“Thanks.” I stop at the top steps, however, and lower my voice. “How is she?”
Sams frowns, as if the question throws him. “How are you?”
Me? Confused. Angry. “Sorry,” I say.
“Good. No trouble tonight, okay?”
“Scouts honor.”
“You were never a scout, Rem.” But he lets his smile surface and for a moment I feel normal.
I give a quick glance around. I’ve always loved the Mulligan house. It faces the lake with a wide bank of windows, through a massive great room added on when Elizabeth Mulligan took a sledge to the wall in her kitchen. A former farmhouse from the early 1900s, it creaks and whines like an old man in winter when the wind off the lake harasses it, but with its vintage oak trees and heirloom Hosta-lined stone walk, the place nets easily in the seven digits. Bets, as Danny called her, is holding onto her family’s inheritance with an iron grip, despite Sams’ urging to sell and buy a nice condo in Excelsior.
I am not looking forward to the rumble her passing will cause in the family.
She’s the iron will, the gale wind, the plumb line, and the voice of truth that holds this family together after the tragedy that landed on them nearly twenty years ago. She’s also the one I need to convince that I’m not the guy—not really—who needs a breathalyzer before entering the Mulligan house of refuge.
I can’t imagine what would make me turn into the kind of man I have always despised except…again, maybe Burke is wise to keep that file from me.
Maybe.
Chips and dip, fruit plates, vegetable platters, and a tray of Bets’ homemade brownies line the giant island that separates the kitchen from the great room. The room is filled with faces I recognize and a few guys raise their hands to me. Among them are the rookies, as if coming is a rite of passage.
They’ll hear about Investigator Danny Mulligan who brought down a Brotherhood drug lord, saved a little girl in a fire before the FD arrived, tracked down the toddler son of a state senator in a cornfield, and apprehended a mall shooter before he could finish the havoc he’d come to wreak.
Danny was a hero, and I very much wanted him to like me. But I was a little too brash to realize that before he passed and I’m not sure we got that far.
I regret that.
“You made it.” Burke hands me a beer but I shake my head and reach for a Diet Coke. He looks impressed and sets the bottle back into ice. He nods toward the television and I see my mug on the news, Eve standing behind me. She’s watching me with an enigmatic look I can’t place.
“Think she’s serious about those divorce papers?” I don’t know why I’m asking Burke, but maybe he’s got insider information on this woman I suddenly don’t know.
“She’s left them three times since…well, since …” Burke swallows. “So yeah, I think she’s serious.”
“I need to know why.”
“My guess is that she’s tired of waiting. She needs to start over.”
Then tonight’s the night, because I’ve never been more serious about restarting my life.
Although, my plans include a different kind of restart. As soon as I get my hands on Ashley’s file tomorrow, I’m chronothizing (my word, but remember, I’m also a novelist and we make up words) my way to a new reality.
Right now, however, I’m going to repair some bridges so that should things go south, I have something to come back to.
I wander over to a side table, heavy with framed pictures of the family. Asher is grinning, wearing a stocking hat over his long reddish brown 90’s hair, gesturing a hang ten into the camera. In another, Danny is holding a walleye on a stringer, one arm around an annoyed teenage Samson. In a smaller snap, Lucas and Jake sit on a picnic table eating watermelon.
My gaze, however, fixes on the one of Eve sitting in one of the backyard Adirondack chairs, on her dad’s lap. She has her arms looped around his neck, and looks about fourteen, all long auburn hair, gangly legs and buck teeth.
My heart nearly explodes. I’m not sure how I’m going to return home tonight to my barren house, memories lurking in every corner.
The picture is in my hand, my thumb running down Eve’s countenance when I feel a grip on my arm.
It’s Bets and I’m caught, frozen. “Rem.”
I put the picture down. “Bets. I…” And I’m not sure what to say. She’s wearing a sleeveless top and a pair of white jeans, her bobbed blonde hair tucked behind her ears and a simple gold chain at her neck. She hasn’t taken her wedding ring off since the day Danny died, and I get it.
I stare at her, I can’t help it. Eve is my heart and soul. I probably always knew that, despite the denial in my youth and I wish I’d been an honest man from the beginning. But I’m here now and as God is my witness, I’m not going to give her a reason to leave me the second time around.