One Year (4 page)

E
very other Friday, without fail, Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon had afternoon tea with her friends Katie Keefe and Bonnie Eckman. The women lived three houses down from the Fitzgibbons on Honeysuckle Lane in a small and very charming house built in the late nineteenth century. If possible, Katie and Bonnie were even more meticulous housekeepers than Mary Bernadette; it was one of the things she liked most about them.

Katie and Bonnie had lived together for forty years, and though it was perfectly plain to those who wanted to see that they were more than “just friends,” Mary Bernadette was not one of those people. Paddy, who fondly referred to Katie and Bonnie as “The Ladies,” found this willful ignorance more amusing than frustrating, and had given up trying to bring his wife around to a more contemporary way of thinking.

Katie Keefe was seventy-one and recently retired from her job as accountant for several small businesses in Oliver's Well. She was a tiny woman, and standing or even sitting next to Mary Bernadette, who had often been described as statuesque, she appeared in danger of being physically overwhelmed. Her hair had been snowy white since she turned forty, and she wore it in a perfectly cut bob. Mary Bernadette happened to know that she paid the unheard-of sum of sixty dollars to a stylist in Lawrenceville for her haircuts.

Bonnie Eckman was seventy-three. She was not much taller than her partner (she would say, her better half) but three times again as round. If you were going to set yourself up as a cook, she was fond of saying, you had better know how to eat. For more than twenty years she had been a personal chef in D.C. and then, when the demands of that job had become too arduous and downright annoying (“Cooking isn't the problem, fussy clients are”), she and Katie had moved to Oliver's Well, where Bonnie had opened a small catering business. Though she had shut down the business several years earlier, she still occasionally provided the food for a friend's party. Mary Bernadette had a particular fondness for Bonnie's raspberry scones and was pleased to find a platter of them set out on the table, along with a large square of real butter. Mary Bernadette had no tolerance for phony butter—“congealed yellow oil,” she called it—and neither did Bonnie. Mary Bernadette felt sure it was one of the many reasons that Bonnie's career had been such a success.

“Did you hear that Bill Harrison has filed for divorce from his wife?” Mary Bernadette asked when the three women were settled at a small, round table in a cozily decorated alcove of the living room.

Katie put a hand to her heart. “No, I most certainly did not. And three small children!”

“How did you hear about it, Mary Bernadette?” Bonnie asked.

“Tara herself told me,” she admitted. “Seems he informed her over dinner one night that he had fallen out of love with her.”

“What an idiot!” Bonnie exclaimed.

“Bonnie,” Katie scolded.

Mary Bernadette agreed with Bonnie's assessment of Bill Harrison, but she declined to comment. She was often if not always the first to know the local gossip. For some reason people seemed to want to confide in her, either about their own travails or about the travails of others. Mary Bernadette was very careful never to abuse this privilege—she
did
consider it a privilege—and chose her own audience carefully. Unless, of course, someone had sworn her to secrecy. To hold and keep safe someone's secret was even more of a privilege and a duty, and Mary Bernadette took her duties very seriously.

“It's fine weather we've been having, isn't it?” Katie noted now, reaching for what Mary Bernadette noticed was her second scone. Where she put all the food she ate was anybody's guess. Mary Bernadette herself had always kept a strict watch over her own diet. Gluttony was one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

“The best we can expect for winter in our little part of the world, yes,” Mary Bernadette noted. “My garden is flourishing.”

“Speaking of gardens,” Katie said, “and I don't mean to be telling tales—I loathe gossip unless it serves some good purpose. Of course, there's always the case when . . .”

Mary Bernadette tuned out Katie's ramblings and wondered what good purpose her sharing the news of the Harrisons' divorce had served. Well, she decided, it would have been terribly awkward had Katie and Bonnie
not
known and had run into Tara Harrison in town and had asked an innocent question on the order of, “And how is your lovely husband, Bill?” In fact, by telling, Mary Bernadette had saved her friends a moment of potential social embarrassment.

“Just tell her what you heard, Katie,” Bonnie instructed. “There's no need for a lengthy introduction.”

“Well, all right. It's just that I was at the garden center in Waterville the other day, you know the one, and I ran into Eve Hennessy. Now, she knows you and I are friends, so I don't know what possessed her to say what she did—”

“Don't you?” Bonnie interrupted. “Human nature, Katie. Lousy human nature.”

Katie frowned at her partner. “Anyway,” she went on, “she mentioned how your garden and all of your landscaping is always so perfect and how it is unfair of you to enter the annual garden contest, what with your husband being a professional landscaper. She
implied
that he helped you win last year. I have to tell you, I was shocked, just shocked.”

Mary Bernadette stiffened. “You know, of course, that Fitzgibbon Landscaping has consistently refused to be one of the sponsors of the contest because of my participation. It would be a conflict of interest, not to mention a breach of ethics. And I would never avail myself of Paddy's store of gardening supplies. I insist on purchasing my own supplies from my personal household budget.”

“I know!” Katie shook her head. “You would
never
do anything unethical. Anybody who knows you knows that. That's what was so horrible about Eve's accusation!”

Bonnie grunted. “There will always be the sort of people who resent another's happiness and success. I think they're called ‘haters' these days. Supposedly they're all over the Internet. Vile thing. My advice would be to ignore anything negative you hear, especially when it's about yourself.”

“Oh,” Mary Bernadette said, “I assure you I will ignore it! As my mother used to say, God rest her soul, an evil tongue is of the Devil; the merciful word is of God.”

Bonnie nodded. “Amen. Now, let's change the subject.”

“Will Pat and Megan be coming home for his birthday?” Katie asked. “It's the twenty-fifth, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is, and no,” Mary Bernadette said. “They've decided to stay in Annapolis. I'm told the twins are baking a cake.”

“I hate birthday parties, myself,” Bonnie said. “Probably from having catered so many of them.”

Mary Bernadette nodded. “Familiarity often breeds contempt.”

“Now, that's a harsh sentiment,” Katie said with a frown. “I'd prefer to think that familiarity breeds, well, fondness.”

Bonnie grinned. “She's the Pollyanna of the family.”

“I don't suppose,” Mary Bernadette said, “that I might bring home a scone for Paddy? Only, of course, if it's not too much trouble.”

Katie leaped from her chair. “Of course it's no trouble,” she said, hurrying off to the kitchen for a piece of plastic wrap. “Anything for you, Mary Bernadette. Anything!”

T
he board's vote had been unanimous, as Mary Bernadette had believed that it would be. Fitzgibbon Landscaping had been awarded the contract to restore the extensive grounds of the Joseph J. Stoker House. Five companies had competed for the job, one of them a very prestigious firm from D.C., and another a much talked about startup out of Lawrenceville, but in the end Oliver's Well's own Fitzgibbon Landscaping had proved once more to be the right company for the job.

Mary Bernadette took the kettle of steaming water to the kitchen table and poured the contents into her favorite teapot. If she weren't such a modest woman, she might be tempted to feel a bit smug about the success of her family's business. But everything they had achieved had been the result of hard work and the grace of God, and there was no good in being smug about either.

Just then, PJ burst into the kitchen through the back door. His hair looked windblown as if he had been caught in a sudden gust, and he was breathing heavily as if he had run to his grandparents' house all the way from the office.

“We got it!” he cried.

Though she was as excited as her grandson, Mary Bernadette smiled serenely. “Yes,” she said. “I know. And fix your hair.”

PJ pushed his hair back from his face. “Oh,” he said. “Of course you know! Anyway, Leonard DeWitt called me at the office about an hour ago.”

“The vote was unanimous.”

“Really?” PJ laughed. “I have to admit that when it came down to just us and that Blue Sound Landscaping Design, I panicked. Talk about bells and whistles! Remember that video walk-through simulation and that whole presentation about some kind of computer project management software they use to make sure it's all on time and on budget? When Richard asked me how I keep a project on schedule and on budget, all I could say was that I commit to a schedule and a budget and I just make sure it happens ! I was sure we were doomed.”

“Well, I was never in doubt. There's no need for fuss when you've got quality, is what I've always said. I'm proud of you, PJ.”

“Thanks, Grandmother. I'm going home. I can't wait to tell Alexis the good news.”

“But the two of you will come back for dinner,” Mary Bernadette said. “We'll celebrate.”

“Sure. Around six?”

“Five-thirty would be better, but six if you must. And don't be late.”

PJ grinned and hurried out through the back door. With pride, Mary Bernadette watched him go. There was no doubt in her mind that the Fitzgibbon family was blessed. The business her husband had worked so hard to establish was flourishing under the leadership of her grandson. Paddy and Mary Bernadette held positions of preeminence in Oliver's Well. The Oliver's Well Historical Association was continuing to excel under her own guidance. And of course, her son and his wife were successful in their own way. No matter that Pat had ungratefully turned his back on his father's legacy.

Mary Bernadette made the sign of the cross and offered up a prayer of thanksgiving.
Thank you, dear Lord, for the gifts you have bestowed upon us. May the Fitzgibbon family continue to be worthy of your favor
.
Amen
.

A
lexis was preparing a marinade for a Chinese beef dish. On the counter before her was a bottle of soy sauce, a small bowl of chopped garlic, a bottle of hoisin sauce, a jar of black bean paste, a bottle of sherry, a shaker of sugar, and a tin of five-spice powder.
If Mary Bernadette walked in right now and saw what I was making
, Alexis thought,
she would keel right over
. A “foodie” she was not.

Alexis and PJ had been living in the cottage behind Mary Bernadette's house for almost a year. It was a single-story structure with a crawl space in lieu of a proper attic, a kitchen that flowed into a living room, a small full bathroom, and a bedroom. There was a flower garden out front, and behind the cottage stretched two acres of land, at the edge of which stood three massive American beech trees. Alexis would have been glad to help with the maintenance of the property, but she wasn't much of a gardener. Well, she wasn't a gardener at
all
; she had even managed to kill innocent houseplants left in her care. For obvious reasons, she kept this bit of information from the clients of Fitzgibbon Landscaping.

There wasn't much she could productively do on the inside of the cottage, either, other than to keep it clean and bring her own small touches to a décor that Mary Bernadette had chosen long ago. But it wasn't as if they would be living in the cottage forever. Someday in the not too distant future she and PJ would buy a home of their own and then they could decorate as they pleased.

Alexis put the piece of flank steak into the marinade and the dish into the fridge. She got the rice cooker out from its cupboard. The kitchen was small but well stocked with appliances Alexis had received at her wedding shower and the flatware, dishes, and glassware Mary Bernadette had so generously provided. On the whole Alexis felt lucky to be living there. Really, the only thing that bothered her was the relative lack of privacy. She frequently came home from work to find things rearranged. It could only be Mary Bernadette, of course, and the image of her husband's imposing grandmother sneaking into the cottage to shuffle trinkets from one shelf to the next amused her. What could possibly be the point in such tiny, meaningless manipulations?

Only recently had Alexis begun to feel a hint of annoyance when she came home to find a vase moved from one end of a table to the other or the tablespoons stacked in the slot that had formerly held the teaspoons. Still, she had only become seriously upset when one afternoon the week before she walked in to the bedroom to find PJ's Christmas gift to her gone from the wall over her dresser. It had taken her almost ten minutes of frantic searching to find it tucked away in the bottom drawer of the small desk that sat in a corner of the living room.

The object that Mary Bernadette had found offensive was a black-and-white photo of a nude woman, the work of a critically acclaimed contemporary photographer named Adrienne Jonas. Alexis loved the photograph. She knew that the piece must have cost PJ an awful lot of money. It was a thoughtful gift, and it meant so much to her. The fact that Mary Bernadette had ventured into the bedroom of a husband and wife—a sacrosanct place, if you considered marriage holy, which as a Catholic Mary Bernadette was supposed to do!—and had in effect hidden a personal item of great sentimental value was just too much.

Still, after some reflection Alexis had decided not to mention the incident to PJ. If found out, Mary Bernadette might be embarrassed—though how she could think she
wouldn't
be found out was beyond Alexis's comprehension—and Alexis had no desire to cause trouble for any member of her new family. If she found the picture gone a second time, then she would tell PJ. Maybe.

Alexis looked at her watch. PJ would be home soon. She so looked forward to seeing him at the end of the workday, even though most days he was able to dash into the office for a quick hello.
I am lucky in more ways than one
, Alexis thought, smiling to herself.
I just hope I continue to deserve the happiness
.