Enright Family Collection (64 page)

They had stopped at a country store where Maureen had bought sandwiches and drinks for their dinner, and they sat outside at a small picnic table and ate, the cool November dusk settling around them. When they finished eating, Maureen had gone back inside to buy a local paper and some ice cream for Ben. She had peered intensely over the newspaper, squinting to read the small print of the want ads in the last light of the day, trying to appear nonchalant so as to not upset him, but the tension had been alive in her face and in her eyes. Ben had peeled the paper from the Popsicle in quiet little strips, hoping not to disturb her.

A long dark green car pulled up and parked a few feet away, and a handsome woman stepped out from the driver’s side and smiled easily at him as she walked past. Her eyes had hesitated as she had glanced back a second time at Maureen, who in the fading light hunched closer to the newspaper. Ten minutes later, the woman came back out of the store, a bag of groceries under each arm. Instead of walking to the car, however, she had walked directly to their table.

“Excuse me,” she had said. “It seems you’ve bought the last of today’s paper. I was wondering if I could perhaps buy it from you when you’ve finished with it.”

Maureen had looked up into the face of the woman, who stood not five feet away, and it seemed as if in that second the two women had sized each other up.

“Actually”—Delia set one of her bags on the end of the picnic table—“the only section I really need is the want ads.”

“I’ve already finished with this page”—Maureen handed her a page from the paper—“so if what you’re looking for falls between Advertising and Bookkeeping, you just might get lucky.”

“Thank you, but I already have more
job
than I can
handle these days. I’m looking to hire someone to help me out, and thought perhaps I might find someone who is looking for something that would fit in with what I need.” Her mouth had turned up slightly on one side and she added, “Though someone with a little advertising as well as a little bookkeeping in their background might do quite nicely.”

“Could I ask what the job is that you’re looking to fill?” Maureen asked tentatively.

“I need a wife.” Delia smiled.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m looking for someone to run my house—to run errands, drive my kids around, do the shopping, cook, pick up the dry cleaning—all those things that wives do for their hardworking husbands—so that I can work.”

“May I ask what you do?”

“I’m a writer. But I’m also a single mother with three children, and I’m finding that running a house and running with my children and trying to work seems to be a juggling act that I don’t do very well. I’m afraid I’ve put the cart before the horse, if you follow. I’ve just bought a big house that needs tons of work—don’t ask, it was exactly the house I always dreamed of owning, and it was, all things considered, a steal—and now I have to write the books that will pay for it. So I thought if perhaps I hired someone to do all those things that need to be done while I’m writing, that my home would run more smoothly, and I’d write better—not to mention faster—if I didn’t have to worry about my family and my home being neglected. My children would be happier. I’d be happier. My editor would be happier. The mortgage company will be happier.”

“How old are your children?”

“My daughters are four and seven, and I have a son who is ten.” She turned to Ben then, and said, “Probably about as old as you are, am I right?”

“I was ten last month,” Ben had told her.

“What a coincidence. So was Nicky. On the eighteenth.”

Ben had grinned. “Mine’s the seventeenth.”

“Ha! Older than Nicky by a day!”

Delia had set her second bag down on the table next to the first and turned back to Maureen. “What type of work are you looking for?”

“Actually,” Maureen had cleared her throat, “probably the same type of job you’re looking to fill.”

“Really? What a happy coincidence! Give me your number and I’ll give you a call in the morning. I’m afraid I can’t offer you much of a salary to start. That is, if you think you’d be interested . . .”

“Yes! Yes, of course I’m interested. It’s just that, well, it would be better if I call you. I don’t have a number. I mean, I don’t know where we’ll be. . . .” Ben could not recall ever having seen his mother so flustered.

“Are you new in the area?” Delia looked concerned, then asked gently, “Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

Maureen had sighed deeply, and looked up into the face of the older woman, and proceeded to tell her everything that had led them to that small picnic table near the parking lot outside Grover’s General Store in Westboro, Pennsylvania.

“Is this your car?” Delia had asked when Maureen had concluded.

Maureen, clearly fighting tears but staunchly refusing to let them fall, had nodded.

“Follow me home.” Delia lifted a bag. “It’s getting cold and dark, and I have a feeling that we have lots to talk about.” To Ben she had said, “How ’bout giving me a hand with these bags, son?”

“My name is Ben,” He told her.

“And my name is Delia. Delia Enright.”

“I’ve read four of your books,” Maureen said.

“Really.” Delia had paused, and turned back to Maureen. “Which was your favorite?”

“I liked them all, but I especially enjoyed the ones about Harvey Shellcroft, the detective.”

“My very favorite guy.” Delia had beamed.

Maureen gathered up the paper trash and discarded it
all in a large trash can at the side of the building. “Will you be doing any more books about Harvey?”

“Absolutely. I’m hoping he’ll make me famous. As a matter of fact, I’m counting on it.” Delia opened the driver’s side door of the dark green car and slung her purse across the front seat.

“By the way, Mrs. Enright,” Maureen had called over her shoulder, “my name is Maureen Pierce.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Maureen Pierce. I have a very good feeling about you. I think we just might be able to work something out, you and I.”

“I think I might like that.”

“Then let’s go home and figure out how we might help each other.”

Over the next few years, it would have been difficult to assess who had actually been of greater service to the other. Delia had provided Maureen with a job she had loved and was perfectly suited to doing, that of running the handsome stone home Delia had recently purchased before she had become aware of just how much time and money it took to run so large a property. Maureen had tended to all those day-to-day tasks that, had Delia had to deal with them, would have distracted her from the business of writing. And in return, Delia had brought them into her home, and given them a family. It had been Ben’s first real home, and the only roots, the only sense of
belonging
that he had ever known.

For a time, Ben and Maureen had stayed in the main house, though later, as Delia’s career took off, plans were made for renovations to the old carriage house to serve as their own separate living quarters. Ben and Nick had taken an instant liking to each other, and by the end of that first week, had become close as brothers. Even Nick’s little sisters weren’t so bad. Georgia had been a somewhat shy little girl with long straight white-blond hair and a dreamy look who kept to herself a lot. Zoey, on the other hand, had been a bit of a tomboy, always struggling to keep up with her big brother and with Ben. Even now, years later, the thought of little Zoey tagging
along valiantly, no matter what the game, could bring a smile to Ben’s face. She had been such an earnest little girl, so determined to master it all. Anything the boys could do, Zoey wanted to do just as well.

Every once in a while, Ben would wonder what had become of her, and Nick, and their little sister. But then he would shake it off and force himself to concentrate on today, reminding himself that
that
part of his life was gone, along with his mother and the wonderful life they had had in Westboro. It had hurt too terribly to try to hold on to any piece of it, no matter how small. As a young boy, the first real security he had ever known had begun the night Delia Enright had found them, homeless and scared, in the parking lot of Grover’s General Store, and had ended when his mother found the lump in her breast that so unexpectedly changed everything forever.

It seemed that the unexpected had a way of pulling his life off course every time he had started to feel comfortable, Ben though wryly, looking down at his casted right leg. Another symbol of things taking an unexpected turn just when you thought the breaks—
no pun intended,
he winced—were going your way.

His driving had been good, those last six months. Good enough to have qualified for some big races, though maybe not good enough to have won. Still, he had done well enough to have drawn some inquiries from the big boys at Ferrari and Benetton, Arrows and McLaren. He was just beginning to think that perhaps, after all the years of test driving, of waiting his turn, he just might have a shot at joining one of the big teams.

And then he had had the misfortune to slam sideways into a wall at eighty-two miles per hour on that second hairpin turn on the forty-third lap of the Portuguese Grand Prix—the last race of the season, and maybe the last race of his career.

Ben had awakened in a hospital, weights suspended from the leg that seemed to float before him through a dense haze of medication. Fractured in three places, his right leg had been pinned and casted, as had been his
right forearm.
Lucky to be alive,
he recalled hearing through the fog that day, though at the time, he hadn’t been certain that he agreed. It would be at least a year, at the very minimum, before he could even attempt to race again. And that was assuming that he would find a new sponsor, after missing an entire season. Recently, he’d heard rumors that the tire company that had been his biggest sponsor was considering the sale of its British operations to a Canadian company that expressed no interest in spending money on race cars. Ben wondered just how much worse his luck could get.

He did have his investments—a graduate degree in economics had served him well when it came to investing his mother’s inheritance, which his grandfather had passed on to him when he had turned twenty-one—along with his London flat, so it wasn’t as though he was desperate. But he sure as hell was bored. For years, most of his spare time was spent with other drivers and the members of the pit crews. These days, when it took him forever to get as far as the first floor of his apartment building, going down those narrow winding steps was an adventure all its own. “Don’t get around much anymore” had taken on a whole new meaning.

And now his grandfather was on his way for a visit, something Delaney almost never did. Over the years, Ben had logged many a frequent flyer mile returning to the States to see his grandfather, but only rarely had Delaney made the trip to visit Ben. No one knew better than Ben just how much his grandfather hated to fly. Whatever it was that was bringing him across the ocean, it must be pretty damned important.

Well
Ben settled back with his book, I
guess by this time tomorrow night, I’ll know.

*  *  *

Delaney O’Connor paced the floor of his hotel room without any purpose whatsoever than to keep himself moving. Every fourth time past the mantel, he glanced up at the clock with its ornately painted face, annoyed to find that not even a mere
minute
had passed since the
last time he had looked. The flight had left him anxious and weary, and he wished that he had put off” this meeting with his grandson until the next morning. But the truth was he couldn’t wait to see Ben. The only child of Delaney’s own only child, Ben was also Delaney’s only living relative, and the only person on the face of the earth whom Delaney truly loved.

Delaney had loved his grandson the minute he had first laid eyes on the boy. Understanding immediately that the boy’s anger was a poor mask for the sheer terror he felt at knowing that his mother was dying, the sense of betrayal he must have felt when she had chosen to share her last months with her father as well as her son, Delaney’s heart had gone out to the boy. The bonds of their relationship had been forged as they had, together, watched helplessly as Maureen had died, bit by sad bit every day, and had grown stronger still when she had passed away and the pain of it had wrapped around both of them so tightly. It had all but broken Delaney’s heart when Ben had fled his home after Maureen’s funeral, running back to the Enright home in Pennsylvania. Wisely understanding that it had been the reality of his mother’s death that Ben had attempted to flee from, Delaney had vowed to do whatever it would take to help his grandson cope with his grief. When it became clear to Delaney that Ben was uncomfortable living in the house where his mother had died, Delaney had immediately closed up his Connecticut home and moved them both to a town house in Manhattan. And there they had lived until Ben had left for college in Arizona, then graduate school in London.

Though Delaney had always hoped—prayed—that someday Ben would express an interest in taking over Connor International, it had been difficult to ignore that Ben’s real love was racing. Delaney had sighed with resignation when Ben became a test driver for a manufacturer of race cars, and then later, more recently, had taken the first steps toward establishing a career as a professional driver. Yet even as Delaney had secretly
purchased a British tire manufacturing company and signed on as Ben’s first sponsor, he had never given up his most cherished hope that one day, Ben would want to work for the business his grandfather had spent a lifetime building.

Delaney hated the feeling that he was manipulating the boy, even if it was, he felt certain, for his own good. For years, he had known that for Ben to block out the past, was not a good thing. Delaney and Delia had spent many an hour on the telephone discussing Ben’s refusal to return to Westboro, or even to see Delia. A deeply disturbed Delaney had consulted a renowned child psychiatrist, who had cautioned him not to force Ben to deal with memories he wasn’t ready to cope with, to be supportive but to permit the boy to heal on his own. He would, Dr. Smith had assured Delaney, come to terms in his own time, reminding him that Ben had suffered a deep loss at a very vulnerable time in his life, and that he should be permitted to deal with it in whatever way was best for him. For Ben, the best way had apparently been to blot out as much as possible of those years before he had come to live with his grandfather. Delaney and Delia had stayed in contact throughout that time, both hoping that the time would come when Ben could make the trip back to Westboro and renew his old ties. It never had.