The House On Willow Street (28 page)

“Don’t go letting Jack off the hook, now,” insisted Mara’s father. “He was the one who took our beautiful daughter and ruined her.”

“He didn’t exactly ruin me, Dad,” said Mara, getting anxious. “Ruin” sounded like a throwback to the days when evil men had their way with young women and then left them in the lurch. After which no decent man would have anything to do with them.

Maybe it had been a mistake to tell them everything. But how could she have kept it from them?

“I never liked him,” said Stephen from his position on the floor, where he was getting mud out of his football boots.

“You never said a word to me!” said Mara.

“He didn’t like to, I’m sure,” said her father grimly, shooting Stephen a fierce glare.

It appeared that after Jack’s visit to Dublin, the Wilson household had done nothing but speculate as to when Jack would ask Mara to marry him.

“Well, she
is
hot, you can’t deny that, Mara,” said Stephen, head still bent over his boots, oblivious to the dark looks from his parents.

Mara could tell from the tone of his voice that he was visualizing Tawhnee. She’d seen this happen to many other men, many other times. Jack included. Why was it that tall, slim women with enormous breasts had this effect on men? Was the male of the species really so easily distracted with physical things?

“Does she have any sisters . . . ?” asked Stephen.

“Oh God,” muttered Mara crossly. He was only twenty-three, after all. Twenty-three-year-olds did not necessarily think with their brains. They weren’t always loyal, either.

“Sorry, sorry,” said Stephen, recovering. “I wasn’t thinking. Really sorry, Mara.”

“Oh, it’s all right, Stephen,” Mara sighed. “You’re not alone: I don’t think there was a single man in Kearney Property Partners who didn’t lust after her. In the beginning, Cici said I wasn’t being fair because she was so beautiful. Cici reckons beautiful women have it really tough because all other women suspect them of stealing their men.”

“That Cici is a bright girl,” said Elsie firmly. “She knew which she was talking about, that’s for sure, certainly when it came to that bitch.”

The other three members of the family gasped in shock: Elsie Wilson did not swear or utter vulgarities of any kind, so for her to come out with such an expression was highly unusual.

“Ah, Mum,” said Mara, conscious that the pain she felt on her behalf had poor Elsie in a muddle. “There’s no need to be upset. Cici wasn’t defending Tawhnee, she said all that before Jack ran off with her. Plus, he probably wasn’t the man for me anyway.”

“He certainly didn’t deserve you,” declared her father with thinly veiled anger.

“I know,” said Mara soothingly, and she realized that instead of her family consoling her, she was trying to console them. That was the way it had always been in the Wilson family: wound one of them and you wounded them all.

By bedtime that night, Mara decided she needed to get away early next morning or she’d go mad. All evening her father had alternated between treating her with kid gloves and telling her men were like fish in the sea.

“Or buses,” said her father. “Always another one along soon.”

Mara thought of the number 45, which came up their road. It had been notoriously unreliable ever since she could remember. If men were like the number 45, she was in big trouble.

“Dad,” began Mara, desperate to change the subject, “I wanted to ask you something. It’s about Danae . . .”

Seeing the look that passed between her parents, Mara could tell she wasn’t going to get any more from him than she had from her mother.

“Do you have five minutes?” Danae asked Belle on the phone the following morning. “I need to see you.”

“Absolutely,” said Belle, with the confidence of a woman who knew that minions would do her bidding in her absence. “I’ll drop over, will I?”

“No, not here,” said Danae.

“Are you all right?” asked Belle suspiciously.

“I’m fine, but I need to talk to you.”

“You sound rattled,” said Belle, her suspicions growing. “Are you sure something’s not wrong?”

“No,” said Danae.

“Oh, right,” said Belle. “Something
is
wrong, but you’re not going to tell me over the phone. Fine, when can you come over?”

“I was thinking of shutting the post office now,” said Danae.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints!” said Belle in alarm. “It must be something very serious. We’ll go into a corner of the coffee shop—no, better yet, the bar. I’ll have a big pot of green tea ready. No one will disturb us in there.”

“Actually, I think I might have a strong coffee,” said Danae.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Belle said again. “I’ve never seen you drink coffee in your life.”

“Today is one of those days.”

Danae felt nothing like her normal self. She hurriedly shut the post office. It was half ten in the morning, hours away from her normal half-hour lunch break. She didn’t think she’d ever done anything like this in all the years she’d been postmistress; not even that time when she had the terrible flu and had to keep rushing in the back to go to the bathroom. No, nothing stopped her doing her duty. But today, she simply couldn’t cope. Not after the phone call from Morris.

She’d had an inkling of what Mara was up to when she’d casually said, “I’m going to set off for Dublin today, drop in and see Mum and Dad, stay overnight. I feel a bit guilty, you know, ’cos I did come straight to you from Galway, and you know my mam, she worries, she needs to see me.”

“Of course,” Danae had said, thinking this was a great idea and what a lovely girl Mara was, always thinking of others, so kind and generous and always happy.

Plus it would be nice to have a night on her own again.

And then this morning Morris had phoned. Even before he said anything, she’d had the strangest prickling of anxiety that something wasn’t quite right. Morris almost never rang on the private line in the post office.

“Hello, love,” he said.

“Hello, Morris,” she’d replied. “Why do I feel this isn’t just a social call?”

“Oh, well, it’s not,” he said. “Mara’s here, as you know, and she’s been asking questions about you. Nothing horrible—you know she loves you, worships the very ground you walk on, Danae—but she knows there’s something not quite right and she wants me to tell her.”

Danae closed her eyes and leaned against the wall for strength, because otherwise she might have sunk onto the carpet in the back office. “Oh, Morris, I suppose she has to know, but I wish she didn’t, I wish nobody ever had to know.”

“You did nothing wrong,” Morris said. “You did the only thing you could, Danae. Nobody could blame you for that.”

“But they do,” she said quickly, “they do. His brothers. His mother. She blamed me until the day she died. She never forgave me. And his brothers—they hate me, hate the sight of me. And him . . . Oh, Morris, I don’t want Mara to know, I really don’t. And if she has to be told, I should be the one to tell her.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before she set off all the way up here. Now she’s determined to get the information out of myself or Elsie.”

“Did you tell her you were going to ring me?” Danae asked quickly.

“No, I didn’t. I’m not that much of an eejit,” said her brother spiritedly. “It’s your secret, it’s your story to tell.”

“Oh heck,” said Danae. “Let me think about it. Can you put her off for a little while?”

“I’ll do my best,” said Morris.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll ring back.”

And then she’d rung Belle.

Belle greeted her in the front lobby of the Avalon Hotel and Spa, looking resplendent in her normal hotel outfit of crisp black suit, cream silk shirt and a large flower brooch pinned to one lapel. Even this bit of girlish femininity couldn’t detract from the steeliness behind Belle’s smile.

“Come on, into the bar with you,” said Belle, and marched her through.

Coffee arrived, filter coffee, in a beautiful silver pot.

“I didn’t think you’d be wanting a shot of espresso or anything like that,” Belle said. “Certainly given that I’ve never seen you touch a drop of the stuff in all the years I’ve known you.”

“No,” said Danae, “I don’t normally. But I feel so shaken now and this might help.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Belle. “It might give you the jitters. You could be climbing the walls in five minutes with all the extra caffeine in your system . . . but I suppose you know what you’re doing.”

Belle busied herself pouring coffee, leaving Danae to add a drop of milk to hers.

“Right—spill,” said Belle. “I’ve only got fifteen minutes. There’s a couple coming in who want to talk about their wedding in two years’ time. The function manager is off today with a sore throat. I’ll give her a sore throat when I see her! But anyway, we don’t have long. What’s wrong?”

“It’s Mara,” said Danae slowly. “You know I love her, and it’s been wonderful having her around but—”

“But difficult,” interrupted Belle. “Of course it’s been
difficult! Sure, you’ve been living on your own up the side of a hill for donkey’s years. Of course it’s going to be difficult to have another human being there with you. Is that what this is about? Do you think it would be easier if she didn’t live with you? If she went somewhere else in Avalon? I’m sure we could sort something out.”

“No, that’s not it at all,” said Danae. “Granted, it is tricky living with someone when you’ve been living on your own for so long, but Mara’s so easygoing and lovely. She keeps trying to bring me tea in bed, and in the evening she cooks and insists on doing all the washing up. I feel quite spoiled. It’s strange.”

“Course it’s strange,” said Belle, “when no one has looked after you in a very long time. So if it’s not Mara, what’s the problem?”

Despite her anxiety, Danae grinned. No matter what the situation, Belle could be relied upon to get straight to the point. There was no going off on tangents for her.

“She wants to know about Antonio.”

“Oh, right,” said Belle slowly. She looked carefully at her friend’s face. “And how do you feel about that?”

“I don’t want her to know,” said Danae, as if this was perfectly obvious. “I don’t like anybody knowing.”

“I can vouch for that,” Belle said grimly. “How many years did I know you before I managed to drag the truth out of you?”

“It’s so painful, and people are bound to think worse of me. It’s easier if nobody knows.”

“Of course,” said Belle with an edge to her voice, “it’s much easier if your friends haven’t the slightest clue as to what your life has been like and what you’ve suffered and how difficult it is to live with it every single day of your life. Oh sure, much better if nobody knows. I agree with you
there. In fact, I would say there are psychologists as we speak saying, ‘
Oh yes, vitally important and painful things in people’s lives should remain buried forever, then we’d all be much better off.
’”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Belle, don’t go off on one,” said Danae. She added a teeny bit of sugar to her coffee and took another sip.

She’d forgotten how nice coffee tasted. The richness on her tongue. Antonio, being typically Italian or half-Italian and half-Irish, had loved his coffee. They’d been drinking espressos and Americanos long before the rest of the country got around to finding them fashionable.

“The thing is,” Danae said, choosing to ignore her friend’s mild sarcasm, “Mara has now hightailed it off to Dublin to get the truth out of her father, and I don’t want him to tell her. Before I came to see you, Morris rang me to say that Mara wanted to know what had happened. It’s all my fault, I should never have let her come to stay here, I should never have suggested it.”

“I’ll tell you what you should do,” said Belle firmly. She reached out and took one of Danae’s slim hands in hers. Belle’s hands were big and strong and there was a pearl ring on one of them, her engagement ring and a wedding ring from her last husband. Her first marriage had been a disaster—hence her slightly cynical views on young love and early marriage. But she’d loved Harold, her second husband, dearly, even though rumor had it in the town that he’d died under mysterious circumstances—a rumor that enraged Belle every time she heard it. “Cancer’s very mysterious all right,” she used to say grimly. Anyone who mentioned the rumor in her hearing never repeated it again; Belle made sure of that. She held on to Danae’s hand tightly.

Danae’s hands were long and slender and her jewelry was
of a totally different type. On one hand, she had a strange silver ring with a beautiful turquoise stone in the middle of it. Her nails were never painted, merely filed short. She had sensible, workmanlike hands, and they were cold. Bad circulation, some might have said. Belle preferred the old adage of “cold hands, warm heart,” because she knew her friend had one of the warmest hearts ever. And yet it had been frozen for so many years because of the past.

“What I want you to do is ring Morris, get him to put Mara on the phone, then say that when she comes back, you’ll tell her the whole thing.”

“I can’t,” protested Danae.

“Yes, you can. It’s about time you shared the load. I knew it would be good to have Mara living with you. I knew she’d not rest till she found out.”