The House On Willow Street (25 page)

Mario’s was a pizza restaurant, and Kitty’s favorite for the chocolate fudge desserts.

“Great,” said Tess. Perhaps he was planning to do it then.

“Tess, help me out on this,” he pleaded, the moment she got on the phone. “I’m not sure how to begin,” he said sadly. “I don’t want them to hate me, and I don’t want to hurt them.”

Tess flattened down all thoughts of saying “It’s a bit late for that now.” She was culpable too, she knew. But despite that, it was a bit rich for him to want
her
to tell Zach and Kitty about Claire so that they could all be happy families together.

“How about Friday night?” she said pleasantly.

“We should do it together,” he insisted.

Tess hesitated. Perhaps that would be best. A united front might help Zach and Kitty understand that, even if parents split up, they were together for their children. “Fine,” she said. “But you’re paying.”

She might have gone to bed that night and actually slept, if Helen, Kevin’s mother, hadn’t phoned right after Kitty had been put to bed.

“Tess, I had no idea,” she said, her voice catching. “I had no idea, honestly. It’s all such a shock.”

“I know,” Tess soothed, wondering why she was the one doing the soothing.

“I thought you were mad to separate in the first place,” Helen sobbed. “Now look what’s happened: he’s got this new woman. Oh, Tess, it’s not right—not right for you, Kitty or Zach. Look at what all this separation nonsense has done!”

“We both agreed to the separation, Helen, so it’s not all Kevin’s fault,” Tess said, trying to say something comforting because she knew that Helen adored her and the children.

“Yes, but you separated to fix things,” wailed Helen, “not to find new people.”

Since this was largely what Tess herself thought, she hadn’t the heart to argue with her mother-in-law.

For the next ten minutes, Helen cried over the phone while Tess tried to find a way to end the call.

“She’s only a young girl, you know,” Helen sniffled. “I don’t know what’s got into him. Would you take him back, Tess, if it ended with this girl?”

Tess breathed out slowly. “Helen, love, it’s gone beyond that,” she said, wondering if it really had gone beyond that. Could she take Kevin back if he asked?

Her mind flickered, as it so often had of late, to Cashel.

That had been real love and real passion, she realized now. A tornado of emotion compared to what she’d felt for Kevin. If she took Kevin back, it would be agreeing to a life of gentle, kind benevolence with him, the two of them returning to sharing a home but leading separate lives in so many ways.

Seeing Cashel at his mother’s funeral had made her remember the fierceness of her love for him. If only he hadn’t abandoned her, things might have been so different.

“But now everyone knows,” Helen went on. “I’ve never even set eyes on her, but when Agnes Ryan phoned me to say she’d seen my Kevin kissing this girl on the street outside the café, I was so shocked that I rang him straight up and asked him. That was the first I knew of it.”

Tess simmered. So much for the not-upsetting-you-by-bringing-Claire-out-on-the-streets-of-Avalon schtick.

“Oh well, it’s out in the open now,” Tess said. “Helen, pet, I have things to do, perhaps we can talk tomorrow?”
You might need to bail me out of jail for murdering your son for not telling his own children when other people have seen him snogging this woman in the town square.

She’d have to tell Zach now. News like that would be all around Avalon at the speed of light. Someone on Zach’s bus in the morning would be bound to have heard. He ought to know the facts himself.

Wearily, she went upstairs and knocked on Zach’s door. “Can I come in?” she whispered.

As usual, a moment passed before he got up and opened the door. Tess wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing in there, but whatever it was required privacy, and it was her job to give it to him. The room smelled of socks, teenage boy and the new deodorant that he was spraying like there was no tomorrow.

“Sure,” he said.

He was dressed in an old faded sweatshirt and jeans. They both sat down on the bed and Tess was silent for a moment, wondering how the hell she was going to broach the subject.

“What’s up, Ma?” he said. “You look like somebody’s died.”

“No! Don’t be silly,” she said, going into mummy mode.

Mummy mode meant that if the sky was falling in, Mummy would say, “
No, it’ll be fine. We’ll sort it out. There’s bound to be a solution somewhere.
”

“When your dad came over the other night, he had something important to talk about.”

A wary look stole over Zach’s face. “He wants to get divorced?” he said.

“Well, not exactly. Why did you think that?”

“He’s been different the past month . . . happier,” Zach said. “Before, he used to keep saying how much he missed being at home, and I felt angry at you for the whole thing. But then, he was really happy. I figured it out. He’s seeing someone else.”

Wish you’d told me
, Tess thought.
Then I wouldn’t have been the last to know.

“You’re very intuitive,” she said, patting his arm and repressing the desire to lie on his bed and cry. “I suppose there’s always the risk that this could happen when two people split up . . .”

“But you weren’t supposed to split up. You didn’t need to split up,” Zach said. “That was your idea. I heard you talking about it.”

He sounded angry now and Tess felt the weight of guilt upon her.

“I thought it was the right thing to do,” Tess said.

“Not for us, it wasn’t,” Zach said accusingly. “Not for me and Kitty. We were a family,
before.
Now we’re not.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatever,” he muttered.

Tess tried to put her arm around him, but he shrugged it off.

“Do you want to meet her?” she asked.

“No,” he snapped. He put his headphones into his ears, which was teenager-speak for “conversation over.” Normally that would have been Tess’s cue to deliver a mild lecture on rudeness. Tonight, she let him be.

They sat together on the bed for a few moments, Zach with his eyes closed, then Tess got up and left the room, closing the door quietly.

He was right: it was her fault.

I
t had been nearly two decades since Danae had lived with anybody; two decades of being on her own in her cottage in Avalon with her animals and her beautiful garden for company. She didn’t realize how much she’d grown used to this until Mara came to stay.

At first, it had been novel to have Mara around the place with her vitality and her energy. Mara was forever cheery. Even being dumped by the man she’d loved hadn’t dimmed her light. Danae was astonished at this and wondered if perhaps Mara secretly cried in her room at night, sobbing over pictures of Jack. Danae suspected that, in Mara’s place, that’s what she would have done. She would have felt so devastated to be rejected by a man who’d been so important.

But if Mara was feeling utterly brokenhearted, she wasn’t showing it. No, there was this amazing strength inside her niece; it must be something to do with being brought up in such a happy family, Danae decided.

After a while, however, Mara’s presence began to—well, Danae decided, there was no other word for it: to
irritate
her.

Mara was so cheerful all the time and so at home, sharing the place. Not that she took advantage—no, not for a second. She did all the housework, every chore, cooked meals.

“Well,” said Mara, “I’m not out working and you are, so it’s only fair.”

She bought the groceries out of what must have been a dwindling supply of money and Danae fretted over this. Danae had fretted over money her whole life.

“No, it’s fine really, Danae,” Mara said. “I’m a good saver, you know. I’d money in the bank, plus I’ve been sending my CV off all over the place looking for work, although not many people are employing former estate agents these days.”

Even this didn’t seem to dim Mara’s enthusiasm. “I was thinking of looking around here for work. Do you know of anyone who might need someone to help? Part-time, to dip my toe back in the water. It’s a good time of year to get part-time work, people tend to need more staff in the build-up to Christmas, so I might be able to get a bit of shop work or something. I’ll do anything, I don’t mind: sweep floors, scrub, iron—you name it.”

Danae had laughed. “You’re brilliant,” she said. “Nobody can say you don’t know how to work.”

“Oh, I know how to work, all right,” Mara said. “I was fabulous at my job.” She turned quiet and reflective for a moment. “Cici told me I was mad to leave, but I couldn’t go on working there. It felt wrong. It was the principle of the thing. And . . . and then I couldn’t look for money from them for some sort of constructive dismissal case. No, that’s not my way. Jack marrying Tawhnee was a sign, that’s all. I had to move out.”

“A sign?” asked Danae, interested.

“Oh yes,” said Mara. “I’m a great believer in signs, aren’t you? It’s like . . . I dunno. A parking space is a sign, right?
Someone’s terribly friendly to you in a shop—that’s a sign, isn’t it? There are lots of signs of happiness and good things out there, you have to be on the alert for them.”

And that was probably one of the big differences between the two of them, Danae thought to herself. Mara was exuberant, full of life, brimming with a gentle confidence. She was warm to everyone; warm in a way Danae was afraid she never could be.

There were several things about having Mara staying with her, Danae reflected, that made it hard. One was the simple physicality of having another human being about the house, even if that human being was a wonderful, loving, kind, thoughtful guest, like Mara. Another difficulty was the sheer contrast between them. Mara could walk into a room where she knew nobody and ten minutes later she would have made firm friends with at least half the people there. Danae, walking into the same room, would watch carefully from the sidelines. That was what she did: watch carefully. That was what she’d done for a long time. It was probably too late to change now.

But the biggest problem to do with Mara’s presence had nothing to do with their different personalities or getting used to sharing a house with her—it was the matter of how to keep Mara from finding out about her monthly trips to Dublin.

“You’re up early,” said Danae in surprise as Mara emerged from her bedroom in her pajamas, hair tousled. She had counted on Mara still being asleep when she set off.

“Yes,” said Mara, “it must be the country air. In Galway I could sleep for hours at the weekend, but here it’s different.” She yawned, “Cici would laugh if she saw me up at . . .” she looked at her watch, “. . . half seven on a Saturday morning. Where are you off to at this hour?”

Was it her imagination, Mara wondered, or did Danae really look a little furtive this morning? There was definitely something different about her. On days when she wasn’t going to the post office, Danae’s uniform seemed to consist of a comfortable skirt and a sweater, possibly accessorized by a scarf or a long flowing cardigan. Today she was much more formally dressed, in neatly pressed trousers, a blouse and jacket.