Whiskey Island (37 page)

He shook his head. Even though he looked uncomfortable, he didn’t try to escape. She was grateful.

Megan released a long breath. “Peggy, do you remember how on the night of the carjacking Nick thought he saw a man running away from the car? Someone who might have knocked out the second carjacker?”

Peggy frowned. “I thought he decided there wasn’t anyone there, after all.”

“Well, there
was
somebody, and we think the same man is living down on Whiskey Island.” Megan paused. “Peggy, I don’t know how to say this gently. It might be Rooney. There’s some evidence pointing that way.”

The color slowly drained from Peggy’s cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound. Casey turned to Jon to let her sister have a moment to digest this.

“You never met our father, did you?”

“He was already gone by the time I got to know you.”

“I was going to tell you about this myself. We don’t know for sure the man Nick saw was Rooney, and we certainly don’t know if he’s the one causing the problems you told me about down there. But he might be, and we might need your help somewhere along the way if he is.”

“What kind of evidence?” Peggy’s voice was surprisingly steady.

Megan told her everything Niccolo had discovered. Peggy took it in quietly.

“There could be other explanations,” Megan said. “But the best one is that the man is Rooney, and he was hanging around the saloon that night because it used to be home.”

“I don’t even remember him,” Peggy said. “I wasn’t as old as Ashley when he left.”

“I remember my daddy,” Ashley said.

Casey realized that even though she’d seemed occupied with her dinner, the little girl had been listening to everything. She was sorry Ashley had chosen this particular afternoon to come out of her shell.

“Did your daddy hurt you?” Ashley asked Peggy.

Peggy seemed to sense the importance of the question, even though she was trying to put her own life together in a brand-new way. “Never, honey. He ran away, but he never hit me or hurt me. Never.”

“I ran away,” Ashley said.

Casey felt every pair of eyes at the table fixed on her face. “I think what Ashley means is that she and her mother left a difficult situation at home, and now things have changed a lot. It must feel like she’s running away, especially since her mom’s not here with her right now.”

Ashley, who appeared satisfied, went back to her dinner.

“What are you doing to find out if this man really is our father?” Peggy asked Megan.

“I’ve been to the place where we think he’s been living. I left him a note. Nick goes back every few days. We can’t do a lot more than that, not right away. If it is Rooney, he’s been on his own for a long time, and he’s survived. We have to go slowly, so we don’t scare him away.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to?” Peggy said.

“Scare him away? A part of me does,” Megan admitted.

“Are you okay with this, Peggy?” Casey said. “I know it’s unexpected.”

“I’m just glad I’m not off at school.”

Megan clasped Peggy’s hand. “If we find out it is Rooney, we’re going to have to figure out what to do. I don’t know our legal rights. Maybe we can’t do anything.”

“It depends on whether you can prove he’s a danger to himself or others,” Jon said. “If you’re talking about commitment to any sort of facility, that is. And that’s not as easy as it might seem.”

“You mean a man living out in this weather isn’t automatically a danger to himself?” Megan said.

“If he’s doing it because he wants to—” he looked over at Ashley “—to cause himself harm, then that’s one thing. But if he’s living on Whiskey Island because he thinks that’s his best alternative, even if his judgment is faulty, we might not be able to prove our case in court. If we could, every homeless man and woman in America could be committed.”

“Maybe the government should provide decent, free housing, instead of worrying about committing people,” Peggy said.

“It’s not that simple,” Jon said. “Rooney had housing right here, but he left anyway. He could come back, but he hasn’t.”

“What about trespassing?” Megan said. “Could we have him arrested and locked away somewhere for evaluation?”

“There are too many violent criminals to count on the cops or courts doing much about trespassing. Unless we can prove he’s been responsible for the vandalism on Whiskey Island, you’re stuck.”

“You don’t think he’ll come home if we ask him to?” Peggy directed her question to Megan. “Maybe he’s ashamed. Maybe he just needs a push in our direction.”

Casey answered for her. Gently. “It’s unlikely. Peg, the one thing we know about Rooney is that he’s not all there. That doesn’t just disappear with a little love. Whatever Rooney’s problem is, it’s longstanding. And the longer these sorts of problems go on, the harder they are to fix.”

“What kind of problems? Spell it out.”

Casey sighed and looked to Megan for help, but for once, Megan was letting Casey handle a family crisis. “Schizophrenia. Bipolar personality disorder. Organic brain syndrome. Acute alcoholism. I don’t have an exact diagnosis, but it doesn’t matter. It could be one, it could be a combination. Whatever it is, it’s serious, and probably chronic by now. If he let us, we could certainly improve the quality of his life, but we can’t wipe away years of mental illness.”

“He wasn’t always this way?” Peggy said.

Casey had done a lot of thinking about that since returning home. Much of the bitterness she’d felt toward her father had dissipated as she’d begun to think of him as ill, not simply negligent. “The signs were probably there for years before he left us. We were too young to see them, and our mother was too loyal.”

“He was always a little different from other fathers.” Megan sat back in her chair. “A little fey, as if the fairies and the leprechauns were speaking to him. He would tell the most wonderful stories, but it was impossible to know where the truth left off and the story kicked in, because everything was a story to Rooney.”

“I wish I’d known him. I wish I had the chance now.”

They fell silent. Casey wanted to make this better for all of them, but there was no quick fix. Once before, Rooney had changed their world forever. Quite possibly, he was about to do it again.

Megan’s chair scraped the floor. “I’ll get the pie.”

Nobody tried to beg off. No one in the Donaghue household stopped eating when she was upset, particularly when Megan’s pie was offered.

“I’m going upstairs to get those coffee beans.” Peggy was the next to disappear.

Casey watched her go. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad that Rooney’s a stranger to her.”

“How are you doing?”

She sighed, and Jon reached out to take her hand. “Come home with me,” he said. “We’ll rent a video. You can talk if you feel like it.”

For some reason it sounded perfect, nothing at all like what she usually did to relieve stress. In the past she would find a party, or invent her own. Instead, the thought of Jon’s arms around her and the quiet of his house was irresistible.

Then she saw that Ashley was staring at her. Waiting.

“Can’t.” Casey shook her head. “I promised Ashley snow angels today. And snowballs.”

“It takes at least three people wielding snowballs for a good fight. And I don’t mind Disney afterward. Ashley can choose whatever movie she wants to see.”

“You’re sure?” Casey tried to remember one man from her past who not only would have offered this but would have sounded happy to do it.

Jon turned to Ashley. “If it’s all right with the princess. Princess?”

Her expression lightened. “My mommy calls me princess.”

“It’s a very suitable name. Princess Ashley.”

“Is it okay if Jon comes along to make snow angels?” Casey asked. “Then we can go to his house when we’re too cold to play outside anymore.”

“Can I play with the doll in the sailor dress?”

Jon smiled at her. “You bet. Casey tells me she bought you a doll. Bring yours along, and you can introduce them.”

Casey watched something very close to a smile light up the little girl’s face.

Quite possibly Jon Kovats was a miracle worker.

23

N
iccolo debated how to tell Megan about his Friday night conversation with her father. He still wasn’t sure that the man he’d spoken to on Whiskey Island was Rooney, but the evidence pointed that way. Whether or not he was, Megan needed to know what had transpired. He just wasn’t sure how best to pass on what he’d learned.

Late Sunday afternoon, during a lull in the madhouse that had once been a one-man renovation project, he decided to call her and tell her over the telephone. It wasn’t the kind of news to deliver that way, but she wasn’t the kind of woman who would want it any differently.

The kids were three rooms away, painting walls to music that was loud enough to bring them tumbling down. Niccolo sat down to dial and found himself developing a mental sermon on rock lyrics, violence and the abuse of women. He might not have a pulpit from which to deliver it, but the kids were going to hear this one when the time was right.

First he tried Megan at home and got an answering machine with a curt message. Next he tried the Whiskey Island Saloon for half a dozen rings. He was about to hang up when she answered.

Her lyrical alto, even in simple greeting, had an odd effect on him. She made him think of things he’d willingly abandoned and was afraid to reclaim. Her voice made a satisfying life seem oddly empty and meaningless. The work he’d done to put their brief relationship into perspective seemed to vanish between one musical syllable and the next.

He identified himself and waited.

As always, she got straight to the point. “Have you discovered something else about Rooney?”

“I—” There was an instant of earsplitting static; then the line went dead.

“Megan?” He waited, but he was sure they’d been disconnected. He hung up, waited a moment, then picked up the receiver again.

Nothing.

“Nick!”

He grimaced and got to his feet, following the summons to the room where the kids were painting. At the expression on his face, someone had the grace to turn down the radio. “This wouldn’t be about the telephone, would it?” Niccolo asked.

There were four kids working today—Joachim, Winston, Josh and a newer boy, a high school dropout named Pete, who was all left feet and bluster. Pete was blond, blue-eyed and a self-proclaimed descendant of Chief Crazy Horse. He and Winston often vied to see who could be the most outrageous, but like Winston, Pete was a hard worker.

“Like we sort of tore out a wire or something,” Pete said now. “Sorry, didn’t mean to. I kind of like caught my finger in it and couldn’t shake it loose.”

Niccolo didn’t ask why Pete had placed his finger under the telephone wire—which was stapled to the wall—in the first place. “I can repair it. Just stay away from wires in general. If that had been an electric wire, we’d be scraping you off the ceiling.” There were no exposed live wires anywhere in the house, but he didn’t think the warning was a bad idea.

“Can I help you put it back together?”

Niccolo had already noted Pete’s fascination with all things mechanical. He wondered why no one in the boy’s checkered educational past had noticed, too. Reluctantly he smiled, his irritation vanishing. “Afraid I don’t have the time right now. How’s the painting going?”

Elisha had chosen a deep green for this particular room, convincing Niccolo the choice was right by assembling a scrapbook of pictures she’d clipped from old magazines. The color brought out the beauty of the maple woodwork and accentuated the view of the backyard. Someone would probably use this room as a study or sitting room, and for just a moment, he wished it were going to be him.

“Gonna take another coat,” Winston said. He was “boss” of the painting crew, a position that paid a buck more per hour than the minimum wage the other boys were getting. Although Niccolo didn’t pay the kids for most of the things they did—many of which he had to secretly redo—he had decided to pay them for painting. It was Tom Sawyer drudgery, pure and simple, and every one of them needed the spending money.

He stood back and looked at the room with a practiced eye. “You’re right. But one more should do it. It’s looking good.”

“Needs something different on this wall.” Winston gestured to the only wall unbroken by a window.

“Whoever lives here will put up pictures.”

Winston shook his head. “Needs something bigger.”

Niccolo envisioned splashes of gang graffiti. “Let’s just leave it like it is, okay? We’ll buy posters.”

Winston shrugged.

Niccolo left them to finish, and the volume on the radio went up the moment he started down the hall.

He wasn’t sure what to do about Megan. He couldn’t leave the kids alone and expect to find the house—or kids—in one piece when he returned. He decided to run next door and use the telephone. His upwardly mobile neighbors were away for the weekend, but the young woman with the large stable of “boyfriends” was home after a brief trip out of state. She’d stopped by earlier in the afternoon to retrieve mail he’d collected for her.

He bundled into his winter gear, then told the kids he would be back in five minutes.

“I’m just going next door,” he warned them. “And I’ll have an ear cocked for sirens.”

They rolled their eyes in unison.

Ashley, Casey and Jon had disappeared for an afternoon in the snow, and Peggy had gone upstairs for a nap. Megan had been staring into her third cup of coffee, trying to get up enough energy to drive home, when Niccolo phoned. She knew he hadn’t hung up on her, but she was feeling frustrated anyway. She was sure he would call back as soon as he could, but in the meantime, she wondered what he’d been about to tell her.

She didn’t really like to think about Niccolo. She harassed Casey about choosing unworthy men as lovers, but in her own way, she’d done the same. Casey chose men who were only available for a good time, and Megan chose men who were so emotionally distant that she didn’t have to make meaningful connections. She’d given the matter a little thought over the years, but it hadn’t seemed particularly important, because she hadn’t yearned for anything different.