I, Michael Bennett (Michael Bennett 5)

She brushed past me and hit the stairs.

I tried to say something, tried to come up with words that would make her stop in her tracks, but there was nothing to say. She walked past me where I stood rooted to the porch and right out into the summer night.

I would have gone after her immediately, but my eye was on fire, so I ran inside to splash water on my stinging face. After I finally worked loose the gravel grit from my burning eye, I rushed back to the front door.

I was convinced that I’d see Mary Catherine there on the porch, her I’m-running-away ploy finished now, ready to give me more of the grief I definitely deserved. But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t even in the driveway anymore. I jogged out to the road and stood peering left and right into the darkness.

You’ve gotta be kidding me, I thought. There was no sign of her. She was really gone.

I went back up the driveway and hopped into the minibus. Driving after having had a few drinks was irresponsible, I knew, but I didn’t care. Panic was building inside of me at that point, the kind of pure panic reserved for a shitheel who realizes that he might have just taken advantage of the special woman in his life one too many times.

I almost took out the mailbox as I reversed it out onto the country lane. Trees wheeled by in the sweep of the headlights as I screeched the stupid clunky bus out onto the road. Then I put it in drive and floored it.

At every curve on that twisty rural road, I was sure that I was about to see her. I’d pull over, there’d be some yelling, some tears, but we’d fix it. I’d fix it somehow. The problem was, I didn’t see her. She wasn’t on the road five miles in each direction. I raced to the parking lot of the pizza parlor and then the bowling alley. I went in and asked the turbaned clerk at the 24-7 gas station if Mary Catherine had come in, but he just shook his head and went back to the cricket match he was watching on his laptop.

I even drove out to I-84 and went up and down it for over an hour, but it was fruitless.

I’d lost her, I thought, near tears as I stared into the roadside darkness. I’d finally done it. I’d finally gone and completely ruined everything.

CHAPTER 80

I WOKE UP the next morning on the porch just before dawn. I sat up, my back and neck stiff as plywood from falling asleep on the ancient wicker love seat. Head ringing from my hangover, I lifted my itchy arms to see that I’d been eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Then I remembered the night before, and I really felt bad.

I lurched back into the house. I was hoping that perhaps Mary Catherine had come home while I was asleep and that I’d find her fast asleep in her room. I crossed my fingers as I came through the living room. I even said a little prayer by her closed door, one of those childish if-you-give-me-this-one-God-I-promise-to-be-a-better-person specials. Then I cracked the door and dropped my head in despair.

God must have been off duty this morning, because Mary Catherine’s bed was completely empty. “What’s going on?” Seamus whispered, suddenly appearing in the hallway beside me in his robe and slippers.

Great, a priest, I thought. Just what I needed. I was going to need last rites when everyone found out I had driven Mary Catherine away.

I stared at Mary Catherine’s empty, made bed and then back at him, speechless.

“I heard the yelling last night, Mike. Something happened with you and MC? What is it?”

“Mary Catherine,” I said. “She’s, um, left.”

“What?” Seamus said in shock.

I shook my head.

Rather than wait for an explanation, Seamus put on the coffee and waited patiently.

It actually took two cups of joe and a couple of eggs over easy to give my full confession to the old priest.

“Well, you can’t blame the lass, can you?” he said, slathering butter across a piece of multigrain toast. “Running loose with wild women tends to irk the little lady at home.”

“The funny thing is, I wasn’t running loose with a wild woman,” I argued. “I was tempted, don’t get me wrong, Father. Sorely tempted, but I resisted. I could never do that to Mary Catherine.”

“You’re an idiot, Michael Sean Aloysius Bennett,” Seamus said. “How many Mary Catherines do you think are out there? Exactly how many good-looking, caring, strong females dumb enough to fall head over heels for the likes of you do you think presently exist? You string people along long enough, the string withers, then it breaks.”

“Don’t say that. Please don’t say that, Seamus,” I said, groaning. “I need to get her back. How can I get her back?”

Seamus just shook his head and pointed at the toast stack in front of me.

“Eat some carbs, son,” he said. “You’re going to need them for all the creative thinking you have to do.”

I was in the bathroom rubbing calamine lotion on my skeeter bites after my shower when my cell phone started ringing. I raced into my bedroom, thinking it was Mary Catherine, but of course it wasn’t. It was a number I didn’t know. Manhattan; 212. I answered it anyway.