The First Time I Said Goodbye (2 page)

* * *

My mother sat on her bed, folding clothes and putting them into bin bags. T-shirts he barely wore, chinos that had become baggy and loose on him over the last few months.

“I’m packing them up,” she said as I walked in, pushing her hair off her face and curling it behind her left ear.

“You don’t have to do that now,” I said.

“I know. But it has to be done sometime.”

“But not now, Mom,” I said. “You don’t have to do it now.”

“Annabel, pet, I know this is awful but I’ve been living with it for a long time. I knew this day would come. I was ready for it – sort of.”

I didn’t understand that, how she could be ready for it. Sure we had all known this wasn’t going to end well but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel every shred of breath leave my body in the moment the breath had left his.

“I was there for him, Annabel. I was there and loyal and I loved him, right to the end. I always will love him but he’s gone and, sweetheart, he’s not coming back. So I need to move on.”

She spoke so calmly that I felt the room swim a little. It was almost as if she were talking about paying the bills, or doing the grocery shopping. Something which might as well be done now. Not something that had ripped our lives apart. I rested my hand on the chair by her dressing table and looked at her again.

“I want to go home to Ireland,” she said, folding his shirt – his checked shirt, the one he had worn when we went to the coast and walked along the beach. I had teased him for ogling the young, surgically modified women in their bikinis and he had told me he only had eyes for my mother. I looked at it: empty, folded, slipped into a bag. “And I’d love you to come with me.”

I looked at her as if she were mad. She
was
mad. Maybe she needed the “
Grief makes you do funny things
” T as well?

“Don’t look at me like that, Annabel,” she said, lifting another shirt, folding it and placing it in the box marked for Goodwill.

Feeling churlish, I reached in past her and took it back out again, holding it tight in my arms, trying to get some hint of him back. All I could smell was her detergent and fabric softener – not a hint of coffee or musky aftershave. Not a hint of my dad.

“You want to go back to Ireland? And you want me to go with you?”

“It’s not that hard to take in, is it?” my mother said, her face set in a way that let me know she was very much determined to go ahead with her plans – with or without me.

“But, Mom, you have a life here. I have a life here. I have the bakery. I have Craig. We have this house – your friends, your colleagues, your life.” I was clutching at straws, of course. Straws of what I had, before. What I had before he was sick. When everything changed. What I really wanted to say of course was that I could not even begin to imagine how
she
could want to walk away from our home and our life, even though there was a part of me which wanted to walk away from my own life. I knew she was grieving but . . . I felt something constrict in my throat.

“Who said anything about walking away? I just want to visit. It’s been a long time. I need to get away, don’t you understand that? Everything has been on hold for so long . . . Everything has been so hard. Illness and death. Even this damn house – it doesn’t smell like home any more. It smells of antiseptic and illness and the perfume of strangers come to pay their last respects. I just want to go home again. I’d love you to come with me – to see Ireland. Didn’t we always talk about going? When you were small? Wouldn’t it give us both a lift?”

Chapter 2

I never imagined we wouldn’t be together. From the moment I met you I knew I had to be with you. I can’t breathe without you, but I can’t think of another way. Not without breaking hearts all around me. Do you understand? It’s easier to break mine than theirs. I’m just so sorry, my darling, that you are caught in the crossfire.

* * *

I had never been to Ireland before. It was one of those trips we always talked about but never quite got round to taking. My Irish family members were people I knew from birthday cards, phone calls and, latterly, Facebook. Ireland was somewhere my mother spoke of wistfully – regaling tales of Irish dancing, dew-dappled mornings, the
craic
and the singing. I grew up on a diet of Maeve Binchy books and an annual family viewing of
The Quiet Man
. I am pretty sure my mother had hoped that one day I would enter the Rose of Tralee, but as my teens turned into my twenties and my twenties into my thirties and I showed no sign nor interest in reciting a poem or dancing a jig on Irish national television she let the dream slide. Dad, well, to him I was his all-American girl born on the fourth of July – my mother had a battle with him not to call me Sam.

“Sure, there’s already a Sam in our family,” she argued, my Aunt Dolores having delivered a boy by that very name a year before.

“Yes, but he’s a he and lives thousands of miles away,” my father had argued.

My mother had fixed him with a steely glare – not too unlike the one Maureen O’Hara gives John Wayne in
The Quiet Man –
and told him there would be no such name. So he had retaliated and vetoed her choice of Aoibheann (“Who on earth could pronounce that?” he had asked) and they had settled for the non-controversial name of Annabel.

Part of me couldn’t believe that in just a few short hours I would be there – on that famous Irish soil.

I pressed the last of my sweaters into the case and zipped it closed while Craig watched from the other side of the room, his arms crossed. His body language screamed that he was not even a little bit happy with my trip – and he hadn’t even pretended to be since I had come back from my mom’s and told him that she wanted me to visit Ireland with her.

“You can’t be serious?” he’d said as I’d flopped onto the sofa beside him and put my feet up on the coffee table opposite.

I was exhausted. The toll of the last few days, not to mention the last few months, was heavy. I didn’t have the energy to fight so I said nothing, figuring my silence would be proof enough that I was serious.

“What about your business?” he said.

“Elise will take care of it. She’s been doing a fine job while I’ve been nursing Dad. I’m sure she can continue to do a fine job while I’m away.”

“But you have said all along how you couldn’t wait to get back. How you were missing Bake My Day?”

“I am missing it,” I said, which was of course just partially true. I missed what it had meant – to me, to Mom, to Dad. But I didn’t much want to face what it meant now. But as I said, I was tired and Craig was not the person I wanted to have this discussion with. “I didn’t expect it to feel so . . . final. So horrible!” I spat out, feeling tears prick my eyes. When we had first found out Dad was sick – terminally sick with no hope of recovery – I had reeled with shock. Then as I’d watched him suffer I’d started to tell myself that, although it would be hard, it would be a relief to see him out of pain. That comfort of knowing he wouldn’t be in pain any more got me through many long nights, but the moment he was gone that had shattered into a million pieces around me. Now I just felt lost. I felt like I needed to try and find my way but I didn’t quite know how. When my mother had suggested going to Ireland with her a part of me had, in spite of those initial reservations, felt a little glimmer of something . . . a glimmer that I could get through this.

“Going to Ireland is just running away,” he said, gruffly, unable to hide his irritation.

“Perhaps I need to run away for a bit!” I bit back, my tone sharper than I intended.

In hindsight, although this was true, this was absolutely the worst thing I could have said to Craig.

He stood up, ran his fingers through his dark wavy hair and took a deep breath as if trying to steady himself.

“I don’t mean run away from you,” I offered quickly, trying not to think about whether or not I really meant what I was saying. “I just mean from here and now and how I’m feeling.” The tears started. “And my mom needs me now.”

“And what about me?”

I thought of everything we had been through – how we had weakened and broken along with my father. My father was beyond help now but, maybe . . . maybe Craig did need me more. But it wasn’t him who was most broken now – it was my mother. And me, I suppose. I was broken too.

“She needs me more,” I said softly and he turned and walked out of the porch into the summer rain, slamming the door behind him.

Of course he had come back and told me he was sorry, saying that he missed me already and that while he understood my need to take a trip I couldn’t escape real life forever. I was painfully aware of that, I told him, but I needed to escape a little bit now. When I saw my mother’s face light up as I booked the return tickets, I knew I had done the right thing and I could blank out all images of a gruff and grumpy Craig.

He offered to drive us to the airport, but I said I preferred to take a cab. If there was to be a scene at my departure, I much preferred that it would be on our own front porch rather than in his car. “It’s not for very long,” I said, as I threw my Kindle into my carry-on case. I’ll be back before you know it.” I zipped my case closed in time to hear a taxi beep outside. Craig sighed as if I had just told him I was leaving forever. I looked at him – his sorrowful face staring back at me – and I wanted to push away every negative feeling I had towards him. I walked over and kissed him gently on the lips, bristling slightly as my lips met with stone cold indifference from him. He was not making this easy.

“Goodbye,” I muttered, pulling my cases behind me to the porch. He followed me but he didn’t offer to help so I adopted an eyes-forward-do-it-myself approach.

Climbing in beside my mother, a little part of me breathed out.

“Is he still sore about you going away?” my mother asked, shifting in her seat and adjusting her seat belt.

“Not at all,” I lied, looking out the window and watching Craig walk dejectedly back to the house as if I were walking all over his dreams and not just helping my grieving mother heal her broken heart. “He just, well, he worries about me.”

“Ireland’s very modern these days,” my mother said. “And the North, well, it’s not like it used to be. It’s safer than most places here. Hardly anyone gets shot these days. He has nothing to be worried about.”

I think we both knew that wasn’t what Craig was worried about.

She took my hand and squeezed it tight. “The friendliness of the Irish – it’s not just a thing of legend. It’s real, you know. And
th
e
people of the North, we get a bad rap sometimes but, you know, hearts of gold. They’ve been through so much. I was lucky, I suppose – I left before the worst of the troubles started . . .”

“Is that why you never went back, Mom? Until now? Because of what was happening?” I thought of my mother and how she seemed to think wistfully of home from time to time but never mentioned going back. I had offered once, to pay for both her and Dad to make the journey back but she had shaken her head. “I’ve spent more of my life here than I ever did there,” she said. “Sure it seems strange to even consider it home now. I’m happy with my memories.” But she hadn’t looked me in the eyes and I knew there was a part of her that wanted more than just memories.

She shook her head now, giving my hand one last tight squeeze before letting it go. “Oh no, darling. It wasn’t that . . . it just didn’t feel right.” She leant back and closed her eyes, signalling that she wanted to snooze and that the topic of conversation was closed for now.

I looked at her, head tilted to one side, grey hair in a stylish bun, her fingers fine and delicate, soft as satin. She looked well, I realised, with a bit of start, and I’m not sure if it made me feel sad that she looked a little freer since Dad had passed or it made me happy that it wasn’t only his pain that had ended. It had almost killed me to watch him suffer – Lord alone knows what it did to her. I looked out the car window – the fields passing by in a dull blur of green and I wondered if Ireland really was green and lush and if things really had changed.

I thought of Craig and his sullen face and pushed that aside. And I thought of Elise and her excitement at getting to hang onto the reins of Bake My Day for another while yet, and I pushed that away as well.

This trip, whatever it was, was my escape from what had happened – and my journey towards what would be and, whatever would come, I would make the very most of it.

* * *

“There’s no hotel?” I was having to hold my tongue very firmly in place not to swear at my mother. I had never sworn at her before and I was not about to in the departure lounge of Miami Dade airport.

“Family don’t do hotels, pet,” she said, adopting a strange lilt to her accent which I hadn’t heard in a while. It was as if she was transforming into an Irish cailín before my very ears. “It would be madness.”

“Mom, I said I would pay – so if it’s money . . .”

“It’s not money, love,” she said. “It’s family. When you go home, you stay with family.” Family who you have never met, I thought to myself and sighed. I thought it would be me and Mom in a hotel room, not crammed in someone’s spare room like the invading Yanks.

“And you are not to be worrying, because I know you won’t want me cramping your style so I’ll be staying with Auntie Dolores and you will be staying with Cousin Sam.”