“Everything with her is so—so deadly serious.” Grace sighed. “I feel bad for her. I don’t think she ever has a moment’s peace.”
“How much does anyone know about her childhood?” Alexis asked. “Was it a particularly difficult one?”
“I don’t think so,” Grace said. “But she’s never talked much about growing up in Ireland.”
Megan nodded. “We do know that she had a brother named William and he died young, in his twenties I think. And both of her parents died before they were sixty. They never saw their grandchildren. No one had the money for travel back then.”
“The last of her line?” Grace wondered. “I never heard about cousins, either. There was Aunt Catherine, and I know she didn’t have any daughters, but honestly I have no idea if she had any children at all. If she did have sons, they might still be in Ireland.”
“So,” Alexis said, “apart from us, Mary Bernadette is alone in the world.”
The three Fitzgibbon women were silent for a moment.
“You know,” Grace said suddenly. “I think my mother is terribly afraid to be happy. I think she believes that being happy only tempts fate. Or, in her case, the punishing wrath of God. Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; my sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy. That’s from a poem Ben Jonson wrote after his son died of the plague. Same notion. Punishment for happiness.”
Megan sighed. “I wonder if she was always this way. I wonder if her—let’s say, her seriousness—came about only after she lost her child.”
“I think it’s quite possible. But I’m pretty sure we’ll never know. I’m certainly not going to ask Dad a question like that!”
“It would upset him,” Alexis said. “He’s such a nice man, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Megan said. “He is.”
“I suppose I’d better get back to Mom,” Grace said suddenly, rising from her seat. She smiled at Alexis. “I’m glad we had this time together.”
Alexis smiled back. “Me too,” she said. “And thanks, the both of you.”
CHAPTER 115
“I had a very nice conversation with your mother and your aunt Grace this afternoon. They’re such intelligent women. Funny, too,” said Alexis.
Alexis and PJ were at the cottage that evening. Alexis was feeling more optimistic than she had felt in a very long time. Grace and Megan had given her hope that someday she might succeed in forging a meaningful and independent life while still being a member of the Fitzgibbon family. Assuming she was still married to PJ.
“Good.”
“What do you want for dinner?” Alexis asked, opening the fridge and looking inside. “We’ve got ground turkey. I could make burgers or meatballs.”
“Either one, you pick. Alexis? I need to talk to you about something.”
Alexis closed the fridge and turned around. The pained look she saw on her husband’s face startled her. “Is it your grandmother ?” she asked hurriedly. “Did something happen since I was at the hospital?”
“Grandmother is fine. It’s just . . .”
“What, PJ?” Alexis walked over to him and put her hand on his arm. Her heart was beating madly. She was suddenly very, very afraid of losing him.
“It’s just that there’s a rumor around town that you and Morgan Shelby have been spending time together. People have seen you going into his gallery.”
Alexis took her hand away from her husband and willed herself not to blush furiously. A guilty conscience needs no accuser, she thought. How true that was! “Yes,” she said carefully, “I was spending some time with him. I—I was thinking about maybe learning the gallery business. He gave me some advice. But then I decided it wasn’t what I wanted to do after all.”
“That’s all?” PJ asked, his tone pathetically hopeful.
“Yes, PJ,” Alexis said. “I swear. That’s all.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were thinking about working in a gallery?”
“It seemed that you had so much on your mind already.”
“You mean you thought I wouldn’t listen to you. You thought I’d say you were just complaining about your job with Fitzgibbon Landscaping.”
Alexis nodded. “Yes.”
PJ shook his head. “You were probably right.”
“Who . . . Who are these people who saw me with Morgan Shelby?” she asked.
PJ looked embarrassed. “The wife of one of the guys at work told him she’d heard rumors,” he said. “He came to me. He thought I should know.”
Alexis felt slightly sick. She could honestly say that nothing had happened, but the thought of people talking as if it had badly frightened her. She remembered something PJ had said, back when Wynston Meadows had started making trouble for the family. The very rumor of wrongdoing could taint even the most innocent of people. And just how innocent was she, Alexis wondered. Not as innocent as she should be.
PJ now took her right hand and held it in both of his. “The thought of you falling in love with another man . . . I don’t think I could stand it, Ali.”
“I’m not in love with another man, PJ.”
“I believe you. And I’ve thought about what you asked, and I do want us to see a counselor. As long as we don’t tell my grandmother. She’s always distrusted therapy of any kind and given her health . . . Well, I don’t want to make things worse for her.”
And, Alexis thought, you’re still thinking of Mary Bernadette before me. And when I was miserable all by myself you ignored me, but when you thought there might be another man, you listened. Oh, PJ, we both have some serious growing up to do.
“Thank you,” she said. “It might not be easy, you know.”
“I know.”
“Things will have to change, PJ, or we’ll find ourselves right back in the same place a year from now. But with a baby in tow.”
PJ’s eyes were blurred with tears. “I’m afraid, Ali. I’m afraid of losing you. I’m afraid of what my parents would think of me if I were stupid enough to let you go, if I gave up on our marriage. I’m afraid that no matter how hard I try I’ll fail.”
“But you still love me?” she asked.
“With all my heart,” he said.
“Then we’ll be okay,” she said, willing herself to believe it. “We have to be, for our baby’s sake.”
“Do you remember our wedding?” PJ asked.
Alexis smiled and gently wiped the tears from her husband’s cheek. “Like it was yesterday.”
“You for me, and I for thee and for none else.”
The words they had spoken before God, family, and friends. “Your face to mine and your head turned away from all others,” Alexis responded.
“I vow.”
“I vow.”
And then PJ took her in his arms and they stood together, quietly, for a long time.
CHAPTER 116
“Megan, good to see you again.”
“And you, Sarah,” Megan replied, shaking the hand of her colleague. “How’s the family?”
“Fantastic. My daughter gave birth to her fourth child last month.”
“Fourth? Wow. Girl or boy?”
“Another boy. Mark my words she’s going to try one more time to get it right.”
Megan laughed and took the seat Sarah indicated. Sarah Simons was a professional fund-raising consultant and one of the best at that. Over the years she had done great work in helping the CPEE find money from a variety of sources, and most recently she had been responsible for raising twenty million dollars to fund a new wing of an esteemed art museum in Chicago. If anyone could help save the Oliver’s Well Historical Association from the meddling Wynston Meadows, Sarah Simons was the most likely one to do it.
“So,” she said, seated behind her desk, “you said on the phone this isn’t about the CPEE.”
“It isn’t.” Megan outlined what had been going on with Meadows and the OWHA, and how she had gotten herself a place on the board—“a miracle, that”—with the admittedly crazy hope of ridding the
association of the Great Man. “So far,” she went on, “they—we—haven’t seen a penny of the promised first installment of five million dollars. And the CEO tells me that Meadows has refused to formalize a payment schedule. If you ask me, he has no intention of forking over the money.”
“He’s bad news,” Sarah said shortly. “Everyone knows that. People who aren’t compelled to do business with him don’t. Personally, I think he’s mentally unbalanced.”
“From what I’ve seen so far, I think I agree. Look, here’s the thing, Sarah. The OWHA is financially sound. They don’t need Meadows’s money to survive, but they do need it—or they think they need it—to buy a big, important piece of property known as the Branley Estate. It would be a real coup for them and a benefit for the town as well as for the entire region. The buildings are in bad shape, but after restoration they hope to open the place as a museum.”
Sarah nodded. “And you want me to do a feasibility study, define the board’s goal, outline how much money it really needs to raise to buy the property and then to restore it to at least some of its former glory?”
“Right. And then I want you to work your real magic by finding potentially interested donors and putting me in touch with them.”
“Private donors in this case, since you’re not approaching them through formal procedures. Am I right?”
“Yes. The other members of the board know nothing about this yet. And I don’t want them to know unless—until—I’ve found my money.”
“So we’re not looking at government funding or corporate sponsorship or even foundations with grants to give.”
“Is that going to be a big problem?” Megan asked.
“It shouldn’t be a problem at all. Not to be indelicate, but who’s going to pay for my time and efforts if the board doesn’t even know about me?”
“Me,” Megan said. “I’m your client.”
“I don’t come cheap.”
Megan smiled. “I’m aware. But I’ve got the money.”
“And what the hell, I’ll give you a discount. It’ll be fun to try to undermine Wynston Meadows, even in a roundabout way. That is what you’re trying to do, yes? Kick him out once you’ve secured pledges from more reputable donors?”
Megan nodded.
“All right, Megan,” Sarah said. “Let’s sign the papers.”
“Thank you, Sarah. Thank you for believing in my impossible dream.”
CHAPTER 117
Alexis and Maureen were at the Pink Rose Café having an afternoon coffee and what Maureen liked to call her “unnecessary constitutional necessity.”
“I saw Mary Bernadette this morning,” Maureen said, wiping powdered sugar from her chin. “I just decided to show up. Frankly, I can’t believe she let me in, but she did.”
“Really? How did she seem?”
Maureen grinned. “In fine form. Charming the nurse who delivered her breakfast into giving her extra butter for her toast.”
Alexis laughed. “I guess before long she’ll be back on Honeysuckle Lane, directing and dominating the Fitzgibbon clan!”
“Looks like it.”
Alexis quickly glanced around the café to be sure that no one was in eavesdropping distance. “I have big news,” she said. “PJ has agreed to see a couples therapist.”
“That is big news! Hopefully this therapist can help sort things out.”
“Did you try to save your marriage when it started to break down? Did you ask Barry to see a counselor?”
Maureen smiled ruefully. “Oh, yes, I tried all sorts of things to make the marriage work, but Barry wasn’t interested in our future together. At least I had the moral satisfaction of knowing that I was willing to forgive him and give the marriage another chance. Cold comfort, but better than nothing.”
“His loss,” Alexis said, reaching for the last piece of her chocolate croissant.
Maureen shrugged. “I’d argue if I could.”
“Are you in touch with him? Do you know where he is and what he’s doing?”
“We’re not in direct contact, no,” Maureen said. “There’s no reason to be, not since we didn’t have children. But he lives in Smithstown and on occasion I hear a snatch of gossip. He’s been married twice since our divorce. Divorced twice, too. I don’t know why he bothers getting married in the first place. He’s clearly not cut out to be a husband. He can’t even spell monogamy.”
Alexis laughed. “I’m glad you’re over him.”
“Me too. Although it did take some time. It’s amazing how attached we become to people even when all they cause us is misery. Barry treated me shabbily from the first—not that I saw that then!—but I found myself missing him when he’d gone.”
“Habit?” Alexis wondered. “A relationship becomes a habit, good or bad.”
“And people need habits, don’t they? If everything that happened to you and everyone you encountered was always new and changing, life would be unbearable.”
Alexis nodded. “I don’t mean to equate my husband with something as mundane as breakfast, but if I don’t have this particular kind of bread I like every morning, toasted with bitter marmalade, my entire day is somehow—wrong. I want my life with PJ to be that sort of habit. Without him it would just be—wrong.”
Maureen laughed. “I’m not sure I’d tell him about the toast analogy, but I get your point.” She ate the last bite of her donut and wiped the last speckles of powdered sugar from her hands. “You know, I’m so happy that you’re taking steps toward a change for the good. Do you remember when I told you to let PJ know you needed a path of your own, something that belonged only to you and not to the family?”
“Of course I do. It was the day you rescued me.”
Maureen smiled. “Be that as it may, I have a confession to make. I’m afraid I haven’t followed my own advice.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is that I haven’t been brave. I haven’t been decisive. Sometimes . . . sometimes I think that after what happened to me—the bad marriage and the messy divorce, I mean—sometimes I think that I just . . . stopped. That I just gave up really living for anything other than this vague and far-off notion of ‘taking care of the parents.’ I think I decided to be safe. Do you know, Alexis, that I don’t even have a hobby?”
Alexis flinched. She recalled Morgan Shelby asking her about her life apart from the Fitzgibbons. She recalled having nothing to say. “Well, neither do I,” she admitted. “I used to before I . . .”
“And you will again. You’ll have a passion all your own. I believe that.”
“But if I will—if I can—you can, too,” Alexis urged. “You’ve always seemed so strong. So sure.”
Maureen laughed. “I guess it’s easy to seem strong and sure when your life presents absolutely no challenges and you’ve organized it that way. Look, I didn’t mean to get all depressing. The point is that I’m proud of what you’re trying to do for yourself, Alexis. Okay, I’m not your mother, I have no right to be proud, but I am.”
“Thank you, Maureen,” Alexis said sincerely. “I don’t know what I would do without your friendship.”
“Without your friendship I’d have to eat my donuts all alone!”
Alexis laughed and looked at her watch. “Oops. I should get back to the office. When Mary Bernadette is back on her feet, the last thing I want her to find is a bill unpaid or the candy jar only half full.”
“And I should get back to good old Wharton Insurance. Not that anyone will have missed me. . . .”
“Maureen,” Alexis scolded, as the two women left the café. “You underestimate your charm.”
CHAPTER 118
Back in Annapolis, Megan’s campaign to replace Wynston Meadows’s promised financing was forging ahead. Sarah’s office had completed the feasibility study and had drawn up a detailed schedule for when money for the purchase and restoration of the Branley Estate would be needed over time. The results were heartening.
Ten million dollars would do t
he entire job—from buying the property to designing the restoration and through to the end of construction. One million up-front would secure the estate and get the restoration team rolling. Finding $1 million was doable. And Megan knew from experience that the hardest part of the fund-raising process was securing money up front. Afterward, especially once work had begun and the project was a reality, donors tended to come on board more readily.
Megan reviewed the list of potentially interested donors Sarah had provided. Some of the names were familiar to her; some were entirely new. Sarah had warned Megan there was a good chance that most if not all of them would make the complete and total absence of Wynston Meadows’s involvement a prerequisite for their investing. “In fact,” she had said, “you might want to consider making that assurance up-front. The man has made a lot of enemies. But that’s your call.”
“Hey.”
Megan turned around as Pat joined her in the office and sank into the chair by her desk. “You look tired,” he said.
“I am tired. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
Pat frowned. “I’m worried about you, Meg. You’re already stretched so thin, what with work and the charity and David’s surgery looming.”
“It isn’t looming, Pat. It’s coming.”
“Meg.”
Megan sighed. “Look, Pat, don’t worry. I’m fine. Really, I’m on top of it all.”
“It’s not that I doubt your abilities.”
“I know.” She did know. Her husband had always been her greatest supporter.
“But I still don’t understand why you’re doing this,” he went on, pointing to the printed list of names still in Megan’s hand. “Why have you taken on this Herculean task just for my mother? You don’t think you can finally win her friendship, do you?”
Megan laughed. “No! Anyway, I’ve told you before I’m not really doing this for your mother.”
“Well, I certainly hope you’re not doing it for me. I don’t need you wearing yourself out for my sake.”
“Consider the big picture, Pat. I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do.”
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