The Last Will of Moira Leahy (18 page)

He was a beautiful man, I acknowledged, as sculpted as anything around us. I don’t know why I found it so difficult to admit that I was simply and strongly attracted to him, and probably always had been. For that moment it was enough to know that I admired his spirit and liked being with him—maybe because he was an artist, as I’d once been, maybe because I fed off his passion in some nameless way. Or maybe just because he was fine.

“Christ, here’s a classic. Look at that press of flesh. So bloody real.”

I turned toward the statue he admired. A man’s hand on a woman’s thigh, dug deep in her flesh. Yes, that did seem real. But the woman didn’t want his attentions. She fought him. Suddenly, my lungs felt heavy. Like marble.

“Maeve, you okay?” I’m not sure what he saw in my face, but the joy in his eyes vanished as, somewhere, a crow cawed.

I ran. People stared at me, scowled at such improper conduct inside a renowned art gallery. I kept on, escaped out the door, down the stairs, onto the pavement. The cawing bird flew above me. The bus drew near.

A dream, I realized, almost with relief; I was dreaming again. I didn’t remember falling asleep or where I’d lain my head, but I knew the keris would be in my hand soon, ready for a fight. I looked for the little girl with the red hair.

Another bleat, another caw, and then a force hit and my lungs emptied as I landed on the grass. I opened my eyes to Noel, his body pinned over mine. I felt the heat of him, his hard breath as he clasped me close, and a chill air where my silk blouse had opened.

“Get off me!” I pounded at his chest. “Get off!”

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he hollered into my face. His was red, raging. “You almost died just now! You almost died!”

I heard, as if from a great distance, the fading sound of a horn and realized the bus had just passed, that I had—truly, not just in some dream world—almost been killed. That I’d almost let it happen.

And just beyond Noel’s shoulder, I saw the wave of a black wing as the bird flew away.

I CALLED KIT
that night and left a message on her voice mail. Something incoherent. I needed a doctor, needed my brain checked because something was very, very wrong with me, because I’d started dreaming during the day with open eyes fastened against reality.

I stared at the mirror after I hung up. “I’m not crazy,” I informed my reflection. “I refuse to be crazy.” The woman in the glass nodded in agreement.

I couldn’t bring myself to answer Kit’s call hours later, just listened to the message once the light on my room phone blinked. “The doctor I told you about can get you in as soon as you’re back,” she said. “I wish you’d told me more about what happened. Was it a flashback? I told you it could be PTSD, I told you that might be it.” I heard the frantic worry in her voice. “You should come home now. Call me back.”

The sun set and still I sat alone in my room, sustained by panettone and Italian soap operas. Noel knocked on my door with less frequency as the hours passed—“Come on, Maeve, I know you’re there”—but I didn’t answer. How could I explain my actions when even I didn’t understand them?

Instead, I retrieved the
keris
from the safe and did something that might seem truly mad. I placed the blade on the other side of my bed—on the other bed, really—then crawled under the covers on my side and turned off the light.

That moment marked a turning point for me, though I wouldn’t know it until later. Still, ramshackle as I felt then, I sensed an unloosing as the part of me that should’ve been keeping guard, looking out for my best interests, suddenly disappeared. Poof. Like magic.

A NEW SONG
debuted the next morning. Very, well, piratey. Alvilda would’ve approved. And it became the perfect antidote to the gale that had whipped my emotions around the previous day.

I called Kit and left a message: “Sorry about the confusion. I feel fine. Better than fine. It was just a bad day. Don’t worry.” If self-determination counted for anything, I would make those words true. I grabbed my coat and left before she could phone back and yell at me.

The heavy drape of yeast and sweet spice enticed me into a nearby eatery, where I sat at a table for two. I devoured a Danish and three cups of espresso, and read a newspaper full of articles on football scandals and fashion and commerce, soaking up culture as my sister would’ve a good passage of
Jane Eyre
.

Moira.

The thought of her steeped in me, and I let it. She would’ve loved Rome. The people. The language. She would’ve noticed things like plants and the color of people’s front doors. She would’ve noticed babies in carriages and stopped to coo at them. She would’ve enjoyed gelato.

After breakfast, I purchased a disposable camera and took pictures. Of plants and babies and front doors, and a woman hanging laundry on a line.

I RETURNED THAT AFTERNOON TO FIND A NOTE TAPED TO MY DOOR
.

Where are
you
?!?

—N

I pulled it off and knocked on Noel’s door there in the hall. “You’re behind the times,” I bellowed through the wood. “Nails are the latest rage.”

No response. Maybe he’d left for dinner.

Back in my room, I pulled off my coat, set it on the bed. Stared at the other side. Realized. The
keris
wasn’t there. Had I seen it that morning as I’d swaggered around to Alvilda music? Worst-case scenarios stampeded into my imagination—a greedy maid, the bartender who’d noticed it that first day, Noel trying to prove a point. But when I rounded the end of the bed, I found the
keris
on the floor, in the slight gap between my two mattresses. Warmth traveled my arm when I picked it up.

Room temperature, my ass.

That’s when I heard something in the other room. Shuffling sounds. People noises. Noel. Ignoring me. I knocked on his door.

“I hear you breathing.”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he called back. “Just wait.”

Wait? I squared my shoulders, the
keris
still in my hand. Alvilda wouldn’t wait for some guy. In fact, Alvilda wouldn’t knock. I turned the handle between our rooms. It gave way. And there, with a towel around his waist, stood my bonny friend.

“Christ,” he said. Water rivulets streamed down his face. “I said ‘wait,’ not ‘come in.’”

“Oops. Sorry.” Every bit of me went hot, and I knew it had nothing to do with the
keris
or the temperature of the room. I stared at his eyes, tried to pretend he wore more than a scrap of cotton terry, though my peripheral vision took comprehensive notes on his toned body and scatter of chest hair. If I’d had any functioning brain cells, I would’ve slunk back into my room. As it was, it took a vast effort to pull my gaze off him. That’s when I saw the big envelope on the floor near his door. “Look!” I picked it up. “Another FedEx from Garrick!”

“Another?”

Ah, hell. “That time Jakes called, I needed something to write with so I opened your drawer and saw the FedEx, and I noticed that it was from Garrick, but I didn’t open it even though it might’ve been important. Have you opened it yet?”

“No.” He stepped so close I could smell the soap on his skin, and then he took the envelope from me and tossed it onto his bed.

My non-
keris-
holding hand jangled in his face. “But … but, what are they?”

“Packages from my grandfather.”

“We’ve established that. Why haven’t you opened them?”

“Let’s say I won’t grasp the language. It’s lost to me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s no reason you should. Now are you going to let me get dressed?”

“I don’t think I will. Frankly, I’ve had enough of your bad moods.” And then, because three cups of espresso does things to a person, I lifted the sheathed
keris
and put my hand on my hip.
“En guard
, scurvy dog!”

“You have me at a disadvantage,” he said, right before reaching behind him at lightning speed. I barely registered a flash of white when the pillow hit me in the face and dropped artlessly to the floor.

“Grab your sketchbook. There’s an inspiration for you.” I looked at the
keris
, which now pointed toward the floor as well. “The impotent sparrist.” I snorted. He chuckled. “Not that I don’t know how to wield this thing,” I continued, waving the
keris
. “I mean, let’s be clear.”

“Cute.”

“I am, aren’t I? So cute you’ll explain those packages.”

“Persistent as a bloodthirsty mosquito.” He pushed wet hair out of his face.

I made a high-pitched mosquitoesque sound.

“After you told my grandfather that I came here to find my mother—”

“I didn’t exactly tell him—”

“—he sent some of her old letters. He thought there might be a clue in them to help an investigation. Problem was, I didn’t have an investigator. So he hired Jakes.”

“But why didn’t you have—”

“Now Jakes is harassing me to turn over the letters so he can analyze the hell out of them,” he said. “But I won’t give them to him until I’ve read them. And I won’t read them.”

“Why not read them? Why not give them to the investigator?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. I thought his towel might fall, but it must’ve been superglued in place.

“You know why this is crap? I don’t need her. I don’t even think about her.”

None of this made sense.

“Then what’s all this for?” I asked. “Why come so far, spend all this time and money on finding someone you don’t even think about?” He didn’t answer, just turned his wet back on me. Any respectable person would give him some privacy, leave him alone to dry off and dress. I stepped a little closer. “You’ve become a real stub of companionability, you know.”

“You almost died.” He struck at the last word like a gong.

I wanted to reach out and touch him, but didn’t. “It was a mistake. Can’t you just let it go?”

“What? The image of you nearly flattened by a bus?”

“A bloody bus,” I said, trying to lighten the moment.

“It would’ve been bloody.”

“I lost my head for a second.”

“You might’ve lost it forever. Christ.”

“Noel, I—” I strode around his still form, looked him in the eye. “It was like a dream,” I said. “I was out of it.”

“If that’s true—” He grunted. “You should see a doctor.”

“Now you sound like Kit.”

“Good. Kit’s a smart woman. Listen to her.”

“I feel great today.” I tried for a smile, but his glower sapped the will from my lips.

“You walked in front of a bus,” he said. “Tell me how this is a good thing.”

“Right. And you saved my life.”

“Not that you need rescuing. Isn’t that how it is?”

“Not that I do, generally speaking, but you came in handy just then.” My voice softened. “Thank you for being there.”

He regarded me for a long moment. “Giovanni wants us ready around eleven.”

I’d forgotten. The club. My outfit. “We don’t have to go,” I said. “If you’d rather—”

“He took the night off to help us.” Words spoken slowly, enunciated crisply.

“All right, all right,” I said.

I’d just crossed the threshold to my room when I was struck in the back of the head with a damp towel. The door thumped closed behind me.

I turned, put my hand to the door, and envisioned Noel on the other side. The keris flared hot in my hand. My vision blurred. I leaned against the settee, let the blade fall onto a pillow.

Color and focus came back slowly as a fine film of sweat formed on my upper lip. There was risk and then there was stupidity. I wouldn’t wear that outfit. I just wouldn’t.

Out of Time

Castine, Maine

LATE OCTOBER 2000

Moira and Maeve are sixteen

Moira nearly slammed into Maeve as she stepped out of the bathroom.

“Don’t go,” Maeve said. Just that.

Moira had been a wreck of nerves all day, but she’d made a decision: Tonight would be the night with Ian. Making love would bond them completely. She’d have time, after, to explain things. For now, she was obsessed over the details of the moment: What would she wear? How should she behave? Would it hurt?

She’d found an outfit—a black stretchy top, a nice pair of jeans—and she’d applied just a little of Mama’s perfume, some of her lipstick. She’d left her hair loose and mussed it into a semiwild state. And just when she felt satisfied with her reflection, Maeve stood in her way and asked her not to go.

Moira walked around her and into their bedroom. She kept her voice low. “What’s the matter with you? I’m going to Ann’s.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Maeve rounded on her to barricade Moira from their closet. “I know you didn’t go out with her last week. I know because I saw her in school and asked about the movie. She said there wasn’t a movie.”

“Stop butting into my business!” Moira tried to push past her twin, but Maeve grabbed her arms.

“I have a bad feeling. Don’t go.”

Moira stiffened. “Your feelings aren’t always right.”

“They’re right most of the time.”

“Not this time.”

“Stay here tonight.” The storm in Maeve’s eyes softened. “I have a new piece, and I think it’d be easy to adapt to piano—”

“I don’t need your charity.” Moira felt the words land like a blow to her sister and regretted it. Still, this was her night with Ian. The only time she’d give away her virginity. Nothing was going to stop her, not even Maeve and her bad feelings. She tried again to dodge her twin and succeeded this time in snatching her sneakers.

“Why would you say that? You know I love to play with you.”

“I’m not in your league, and we both know it. You’re too busy with your Hollywood stuff for me now.” She stuffed her feet inside the leather.

“It’s not Hollywood stuff.”

“New York, whatever.” Moira hated her jealousy, the way it heaved in her like a sickness, but she couldn’t seem to stop it.

“Why are you doing this to us?”

“I didn’t do this to us! You did this!” she said before she could stop herself.

“I did? How did I?”

By being perfect and always so sure of yourself. By flying high while I stood on the ground and watched. By not helping me learn to fly, too. By making Ian love you
.

“By making my life impossible!” Moira made for the door.

Maeve grasped her arm again—“Please, don’t go, please”—and again Moira pulled away.

“I will go. I don’t believe in your feeling,” she said, already down the hall and at least three steps ahead.