Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

“I can hear that ‘Something Else’ has capital letters in it.”

Temple sighed. Heavily.

“Spit it out. You’ll never catch me in a better, more penitent mood, coming home to pandemonium and knowing I’d closed down your call.”

“Okay.” She wiggled to sit up against the headboard too.

“Look, Temple, I’ll make a wild guess that this involves the Mystifying Max.” Using the guy’s stage name made it easier to say.

“You know Evil Kitty led him to his cousin Sean in Ireland. Alive.”

“Alive and mostly recovered from that IRA bomb years ago.”

“Sean had sustained some bad injuries and PSD and memory loss. His DNA was found in the ruins of the bombing site so everybody assumed he was dead. And you know Max went—”

“Yes, yes. Sean’s a poor soul and a saint miraculously recovered. I’m waiting for the streaming Amazon video to come out.”

Temple gave him a Look before continuing. “So teenage Max—Michael then—went home alone to Wisconsin, where he found cousin Sean’s family suspicious that he’d escaped damage, at least physical damage, but not Sean. And the mothers, sisters, couldn’t get over that, so the Kellys and the Kinsellas were equally wounded and broken.”

“That’s almost predictable, Temple. And…’Michael’ had to cover up the stupid girl-chasing that had separated the boys. He was not Max yet, Max the magician. The parents would detect that awkwardness, the lies, the unsaid Something More.” Matt leaned forward, alert.

“What?

He embraced and kissed her.

“Nice but… What?”

“You’re a very healing person, you know that?”

“Not my most lavish compliment.”

“It’s worth more than rubies.” He glanced at his engagement ring on her finger. A vintage piece. She so loved Art Deco. Bought on time with his first big-time radio station money. The pear-shaped diamonds and rubies shining like blood and tear drops, something he’d never noticed before.

That had done it. Temple pointing out, painting an emotional moment in his analyst’s brain that he could identify with: a boy so guilty that he couldn’t stop something bad from happening— whack!, the crack of Effinger’s hand across his mother’s face. Him behind some soft chain-link fence of string bawling. He must have been a toddler in a playpen. “ And you next—”

Matt resumed full counseling mode. “So Michael made himself the Prodigal Son, went all vengeful and returned to Ireland to take on the IRA and became Max. Michael. Aloysius. Xavier. Kinsella. He used his baptismal middle and confirmation names to remake himself.”

“I never knew about those unpronounceable middle names until later,” she admitted.

“Survivor’s guilt is a horrible state, Temple, because you can’t do anything about it. And you couldn’t have done anything about Max’s obsession at the time or in those circumstances.”

“I wanted a partner, not a guilt complex.”

“We’ve all got those, even you, because you can’t cut loose from Max.”

“That’s not true. I have.”

“Have you? That’s what you think, but… Okay. Now they ’re reunited, though. The cousins. Sean at least has a happy life in Ireland and Max still wants something from you even though he persuaded you to go to Vegas with him and left you flat in six months.”

“Nine months.”

“I was hoping you were delivered from that demon baby.”

“Not fair! Max was protecting me from IRA guys who thought he had a hoard of American donations to the IRA, even then, that hadn’t been delivered in years.”

“I’ve concluded that hoard is a mythical beast,” Matt said. “The supposed IRA guys who attacked you in the parking garage may also be. Did they have Irish accents?”

“Like I’d listen for that while I’m being pummeled? You’re probably right, but back then everybody wanted to know where Max was, from Molina to nameless thugs. That’s old business. New business? Sean and Max owe some heavy explanations to their poor families back in Wisconsin.”

“Like we recently gave your poor family back in Minnesota.” Matt couldn’t help smiling at characterizing the robust, sports-loving Barrs that way. He narrowed his eyes. “Families are the last to know, but we don’t have to be.”

Temple took a breath and delivered a long, and probably unwelcome sentence, fast. “Max wants me to accompany him and Sean back to their families in Racine, Wisconsin, as a buffer, I guess, but mainly because I would know more about any holes in his memory since his bungee cord fall.”

“And only you.” Matt couldn’t keep a tinge of bitterness from his tone.

“Not necessarily. You’re the counselor. You know everything I know because you heard it from either Max or me at one time or another. So I volunteered you.”

“What? I’m supposed to come in cold on a situation with two totally confused sets of parents, one pair seeing their long-thought-dead son back, but maimed from bomb blast injuries, the other son probably written off as a bad seed when all he was trying to do was protect them from their inability to handle a tragic situation for fifteen-some years.”

“See, that’s why you’re so good at these human thorn-bush issues that a TV network wants you to do a show.”

“That’s just it. This emotional booby-trap stuff is not ‘a show’. I should never have considered doing it.”

“No. No, Matt. That’s the last thing I want. Is that why you’ve iced the network? You think going live with counseling is immoral?”

If only he were so noble, Matt thought. He was as capable of being flattered, or seeing value in what he did, and the big bucks as anyone. No, it was the danger he sensed hanging over Temple that gave him cold feet.

Cold feet. Warm heart.

She looked so troubled and torn. Temple could not not help someone. Like Electra tomorrow morning. Like someone she’d never met before the other day, or the next day. She called it PR, public relations, making everything run smoothly, but it was insight and empathy and heart and he loved her to death for it.

And, trying to protect her, he had become as toxic for her as Max Kinsella had ever been.

“No,” he said. “I’ve decided that a change of place, and of medium, would be good for me. You. Us. But I have a few loose ends to tie up with the radio station. And Letitia.”

She nodded sympathetically.

“And then I’ll deal with the ‘Days in the Lives of Michael-slash-Max Kinsella’.”

“That’s wonderful! And I’ve made a decision too.”

He waited. Afraid.

“I know where we should be married.”

“Let me see. It’s either religious or civil, either there or here. The Polish cathedral in Chicago where my family are, and you can have a Princess Diana-long train on your wedding dress, or the Crystal Phoenix wedding chapel here in Las Vegas, where you can have a Princess Diana-long train on your wedding dress.”

“You!” She slapped his shoulder in play. “You so understand my need for stature. Close, but wrong! It’s at Our Lady of Guadalupe here in Las Vegas where I can have a Princess-Diana-long train and wear the Midnight Louie Austrian crystal shoes without worrying about them being ripped off during travel.”

“Here? At OLG? A small Catholic Church. You don’t have to.”

“I want to. I think it would make Father Hernandez very happy. And more importantly, I think it would make you very happy.”

“It’s crazy, but genius,” Matt said.

And it was. Both families on uncommon ground, the formal Catholic ceremony satisfying his mother’s conventional dreams, and Temple’s more liberal family loving the sweet ethnic simplicity. OLG, as the church was so inelegantly initialized. Where Temple had accompanied him to her first Mass.