The Shortest Way Home (37 page)

“Well, it was really fun hanging out with Rebecca last night. I figured maybe it wouldn’t be so bad meeting another new person. But you’ll be with me, right?”

“I won’t even leave to go to the bathroom. I’ll just hold it the whole time.”

Kevin crossed his eyes and made a pained face.

“That’s just how I’ll look,” said Sean. “By the way, I’m going over to Rebecca’s tonight. I might be home late.”
Like in the morning.
“You all right with that?”

“Oh. Sure. But why doesn’t she just come over here again?”

“Hey—are you trying to steal my girl?”

Kevin giggled. “She did kinda like me. Maybe even better than you!”

* * *

S
ean was still smiling about that as he drove to Rebecca’s. Getting bird-dogged by an eleven-year-old. He told her about it when he got there. She smiled, but he could see it wasn’t a real one. “What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “It just sounds funny—referring to me as ‘your girl.’ ”

A prickle of anxiety ran up his neck. “It’s just an expression.”

“I know.” She unplugged a huge brown ceramic lamp and brought it down to the garage.

* * *

L
ater, after he’d finished brushing his teeth and checking to make sure he still smelled reasonably good, he came into her room to find her sitting up in the twin bed reading a book.

Should he have brought a book? Is this what couples did after they’d been together a little while—read before sex? If he had known, he would have brought
The Last Battle
. He was almost finished. Now he felt like a kid at a masquerade party who’d forgotten to wear a costume.

She looked up and there was something there, an uncertainty of some kind. Could she possibly be unsure of how absolutely giddy he was to sleep with her? Maybe she was worried that after a week of pouncing on each other every chance they got, he was losing interest. She had no cause for concern. None whatsoever. But was he supposed to come out and say it?

And what was with the book?

She slid over to the wall, as far as she could go in the narrow twin bed. He hesitated. “Are you sleepy?” he asked, wanting to give her a gentle excuse if she wasn’t interested in sex. Because if there was some other reason, he didn’t want to know it.

“No,” she said. “Are you coming?”

He climbed in beside her, every cell rising up to heave itself in her direction. She allowed his arms around her—how else would they fit? And then her hand began its customary migration across the landscape of his chest, and at last he took a normal breath.

Their lovemaking felt self-conscious and frenetic. Rebecca gasped once, then again, and he was relieved that she was climaxing. But it didn’t quite sound the same. In fact, it didn’t sound the least bit happy or ecstatic. In another moment he realized she was crying.

He quickly pulled back. “Oh, my God,” he said. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.” In the dark he could hear that the pain she was feeling was worse than physical.

“Tell me . . .” he said, though part of him absolutely did not want to know—would have paid good money to avoid hearing whatever it was she might say.

“I thought I could do this,” she whispered, “but I can’t. I feel like I’m falling into a hole I might never climb out of.” She rolled away from him and off the bed, grabbing up a blanket that had fallen on the floor to wrap around herself.

He sat up in bed. “What did I do?”

“Nothing. It’s fine. You’re just you. It’s not like you ever tried to hide it.”

“Hide what?”

“That you like me, but not enough.”

“Enough for what? To want to be with you every second of the day? Because I do.”

“Enough to do more than hang out and have sex, Sean. Enough to stay.”

Which of course silenced him. He thought of Cormac talking about Barb’s desire for a child with his genes and asking,
What’s the comeback for that?
Absolutely nothing.

“This isn’t healthy for me, Sean. I thought it was—like it might be some kind of closure for how in love with you I was in high school. But it’s not. I’m thinking crazy thoughts, like, ‘Maybe if I were more like Chrissy . . .’ Or ‘Maybe if my face—’ ”

“No!” he said, standing up and coming toward her. “That’s not—”

But she backed away from him. “I
know
. But don’t you see why that makes it worse? I know it’s crazy, but I’m thinking it anyway.”

He stood there stunned. Because he did see why that made it worse. And he couldn’t believe he could cause someone that kind of pain. He wasn’t used to . . .
affecting
people like this.

“I’m sorry.” He meant it so sincerely, but knowing, too, how meager a response it was.

“
I’m
sorry,” she said. “I wish I were so much . . . cooler than this.”

“Rebecca, you’re perfect. I’m the—”

“Oh, my God, please don’t do the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ line. We both know it’s you. But it’s also me for knowing you so well and wanting you anyway. So let’s just not say it.”

They stared at each other in the dimness, and he could see the reflection of light from a streetlamp on her dampened face. He knew that if he offered the only kind of comfort that he had ever been good at—physical comfort, palliative care—she was likely to reject it. But he did it anyway, because how much worse could it get than this?

He put his arms around her and was surprised when she didn’t pull away. He held her as close as he dared and said, “You are everything that’s good.”

“Please shut up,” she whispered. And he knew that at least it was better than the other thing she could have said, which was
But still not good enough
.

CHAPTER 45

S
ean came to consciousness in his own bed like a man suddenly dropping through the ice of a frozen pond. The memory of the previous night hit him before he’d even opened his eyes. It was over with Rebecca. In every way. She had told him she couldn’t see him until she got herself back on solid ground. That’s how she’d put it. As if his very presence were a kind of emotional tar pit, sucking her down into some dark lifeless place.

She hadn’t blamed him. And yet she’d called their relationship “unhealthy.” It was only a whisper away from saying that he was bad for her. He had never been The Bad Guy before. Certainly he’d disappointed women occasionally. There had been one or two, prone to drama, who’d professed their love for him, demanding to know why he wouldn’t return it. And he’d felt sorry for them, despite what he’d known to be a very clear message: This is casual. It is not love.

Rebecca had demanded nothing. And he’d given her everything he had. His innermost thoughts. His worship of her body. His utter admiration and pride in her. He’d loved her and it showed. He had to admit that now. The fact that he’d never said the words seemed now to be as relevant as making a promise with your fingers crossed behind your back. A technicality that counted only among children.

And there was that guy—the old boyfriend. Maybe now that Sean was The Bad Guy, this jerk had been promoted to The Good Guy. Gainfully employed, centrally located, saying all the right things simply because he knew how. He’d been in an
actual normal relationship
with her, for godsake—he had the edge!

But she was too smart to go out with some loser who didn’t appreciate her, wasn’t she? He couldn’t be all that bad, because at some point Rebecca had chosen him. But why did they break up? It was hard enough to be without her, but he found it unbearable to lose her to someone who might not get how great she was. As if he had a choice.

* * *

W
hy he had agreed to take Kevin to meet his father at IHOP, he couldn’t for the life of him recall. Just pulling into the parking lot, remembering the dread he’d felt only a week ago when he’d faced his father the first time, compounded that drowning-in-ice-water feeling he’d been having all morning. He was grateful that Kevin was too anxious to notice.

Da was too excited to notice, at first. He reached his hand out to shake Kevin’s, grinning, studying every hair, every freckle. As Kevin slid into the booth, Da gestured surreptitiously to his eyes and murmured, “Just like . . .”

Hugh.

“Yeah.” Sean nodded and sat beside Kevin.

The older man asked his grandson about school and camp and the dog. Sean monitored this interaction as if he were sitting in a high school English composition class, struggling to focus on what he knew he would be tested on later, but unable to keep his mind from wandering out the window, across the sports fields and over the trees.

“And your Aunt Deirdre,” he heard Da say. “I understand she’s to be in a play.”

“Yeah, we’re going to see her tonight. She’s got a really big part. But not the biggest part. That has to be a guy, because the play is called
Joseph and 
. . . something about a jacket.”

“Where is the theater?”

“In Worcester. She practically lives there.”

Sean studied his father, who was assiduously avoiding eye contact as he stirred sugar into his tea. Kevin excused himself to go to the bathroom.

“You can’t go,” Sean told Da. “Deirdre’s already freaked out enough. If you show up, she’ll blow a gasket.”

“She said she didn’t want to see
me
. She never said I couldn’t see
her
.”

Sean squinted at him, annoyed. “You’re kidding me with this. Really? You want to play semantics with the grown daughter you haven’t seen since she was in preschool?”

When Da looked up, his gaze was lit with anger. “No, I want to
see
her. I want to lay eyes on my baby girl before I move across the ocean and die.”

“Don’t be dramatic. You could have seen her anytime in the last twenty-eight years. And don’t pull the old man stuff on me, either. We’re all going to die.”

Da scrutinized him. “Rough night?” he said.

He thinks I’m hungover.
Sean let out a bitter snort. “You could say.”

Da studied him a moment longer. “Well,” he concluded, “not from drinking. Bad news of some kind?”

Oh, what the hell,
thought Sean. He could play twenty questions or he could just say it.

“I was seeing someone. She broke it off last night.”

Da nodded, his face softening slightly, but thankfully not to the point of pity. “I’m sorry.”

Sean shrugged, but he supposed that Da knew better than to believe the matter was shrug-able.

When Kevin returned, Da shifted the conversation to his upcoming trip. “It’s a beautiful place, really,” he told Kevin. “Great rolling hills and green pastures. A place that heals the soul.”

“What’s the highest point?” Kevin asked, his lips sticky from syrup.

“That would be Carrauntoohil, in County Kerry, where I was born. It’s a great one for climbing.”

Kevin’s eyes shone with interest. “What makes it so great?”

“Ah, you have to scramble up the Devil’s Ladder to get to the top.”

“Why do they call it that?”

“Well, not for being a stroll in the garden, lad, that’s for sure!”

“Have you done it?”

“Once. Just before I came to America when I was nineteen. I wanted to go to the very top of Ireland before I left it, so me and some of the lads hitchhiked down and made the climb. The weather turned sour at the peak and we very nearly froze to death—even though it was May!”

“That’s
awe
some,” breathed Kevin.

“You’ll have to see it yourself someday.”

As the boy’s questioning gaze turned to him, Sean realized a campaign had been waged by the wily old man. Waged and practically won.

“Could we go?” asked Kevin.

“Ah, Kev,” Sean said wearily. “It’s not exactly like going to Connecticut.”

“The highest point in Ireland, Uncle Sean. The Devil’s Ladder!”

Sean looked at his father, the man’s eyes wide with false innocence.

“Don’t give me that,” Sean told him. “You’re sinking pretty low, turning the kid on me.”

“I’ve done no such thing, and I resent the implication.”

Sean snorted. “Right!”

“Just think for a moment,” said his father. “Think of the boy and yourself, traveling the land of the faeries with me. It’d be grand!”

“And don’t turn on the Irish charm. I’m half Irish—it doesn’t work on me.”

Kevin watched this sparring intently, as if the outcome had significance far beyond vacation plans. Sean looked at him, at Hugh’s eyes silently hoping.

“It might do you good to get away for a bit,” Da said, his tone mild, his meaning clear.

Yes, indeed it might. In fact there was nothing Sean wanted more at the moment than to go far away. “School starts in two weeks,” he relented. “We could do one week, tops.”

Kevin and Da let out simultaneous whoops of joy that made pancake eaters at other booths turn their heads and smile.

* * *

T
hey went straight to the Belham library, got onto a computer, and filled out the online passport forms for Kevin. Then they stopped off at the house for Kevin’s birth certificate, went to the post office, submitted the forms, and had his picture taken. For a steep fee, the passport would arrive in two days.

When Sean saw the cost of the expedited passport and then the airline tickets, he murmured to his father, “Are you sure you can cover all this? I can help, but money’s tight on our end. I’m working at a coffee shop at the moment.”

“I was never happier to pay a bill in all my life” was all he said.

Later that afternoon, after Da had gone back to his hotel and Sean and Kevin had returned to the house, the phone rang. “Is Kevin there?” asked a boy’s voice.

Sean handed it over and dawdled in the kitchen, constructing his turkey sandwich with unnecessary care. The caller apparently asked what classes Kevin would have, and the two of them determined they would have science and drama together. Then the conversation circled around to a tent full of farts, and Sean quickly determined that the kid on the other end was Ivan from Boy Scouts.

“Sure, I can hang out,” said Kevin. “But it’ll have to be in the next couple days.” He waited for the obvious question this begged, a proud little smile playing around his cheeks. “I’m leaving on Sunday for a week. Me and my uncle and my grandfather are going to Ireland.”