A million questions tore through his mind at once. Had his brothers shown up out of the blue despite his pleas to Patrick? That had to be it. He weighed his options. None of them were attractive. He could blow off his mother’s cry for help or he could call Molly and cancel, risking the fragile trust she and Kendra had in him. With a 9 a.m. deadline staring all of them in the face, postponement of tonight’s meeting carried all sorts of risks. Even so, he’d always been a dutiful son, even when it hadn’t been easy. He couldn’t fail his mother now.
“I’ll see what I can do about rearranging my schedule,” he reassured his mother. “I should be there in ten minutes.”
“Thank you.”
He was already en route when he called Molly from his cell phone. “I need to postpone dinner,” he told her.
“Just like that?” she asked incredulously. “I thought this was so important. I thought it had to be tonight.”
“You’re right,” he admitted, never more aware of how impossible it was to struggle with divided loyalties. “It is important, but I just had a call from my mother. There’s some sort of emergency at the house. I’m on my way there now. If it’s something I can deal with in a few minutes, I’ll get back to you and we can still make dinner.”
He thought of his fear that he was going to find his brothers there. “My hunch, though, is that it’s going to take longer. If it’s not too late when I’m through there, I’ll come by the bar and apologize to Kendra in person.”
“And Joe Sutton? Can you put him off?”
“I’ll work it out. I promise. Joe won’t show up until I’ve had a chance to meet with you and Kendra.”
“Fine,” she said, her voice tight.
“Molly, I won’t let you down,” he told her urgently. “I won’t. Mom said this is an emergency. I have to go.”
She sighed. “Of course you do. I hope everything’s okay when you get there.”
He imagined the hell that might be breaking loose if this involved his brothers. “So do I,” he said grimly. “So do I.”
Chapter Seven
Molly slowly hung up the phone. She’d heard the genuine worry in Daniel’s voice and knew he wouldn’t be putting off this meeting with Kendra if there weren’t a very real crisis at home. Still, she wasn’t looking forward to trying to explain that to Kendra. The girl was suspicious enough. This would only reinforce her general distrust of adults, her belief that no one could be trusted to keep their word.
“Who was that?” Kendra asked, regarding Molly warily.
“Daniel,” Molly admitted. “Now, I don’t want you to get upset, but he’s had an emergency. He’s postponing dinner.”
To her surprise, Kendra’s expression immediately brightened. “Good! Then we can go out, just you and me,” she said enthusiastically. “Who needs him?”
“At the moment, you do,” Molly reminded her.
“You’re not going to turn me over to that cop,” Kendra said with confidence. “You know I’ll just take off again if you try.”
Molly tried to explain the position she was in, the position all the adults were in who were aware of Kendra’s presence in Widow’s Cove. “Sweetie, there are a lot of people who have to balance what’s best for you against your parents’ interests.”
“Yeah, right. All they care about is protecting their own backsides in case my parents get mad at them.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” Molly asked.
Kendra had the grace to look chagrined. “No, not really.” Her chin jutted up defiantly. “But I’m not going back there. No one can make me.”
“Actually, they can,” Molly said, fighting for patience. “But they won’t if you can give Daniel and Joe a valid reason why you shouldn’t have to go.”
“Why can’t I just stay with you?” Kendra asked plaintively. “I could go to school here. My grades are real good, and I’ve been studying all along, so I could probably pass final exams in any classes, even if I haven’t been here all year. Then everything would be great.”
“There are probably a million reasons why that won’t work,” Molly said with regret. “For starters, I’m not a relative. Nor am I licensed to be a foster parent. I run a bar and live upstairs. I’m single and—”
“But you care what happens to me,” Kendra replied, cutting her off. “Isn’t that the most important thing?”
“I’m sure your parents care about you, too.”
“If they did, they wouldn’t be making me go away.”
“Where, exactly, are they making you go?” Molly asked. Kendra made it sound as if they were sentencing her to hard labor. Molly couldn’t believe it was anything other than what her parents thought was best for her, though where that could be, she couldn’t imagine.
“Away,” Kendra said flatly. “That’s all that matters. They’re sending me away and I don’t want to go.” She spun around and slid off the stool, then headed for the kitchen.
“You can forget about dinner. I don’t want to go with you, either,” she said, flinging the words back at Molly.
Molly stared after her and sighed. It was plain that Kendra wouldn’t answer any more questions on that particular topic. Molly had to wonder if she would be any more forthcoming with Daniel.
In the meantime maybe Retta would have better luck probing for answers than she had had. Retta had always had a way of making Molly comfortable enough to talk about her innermost feelings, things she wouldn’t have dared to share with her grandfather. Maybe Retta could work the same sort of magic with Kendra.
Molly had always heard that life with a teenage girl could be complicated. She was beginning to see the evidence of that firsthand. She could only pray that she wouldn’t do or say anything to make Kendra’s life—or her own—any more complicated.
Five minutes after ending his call to Molly, Daniel turned into his parents’ driveway. There was a fancy, unfamiliar SUV parked in front, along with Patrick’s easily recognizable pickup. As soon as he spotted the cars, Daniel’s heart began to beat harder. There was no longer any question in his mind about what he was going to find when he walked through the front door. The only question mark was just how bad it was going to be.
He paused at the front door, drew in a deep breath, then stepped inside, expecting to be hit with a barrage of shouted recriminations. Instead, he was greeted with total silence. All those people and no one was making a sound? It didn’t make sense. In fact, it was downright eerie.
He walked through the foyer to the living room, which they’d rarely used. It was kept spotless for company, not for use by rambunctious boys. Even after he and Patrick were older, the living room had remained off-limits, too stiffly formal to be inviting.
Now there were four men seated awkwardly on the sofa, their expressions dark and forbidding. His mother perched on the edge of an uncomfortable but prized antique chair, her hands twisting nervously in her lap. Naturally his father was nowhere in sight. He’d probably taken off at the first sign of tension.
Patrick glanced up when Daniel entered the room. “I imagine you were called in to save the day,” he said.
Daniel ignored the barb and paused to give his mother’s shoulder a squeeze before crossing the room to greet his brothers.
One by one the others stood and shook his hand. First Ryan, the oldest. Then Sean, and last of all Michael. There was no mistaking the fact that they were Devaneys. They had his father’s dark Irish looks, just as he and Patrick did. There was little of their mother in any of them, except for a slight softening around Ryan’s mouth when he smiled, which he wasn’t doing now, and in the paler blue of Michael’s eyes.
Worried about his mother’s pallor, Daniel turned back to her. “Mom, why don’t you make one of your coffee cakes?” he suggested gently.
When Ryan and Sean exchanged a glance, Daniel studied them curiously. “What?”
“We’ve talked about those pecan coffee cakes,” Ryan explained. “We both remembered how our mother always baked them on speci
al occasions.” He said it as if she weren’t in the room, as if she’d died long ago.
Despite Ryan’s distant tone, their mother hesitated in the doorway, the first faint trace of a smile on her lips. Her eyes shone with an unmistakable wistfulness. “You remember that?”
“I went out and bought one like it the first time Ryan came to see me,” Sean said, looking vaguely uncomfortable at the hint of sentimentality. “It felt right, somehow.”
Daniel glanced at his mother, but her eyes were filled with tears, and she seemed incapable of speaking. He filled the silence. “She still bakes them for Easter and Christmas and birthday breakfasts, right, Patrick?” he said, hoping to draw his twin into the conversation.
Patrick merely shrugged as if it were no big deal that a mere coffee cake stirred memories for all of them. Daniel realized there would be no help from him. In fact, Patrick looked as if he’d rather be anyplace else at that moment.
“Are there other things you remember?” Daniel asked, looking from one brother to another, hoping to encourage more happy memories.
“Her spaghetti,” Sean supplied, though he didn’t look especially happy to be sharing that. “My wife’s boss makes sauce that’s almost as good, but there’s something missing.”
“A spoonful of sugar, I imagine,” their mother said shyly. “It’s a secret I learned from my mother.”
Daniel turned to Michael, who’d remained silent. “Is there anything you remember?”
His expression still hard, Michael looked from Daniel to his mother and back again. “Being left behind,” he said harshly.
Daniel hadn’t expected the blow to come from Michael. When they’d first met, he’d had the impression that Michael remembered the least from the past, and that his foster family, the Havilceks, had made the intervening years good ones.
Tears welled up in his mother’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her anguished gaze on Michael. “You’ll never know how sorry.”
Daniel regarded his brother angrily. “Is that what you came for, Michael? All of you? Are you only interested in hurting her? In making her and Dad pay for what they did?”
“I think we have a right to be angry,” Ryan said quietly.
“Damn straight they do,” Patrick said heatedly. “Stay out of it, Daniel.”
But he couldn’t. He saw the torment on his mother’s face, and he couldn’t allow them to continue with a barrage of accusations that would accomplish nothing. He turned back to his mother with a forced smile. If the issues between them were ever to be resolved, they had to talk without bitterness, openly and honestly. He could see that wasn’t likely right now, not when things had gotten off to such a rocky start.
“Mom, go on and bake the coffee cake,” he told her. “Give me a few minutes with Ryan, Sean and Michael.”
Patrick was on his feet at once. “Stop protecting her.”
“Your brother’s right,” she told Daniel gently. “I don’t deserve your protection.”
“Well, you have it, anyway,” Daniel said. “I won’t let them come in here and hurt you.”
“They’re entitled to their say,” she said.
“In a minute,” he said flatly. “After we’ve talked. Please, Mom, leave us alone.”
She started to leave, then turned back, her gaze on Ryan. “It’s been so long,” she whispered, her voice shaky. “You won’t leave, will you? Not right away.”
“Not without saying goodbye,” he promised.
She nodded, apparently satisfied that she could rely on the word of her eldest son, then left the room.
As soon as he was certain she was out of earshot, Daniel whirled on his brothers. “How dare you come into her home and badger her like this? I thought you were going to give me some advance notice, let me smooth the way.” He focused on Patrick. “Didn’t I talk to you a couple of hours ago? Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Not that it matters, but I didn’t know about the visit till they showed up at my house,” Patrick retorted. “I already knew about your plans for the evening, so I didn’t bother to call. I should have guessed that Mom would run to you the second we showed up.”
“It’s not as if she has anyone else she can turn to,” Daniel said. “Dammit, Patrick, you should be more sensitive. We talked about this.”
“Yeah, well, how dare you try to stop them from saying what’s on their minds?” Patrick replied. “How the hell do you expect to smooth this over, Daniel? Platitudes and apologies aren’t enough, not by a long shot.”
Ryan stepped between them, one hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “Cool it, you two. There’s no need for you to be fighting because of us.”
“There’s every reason,” Patrick insisted, clearly aligning himself with the brothers who’d been abandoned. “Daniel refuses to acknowledge that what our parents did was wrong. If it were up to him, he’d sweep all those years under the carpet. Well, I’ll say it if he won’t. What they did was unconscionable. It can’t be ignored or prettied up.” He scowled at Daniel. “You, of all people, have to know that. You deal with abandoned kids all the time. Our parents did that to Ryan, Sean and Michael, our brothers. How can you defend them?”
Patrick looked as if he wanted to take a swing at Daniel. Daniel would have done nothing to prevent it, but once again Ryan put his hand on Patrick’s shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Ryan said.
Patrick shrugged off the contact. “It’s not okay. Not what they did to you back then. Not what Daniel’s trying to do now. I’m out of here. The rest of you can do whatever the hell you want.”
The tension in the room was thick enough to cut as Patrick stormed out. Daniel tried to find the words to make things right, but there were none. None at all.
“I’m going to check on Mom,” he said finally. He looked at Ryan. “Will you be here when I get back?”
“I promised that I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye,” he said, glancing at the others for confirmation that they would go along with that. They nodded curtly, clearly reluctant to stay but unwilling to break Ryan’s promise.
“Then give me a few minutes. Patrick’s right about one thing. I think it’s important for all of us to get past this.”
Ryan regarded him with a shuttered expression. “I honestly don’t know how that’s possible. I’m not sure what I was expecting when we came here, but I don’t think I’ll find it. Seeing her again…” His voice trailed off. “It just brought all of it slamming back into me.”
“Me, too,” Sean said, his expression grim. “I guess I’d hoped that it would be different once we’d seen her, but it just makes the pain that much worse. We’re not blaming you, Daniel. You had no part in any of this.”
Daniel sighed heavily and glanced at Michael, who looked no happier than the others. Daniel could understand his brothers’ reservations. He had a million of his own. “Please don’t rule out giving them another chance,” he said quietly, then went to see how their mother was holding up.
He found her in the kitchen, her coffee cake ingredients spread across the kitchen table, her hands idle, her eyes distant. It was evident that she was lost in memories, none of them happy.
She looked up when he came into the room. “Are they still here?” she asked anxiously.
“They’re waiting to say goodbye.”
She stared at Daniel helplessly. “I don’t know what to say to them. How can I explain what their father and I did all those years ago?”
“Speaking of Dad, where is he?”
“He’d gone out earlier, thank the Lord. I don’t think he could have handled this.”
“Then he doesn’t know they’re here?”
She shook her head.
“When is he due back?”
“Not for a while yet.”
“Mom, maybe you should go back in there and say goodbye for now. We can arrange another time to meet. You and Dad can talk over how you want to handle it, what you want to tell them.”
She gave him a sad look. “T
hey don’t deserve anything less than the truth.”
Daniel squeezed her hand. “Then that’s what you’ll tell them, but not today. I think you’ve been through enough, having them turn up here unexpectedly like this.”
She touched his cheek. “You always want things to turn out for the best for everyone, but sometimes that’s not possible, Daniel. There would never be an easy way or a right way to do this. And I’m not entitled to any compassion from those three men in there. They’re my sons, just as you are, and I turned my back on them and walked away. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t what I wanted, but I did it because your father insisted it was the only thing to do. I can hardly bear to look them in the eye and see the pain your father and I caused them.”
She visibly drew herself together and stood up. “But I will face them. And I will answer their questions. I owe them that.”
“Not today,” Daniel insisted. “You’ve been through enough for today.”
“They’ve been through more,” she said with quiet resolve.
Daniel watched her walk slowly back into the living room, never prouder of her than he was at that moment.
But when they got there, only Ryan was waiting. He was on his feet, staring out the window. He turned slowly.
“The others are waiting outside, but I didn’t want to go back on my promise. I’ll say goodbye now.”
Kathleen Devaney’s step faltered, and she reached for Daniel’s hand, her gaze on Ryan. “But you will come back, all of you?”
Ryan’s gaze remained steady and unflinching. “I honestly don’t know. I’m not sure I see the point.”
She reached for him, then her hand fell back. “Please, you must. You’ve come this far. I know the answers must be very important to you. Come back tomorrow or next week. Whenever you’re ready. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. You should see your father, too. He should see what fine young men you’ve turned out to be, despite what happened.”
“I’ll try,” Ryan said, his tone even more noncommittal than his words. “Sean and Michael say they’re through.”
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