The Parting Glass (4 page)

“In this dress?” Casey looked down and shook her head. “Not a chance.”

“We’ll call a taxi,” Peggy said.

“This isn’t Manhattan. Nick will be married to somebody else by the time one gets here.” Megan kicked the tire again, shoes be damned. “Maybe somebody’s still left at the saloon. Casey, can you find out?”

Casey dug in her purse for her cell phone and made the call. They all stood perfectly still, waiting until she flipped it closed and shook her head. “It’s a miracle. They’re all on time for the wedding. Everybody but us. Jon’s already there with Nick, and I’ll bet his phone is off.” For good measure she punched in more numbers, with no success.

“Do you know your neighbors?” Megan looked around. “You must know somebody by now.”

Casey inclined her head to the left. “They’re out of town.” She inclined to the right. “I’m taking in their mail and papers.” She nodded to the house across the street. “They’re on the wrong side of one of Jon’s cases and about to move to a secure location. And the house next to theirs is empty.”

Megan peered around her, mind whirling. Casey and Jon had purchased one of Niccolo’s Ohio City renovations. The house, a brick Colonial Revival with classical detailing, suited the busy couple perfectly, and best of all, it was only four blocks from Niccolo’s house on Hunter Street.

“Okay, let’s hike it, then. We’ll get Charity.”

Her sisters groaned. Charity, Megan’s dilapidated Chevy, was renowned for its bad temper. Charity only began at “home.” The joke was rarely funny.

“Got a better idea?” Megan demanded.

“Well, we’ll see if Charity feels at home at Nick’s. If she doesn’t, maybe
your
neighbors will be more helpful than Casey’s,” Peggy said. “Let’s march.”

Megan started down the sidewalk at a fast clip. She heard her sisters behind her, but she was on a mission now. She had said she would marry Niccolo, and it was too late to call off the wedding gracefully.

They tramped in silence, three women in ballerina length silk dresses and hair whipping in the accelerating wind.

“It’s going to rain,” Casey said, a block from Niccolo’s house. “God, I hope we get to the car before it does.”

“It better not rain!” Megan marched on.

They turned down Hunter, and Megan could just see Charity at the end of the block in front of Niccolo’s—her—house. “Lord, let her start.”

“This really is a red-letter day. That was a prayer,” Casey said. “Megan’s praying.”

“I’ll have you know I’m in tight with the Lord. I had to be to get married in the church.”

“At least temporarily. Did Father Brady faint when you joined him in the confessional?”

“Father Brady is nicer and apparently more optimistic about my soul than you are.” Megan was afraid to look at her watch. They were cutting this close, and it was going to take some real time to repair all the wind damage.

The raindrops started just as they got to the car, but Charity started with the first turn of the key.

“Do you believe in omens?” she asked Peggy, who climbed in beside her.

“I’m too Irish not to.”

Megan double-parked Charity at the curb, but she didn’t turn off the engine. The small parking lot looked full and altogether too far away from the entrance she planned to use. St. Brigid’s had a side door just past the sanctuary that led to a stairwell. One flight up there was a room where the brides usually dressed—and now she fervently wished she’d decided to use it. Once upstairs and ready, she could make her entrance through another stairwell into the narthex and eventually up the aisle to meet Niccolo and Father Brady.

Too bad she hadn’t packed her hiking gear.

“We can do this.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll leave the key in the ignition. The neighborhood’s tough enough that maybe somebody will steal her. Once they see what they’re into, they’ll park her somewhere nice and safe until I can find her again.”

“We’re still fifty yards from a door,” Casey said from the back seat.

“It’s only sprinkling.”

Peggy wiped the foggy windshield with her fingertips. “You know what? You’ve lived here too long. By anybody else’s standards, that’s a downpour. And you hate getting wet.”

“Megan,” Casey said, “nobody will steal Charity, and you’re going to get towed if you stay here.”

Charity chose that moment to sputter and die.

“Looks like I don’t have a choice, and I’d rather bail her out of the impound lot than be late for my own wedding.”

“At least your ambivalence disappeared,” Casey said.

Megan didn’t bother to correct her. “Can you two get yourselves inside?”

Peggy had been scrounging under the seat for an umbrella. She held one out to Megan, a poor cousin of the species but still useful. “You go ahead. The weather’s only going to get worse. I’ll see if I can start this monster.”

“I’m not walking down the aisle without you. You have to hold me up.” After a lot of speculation on who should accompany her on the trip down the aisle, Megan had asked Casey and Peggy to walk just a step ahead of her, more escorts than attendants. She had a dozen male relatives who would have been happy to do the honors, but she had chosen her sisters instead. The man who should have walked with her wasn’t up to the task.

Megan gauged the distance and the raindrops. “Which should I ruin? My pumps or my panty hose?”

“I brought extra panty hose.” Casey was leaning over the seat now.

Megan removed her shoes and opened the door. “See you inside.” She flipped open the umbrella, and in stocking feet she sprinted across the grass to her favored entrance. At the door to the stairwell, she shook like a spaniel, closing her eyes and the umbrella and letting the raindrops fly. When she opened them, her future husband was staring back at her.

“Nick!” She put a hand over her heart. “What are you doing here?”

“Checking to see if you’d deserted me at the altar.”

She stared at him. The dark suit set off his wide shoulders, black hair and neatly trimmed beard. With his olive skin and Roman centurion features, he was the perfect finale to any walk down the aisle.

“You weren’t supposed to see me like this.”

He was smiling now. “I remember the first time we spent an evening together. Do you?”

At the moment she wasn’t sure she remembered her own name. She stared at him, this gorgeous, masculine human being who wanted to share her life.

“You invited me home after a day at work,” he said, “and you were exhausted. So you took a shower while I waited, and when you came into the kitchen your hair was wet. Sort of like it is now. And I was flattened by desire.”

“Flattened?”

“Metaphorically. More or less the opposite of my real state, I guess.”

She smiled. “I’d forgotten.”

“So I have a thing about seeing you wet. And dry, for that matter. Just seeing you.”

“Oh, Nick.” She wanted to fall into his arms. Instead she spread her skirt, holding it out with both hands like a little girl in petticoats. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? I’m not much of a bargain.”

“We never get guarantees, but I think you’re a pretty safe bet.”

“I’m a mess. I’m dripping, my car’s probably going to be towed, and I’ve ripped my stockings into shreds.” A hand leaped to her hair. “And I lost my damned orange blossoms.”

“Good. You look perfect the way you are.” He paused. “Although my mother and father will be more impressed if you put the shoes on your feet.”

“They came?”

He nodded.

This time she did fall into his arms. Casey and Peggy arrived just as they finally stepped apart. “Peggy got Charity parked. We—” Casey stopped when she saw Niccolo. “Get out of here,” Casey told him in mock horror. “Go wait where you’re supposed to. This is bad luck.”

He grinned with no contrition.

“Scoot!” Casey gave him a mock shove. “Go tell the organist to do another round of ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring.’ Give us ten minutes.”

“Five.”

“Seven. Go!”

“Bye…” Megan watched him leave. Nick turned in the doorway and blew her a kiss.

“Megan!” Casey grabbed her shoulders and turned her toward the stairs.

They were ready in ten minutes, panty hose changed, hair dry enough. Megan entered the foyer flanked by her sisters. Through the door into the church she could see that Nick, Jon and Father Brady had already entered from the front. The orange blossoms had been restored—Casey had rescued and pocketed them early in their walk—and even Megan’s shoes had been wiped clean. She was ready.

“Do you think Rooney made it to the church? Do you think he’s here somewhere?” Megan positioned herself at the doorway. Heads were beginning to turn.

“He wanted to be,” Peggy said.

The strains of Beethoven’s “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” sounded from the front of the church. Megan had begged the organist to step up the tempo a little so the trip to the front wouldn’t take so long. Now the familiar melody sounded like the most strenuous selection in a Richard Simmons exercise video.
Sweating to the Sacred.
Clearly, after the delay, the poor woman was ready to call this gig quits.

“Okay, we’re going in together. Don’t walk too fast and leave me behind.” Megan took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

“I love you,” Casey said, and Peggy echoed it.

Megan’s eyes filled with tears. “Just go, okay?”

They started down the aisle. She took a step over the threshold and into the back of the church. Like one body the assembled guests rose. From the corner of her eye she saw a lone male figure step into the aisle. Then, as naturally as if he had rehearsed the scene for hours, Rooney Donaghue, shirt buttoned properly, clean shaven and smiling, came toward her and held out his arm.

chapter 3

N
one of the Donaghue sisters were sentimental, but despite that reputation, Peggy choked back tears during the ceremony. Megan was radiant as she joined her life with Nick’s, and even though Peggy hadn’t spent much of her adult life in church, the familiar rhythms of the wedding Mass touched her. But nothing touched her more than seeing her father take his rightful place at his oldest daughter’s side.

That glorious glimpse into the sacred exploded the moment she opened the door into the Whiskey Island Saloon.

“Ice machine gave up the ghost.” Barry, their bartender, pushed past her on his way outside. “Going for ice.”

“I—”

“And the band says they need more room to set up than you gave them,” he shouted over his shoulder. “So I moved tables out of their way, only now there aren’t so many tables—”

“I—”

“And there’s trees down all over Cleveland, so there’s no hope of getting a crew in tonight to cut it up. We roped off the area around the kitchen so nobody’ll park near the piece that’s still standing. But we can’t even get the car towed until…” His voice trailed off as he disappeared into his car and slammed the door.

Peggy wondered exactly what she was going to tell Niccolo and Megan when it came time for them to make their getaway and Casey’s car—if her tire was fixed by then—was waiting for them at the curb instead of the Honda.

“Peggy?” A strong hand ushered her all the way in. She looked up to see Charlie Ford, one of their loyal patrons. “The bakery just called. The cake’s all set up, but they forgot the petty cash, or something like that.”

“Petit fours. I thought maybe they had just put them in the kitchen.” She was beginning to panic. This was a crowd that would expect sweets before the cake was cut.

“Said they’d be by with them shortly. Not to worry.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Charlie’s eyes sparkled. His only son lived in New York, and the staff and patrons of the Whiskey Island Saloon were his Cleveland family. “And Greta says she’s going to quit if she has to stuff one more piece of cabbage.”

Greta was Megan’s treasured kitchen assistant and a fabulous cook in her own right, as well as a dedicated employee. “She always says that. Anything else?”

“Kieran went down for a nap about an hour ago, and the sitter left. The baby monitor’s in the kitchen with Greta.”

Peggy had expected that. The sitter had other obligations, and they had agreed to this compromise, knowing how regular Kieran’s nap time was. The older woman was one of the few outsiders who was willing to look after Kieran at all. How blessed it was to let someone else assume her son’s care for a few hours, and how impossible that would be beginning tomorrow.

But that was the way she had wanted it.

Charlie clapped Peggy on the shoulder. “Say, have you heard the one about the Irish priest who got stopped for speeding on Euclid Avenue? See, the cop smells alcohol on the good father’s breath and notices an empty wine bottle on the floor, so he knows he has to ask him about it. ‘Father, have you been drinking?’ he says. And the priest says, ‘Just water, my son.’ So the trooper picks up the bottle and holds it out in front of him. ‘Then what’s this, Father,’ he says. The priest throws up his hands. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, he’s done it again!’”

She groaned. “Charlie, you’re the worst.”

He grinned as he disappeared into the growing crowd.

Peggy went straight to the kitchen. Greta was supervising a crew of cousins and customers who were setting food on platters and taking it out to the bar for the reception. Behind her, Peggy could hear the front door opening and closing regularly, and she knew that soon enough the saloon would look the way it did on St. Patrick’s Day.

“Everything going okay in here?”

Greta looked up, her moon face glowing with perspiration. “Did you know Nick’s family was bringing food?”

Until she’d seen them at the church, Peggy hadn’t even known Nick’s family were bringing them
selves
.

Greta waved one hand behind her toward the steel counter on the far wall. “Piles of it. They dropped it off before the wedding. His mother gave me instructions, like I don’t know how to heat up covered dishes? Why didn’t somebody tell me? I’ve been cooking for a week.”

“Nobody knew they were coming, Greta. I’m sorry. But I can guarantee everything you cooked will get eaten. Every single bit of it, and they’ll lick their plates.”