Saint and Scholar (23 page)

She shook her head. “What do you mean?”

“Crotchety as hell. He’s usually a pretty easygoing guy, right? I’ll be happy when he gets back to it. He’ll yell at me less about me house.” He scratched his graying head and smiled wanly. “Hey, you want some tea? ’Bout time for lunch.”

She hooked her arm through the crook of his when he offered and let him help her up the small hill toward the fence. “I can’t drink tea right now. It tastes metallic and gives me reflux. I’d rather not spend the next hour with my head over a toilet.”

Allen froze and turned his head slowly to the right to look down at her. “Grant know?”

“No.”

“That why you’re here?”

“
One
reason.”

“You gonna run off?”

She shrugged. “Probably not.”

Allen nodded and they started walking again.

“I haven’t heard from him in a while, though. I think he might have given up on me.”

“Nonsense. He’s not even here. He got a house, you know.”

“Oh. I didn’t know it was a done deal.”

“Yeah. We’ve been working on it. He’s been switching his phone number and stuff over and doesn’t have Internet at home, so he’s been hard to track down. Actually, right now he’s in London at a conference on behalf of the university. He’s supposed to be back next Monday.”

“An entire week from now. I guess I should have called.”

“In a hurry to be somewhere?”

“No, I just…I left a lot of loose ends back in the States. I left in something of a hurry.”

“Running short on courage?” Allen asked as he wrapped his large calloused left hand around her right.

“Yes.”

“Happens to the best of us.”

* * * *

“Hey, watch your step coming in. The place is usually a bit hazardous,” Grant said to Curt as he pushed open the door to his father’s house. “What the–” He stood there with his hand on the door, unable to make sense of what his eyes were telling his brain.

“Dad?” He picked up a broom that had slipped down from the wall and propped it into the empty corner. There actually
was
an empty corner. In the ten or so days he’d been gone, Dad had tidied up a bit. All the obvious trash, such as the dog food bags, had been tossed. The rest of the items in the room seemed to be in the process of being sorted and packed into storage totes. A thick, savory smell wafted from the kitchen. That had surely not been of Dad’s doing. Dad didn’t cook any more than Grant did. Upon investigating the smell, he found tomato sauce cooling in a pot on the stove and a bunch of aluminum casserole pans lined up on the small countertop waiting to be filled. He pulled open the freezer and found it chock-full of pans labeled with things like
Chicken and Broccoli
and
Turkey and Wild Rice
.

He closed the door and scratched his head as Curt entered the kitchen and dropped his backpack into the corner. “I thought you said your dad is a slob,” Curt said as he dropped his backpack into the corner and made his way further into the newly navigable room.

“Well, he wasn’t born one, but he was certainly made one. He must have hired someone to help, finally. I wonder what got into him.”

“Maybe he hit rock bottom?”

“Could be. Let’s go see if he’s on the course.”

Grant found his father standing outside the golf course utility shed talking to himself, pacing in front of the door with his arms crossed over his chest. “I know I put that damned net back in there. Could have sworn it. How am I going to get the balls out? Dig ’em out with me hands?”

“Hey, Dad. You remember Curt from when you visited a couple of years ago?” Grant called upon approach.

Dad’s eyes went wide and both bushy eyebrows raised at them. “Oh yeah, the boy from Cork. You move back, too?” Dad asked. He took off his hat and scratched his uncombed head, his nerves evident by his shaking hand.

“No, sir. I’ve got another year to go. Seems like I’ll never finish.”

“Know that feeling,” Grant mumbled. “Say, Dad, what’s going on at the house? We went there before we found you out here.”

Dad wrung his hat in his hands and smiled nervously. “I…well, been doing a bit of therapy, I guess.”

“Well, keep at it. It’s nice to see the old furniture again. Hey, you want to head into Maynooth with us and get some dinner?”

Dad shook his head. “I can’t. I’ve got a guest.”

“Who, the cleaner?”

“I guess you could call me that.” Carla poked her head out of the shed and offered a timid smile.

Grant stood frozen in place for a moment like some flesh-and-blood statue.

Shut up and wait, indeed.

Curt gave him an encouraging shove forward. “Heads up, Fennell.”

“How ’bout we go find us a bottle,” Dad suggested wrapped his arm around Curt’s shoulders.

Curt looked at him with suspicion. “Bottle of what?”

“Beer or whiskey. Your choice.”

“How about both? I’ve got to ride to Mahon to visit with my sisters for a bit. I’m flying out of Cork on a redeye early in the morning.”

“Good man.”

As they walked away, Carla moved the rest of her body into the doorway. She was wearing one of Dad’s work shirts, splotched with red tomato stains, and had on a pair of gardening gloves and a bandana over her long hair.

“Hey, love,” Grant said softly, still making no move toward her.

“Hey yourself.” When she smiled, her cheeks flushed pink, but he didn’t think it was from embarrassment.

“How long you been here? Longer than a day, obviously.”

“About a week.”

“A
week
,” he exclaimed in an exasperated huff. “You should have told me you wanted to come. I would have got you here.” He tried to rake his curls back and realized they weren’t there. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

“You cut your hair.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how I feel about it yet. I do a lot of interviews on behalf of the department and needed to clean up a bit. Do
you
like it?”

She cocked her head to the side and squinted at him. “Makes you look older.”

“That good or bad?” He took a cautious step toward her with one hand extended.

She put hers in it readily. “I’m undecided.”

He looked down at her hand in his and rubbed his thumb over the top. “I tried calling. Emailing.”

“I know. I was…I was scared.”

“Of what?
Us
?” He pulled her in a bit closer so their fronts touched. “You’re the only one for me. I’d never break your heart.”

She nodded and squeezed her eyes closed. “I know. It took me some doing to understand that, but I know you love me. And…being away from you made me realize just how good you are for me. Sharon made me understand.” When she opened her eyes again, there were tears in them.

He cupped her face between his hands and laid his forehead against hers. “Love, I’m sorry I tried to push you. I had a lot of years to fantasize about my idea of perfect, but I didn’t calculate in any wiggle room. It was stupid of me to expect you to relent. Of course your career is important to you. We can wait as long as you want.”

She shook her head. “No. No waiting.”

He raised a brow and opened his mouth to ask her what she meant, but before he could get the words out, she pulled him forward by the hands. “Kiss me, Grant. I love you.”

“I’ve waited so long to hear those words from your lips.” He put his hands on her waist, bringing her in just a bit more, and bent down to press his lips on hers. Her belly was hard and protruded against his front. He held her back a bit and looked down.

“What were you doing while you were away, love?” He started unbuttoning her shirt from the bottom up. He stopped halfway up and planted his palms against her naked, swollen belly.

She laughed. “Crying a lot. And working on our family tree.”

Epilogue

“So, are you just going to pop them out one after another?” Meg asked Carla as they sat at table two at Mom and Chet’s wedding reception. Meg bounced her chubby, red-haired son on her knee, furthering his overstimulation. The poor kid hadn’t slept in eight hours. Carla took a rare moment to eat using two hands while Ashley and Grant performed something that resembled dancing with the girls.

She shrugged and helped herself to Sharon’s neglected chicken cutlet. “Might as well get them all out of the way,” she said, patting her very round belly. “Pregnancy kind of sucks.”

“God, you’re so rude,” Sharon said to Meg. “How would you like it if we asked if you’re just going to keep pretending you’re not married to Spike and that sweet little Toby isn’t his kid in public, huh? Besides, this is what we all wanted back in college, right? We got our little trio.” She picked up her knife and fork and started cutting into her plate without looking down. When the knife squeaked against the china, she noticed the food theft and narrowed her eyes at Carla. “You sure there’s just one in there?”

Carla crossed her heart. “Yup.”

Ashley brought poor screaming Ariel back to the table with a look of fright on his face. He handed the baby to Sharon. “Sorry! Don’t know what I did.”

Sharon rolled her eyes. “I bet it’s that frickin’ beard. She doesn’t recognize you.”

Ashley fondled his beard with the kind of reverence people normally reserve for prayer beads or hundred-dollar bills. “I like it.”

“Everyone else hates it.”

Ashley furrowed his brow. “You’re exaggerating. No one
hates
it.”

“Yeah we do,” Mom said. She approached the table holding her bouquet and bouncing around to the beat of the music. “Gonna throw the bouquet soon.” She bent over Carla and hugged her neck. They still weren’t quite
okay
, but being a mother herself, Carla was willing to clear most of the slate and give Mom the benefit of the doubt. Like Grant said: they couldn’t change the past once it happened, and Carla didn’t want to have regrets.

Things had gotten worse before they got better. After she had flown home and informed her mother that she and the unborn were staying in Ireland with Grant–a man Mom still hadn’t met–Mom got hysterical.

“I don’t understand this! What did I do wrong? I raised you to be a good Italian girl, and you’re running off like some kind of Gypsy! Is he a
Gypsy
stealing my baby? Some kind of Irish Traveler?”

Carla had sat there on the bed calmly and continued to stuff her clothes into the trunk at her feet. “Mom, I’m as Irish as I am Italian. And no, he’s not a Gypsy. Ask Ashley. You seem believe everything that comes out of his mouth, so maybe you’ll take it from
him
if not me.”

Mom had raged on and on, yelling at Carla in Italian. Carla just took it. She was glad her mother
cared.
Finally, the woman was showing some passion about something, although Carla thought it was the
wrong
something. Mom had gone home, only to call again the next day and yell at her some more. She didn’t calm down until after Emma was born and she actually flew into Dublin herself.

“Well, everyone here is married, Connie,” Grant said. He’d returned from the dance floor with Emma, who was still laughing and kicking her chubby little legs under the skirt of her baby party dress.

Mom squeezed one of her dimply thighs and cooed at her. “I know, that sucks!” she said, and put her hands on her generous hips. “I’ll have to rig it toward someone else. Oh well.” She snatched Emma away and worked her way to the edge of the dance floor, where Chet was waiting with a short stepstool.

Grant looped his arm around the back of Carla’s chair and leaned in close. “You regret not having a big wedding?”

She scanned the room filled with three hundred of Mom’s closest friends and family members, then shook her head. They’d had a small ceremony in Philip Callaghan’s church in Carrickmacross a few weeks before Emma was born. No flowers, no reception, just the two of them and their witnesses. It seemed fitting. “Not for a second. I don’t think you were quite ready to handle my mother’s loud Italian family, anyway.”

Hey shuddered. “Still not ready.”