Season of Second Chances: an uplifting novel of moving away and starting over

by Aimee Alexander

  MaryAnn must hear his key in the door because she comes rushing out into the hall.

  “Oh Des, great! Simon’s here!” she says as if she’s known him all her life. “He wants to get back together with Grace. Isn’t that wonderful?” Des has to remind himself that his son-in-law had him fooled for years. He can’t blame MaryAnn for believing whatever line he’s spun her. “When he saw workmen at the house,” she continues, “he decided to try the B&B’s. I said you’d be back and you could tell him where Grace is.”

  Let me at him, Des thinks. “Thanks, MaryAnn. I’ll handle this.”

  “Is everything okay?” she asks, reading his face with concern.

  “Fine, fine. I just want a word with Simon, alone, if that’s okay?”

  “Of course. I’ll, I’ll just be in the kitchen if you need me,” she says like she knows she’s made a mistake.

  “Great, thanks. I’ll go on in so.” Des makes for the sitting room.

  He opens the door. Benji gets to his feet and wags his tail. But then stops, his tail disappearing between his legs.

  Simon stands. “Des, thank God.”

  Des thinks of all the times he has been played, like he’s being played now. “Thank God, what?” he asks coldly.

  “How are they?” he asks, his voice filled with concern.

  “Hunky dory,” Des says flatly.

  He clasps one hand with the other, and moves them up and down pleadingly. “I need you to talk to them for me, apologise, I’ve made so many mistakes…” The bastard manages to look contrite.

  Des taps his stick repeatedly on the ground, trying to reign in his fury. “Right. I’ll pass on the message. You can go now.”

  “I was hoping that you might get Grace to rethink the access.”

  “I won’t be doing that, Simon.”

  He grips his head. “They lied! I never hurt the children! I wouldn’t. I love them–” he rushes, like he’s the wronged party.

  Des tightens his grip on the stick. “There’s more than one way to hurt a child. And, mark my words, you’ve done your bit. If you have an ounce of love left for Holly and Jack, you’ll leave them be. They deserve their peace now. They’ve had enough.”

  “I’m their father! They need to see me. The courts recognise the importance of fathers and almost always grant access. It was their lies–”

  “If Holly and Jack wanted to see you, they’d be seeing you. Let me give you a hint as to why they mightn’t be so keen on having you in their lives. There’s the manipulation, the lies, the undermining of their mother, the bullying. Oh, and might I add there’s growing up in a house of violence!” Des’s voice has grown louder with every word.

  “That’s why I’m here, to apologise, to admit to my mistakes. Look, I’m trying to give Grace a chance here. If she doesn’t rethink the access, I’ll have to appeal this ruling – and bring up the fact that she perjured herself. The punishment for perjury is imprisonment.”

  Des squints at this creature. “Let me get this straight,” he says slowly. “You are trying to blackmail my daughter – using me as messenger.”

  Simon raises his palms. “No, no, no. You’ve got me all wrong. I’m trying to go easy on her.”

  “Do I look stupid to you? You’ve certainly treated me as if I am, for all these years. Well, let me tell you, I won’t be your messenger. And let me also remind you that there is a barring order against you. If you go near Grace or the children, you’ll risk your precious appeal. How dare you show up here! How dare you try and use me to get to them! But mostly how dare you lay a finger on my daughter.” Des’s blood boils at the thought and he advances, not sure what he’s going to do but prepared to do whatever he has to.

  Simon, eyeing the stick, stands up with a sneer, towering over Des. “You haven’t a hope, old man.” His eyes have turned mean, cold and hard.

  Des can see it now, all of it. Guilt swamps him, guilt that he let this happen.

  But he can’t let that – or anything – stop him. He straightens to his full height. Which is still way too short. “You’re in Killrowan now,” he says, injecting calm and foreboding into his voice. “The police, here, watch out for their own. They’ve been warned about you and are on the lookout.”

  “Which is why they’re here now, lights flashing,” he sneers sarcastically. “Keystone cops in the backwaters of West Cork.” He holds out a hand and, fingers splayed, produces an exaggerated tremor. “Look, I’m shaking.”

  “Mock them all you like but if you ever show your face in this village when Grace is here, they’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks.”

  “So, Grace isn’t here? Is that what you’re saying?” he asks, like the smartass he is. Then, like a smooth gear change, his voice switches to threatening. “Where is she, Des?” He takes a step towards Des.

  Benji goes on full alert, his eyes locking onto Simon.

  “Is she in Dublin?”

  Des’s face gives nothing away. “Yeah, she’s in Dublin. Called up to see you,” he says like Dublin is the last place she’d be. “Pity you’re down here.”

  Simon steps right up to Des now.

  Des is not a violent man but is considering a sharp upward jab of the stick when Benji starts to growl.

  Simon turns. Seeing the dog, his Adam’s Apple rises and falls. He addresses Des while keeping his eyes on the immediate threat. “Right, well, you tell her that this isn’t over. Perjury is perjury. And I’ve the children’s medical records to prove it. Your precious daughter will be seeing me in court. Very soon.”

  “The last thing I’ll be doing is passing on your threats. Get out of here before I set the dog on you.” He looks at Benji, hoping for something, anything.

  To his relief, Benji starts to advance, teeth bared.

  Simon points at Des. “This isn’t over.” He backs towards the door, eyes fixed on the dog.

  Benji follows him until he hurries through the door and shuts it firmly behind him.

  Des hears the front door slam and then, seconds later, an engine start up. Headlights flash into the room. Des stands, facing them, chin high.

  The lights recede as the car reverses, then point towards the village and the car speeds away.

  Des collapses into a chair. For once, his tremor has nothing to do with Parkinson’s. Benji returns to him like a dog to a farmer after herding sheep. Des puts a hand on his head.

  “My hero,” he says.

  Benji sits at his feet.

  There’s a gentle knock at the door and MaryAnn appears. It’s clear from her shocked and guilty face that she’s heard it all.

  “I’m so sorry I let him in! I thought…! He said…! I believed…! I’m so sorry for your daughter. I’m so sorry for Grace. And I’m so sorry for overhearing. The walls…. Oh, Des. What a horrible man. I’m shaking.”

  He smiles. “So am I. Come and sit down. He’s gone now. Good riddance to him.”

  “He had me completely fooled,” she says, sitting in the chair beside him.

  “He had us all fooled, MaryAnn,” he says with regret. “He’s a very persuasive, very cunning man.” He looks down at Benji and rests a hand on his head. “Good dog. Dog among dogs.” Des looks up at MaryAnn.

  “I’ll get him a bit of scone,” she says, rising to her feet. “And something stronger for us.”

  “MaryAnn?”

  She stops and turns.

  “Please, not a word to anyone.”

  Her hand goes to her heart. “You know me, Des. I’m no gossip.”

  “I know. I’m just nervous for Grace and the kids.” He thinks of Simon, driving back to Dublin. It’s not very Christian but how easy it would all be if his car just went off the road?

  In Dublin, it’s eleven, and Jack is in bed when Ross calls him back. He sits up and bangs the light on.

  “Hey, man. How’s it going?” Ross asks, slurring a little. He sounds so… American to Jack. Is that how Jack sounds to the kids in Killrowan? How has no one floored him at school?

 
“Only saw your call now,” Ross says.

  Yeah, no one leaves it that long without checking their phone, Jack thinks. Still, he’d be the same if Ross went silent on him. He wants to tell him he’s in Dublin but it’s too late tonight and he’s doing the course all day tomorrow, then leaving straight after.

  “No worries,” he says. “What’s the craic?” He wants to know everything he’s been missing. He feels it suddenly, like a great big gap in his life. Maybe it was a bad idea to get back in touch.

  “I’d given up on you, man,” Ross says.

  “Sorry,” comes easier now. “I don’t know. I just thought: what’s the point? Six hours each way, like.”

  “Whoa, dude! You sound like a culchie!”

  Jack laughs but is stunned at how condescending and dismissive the word sounds. Is that how he sounded only two weeks ago? Like a complete dick. But he knows Ross and knows he’s not a dick.

  “Yeah, culchies aren’t so bad, it turns out.” He won’t bring up the hurling, though. Ross isn’t ready for that. “Maybe you could come down for a weekend sometime.” There’s still the issue of where he’d stay – and what they’d do with themselves. Ginge might have some ideas.

  “Cool,” Ross says. Just one word but Jack can hear all this: West Cork’d be such a trek when there’s so much going on in Dublin.

  “So, no craic?” Jack asks to fill the silence.

  “You’ve been gone so long I don’t know what you know and what you don’t know.”

  So long? Two weeks? “Try me.”

  Ross goes through a list of who’s going out with who. And who isn’t any more. It does seem distant after all. And Ross really does sound drunk now.

  “Yeah, I better go, here,” Jack says at last.

  “Okay. Cool. Talk soon, dude.”

  “Take it easy,” Jack says and hangs up.

  He looks at the phone and wonders how so much could have changed in two weeks. How he could have changed.

  47

  “You haven’t been to Drombeg?” MaryAnn asks Des, setting down coffee and lifting his breakfast plate. “In all your seventy years?”

  Des shrugs, his mind still on Simon. Can he appeal? Could Grace be accused of perjury? Is the punishment really imprisonment? Or was it all a bluff? Des needs to talk to a lawyer. Fast.

  “Des Sullivan!”

  “What?”

  “There’s a stone circle, three thousand years old on your doorstep and you haven’t seen it”

  “I’ll get around to it, MaryAnn! Don’t you worry. Just tell me where it is.” He takes a sip of his coffee to keep her happy.

  “You’ll get around to it today. Because that’s where I’m bringing you.”

  “Sure, there’s no need to do that.”

  She points a fork at him. “Oh, but there is. If you go on your own, you’ll look at the rocks and you just won’t get it. No, Des Sullivan. We’re going. Soon as you’ve finished your coffee.”

  “Haven’t you got plans?” MaryAnn was always planning something.

  “I can’t think of anything more important than showing you this, this incredible legacy built by our ancestors, three thousand years ago and still standing – well most of it.”

  Des supposes that, for a few hours, he can put thoughts of Simon on hold. What can he do, anyway, on a Sunday? “Well, if you feel that strongly.”

  She actually claps her hands. “I do!”

  Rocks of different sizes and shapes, the tallest close to six foot, stand silent and still in a Megalithic circle. Des and MaryAnn stand, equally silent, equally still, gazing at them. She was right, of course. This is something very special. And “special” doesn’t do it justice. Des feels the history. He feels the people, their spirit lingering. And he feels that this spot, on raised ground with a view of the sea, was chosen for a reason. A sacred reason.

  “Tell me about it,” he says, his words a reverent whisper.

  MaryAnn starts to point out various rocks. “So, these are the male rocks. And these are the female. On certain days, like the Winter Solstice, the shadow from each of the male rocks falls on a female, entering her.

  “MaryAnn!” Des is mortified.

  She laughs. “What? Our ancestors worshipped fertility. And weren’t they right to? Isn’t it an absolute miracle how babies come to be?”

  Des has always thought so. It was one of the reasons he chose medicine. He almost studied obstetrics but wanted to be in the community. And here he is, now, embarrassed by shadows falling on rocks.

  “Don’t you think it’s amazing, that people were here, three thousand years ago, living their lives, just as we are living ours now, doing their best like we’re trying to do.” MaryAnn has gone all dreamy and ageless.

  Suddenly, Des wants to sweep her up in his arms and … he doesn’t know what… or where the urge has come from… but he’d like to do something mad. The truth prevents him. Because the truth is this: he left her behind. In seeking a better life, he discarded her. And that’s the truth. He loved his wife; he loved Miriam so very dearly. There’s no question about that. But he loved the right person, the person whose parents funded him to set up in general practice. It was a love with benefits. He suited himself. He let MaryAnn down.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, feeling it deeply.

  “For what?” she asks, turning. Seeing his face, realisation dawns in hers. She swats her hand through the air. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve had a very good life, Des. I wouldn’t change it for a second. And that’s the honest truth.”

  “I’m glad. I’m still sorry.”

  “You did what you had to do,” she says, without emotion, like she knew him better, back then, than he knew himself.

  He gazes at the stones, remembering the star-gazing, nature-loving, barefoot-walking teenager he used to be. But then, he’d have gazed at anything, loved anything and walked, barefoot, anywhere with MaryAnn by his side.

  Grace can’t imagine gouging anyone’s eyes out. And she says so to Patrick who has been highly recommending it as a means of escape.

  “Look,” he says to her. “Your attacker wants to hurt you. All you are to him is a desire to be satisfied. If you can’t fight for yourself, then fight for the people you love, the people who need you to stay who you are. Fight for them. Escape for them. Be okay for them.”

  She nods with a new determination. It makes sense that he’s a psychotherapist. He knew exactly how to make her fight.

  He demonstrates new moves.

  Everyone practices, in their pairs.

  All morning, they spar, yelling, “No! No! No!” as they block and attack.

  Finally, just as Grace was beginning to doubt that they’d ever break for lunch, they do. She is heading over to Jack and Holly when an arm encircles her neck from behind, forcing her into a headlock. She reacts on impulse, twisting and whacking her attacker three times in the groin as they’ve been practising.

  “Whoa! Whoa! Stop!” The “stop” comes out as a high-pitched yelp. And Grace is immediately released.

  Leaping away, she can’t believe what she has done. Neither can she believe that she had it in her. Hands to her face, she watches her partner crouch over, groaning like a dying animal.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Jack whoops and Holly breaks into hysterical laughter while everyone else looks on in stunned silence. Grace wonders if she and her children need therapy. Have they been exposed to too much for too long?

  Patrick is on his way over.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” she says. “I got such a fright I just lashed out. I wasn’t thinking. Something flipped. I’m so sorry.”

  “No need to be. You did well.” He bends down to her partner. “That was out of line, mate. You deserve what you got, in fairness.”

  “I was just trying to help,” he squeaks. “Introduce the element of surprise.”

  “How did that work out for you?” Patrick helps him up. “Leave the surprises to me, okay? We do everything very deliberat
ely, very carefully here. For a reason.”

  Grace goes to Holly and Jack and puts her arms around them. “Sorry about that. I–”

  “Are you kidding?” Jack says, staring at her. “Mum, you were a ninja. I’ve never seen you stand up for yourself before.”

  That floors her. Because it’s true. All she has taught her children is to roll over and take it; the same lesson, year after year after year. Getting away, she realises, is only the first step on the road to their recovery.

  48

  Des doesn’t know why he’s annoyed. MaryAnn is as entitled to date as the next person. The fellow who came to pick her up, though…. Des reminds himself that there’s no law against dating younger men. Or hippies. Or vegetarians with Rastafarian hair. Where were they off to at eight o’clock on a Sunday night, all the same? Probably star-gazing, he thinks, feeling sorry for himself.

  “You big eejit, Sullivan. Why should you care? There are bigger things to worry about. Much bigger things,” he scolds himself.

  Benji snuggles up to him, like a silent agony aunt.

  ’Twas good of MaryAnn to let him stay on until Alan and the lads finish up at the house. That’s what he should be focusing on instead of having a go at the Romeo who showed up on a BSA motorbike with an extra helmet. Des had a wonderful time with MaryAnn today. He should be grateful for that. Instead of wanting more. If he wants more. He doesn’t want more.

  And anyway, he needs this time to track down a family law solicitor. He goes through his patients in his mind. There has to be one. He remembers Theresa Dempsey, a former patient who grew up in Killrowan then moved to Cork to practice family law – if Des remembers correctly. He looks her up. And finds her! Based in the Mall in Cork, she is practising family law! He takes down the number of this lovely, lovely girl. Woman, now.