The Return of Caine O'Halloran: Hard Choices

by JoAnn Ross

  “Let me see.”

  Caine bent his head.

  “She did a right fine job,” Devlin allowed with surprise. “I remember your mother trying to teach that girl how to quilt. Finally gave up when she kept stitchin’ her finger and bleedin’ all over the squares.”

  “I guess she got better.”

  “Seems she did,” Devlin agreed. “You eat breakfast?”

  “Not yet. I figured I’d stop by the Timberline for coffee and one of Ingrid’s Viking omelets after visiting you and Gram.”

  “And break your grandmother’s heart? She made flapjack batter this morning and there’s a jar of rhubarb sauce waitin’ on the table with your name on it.”

  Caine grinned. His grandfather might look older, but some things, blessedly, remained the same. “Suddenly, I’m starving.”

  Devlin put his arm around Caine’s shoulder and ushered him through the screen door into the kitchen.

  “Your grandmother must be taking a nap,” Devlin said.

  “So early?” Caine glanced up at the copper teakettle clock over the stove. “It’s only eight o’clock.”

  “She was up early. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and pull up a chair, Caine. I’ll go check on her.”

  Devlin was smiling, but Caine heard concern in his grandfather’s voice. “Is everything okay?”

  “Just dandy.” For the first time Caine could remember, his grandfather refused to look him in the eye. “Sit yourself down. I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  Caine poured a cup of coffee from the dented aluminum coffeepot on the stove and took a careful sip. It was hot and dark and strong with a just a hint of chicory that hearkened back to Maggie O’Halloran’s New Orleans roots.

  The table was covered with the oilcloth that dated back to a time before Caine was born. The kitchen radio—an ancient tube model—was tuned to a big-band station, adding to the feeling that his grandparents’ house had been frozen in time.

  “She just drifted off,” Devlin said, returning just as the Chattanooga choo-choo left Pennsylvania station. “I didn’t think you’d want me to wake her.”

  “Of course not. Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”

  “Your grandmother’s not a young woman, Caine. She gets a mite more tired these days. Same as the rest of us old codgers.”

  “Maybe I’d better have those flapjacks some other time.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Devlin argued. “You stay put and I’ll rustle them up before you can say Jack Sprat.”

  He moved toward the stove with the deliberate shuffle of a man of enormous energy trapped in an aging, stiff body. Caine wasn’t about to sit by while a man nearly three times his age waited on him.

  “How about we team up?”

  “I reckon that’ll be okay,” Devlin replied. “But don’t you dare tell your grandmother. She’d have my hide if she found out I put you to work the minute you walked in the door.”

  “Mum’s the word,” Caine agreed.

  They worked in companionable silence. Caine cooked the pancakes in an iron skillet in the center of the woodstove Maggie insisted cooked better than any gas or electric one, while Devlin fried bacon in the electric frying pan.

  In the background, Glenn Miller was “in the mood,” followed by Erskine Hawkins swinging in the Savoy Ballroom with “Tuxedo Junction.” The batter began bubbling around the edges of the silver-dollar-size cakes.

  “So what’re you gonna do about getting Nora back?”

  “What makes you think I want her back?” Caine flipped the pancakes.

  “If you don’t, you’re a damn fool.”

  “Still beating around the bush, aren’t you?”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, boy, I’m gettin’ to be an old man. The way I figure it, I don’t have time to be subtle.”

  The pancakes were a golden brown. Caine piled them on a plate, put the plate in the warming oven, and began spooning more batter into the pan.

  “I’ve got too much to work out without trying to rekindle cold ashes from a failed marriage,” Caine muttered. Having his grandfather bring up his love life reminded him all too vividly of the other night’s humiliating sexual failure.

  The old man piled the bacon onto a platter, then shuffled over to the table and placed it in the middle of the oilcloth.

  “You and Nora started out kinda rocky,” Devlin allowed.

  Caine watched him struggling with the lid of the preserve jar and had to force himself not to rush in to help. “We ended that way, too,” Caine reminded him.

  Devlin shrugged. “Every marriage goes through a few rough patches. You gonna turn those or let ’em burn?”

  Caine flipped the round cakes just in time.

  He was relieved when his grandfather appeared willing to drop the subject while they shared a companionable breakfast.

  “It’s good to have you back, Caine,” Devlin said, spooning the dark red rhubarb sauce over their pancakes.

  “You’ve no idea how good it is to be back.” Caine took a bite and remembered what heaven tasted like.

  “There’s been a lot of changes here on the peninsula,” Devlin complained. “We’re gettin’ more overrun with tourists every day...the kind of folks that look like they just stepped off the pages of one of them L. L. Bean catalogs.

  “Used to be you could leave your tackle in your boat—can’t do that anymore. Remember the first time I took you fishing?”

  “We were out for seven days, trolling for salmon.”

  He’d been five at the time, but Caine could remember the cold winds, the churning waves and the orange floats as if it were yesterday. The memory was so vivid that when he took a bite of bacon, Caine was almost surprised that it didn’t taste of fish.

  “I was as sick as a dog the entire time.”

  “You were a mite green around the gills,” Devlin confirmed. “I told your daddy that we’d better find you another occupation because it was obvious that you weren’t born with the O’Halloran sea legs. Next day he bought you your first baseball.”

  He stabbed a piece of pancake with his fork and chewed thoughtfully. “Funny how things work out. Who would’ve guessed that you’d grow up to be a big-league baseball star and end up in the Hall of Fame alongside Ruth and DiMaggio and Cobb?”

  “You can’t get voted into the Hall of Fame until you’ve been retired for five years. And I’m not ready to retire.”

  “Your daddy said the same thing,” Devlin observed. “The fishing business has gotten so bad it looks like your daddy might have to give up The Bountiful.”

  “I went by the docks to see The Bountiful yesterday,” Caine told him. He’d been surprised by the number of streamlined sport-fishing craft, painted red and blue and yellow, with sickeningly cute names and long whip antennae, that had taken over many of the old fishing-boat slips. “But they told me she was out to sea.”

  “Your daddy got himself a two-week charter. A bunch of insurance guys from Seattle won some kinda sales contest.

  “That’s one of those funny twists of fate. For a while, things were lookin’ so bad we thought your daddy would have to turn The Bountiful over to the bank and go work on the beach.”

  “I hadn’t realized he was in financial trouble. Damn! Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “It wasn’t your problem.”

  “But I made seven million dollars last year.”

  Devlin looked up with interest. “Newspapers said ten.”

  “The newspapers were wrong.”

  “Still,” Devlin mulled aloud, “seven million is a right nice piece of change.”

  “Enough to pay every debt my father could have racked up and buy a fleet of new boats.” Caine’s fingers curved tightly around the handle of his fork. “Dammit, he should hav
e told me.”

  “You had your own troubles, what with your injury and your marriage problems and all,” his grandfather argued patiently. “We didn’t want to worry you.”

  Although Devlin didn’t say it, Caine had the bleak feeling that the reason his family hadn’t come to him for help was that they’d never considered him all that reliable. Although he knew his parents were proud of his achievements, he also knew that they found it difficult to view baseball as a real job.

  The O’Hallorans were a hardy, unpretentious, salt-of-the-earth breed who’d always worked hard for every penny; he, on the other hand, was paid a virtual fortune to play a kids’ game. Add to that a press corps that loved detailing his admittedly hedonistic lifestyle, and it was no wonder his parents had opted to handle their own financial problems.

  Caine shrugged. “I had a few curveballs thrown my way. Nothing I can’t handle. Dad should have said something.”

  “’Tweren’t necessary. A few months ago your daddy turned the boat into a charter and Ellen signed on as cook. Thanks to city slickers with too much time and money on their hands, he’s makin’ more in a month than he did all last year. Which leads me to my next point.”

  “What point is that?” Caine knew he sounded like a petulant twelve-year-old. Which wasn’t surprising since, unfortunately, at the moment he felt like one.

  “That sometimes life takes funny turns and it looks as if things are goin’ downhill, but if a fella’s quick on the uptake, he can turn things around to his advantage.

  “Nothin’ your daddy liked better than bein’ out on that boat. And for a while, it looked like he was gonna have to give it up. But then he figured out this charter business and from what I can tell he’s never been happier.

  “And your mama. Lord, that lady never worked for wages a day in her life, but you’d think she’d discovered heaven from the way she talks about all the pleasure she gets from those city folk gobblin’ up her vittles like they’d been starving.

  “So, why don’t you quit feelin’ sorry for yourself, Caine, and figure out how to make lemonade outta them lemons fate dealt you?”

  Caine squared his shoulders. “I’m not feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Who’s not feelin’ sorry for himself?” a feminine voice asked. “Is that my Caine?” Maggie O’Halloran peered through her wire-framed glasses as she entered the kitchen.

  She was wearing a scarlet sweatshirt embossed with a trio of puffins sitting atop a rock and blue jeans that hung loosely, suggesting that she’d lost a great deal of weight recently. Her hair, once a flaming red, had faded to a soft tapestry of silver-and-pink.

  “Hiya, Gram.”

  Caine pushed himself out of his chair, crossed the room and enfolded her in his arms. She was smaller than he remembered—the top of her head barely reached the middle of his chest—and she seemed unusually frail.

  “God, it’s good to see you.”

  She tilted her head back. “Still using the Lord’s name in vain, I see.” There was a twinkle in her blue eyes. “What on earth are we gonna do with you, Caine O’Halloran?”

  “There’s always the woodshed.”

  She chuckled at that. “You were too big for a whupping when you were born. Guess I’ll have to give you a big hug instead.”

  As she wrapped her arms around him, Caine couldn’t help noticing that her strength wasn’t what it once had been. He drank in the familiar scent of lilacs that had always surrounded her and tried to pretend that nothing had changed.

  “You’re sure looking good, Gram,” he said. He grinned at his grandfather over the top of her pastel curls. “You’d better watch out, Pappy, or one of those big Swede loggers is gonna steal this lady right out from under your nose.”

  “Lars Nelson winked at her last Friday,” Devlin allowed.

  “That wasn’t a wink,” Maggie argued. “The old man just has a tic in his left eye.”

  “Sure looked like a wink to me,” Devlin said. “I thought maybe he was lookin’ for a refresher course on those flying lessons he took from you.”

  “That was fifty years ago,” Maggie informed Caine. “And your grandfather’s still jealous.”

  The three of them laughed at the long-running joke.

  “Besides,” Maggie said as she made her way slowly and painfully, Caine noticed with alarm, to a chair, “I haven’t been up in a plane for so long I probably couldn’t remember how to take off.”

  “I doubt that, Gram,” Caine said. “Everyone knows you were born to fly.”

  “You’re right about that,” Maggie agreed, smiling her thanks to her husband, who’d placed a mug of coffee liberally laced with milk in front of her. “Of course I had a heck of a time convincing others of that fact, back in the old days.”

  She blew on the coffee, took a sip, then gazed down into the light brown depths as if seeing herself as she’d been in those days so many years ago. As if on cue, Les Brown’s “Sentimental Journey” came over the radio.

  “They wouldn’t let me solo, so I couldn’t get my license.”

  Caine knew the romantic story of his grandmother’s life by rote. Maggie O’Halloran, nee Margaret Rose Murphy, had been born in New Orleans in 1930. When she was fifteen years old, she’d run away from the convent school her wealthy parents had sent her to and become a singer and dancer with a travelling troupe.

  It was during her days on the stage that she’d met a dashing former World War II flying ace barnstorming his way across America. He’d taken her up in his Lockheed Vega and although the pilot had moved on the following morning, Maggie’s love affair with the airplane had lasted the rest of her life.

  Caine had heard innumerable stories of Maggie’s exploits while growing up, including how Devlin, who loved the way Maggie Murphy looked in her scandalous khaki trousers, had vowed to win the heart of the hot-tempered, flame-haired aviatrix.

  Noticing the familiar warm light shining in her eyes, Caine was more than willing to sit through the story again.

  “But eventually you got it,” he said, on cue.

  “Sure did.” She chuckled, then took another sip. “Of course, it was still a man’s world, and I got turned down for every airline job I applied for, but then one day I showed up at this itsy-bitsy airfield in Glendale, California, where they were having a pylon race. Won myself a trophy, which I ended up pawning to pay for fuel for my next three races.”

  A reminiscent smile wreathed her face, softening the lines earned from a lifetime of working outdoors. “Boy, I loved beating those egotistical swaggering pilots with their goggles and their baggy trousers”

  “You looked better in those trousers, too,” Devlin drawled.

  “And you were always a silver-tongued devil, Devlin O’Halloran.” A soft flush colored her cheeks, and Caine experienced a twinge of envy at this couple who, after more than fifty years of marriage, were still so much in love.

  He was still considering exactly how they’d managed such a remarkable feat when his grandmother’s head dropped to her chest.

  “Gram?” He was on his feet and around the table like a shot.

  “She’s been droppin’ off like that regular,” his grandfather assured him. “Nora says it’s normal.”

  “But she just woke up.”

  “And now she’s sleepin’. Let it be, Caine.”

  But he couldn’t. There was something wrong with Maggie. Something his grandfather wasn’t saying. And if Devlin wasn’t going to tell him the truth about his grandmother’s condition, he had no choice but to get it from Nora.

  “Thanks for the breakfast,” he said. “I’ll do the dishes.”

  “No need to worry about them. I’ll stick them in the dishwasher.” Devlin gave Caine a warning look. “Maggie wouldn’t want you goin’ off half-cocked, making a fuss about her.”

 
“But she’s sick.”

  “She’s old,” his grandfather corrected. “Let it be, Caine,” he said again.

  Caine shrugged. “Sure, whatever you say.”

  They both knew it was a lie.

  Caine gave his grandfather a farewell hug and walked back out to the car, feeling as if the entire weight of the world was lying heavily on his shoulders.

  * * *

  Johnny Baker was seven years old. His uncombed hair was the color of butterscotch candy, his bare feet were dirty and his eyes were older and more resigned than any seven-year-old’s eyes had a right to be.

  In a way, Johnny was lucky. His burns, which his mother alleged he’d received when he’d accidentally overturned a pot of boiling water, were no worse than a medium-harsh sunburn. If the circumstances had been different, Nora would have sent him home with a tube of analgesic ointment.

  But there was something about the burns themselves that bothered her. The skin on both too-thin reddened arms had clear demarcation lines; there were none of the splash marks she would have expected above the burned area.

  And there were other faint scars, on the insides of the boy’s arms and buttocks. Small, round, wrinkled white scars. Nora had seen marks like that before.

  When the X-rays showed what Nora had feared, she placed a call to Children’s Services and began filling out the admission form that would keep the little boy in the hospital until an investigation could be launched.

  She’d just finished the paperwork when her office door opened. She glanced up, then had to fight the unbidden pleasure that surged through her when she saw Caine standing there.

  “Hi.” She started to rise, then changed her mind, not wanting to give up the three feet of polished desk between them. “This is a surprise.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Oh, Caine. I told you—”

  “It’s not about us,” he said quickly. “It’s about Maggie.”

  “Oh.” She folded her hands atop the manila file. “I take it you’ve seen her.”

  “This morning. And it’s obvious that something’s wrong with her, but my grandfather refuses to talk about it.”