”

At the Rose and Thorn, not much of a crowd was gathered. It was a long, narrow, high-ceilinged room with cracked leather booths on the left, a mammoth antique carved wooden bar to the right, and a few small tables down the middle aisle and at the front. It smelled like Murphy’s Oil Soap and a hundred years of spilt beer and cigarette smoke.

At the tables toward the front sat a few sunburned tourists, looking nervously out of place but amazed and glad to have found good beer on tap in what they considered
to be a godforsaken part of Appalachia. With Eldridge College students on summer break, and what was left of the college crowd and a sprinkling of summer tourists preferring to drink micro-brews at the Pine Mountain Café, barely half the seats in the place were filled.

There were six locals propped up at the bar, drinking beer and propagating local and national political conspiracy theories. In one of the booths to the left, Claire’s cousin Hannah and
Hannah’s husband, Sam, were playing cards with her cousin Maggie and Ed. Maggie’s brother Patrick was tending bar.

Sam glanced up and
met her eyes as she walked in.

“Claire Bear,” her cousin Patrick called out from behind the bar. “Are you ready to rumble?”

“Claire, Claire,” Hannah said, but Claire ignored her.

“Hello Maggie, Ed, Sam,” Claire said as she walked past her friends to greet her father, Ian. He was sitting in the last booth, shelling peanuts and watching a golf game on a big flat screen television attached to the back wall. Mackie Pea was curled up in the crook of his arm.

“Hi Dad,” Claire said.

“I’m not ready to go home,” he said, and glared at her.

Claire was so stung by his hateful tone and fierce scowl that she was speechless for a moment. The little dog Mackie Pea looked at Claire, looked at Ian, and then nosed Ian’s hand, begging for a peanut.

“You don’t have to go yet,” Claire said. “I just wanted to say hello.”

She was embarrassed at his behavior, and looked around to see if anyone had heard. No one seemed to be paying any attention. Meanwhile, Ian had already turned back to his golf game and his peanuts.

“Always making me go here and go there,” he grumbled. “I just want to be left alone.”

Claire turned to the persons seated in the booth behind him and Hannah put her hands up.

“Don’t shoot!” she said. “That kitten looked just like you; what was I supposed to do?”

Claire pointedly ignored her and addressed Maggie.

“Where’s Scott?”

“Still up at Mamie’s house with the pointy claw of the law.”

“Constable Catlitter,” Hannah said. “The defective detective.”

“Why aren’t you up there?’ Claire asked Ed. “Isn’t this breaking news?”

“Mean old lady dies of something old-age-related,” Ed said. “That’s an obituary, not above-the-fold material.”

“How are we going to play without Scott?” Claire asked.

“Sean’s coming,” Maggie said.

“Oh no,” Claire said.

“I know,” Ed said. “We’re doomed.”

Sean was Maggie and Patrick’s attorney brother, who had recently moved back to Rose Hill.

Sam and Maggie high-fived each other from across the table.

“Patrick, are you going to allow this?” Claire asked.

“Don’t worry,” Patrick said with a wink. “I’ll level the playing field with a judicious selection of questions.”

“You should recuse yourself,” Ed said. “You have two siblings on one team.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Patrick said. “This is business.”

A couple of the old coots at the counter laughed, and Claire realized what he meant.

“How many of you are betting on this game?” she asked.

Every one of them raised a hand.

“Great,” she said. “No conflict of interest there.”

They were down to the final round. Team “Tupelo Honey,” consisting of Hannah, Claire, and Ed, were behind by two points. The members of Team “Dude Abides,” Maggie, Sam, and Sean, were already celebrating their impending victory.

“Team Honey,” Patrick said. “This is the last question of the game. Your category is Scottish History, worth four points.”

Hannah groaned.

“Unless the answer is Annie
Lennox or Del Amitri,” she said, “I’m out.”

“Here is your question,” Patrick said. “To what Scottish Saint does this poem refer:

“Here is the bird that never flew

Here is the tree that never grew

Here is the bell that never rang

Here is the fish that never swam.”

Claire looked at Ed, who grimaced.

“I have no clue,” he whispered.

Claire knew some Scottish Saint names, having been brought up by a Scottish mother and Irish uncles who loved Celtic history, but she had never heard this poem. With a sigh, she realized she did know someone who would have the answer.

“I’d like to text a friend,” she said, and ignored the niggling feeling of being about to do something she would later regret.

“I’ll witness,” Sean said, and came over to Claire’s table to watch, to make sure she wasn’t secretly querying the Internet.

She texted, “Help! Pub quiz final. Saint/poem: fish that never swam.”

She held her breath as she pictured her words flying over the Atlantic Ocean.

“You only get sixty seconds,” Patrick said.

“Claire Rebecca Fitzpatrick,” Maggie said. “Did you just do what I think you did?”

“Shut up,” Claire said. “All’s fair.”

Her phone tweedled and she read his response.

“Mungo!” she shouted. “Also known as Saint Kentigern.”

“You are correct!” Patrick said.

Ed and Hannah leapt to their feet, cheered, and traded high-fives with Claire.

The opposing team groaned, money exchanged hands among the locals seated at the bar, and Patrick looked satisfied with his cut.

“Congratulations, Team Honey,” he said. “Your next round is on the house.”

“I’d form a protest but I don’t think anyone would listen,” Maggie said.

“Better to be a gracious loser,” Sean said.

“Time for bed,” Sam told Hannah.

As they left, Sam glanced at Claire with an expression of concern that she pretended not to notice or understand.

“A Scottish friend?” Ed asked.

“Something like that,” Claire said, not looking him in the eye.

“That’s kind of hard to compete with,” Ed said, as he handed her a tall, heavy glass of beer.

Claire took a sip and grimaced.

“This is off,” she said.

Ed sipped his and shook his head.

“Tastes fine to me.”

“I must be coming down with something,” she said. “I think I’ll head home.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Ed said.

“No, stay here and finish our free round,” Claire said. “It’s the only prize we win and someone should enjoy it.”

As soon as Claire got outside, her phone rang.

“Did my heart fly at your service?” he asked.

“I don’t know which play that’s from but I can guess the bard.”

“How in the world are you, hen?”

His voice had gone low and husky. It rang Claire’s body like a bell.

“I’m just fine,” she said. “Where are you?”

“The City of Angels,” he said. “We’re looping.”

Claire was taken aback. She was always thinking of him as being in the UK. They had met on a film set in Scotland, where Carlyle, a respected dramatic actor and drama professor, was Sloan’s dialogue coach as she played Mary, Queen of Scotts. Carlyle, Claire, and Sloan’s personal assistant Tuppy had made up a formidable pub quiz team in the local hostelry.

Huddled for warmth under an umbrella on a rainy, cold hillside, or giggling together while listening to loud traditional Celtic music in a dark pub, Claire had fallen under the romantic spell of Carlyle’s Scottish accent and charming, funny personality. He was not what anyone would call handsome, with his funny facial features and thin, lanky body, but he was the most tender, skilled lover Claire had ever known. He was as apt to leave her breathless from laughter as from passion. It had been a delicious secret for the duration of the shoot. Then Sloan found out and decided she wanted him all to herself.

“How do you like L.A.?” she asked, having been jerked back from the intimacy of his greeting, which reminded her of their past, to the present reality, where he was Sloan’s fiancé.

“I know I have no right to complain,” he said. “I got myself into this mess, as we both know.”

“Not going well, huh?” she asked. “Sloan always did hate going back to work on something she feels done with.”

“She’s driving everyone stark raving mad,” he said. “Shows up late, complains about everything, nothing can be done to please her, leaves in a huff. You know how it is.”

“Mm hmm,” Claire said. “I do indeed.”

“I’ve had my teeth capped, Claire,” he said, laughing. “Can you imagine?”

“Have you been fitted for lift shoes, yet?” Claire asked.

“They’re amazing, really,” he said. “I’m three inches taller but you’d never know how. It feels like I’m walking on my tippy toes, like a ballet dancer. It took some time to get used to. I don’t know how you ladies do it.”

“She’s got to get you ready for the red carpet,” Claire said. “It will be here sooner than you know.”

“We’re premiering at the BFI Film Festival in London,” he said. “We’re already hearing good things.”

“That’s very exciting,” Claire said. “I hope you enjoy it.”

“I just go where I’m told and do what I’m told.”

“Best way to deal with her,” Claire said. “Submit and obey.”

“I think of you, you know,” he said. “In despair, really. Although I’ve no one to blame but myself. How you must hate me.”