Carla Neggers - The Mist

She felt Owen’s arm tighten around her, but he didn’t speak. The doctor in the E.R. had confirmed that she was pregnant. Four weeks. They’d have a spring baby.

“I loved Chris with all my heart. If he’d lived…” Abigail thought of the man she’d married and lost so long ago. “The memory of him is good. He’ll be a part of my life forever.”

“I know, babe,” Owen said. “I’m glad for that.”

She turned to him. “I love you.”

“Then let’s have a wedding.”

“Will Davenport offered us the use of his house in Scotland. Anytime. Owen, I don’t want to wait another second, never mind months…even days…”

Owen smiled. “Good, because I told Will to cut the grass. We’re coming. I can’t wait any longer, either.”

She touched his mouth with her fingertips. “My cuts and bruises are superficial. I’ll be fine…”

He kissed her on the forehead. “Just being with you is enough.” He held her and smiled again. “Bob’s going to Ireland with his daughters and Keira for Christmas. Telling him he’s invited to a wedding in Scotland -”

“Oh.” Abigail’s face hurt, but it felt good to laugh. “This’ll be fun.”

Will spoke to Josie from the Garrison house on Beacon Hill. Simon was pacing in the near-empty drawing room, periodically pausing to stare at Keira’s sketches of the Dublin windowbox and her Celtic stone angel.

“Did he die a clean death this time?” Josie asked.

“He’s a phoenix, our Myles.”

“Our?”

Silence. She knew now. There was no more doubt.

“I’m still in Ireland,” she said, her voice cracking, “but Arabella and I are having tea upon my return to London. Your baby sister is quite worried about you.”

“Tell her to get her needle and thread ready.”

“You and Lizzie Rush?”

His heart almost stopped, but he said, “Abigail Browning and Owen Garrison are having their wedding at my house in Scotland in a few days.”

“Ah. Well, then.”

Simon obviously couldn’t stand it any longer and took the phone. “Hello, Moneypenny. Any chance you can get me to Ireland? I want to leave in the next ten seconds.”

Will smiled. Knowing Josie Goodwin, she had a plane already waiting at the Boston airport for him.

Boston, Massachusetts

9:30 a.m., EDT

August 28

The doctors had sprung Scoop sooner than they’d expected, and Bob found him at their burned-out triple-decker, out back inspecting his garden. He was bandaged and clearly in pain, but he stood up with a squished tomato. “Bastard firefighters trampled my tomatoes. That was uncalled for.”

“They were dragging your sorry butt out from behind the compost bin.”

Scoop sighed. “My apartment’s got so much smoke and water damage, they’re going to have to gut it.”

“Whole building.”

“You can supervise. Where are you going to live?”

“Keira’s apartment for now,” Bob said. “The lace curtains have to go. I don’t care if it’s Irish lace.”

“What about her?”

“She has plans.”

Scoop was silent a moment. “Simon.”

Bob winced inwardly. What a dope he’d been. Fiona had tried to tell him it wasn’t her. It was his niece. “Scoop…”

“They’re good together.”

Scoop wasn’t exactly up to it, but nothing would stop him from heading with Bob to Morrigan’s Bar at the Whitcomb Hotel on Charles Street. Simon had left for Ireland. Jeremiah Rush and a couple other Rushes were there, including Jeremiah’s father, Bradley, and his uncle, Harlan, the spook.

Lizzie showed up late. Nobody knew where her Brit was, or at least no one was saying.

Fiona was pink cheeked and happily playing Irish tunes with three of her musician friends. She saw Scoop and blushed, and Bob’s heart broke, but he knew she’d be okay.

John March appeared on the steps for a few seconds before turning around and heading back toward the lobby. Lizzie got up and quietly followed him. Her father stayed put.

Making peace with the past, Bob knew from experience, wasn’t the easiest thing to do.

Theresa arrived with Maddie and Jayne. “We got through this one,” his ex-wife said and gave Bob’s hand a little squeeze. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do much.”

“You didn’t get killed.”

“All in a day’s work.”

They sat at a booth together, and Bob was off his guard for that split second that put him back in the past, and he saw what he could have had if he hadn’t been such a jerk. But Theresa and their daughters looked happy, and he figured the least he could do was not to saddle them with his regrets.

At a break, Fiona joined them with more Ireland brochures and printouts. “The Rush hotel in Dublin is now officially on our Christmas itinerary. I made reservations for us to have Christmas Eve tea there. It’s expensive.”

“What a surprise,” Bob said.

“Jeremiah has a brother in Dublin. His name’s Justin. He’s just twenty-two.”

“So long as they serve those little buttery mince pies my grandmother used to make, I’m good. And sing Christmas carols.” Bob smiled as Jayne crawled onto his lap. “I like Christmas carols.”

Lizzie found John March alone at a quiet table in the Whitcomb’s elegant second-floor restaurant. He had a bottle of good Irish whiskey. He poured her a glass as she sat across from him. “I met your mother here before you were born. Before she’d met your father. I was a young cop. She was a pretty Irish girl who happened to know some very bad people. She stayed here.”

“Good taste,” Lizzie said, but her mouth was dry, her hands trembling. She’d stood up to Norman Estabrook and his killers, but this, she thought-talking to a tortured man about the mother she never knew-was almost too much for her.

“She was in Irish tourism development,” March said. “Except, of course, she wasn’t.”

“It was a good cover for her intelligence work.”

“She knew what she was doing, Lizzie. She went up against very dedicated, very bad people.” He looked away. “I wish I could have saved her. If you hate me…”

“I don’t. I never have, even when I suspected that I didn’t know everything about her death. I’d have loved to have known my mother. I’d love to have her at my side if I ever get married and have babies of my own-”

“Lizzie.” His dark eyes, so like his own daughter’s, filled with tears. “I’m so sorry.”

“I had a wonderful, interesting upbringing, with a truly loving family. My mother has remained unreal to me, but the choices I faced this past year, the decisions I made, dealing with someone like Norman, have brought me closer to her, helped me to understand her better.”

“She loved you and your father with all her heart.”

“And you, Director March?”

He didn’t flinch at her question. “I could have fallen in love with her. Maybe I did. We met just before Kathryn and I started dating. But then pretty, black-haired, green-eyed Shauna Morrigan ran into Harlan Rush here at the Whitcomb, and that was that.”

“My father knew she was a spy?”

“He wasn’t a part of what she did. She had IRA contacts in Boston. That’s how I hooked up with her. After you were born, she quit. But it was too late.”

“Who killed her and her family?”

“An FBI agent with ties to the Boston Irish mob was responsible. I’d been on his trail. She got me closer to him. He found out. He thought killing her would keep me from him. He gave her up to her enemies in Ireland. It didn’t matter that she’d retired. They killed her and her family.” March drank more of his whiskey. “We cooperated with the Irish in order to save lives.”