The Parting Glass (22 page)

Niccolo bought a picnic table for the end of the parking lot where the villainous maple tree once stood. With it he purchased twenty-four-inch terra cotta pots of marigolds and petunias to set along the perimeter, and two eight-foot sections of pine paling fencing to help screen off the Dumpster. It wasn’t exactly a Tuscan terrace, but it gave them all a secret hideaway where they could take a break and enjoy the sun while the renovations continued.

This afternoon Niccolo had promised Megan a romantic lunch. Marco, of whom she was growing very fond despite his inclination to call her Meg, had gone back to Pittsburgh for the weekend, and only a couple of the Brick kids were still around to help Niccolo install the kitchen tile later in the day. Right now the kids were inside, having their own picnic in the main floor storeroom, which had become an ersatz clubhouse.

“Greek olives,” Niccolo said, taking a white paper carton out of a shopping bag. “Fresh bread from the West Side Market. Hungarian smoked sausage, strawberries—some of the prettiest I’ve seen—a really nice Gouda cheese. I bought pierogies for dinner. Josh loves them.”

“So does Rooney.” She felt vaguely guilty that Niccolo, who worked so hard, had been the one to provide this bounty. But only vaguely. It was so wonderful to be indulged, and even more wonderful just to have him to herself.

“And to drink?” she asked.

“Lemonade.” He looked wistful. The man really did love a good red wine.

“That’s better when you’re working.”

Niccolo had the hands of a working man, rough, callused, broad, but his fingers were long and tapering. For a moment she imagined them wrapped around a chalice or cradling a communion wafer.

“You look perplexed,” he said, halting the parade of picnic fare. “Something wrong?”

She shook off the vision of her husband as a priest. “I’m starved, that’s all. I can’t seem to get enough to eat these days.”

He went still. “There wouldn’t be a reason for that, would there?”

The reason was anxiety, but she wasn’t going to tell him so. And besides, he had something completely different on his mind. “Nick, don’t get your hopes up. I’m still on the Pill.”

Disappointment flicked across his face but disappeared quickly. “Well, I assumed you’d tell me if you weren’t.”

“I know you want a baby.”

“Just me?” He kept his voice light, but she heard all the echoes of heavier issues.

“Someday it’ll be both of us. But we’ve only been married a little while. Don’t we need some time together first? Time to work things out before we add someone else to the mix?”

“What’s to work out?”

He seemed truly oblivious. Anger flashed like lightning, then just as quickly disappeared. Wasn’t she lucky that he was happy? That the tensions she felt were one-sided and therefore hers to resolve? How many women had a man who loved them so unconditionally?

And blindly.

“You don’t look happy,” he said.

“Nick, this isn’t about whether I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know anything. I don’t know where the worry is coming from.”

“Worry isn’t the right word. Not exactly, anyway. We just need to learn to live together, to figure out what’s working for us and what’s not.”

“We lived together for almost two years.”

“Not the same way. I kept my place in Lakewood and spent a lot of nights there. Either one of us had plenty of time to back out if things didn’t go well.”

“Backing out was the last thing on my mind. From the very first moment I met you.”

His wonderful dark eyes were shining for her alone. Suddenly she was melting inside, and she was sorry. Because they were on the edge of something here that they needed to explore. And how could they, when all she wanted to do was find a quiet place to make love to him?

“I’ve never wanted to back out, either,” she said softly. “But sometimes I was so afraid.”

“Was?”

How could she answer that? She was afraid of different things now. Afraid that marriage had brought with it a complacency that swept away all unanswered questions. That her husband, having achieved the goal of marriage, saw no need to set new goals for their relationship. That Niccolo was going to move on without her and still expect her to be waiting by the fireside each night when he returned.

“Well, it’s been an interesting start,” she said. “You’ve got to admit it. We’ve been apart more than we’ve been together.”

He looked genuinely perplexed. “I come home every night, Megan. I see you here every day.”

She wondered why she needed more. And why he didn’t.

“We don’t have much of a chance to talk with saws buzzing and hammers pounding,” she said carefully.

“This is about conversation?”

The lovely melting sensation was now as solid as stone. “Let’s just keep it about conversation, shall we? How has your day gone so far? Tell me.”

He finished taking the food out of his bag, as if he needed the time to settle down. “We’re making progress in the kitchen. We’ll be able to install the appliances next week, maybe even some of the new cabinets.”

“Then I can cook lunch for everybody.” She filled her plate, but the food that had looked so appetizing seemed to stick in her throat.

“Iggy came by this morning, while you were at the Historical Society,” he said.

Megan had gone in early to see if she could discover more about Liam Tierney, but she’d been unsuccessful. Microfilm had no search function. She had looked through the papers for the two-week period before and after the date of the article that she had discovered in the tunnel, but she had learned nothing new. If there were more mentions of Liam later that year or beyond, she had no way of finding them except by going through the paper page by page.

She reached for the lemonade he had poured her. “What did Iggy say?”

“He found the image interesting.”

“Not miraculous?”

“No, but it was good to talk to him. He always has something valuable to add to any question.”

“He’s been a good friend all these years, hasn’t he?” She wanted to feel nothing but gratitude, and that
was
most of what she felt. But a part of her was worried. Niccolo had told her of the many long talks the two men had had during his priesthood, the retreats they’d attended together. She wanted them to remain friends, she wasn’t that insecure, but she did fear the reminders of Niccolo’s other life. Maybe she wouldn’t if she and her husband had more to talk about themselves.

“He’s a good friend,” Niccolo said. “I told him you want to close the tunnel.”

“And his response?”

“Questions. He wouldn’t give an opinion. You know Iggy.”

“I’m worried about the legal issues, too. Those tunnels have been closed off for years, and they were never exactly lawful. What if something happens while somebody’s inside?”

“Marco and I did a cursory inspection. We can have them checked out by someone else if you’d like.”

“By who, the city?”

He grimaced. “Probably not a good idea.”

“It won’t be that long before somebody reports us.”

“And we can deal with it then.”

They fell silent. Megan felt as if she’d gotten nowhere but didn’t know a new direction to take.

Niccolo pushed food from one edge of his picnic plate to the other. At last he sighed. “I’m sorry, Megan. I know this is hard to understand. It’s just that I really like showing people the image. Not because I believe it’s divine, but because most people understand it for what it is, and in spite of that, something good seems to happen inside them when they look at it. I’m sharing something with them. I like the way that makes me feel.”

“Did you just realize that? Because you never told me before.”

“Didn’t I?”

She was about to answer when she heard a noise from inside the saloon, or at least she thought that was where it had come from. A muffled thud that was oddly prolonged. She cocked her head. “Did you hear something?”

Niccolo was already on his feet. “Roy and Pete are probably up to something.”

Roy and Pete were both high school dropouts, too old to go back to regular classes now, but struggling with their GEDs at Niccolo’s insistence. Megan liked both of them but didn’t find either of them as trustworthy as most of the other Brick kids. Pete, who was blond enough to be Scandinavian, claimed he was a direct descendant of Chief Crazy Horse, and he seemed determined to prove that connection by his behavior. All discussions of Crazy Horse’s
real
contributions to the Oglala Sioux, the chief’s outstanding courage and leadership, had so far gone unheeded.

“Want me to come?” Megan asked.

“No, I’ll be right back.”

She watched him disappear through the back door. She was sorry they had been interrupted. Again they had seemed on the verge of real communication.

She was just finishing her lemonade when Niccolo came to the door. “I don’t see them.”

She heard the worry. “The tunnel?”

“Could be.”

She stood and followed him through the saloon. The new front door was still locked, so clearly they hadn’t gone out that way.

“I’ve been trying to get Roy to stop smoking when he’s here,” Niccolo said. “But he sneaks behind my back.”

“Tobacco or other things?”

“Tobacco. I hope.” Drugs were absolutely forbidden, and each Brick kid had to sign an agreement that he or she would stay free of them while participating in the program. “Let’s go down and see if they’re there,” Niccolo said. The unspoken corollary was to go quietly. If the kids were up to something, it was Niccolo’s job to know about it.

Megan hoped they would simply find the boys having a smoke. But that didn’t jibe with the noise she’d heard. Perhaps they’d slammed the door at the bottom of the stairs going into the storage area down below. Or they’d brushed something on a shelf and it had fallen.

She grabbed a flashlight on her way down and followed Niccolo. The door was ajar, and no one was in the furnace room, but the light was on. She flipped on the flashlight and followed Niccolo into the tunnel.

She was just behind him, and she nearly crashed into him when he stopped abruptly. “Good God,” he said. “Are you boys all right?”

Megan peered around him and saw why he’d stopped. The two boys stood motionless in a sea of plaster and concrete rubble.

“The ceiling fell, Nick.” Pete’s voice was shaking. He didn’t sound like a wild man now. He sounded like a little boy who had just seen the monsters in his closet.

“Are you all right?” Nick repeated.

“I think so.”

Nick was picking his way forward by then. The boys were standing in front of the Virgin. The ceiling there was intact. Not so the area before and just after it. Megan was reminded of the tornado, a reminder she’d hoped to avoid for the rest of her life.

“How did this happen?” Nick said.

“We just wanted to see what was behind it. You know. A leak or something, like you said. There’s like a gap between the wall and the ceiling. I got on Roy’s shoulders, and we were doing fine, but then he started to sway and I got scared, and I grabbed one of the beams up there, and Roy crashed against the wall, and I was left swinging, and the board groaned—”

Nick held up his hand for silence. “I get the picture.”

“It all came crashing down. Everything. All around us. But I wasn’t touched.” In the beam of her flashlight, Megan saw him turn to Roy. “You either, right?”

“I’m okay. Yeah, sure.”

“I don’t know what you loosened up. The beam looks fine. But we’d better all get out of here until we can make sure this isn’t going to happen again,” Niccolo said.

“We could have been killed,” Pete said. “Like dead.”

“If we’d been standing over there,” Roy said.

Pete began to sound more like himself. “You think it was a miracle, Nick? Like people are saying? Another miracle? If we hadn’t been standing right here—”

“I think we’d better get out of here,” Niccolo said. “That’s what I think. Stay there and let me clear some of the rubble so you can get through without falling. Megan, hold both the lights.”

She grabbed his and watched him haul chunks of concrete out of the way. The boys picked their way through after a minute, and the four of them started down the tunnel.

She was already several yards away when she stopped, turned and trained her light on the image of the Virgin. Just as she feared, water was trickling from the Virgin’s eyes.

chapter 15

T
ippy’s sister Shannon was more enthusiastic than knowledgeable, but she was a quick learner. She wanted to teach, and that was why she came out to Tierney Cottage three times a week, to learn what she could and earn a little money besides. Her love for children was real, and once she’d got used to Kieran, she had grown fond of him, too.

But not today.

“He won’t do anything. Not one thing.” Shannon was discouraged and growing more so. Peggy understood only too well how the girl was feeling.

“We all have days like that, I guess.” Peggy watched her son throw himself to the floor and kick his little legs. It wasn’t the first time that day, and she was afraid it wouldn’t be the last.

“He’s getting worse.” Being blunt was part of Shannon’s nature and usually not a problem.

Today Peggy felt a surge of anger. Not so much at Shannon, she supposed, as at life in general. She rarely indulged in anger or self-pity, but sometimes they indulged themselves.

She forced herself to model the patience she demanded of Shannon. “He’s not worse. He’s just not making any gains right now.”

“Well, when I first came he’d sit quietly for a few moments, and he’d point. He’d even listen while I read to him.”

Shannon was a pretty girl, with a broad freckled face and curly black hair. Peggy remembered when she’d been sixteen herself and believed that hard work and tolerance could change the world.

“I know you’re disappointed,” Peggy said. “I’m afraid that’s part of the game.”

“At least
I
can go home at the end of the afternoon.”

Peggy thought that was a particularly mature observation. Shannon might be frustrated, but she recognized how much more frustrated Peggy must feel. In Shannon’s blunt way, it was a stab at sympathy.