“Your nephew has a beautiful home.”
“Mansion, you mean. That land once belonged to John Hancock. He bought it on speculation but didn’t do much with it. It had an interesting history before it became a Dolan property. One family in the mid-nineteenth century buried a child there, but the coffin was dug up and planted in the Hancock Cemetery. Now, that’s an interesting bit of ground. The Puritans didn’t always have grave markers, and cattle roamed freely over it, so there are many more people buried there than indicated. I actually took Liam there once when I was trying to build his appreciation of our history. He didn’t find anything impressive about it. I don’t think I was very successful at building his appreciation of Quincy.”
“Oh, no. Liam has a real feeling for this place. You’d be surprised.”
“I would. Sometimes it takes a virgin set of eyes to see what we’ve been looking at for decades. Maybe you’re right. While I’m happy that it was a good experience, I know you’re probably ready for bed. I won’t keep you,” she said. “Good night.”
She returned to the living room, and I hurried up the stairs. I wanted to get into my room, first to see if Ava would surprise me by somehow being there and second to look out the window to see if I could spot her on the street. The room was empty. I gazed up and down the street from every angle but saw no one. A few cars went by, their headlights scraping away some darkness for me.
Finally, I sat on my bed. I felt stunned, confused.
Did I really see and hear Ava? Would she appear again? How long had she been there? Was that her I had seen at the dance club after all?
I prepared for bed slowly, keenly listening to every sound, every creak in the house. The footsteps I eventually heard on the stairway and in the hallway were Mrs. Winston’s, but when I got into bed, I just lay there with my eyes open, anticipating. A stronger breeze kicked up, and the branches of a close maple tree scratched the siding of the house with an almost perfectly constant rhythm. I closed my eyes. I was tired and wanted to sleep, and the best way to do so was to convince myself that I had imagined Ava. Otherwise, it made no sense. She would never cut and run. Comfortable with my theory, I drifted off, and when the first rays of sunshine penetrated the curtains, I was elated. Nothing had happened. She hadn’t appeared.
Forget it. It was your overworked imagination, I told myself, and got up to get ready for work.
Liam was there early, but he didn’t come into the house. He sat in his car, waiting. I had a feeling he would be there already, so when I had finished breakfast and my last preparations for leaving, I stepped out of the house.
“ ’Morning,” Liam said. “You look like you had a good night’s sleep.”
“Looks deceive,” I said after getting into the car.
“I’m easily deceived, then,” he said. “But happily deceived as well.”
I asked him about the work he had to do in Boston. He talked more about the business and his father’s efforts to get him to be part of it.
“I know I was a brat,” he said. “When a father builds something as big as Dolan Plumbing Supply and has a son, he hopes he’ll have the same interest and enthusiasm and carry it on. That’s especially true here, where there are so many family businesses, houses people have lived in for generations, and proud family trees. Just ask my great-auntie Amelia.”
“I don’t have to ask. She doesn’t miss a chance to tell me,” I said, and he laughed.
“Lorelei Patio,” he said, and repeated my name like a prayer. “I don’t know where you really came from or why you are here, but some angel is looking out for me.”
“Maybe it’s a fallen angel,” I said. He shook his head.
“No way, José.”
When we reached the company, he went in to get last-minute instructions from his father. On the way out, he stopped at my desk.
“I know you have my aunt’s half-board plan or whatever she calls it, but if I get back early enough . . .”
The vivid memory of Ava in the shadows returned as he spoke. If she really was there, this budding romance was already on a fatal trajectory. But the look on his face, the desperate hope that I would show at least as much enthusiasm as he was showing, warmed my fearful heart.
“Just call from the road,” I said. “I should let Mrs. McGruder know. That’s a house filled with little courtesies to be observed.”
“Exactly.”
He kissed me quickly and hurried away.
To keep myself from thinking of anything dark and treacherous, I went at my work with a furious passion. I nearly worked through lunch and would have if it weren’t for Carol Charles, one of the women in accounting, stopping by to get my sandwich order. After lunch, I took a call from Kelly Burnett for Mr. Dolan. She knew I was his personal secretary, of course, and asked me how my evening had been. She said she looked forward to seeing me again. She suggested that Mr. Dolan might be planning something for the four of us, “maybe even six of us if Julia and Clifford can manage it.”
I couldn’t help but like the way I was being included, accepted, so quickly. But why? Was it because I was doing good work or that Liam was undergoing some sort of change for the better? No one really had yet pursued my family story. Everyone had accepted my rendition of it, and I had apparently left them with the sense that talking about it would be painful for me. How long would that work? When would the detailed questions be asked? How could I survive dishonesty long enough to be truly accepted?
I had the feeling that this broken family needed me almost as much as I needed them and that in their way of thinking, nothing could change their minds about me. Just let it go, I told myself. Just let it run its course. You’ll know when to pull back, when to leave, but for now, enjoy what you’ve always wanted to enjoy, a normal way of life.
Liam called at three. He wasn’t on the road back, but he was determined to be home early enough.
“I’ll hire a helicopter if I have to,” he joked. At least, I thought he joked.