25 Years

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Why can’t it be easier?” exclaimed Lily, sitting down on a bench made from a tree trunk. Winky jumped up beside her and sat down. “Ryan’s being dead will never be okay, but why can’t we be loving toward each other?”

  “Lily, do you think it would’ve been better—the getting along part—had Ryan lived?”

  Lily gazed up at him. He was right, of course. Why had she never seen that? Her mother had never been easy to live with and never would have been under any circumstances.

  And regardless of whoever Lily married, her mother would criticize her—and probably her spouse—because that was what Marie did.

  “You can’t change your mother,” Patrick said. “Don’t try. But I came here today to urge you to do what is right for you. Make the choices that will make you happy. Your mother may come around in regard to Colin Gardner, and she may not. But that’s no reason for you to turn away from someone or something you find important to your happiness.”

  His words filled her with peace. Of course. It was so simple. There was no need to acknowledge her mother’s feud with Colin, let alone feed it with dramatic statements or actions. Wiser would be to go about her own life and…well…ignore Marie’s sniping to the best of her ability.

  “That said, I’m not crazy about your driving to Bemidji alone after dark. There are always deer on the road, and your car is very small. I wish you’d at least wait until daylight.”

  Lily heard the distinctive musical notes of her cell phone’s ring. She walked to her car and reached inside the open window.

  It was a Minnesota number. It would be Colin.

  “Hello?”

  “Lily. It’s me.”

  “How is he?”

  “It’s meningitis. He’s all right just now. He’s sleeping, so I came out to call you.”

  “Do you need anything from home?”

  He didn’t answer at once. Then he said, “You’d drive down here?”

  “Of course. Maybe not till tomorrow. I haven’t thought that far.”

  “We’re reading The Lord of the Rings. We’re on The Two Towers. It’s beside the bed.”

  His bed. The bed she’d shared with him.

  “Okay. I’ll bring it when I come.”

  When they said goodbye, Lily saw her father smiling up at the nearest tree house.

  He said, “You know, Lily—I’m not sure if your mother has realized the obvious advantage yet, but I’d love to have you nearer home. I miss you.”

  And, just like she had when she was a child, she rushed to him and embraced him.

  He said, “Your mother and I both love you very much. Neither of us—and I know I speak for her—hold it against you that Ryan drowned while he was under your care. You’re our daughter. You didn’t murder him. You were a young person who made a mistake that I’m sure has caused you as much pain as it caused us. Different pain, but equivalent. And I can’t remove your hurt any more than I can your mother’s or my own. But we want you to be happy, Lily. We love you, and we want you to know every joy life can bring.”

  The tears sprang to her eyes, unexpected. A flood. The knowledge of what she had done—and thereby failed to do—had been battened inside her. Emotional knowledge.

  She sobbed.

  “There, there, Lily.” Her father patted her back. “We all go on.”

  “Thank you,” she said, not needing to say what the gratitude was for, unable to define it if he asked.

  “Let’s finish up whatever needs to be done here and go home to your mother,” he said. “She needs you, too, Lily. She doesn’t want to admit how much she loves you. I think she’s afraid to realize it. Afraid of losing you, too.”

  As she drove home behind her parents’ ancient Land Cruiser, Lily wondered if what her father had just said was true. Maybe, whether or not Colin Gardner was to be part of her life, she should come to Minnesota to live. The antipathy she felt for the place, she saw now, was not dislike of the midwest, its people, its cold winters, its mosquitoes in summer. It had simply been a tangible monument to the sickening error she had made at the age of fifteen, the error with such tragic consequences.

  As she parked in the spot she’d been using near her parents’ car and her father climbed out, he gave her a look that mingled humor and understanding and reminded her again that her mother would not change. She shouldn’t expect miracles, in other words, even the miracle of civility.

  Marie sat on the porch swing with Helen, Bert on the steps nearby. Marie and Bert were having cocktails.

  “Gin and tonic?” Bert said to Patrick and Lily.

  “Thank you,” grunted Patrick and bent to kiss his wife, who tilted her head up.

  Lily went to the swing and said, “Move over, Helen. I want to sit by my mother.” And as her cousin laboriously slid over a few inches, murmuring something about the swing really not being big enough for three, Marie reached up and hugged Lily.

  Lily said, “Mom, I was thinking. Maybe out there, we could each tell our favorite recollection of Ryan. You know, tie the canoes together? I mean, I don’t know what you have planned, but…”

  She expected her mother to say that of course Lily didn’t know—of course she had never cared about scattering Ryan’s ashes.

  Her mother suddenly put her head back and laughed. “You know the one that keeps occurring to me? It was at Music Night. We’d all tuned our instruments and then we went outside to see that owl—”

  A sudden break.

  There had been an owl. Yes. Perched on the dock railing. So strange.

  Years before Ryan’s death.

  Unexpectedly, Helen started laughing. “He untuned the instruments.”

  They all laughed then.

  Lily realized that her hand was in her mother’s.

  “Maybe, Lily—I don’t know how long you’re going to be here.”

  “In Minnesota? I think a long time, Mom. I do have a textbook to edit, and the publishers are hoping for another.”

  Her mother’s eyes had gone from sharp to slightly vulnerable. “It would be wonderful to have you. I’m sorry, Lily. And your father’s right. You have the freedom to see whoever you like. Whether Colin Gardner can ever be welcomed in this house—that’s another question….”

  “We’d better get out in the canoes,” said Helen. “It’s about time.”

  Patrick opened his mouth, but Lily said, “Right,” and stood up.

  With a rueful smile, but one that also commended Lily for not battling with a decision apparently made in their absence—to scatter the ashes that night—her father turned to Marie. “Shall I bring down Ryan’s ashes?”

  They were in her parents’ bedroom, and the protectiveness with which they’d kept their youngest child near them touched her. The ashes were in a heavy iron urn, and they planned to sink it in the lake when they scattered the ashes.

  Colin should be here. Colin was part of this.

  But it hadn’t mattered to Colin. He had said that her parents’ needs should be met, and he was right. It didn’t matter that her mother was unjust to him, either. And somehow, Lily thought he understood that, too. He was a scapegoat, and he was strong enough to play the part.

  They took two canoes, she and her parents in one, Helen and Bert in the other, and paddled out to the middle of the lake. There were other people out, swimming from a dock on the opposite shore, fishing from an aluminum skiff.

  As the sun turned the water orange and purple, the mosquitoes providing music, anecdotes about Ryan spilled out, disordered.

  “Oh, God, Lily, do you remember,” Marie said, “when you came home from that week of ballet camp and he told you Spinner had died?”

  Their miniature poodle, who had been alive and well at the time of Ryan’s tragic announcement.

  The shared laughter brought new notes, more joyful than funereal, to the music of the sunset.

  “I believed him, too!”

  “He used to tell me all the time that I stank,” said Helen. “Remember how he used to bring
deodorant to me at the dinner table?”

  Lily grinned. “You just made me feel so much better, Helen. I’d forgotten he ever picked on anyone but me.”

  As the sun fell lower, her father removed the lid from the urn and dropped the lid into the lake. Then he offered the urn to her mother, and Lily saw it was because he couldn’t go on.

  Marie shook her head and passed the urn to Lily.

  She reached in, touching the ashes. Her parents could not touch these, could not make themselves. This was their child, her brother.

  She dropped some on the surface of the water, then said, “Helen, could you please?”

  Carefully, reaching over the water, she handed the urn to her cousin.

  Helen matter-of-factly thrust one hand into the urn and lifted out some ashes. Scattering them, she said, “‘Judge me by my size, do you…? And well you shouldn’t. For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it and makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter.’”

  And Lily reached across the water again, this time to hold her cousin’s hand.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “THEY’LL LOVE IT, Colin.” IT was the third weekend in August and the fourth time Colin had come with Lily to Camp Boreal. Luke, fully recovered from his illness, had been there more than a dozen times.

  Marie liked Luke and was teaching him to play the piano. Rudeness to Colin she’d honed to an art. Instead of making Lily the target for ceaseless disapproval, she criticized Colin’s hair, clothing, occupation, personality and family background—to his face, of course.

  Colin had come upon the gift for Lily’s parents while away with Luke, doing a raptor presentation at a summer camp near Omaha. It was a stone birdbath fountain with the figure of Yoda in the center. Engraved around the rim of the bath were the words: MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU.

  It was in the back of Colin’s pickup truck, under the camper shell. Luke sat between his father and Lily as they drove to Camp Boreal.

  “I imagine,” said Colin, “that at least one member of your family will find something not to like.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “As a matter of fact, she might decide I’m mocking her grief.”

  That was not out of the realm of possibility.

  “Luke, remember the plan?” he said.

  “What plan?” asked Lily.

  “You’ll see.”

  Lily’s mother came out on the porch to meet them as they started up the steps. “I wondered when you were coming. We didn’t know whether to put the lasagna in. I just did, anyhow. I figured you could eat it cold if you were late.”

  “Mother, I’m never late,” Lily pointed out, with an attempt at a smile.

  “Those shoes look fancy. Are they new, or are they some of your things you moved from Santa Barbara?”

  “From Santa Barbara.” She had sublet her apartment there for the remainder of her lease and moved in with Colin and Luke in late July.

  “What’s that?” Marie’s eyebrows drew together as she saw the birdbath Colin had brought from the truck. “Not some junk you picked up…”

  It was particularly brassy, Lily thought, for either of her parents to talk about anyone else picking up junk.

  But Marie came slowly down the steps. “Patrick. Patrick, come here! Colin, where did you find it? Oh, where shall we put it?”

  She rushed down the porch to Colin, hugged him around the waist, and kissed his cheek against his short, sparse beard.

  Lily’s father walked to the edge of the porch, peered down at the birdbath, at Colin, at Luke, at his wife and finally at Lily. He gave his daughter a wink, and she grinned.

  Marie said, “It’s perfect, Colin. It’s perfect. Does it work? Is it a fountain?”

  “SO WHAT WAS LUKE’S PART in the plan?” Lily asked that evening as she and Colin sat on the end of her parents’ dock, gazing across the lake to the place where tragedy had caught them twenty-five years before.

  “He’s doing it. He’s inside minding his own business.”

  Lily pulled her legs up to her chest, crossing her bare ankles as the mosquitoes began to dine.

  Colin looked at her, and she looked back. She couldn’t see the color of his eyes in the twilight, but he had become familiar to her, her best friend, a friend like none she’d ever had.

  He said, “Will you marry me?”

  She had known, she realized. Men had proposed to her before, and she had known then, as well. “Yes.”

  “I had this made.”

  She had not expected a ring. She would’ve laid money that Colin would not have bought her an engagement ring, let alone had one made.

  But he had. It was smooth and round, gold, and the design etched in it was like tree bark. Inside were set stones. An emerald, a diamond, a ruby.

  It was the most beautiful ring she had ever seen, and it fit her.

  “I love it,” Lily whispered.

  “I love you,” he said.

  They lingered on the end of the dock for a while, then wandered back toward the house.

  “So—Luke knows?”

  “Of course he knows. I asked him what he thought.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He’s excited, Lily. You’ve changed his life. Maybe even more than you’ve changed mine.”

  Her parents and Luke sat at the kitchen table playing Hearts. Luke looked up excitedly when Lily and Colin came in.

  Lily said, “Colin and I are getting married.”

  “If you go through with it this time.” Her mother tossed a heart onto the table.

  Her father stood up and kissed her. He told Colin, “Congratulations,” and shook his hand.

  Lily showed them her ring.

  Luke said, “I think it’s pretty. I told Dad so. We went to the jeweler together.”

  Marie said, “See that you don’t lose it.”

  Colin, Lily and Patrick all looked at each other, fighting laughter.

  Luke said, “Yeah. It cost a lot.”

  “Too much, I’m sure. Ridiculous to spend so much money on jewelry. Luke, it’s your turn,” Marie muttered. “You two, there’s a cake in the bread box. Why don’t you serve it?”

  Patrick took his seat at the table again.

  Lily and Colin met each other’s eyes and grinned. Marie would never change, Lily and Colin would always bear the weight of Ryan’s death, but there was still joy in the world. Still laughter and love to be shared.

  A VISIT FROM EILEEN

  Janice Macdonald

  Dear Reader,

  Things happen for a reason. I hear people say that all the time, as I’m sure you do, too. You may have said the words yourself. They’re often the response to difficult or painful situations. Although I want very much to believe that there is some sort of grand plan and it isn’t just random chance that things happen the way they do, I must confess that sometimes I find the idea difficult to accept.

  In my story, Eileen regrets her decision to leave Ireland and Kieran, the man she loves. “What if?” she keeps asking herself. What if she’d swallowed her pride? Stayed in Ireland? Married Kieran? And yet, as Kieran points out when they’re reunited in Ireland twenty-five years later, if she’d stayed in Ireland he wouldn’t have married the woman he did, had a daughter and now a granddaughter he dearly loves. But he, too, wonders: Was there a reason his wife died so young? Were he and Eileen ultimately meant to be together? Was there a reason for the twenty-five years she spent in America?

  I imagine life as a vast and uncompleted jigsaw puzzle. From my vantage point, I can see only a few pieces and have no idea what the overall picture looks like. In my own life, I occasionally look back and wonder what if I’d taken this road instead of that. In some instances, I can see that not getting what I thought I wanted at the time was actually a great stroke of luck. But was it luck? Or destiny, perhaps?

  I hope you enjoy “A Visit from Eileen.” I love getting your e-mails and letters and try t
o answer every one of them. You can get in touch with me at www.janicemacdonald.com, or by writing to Janice Macdonald, PMB 101, 136 E. 8th Street, Port Angeles, WA 98362.

  Best wishes,

  Janice

  CHAPTER ONE

  Clonkill, County Galway, Ireland

  KIERAN O’MALLEY STOOD on a stepladder in the bathroom of a house that belonged to the woman who, but for one of those quirks of fate, would almost certainly have been his mother-in-law. Carmel, her name was, although even when he was engaged to her daughter, Kieran had never progressed beyond Mrs. Doyle or Mrs. D. Spread across the floor below him were pages of newspaper set down to protect the robin’s-egg-blue tiles, laid by him a week or so ago. The day after, in fact, Mrs. D got word that Eileen was finally coming home for a visit.

  “Will you have a coffee, Kieran?” Mrs. Doyle called.

  He didn’t reply; it wasn’t really a question. Experience had taught him that he wouldn’t be allowed to keep painting without joining her in a coffee. A few more unanswered shouts and she’d bring the coffee up herself.

  As far as Mrs. Doyle was concerned, Kieran often thought, he might as well be her son-in-law. “You’re the son I never had,” she was always telling him, a term of affection that came with a price. Mr. D had died years back, long before Eileen went off to America, and Kieran had taken over the kind of tasks men did around the house. The phone would ring and it would be herself, “Ah Kieran, would you ever help an old lady out, then?” The front hedge needed trimming, the bricks down the garden path had worked loose and one of these days she was going to trip and break her neck. Or, Eileen’s coming from America and the whole house needs a good spruce up, sure the spare bedroom hasn’t been painted since she left and how long has that been?

  Twenty-five years, that’s how long it had been. Not that he was counting at all.

  “Kieran,” she called again. “Come down now and have a coffee and some jam roll.”

  In the kitchen, he took a chair at the table as Eileen’s mother bustled around with cups and saucers. It was in this very room that Eileen had told him he was a no-good, faithless lout, the lowest of the low, and she’d had enough of him and this whole bloody country. Soon after that she went off to America. Los Angeles, and she hadn’t been back since.