“It looks like a fairy city,” Deidre murmured from the seat beside him.
He glanced at her. She gave him that little smile that always struck him like a fist to the gut. He exhaled with relief.
Apparently, he’d been forgiven for inviting Brigit without consulting her.
He knew what Deidre meant about Chicago. The tops of the high rises were partially occluded by wispy clouds. The city did look a little surreal, situated there on the distant shore.
“Do you ever miss it, Deidre?” Brigit asked from the seat behind him. For a moment, Nick didn’t understand what she meant. Then he recalled that Deidre’s permanent home had been Chicago for all of her childhood. After the crash, Brigit had been forced to liquidate most of her and Derry’s assets to pay legal damages to the Itani and Reyes families. She’d moved onto Sycamore Avenue, making the Harbor Town vacation house her permanent home.
“I miss it. I love Chicago. It’s such a great city,” Deidre replied.
“I understand you’ve visited Marc and Liam there several times over the past few years,” Brigit said with what struck Nick as forced neutrality.
“Yes. I have,” Deidre said.
An awkward silence ensued, and Nick thought he understood why. Deidre had never driven the short distance to Harbor Town to visit her mother when she was in the vicinity.
“Deidre, what was it like when you met Lincoln?” he heard Brigit ask after a moment. Her uncertain, timid voice struck him as highly uncharacteristic of the vibrant, intelligent older woman.
He waited, acutely aware of Deidre where she sat beside him even though he didn’t watch her.
“Well...” Deidre began hesitantly, “the first time I saw him, Lincoln called me by your name, Mom.”
“He did?” Brigit asked.
“Yes. My hair was long a few months back. I had just cut it off recently. It must have looked similar to when you were young and knew Lincoln,” she explained in a rush. She cleared her throat. “You can see why he might have become confused momentarily, between me and your younger self. Oftentimes he was very sharp mentally, but other times...he’d drift.”
Nick sensed her glance at him and briefly met her stare.
“When I explained to him I was Deidre, not Brigit Kavanaugh, he whispered, ‘Deidre Jean’ and he had this look on his face...almost as if he knew precisely who I was all of a sudden. That was one thing about Lincoln at the end of his life, don’t you think, Nick?” she asked, looking to him for corroboration. “Sometimes, you’d think he was totally out of it and confused, and then suddenly he’d say something spot-on, and you got the impression he understood things even better than you did.”
Nick nodded. “Sometimes it seemed like he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about when it came to business decisions, and the next moment, he’d instruct me to do something completely brilliant that I hadn’t thought of, and he’d have all the details and the names of the players perfectly intact in his memory.”
Only the engines rang in his ears for the next few seconds, each of them seemingly lost in their thoughts.
“He must have recognized you on a very deep level,” Brigit mused.
“He recognized you in me, Mom,” Deidre said, her gaze out the front window.
“Maybe. But maybe he saw more than that.”
The charged topic segued to more mundane matters. Nick found himself dwelling on Brigit’s enigmatic statement, however, as they flew over the tiny, picturesque community of Harbor Town perched on the shore of the great lake.
What had Linc seen when he looked at Deidre? What had he seen when he saw Nick and her together? Nick was way too practical to think the answer was a future, which is what Linc had alluded to in his letter. Certainly Lincoln must have seen something though—something Deidre and he hadn’t begun to envision, until recently, anyway.
Linc had craved a family for his entire life.
Who was Nick to argue at the possibility that Linc thought he recognized it standing right in front of him during the last days of his life?
* * *
Nick insisted on taking them out to an early dinner after the flight. Deidre found herself relaxing and enjoying herself as they dined at Bistro Campagne and Nick and Brigit told stories about Lincoln’s favorite hobby, his horses. For the first time, Deidre discovered Lincoln had bred racehorses.
“Lincoln was well-known on the racing circuit. So was his father, George,” Brigit assured Deidre when she expressed her amazement. “Lincoln owned Sacramento Sal, the winner of the Belmont Stakes and the Preakness two years running. Sal also placed at the Derby last year. Isn’t that right, Nick?” Brigit asked. Nick nodded. Deidre caught her mother’s eye. It struck her as bizarre that her mother followed horse racing all these years and knew so much about the topic.
“What is it, Deidre?” Brigit asked.
“Nothing,” she murmured. “It’s just that Nick took me out to McGraw Stables the other day. I had no idea you still rode. Addy McGraw told us you’ve been going out there since we bought the vacation home on Sycamore. I was surprised to learn from Lincoln that you were an excellent horsewoman. I’d had no idea until I met Addy you’d been riding all these years. Now I’m finding out you’re an expert on racehorses, as well.”