Kathleen O'Brien - The Sinner

“Just be sure to come back in time for the toast,” Kieran added, pulling his wife close and kissing her lightly on the neck.

Claire smiled. “Of course I will. It’s bad luck, you know, if you don’t say ‘Happy New Year’ to the one you love at midnight.”

“I don’t believe in bad luck,” Kieran said softly. He took his wife’s hand and held it so tenderly Bryce felt the urge to look away. “Not anymore.”

“Knock it off, you two,” Evelyn Gordon said. “You’re going to make me barf up my parfait.”

“Would you listen to that lovely mouth on my lovely wife,” John Gordon said in mock disapproval. But he pulled Evelyn in and kissed her on that lovely mouth, and suddenly Bryce felt so out of touch with the whole damn world it was like being caught in a Plexiglas isolation tank.

Everyone was in love, it seemed. Everyone but him.

He looked over at Mallory Rackham, who was quite beautiful, but who oddly didn’t stir any romantic impulses in Bryce at all. She didn’t seem uncomfortable surrounded by all this fog of bliss. She didn’t seem to feel left out. She was smiling at the Gordons across the table.

So why did Bryce suddenly feel so strangely alone? And what was wrong with that, anyhow? Alone was a choice. Alone was good.

Maybe it had nothing to do with romance. Maybe it was just that this could have been his family, his real family. This could have been his town. These could have been his friends. And yet too many years, too many emotions, too many bad decisions stood between them.

“Let’s go out on the porch and look at the backyard, shall we?” Claire was suddenly at his elbow, smiling up at him. “It’s really beautiful on a clear night like this.”

She was right. The long, narrow strip of garden behind the eighteenth-century mansion was amazing, an orderly oasis of grace and peace under the deep, starry blue sky.

They walked slowly along the back porch, just beyond the warm yellow rectangles of light cast by the library windows, where the others were working. The weather was perfect, hovering on the crisp edge of frost, so Claire seemed quite comfortable in her green velvet maternity evening gown, and he didn’t even really need his dinner jacket.

When they came to the edge of the house, they stopped. He leaned his elbows over the cold, marble railing, favoring his wounded arm just a little, as it was already mostly healed. Claire rested her shoulder against a smooth column.

“It’s changed a lot since I was a kid,” he said.

“What’s different?” Claire looked out into the semi-darkness. “I didn’t know the house before I married Kieran. I don’t even know when the pool was put in.”

“The pool was always here,” he said. “At least as long as I can remember. But it all looked very different to me, somehow. It didn’t look this—peaceful.”

She smiled. “Adolescence isn’t a very peaceful time, is it? I mean, it isn’t for any of us—but it must have been particularly tumultuous for you.”

Somehow he didn’t get the impression she was poking around for gossip. She had a peaceful quality herself, kind of like this garden, as if she had been through a lot and found calm on the other side.

“Yes,” he said, surprising himself. “I was pretty damn angry most of the time. This garden belonged to my father, and that alone was probably enough to poison it for me.”

She just nodded. Bryce looked at her lovely profile rimmed in moonlight, and he decided that Kieran had done very well for himself. A woman who knew when to be silent was rare. A beautiful woman who knew was nothing short of a miracle.

They stood together several minutes. The air was cold and clean and sweet, filled with the scent of unseen winter roses. The light in the pool was off, so the wind-ruffled navy-blue water was lit only by wavering points of starlight. Somewhere a fountain trickled.

Suddenly, Claire made a small noise, something between a gasp and a moan. He looked over and saw that she was clutching the railing with one hand, bending toward it. Her other hand was pressed against her abdomen.

“Are you all right?” He touched her shoulder. “Do you want me to get Kieran?”

She shook her head, but she didn’t seem to be able to speak. Her breath was shallow and quick. He put his arm around her shoulder and felt the trembling in her fragile body. Oh, hell. He didn’t know anything about pregnant women. What was happening?

If it had gone on a single second longer, he would have scooped her up in his arms and carried her in to Kieran. But just then she took a deep breath and straightened up to her full height, which still didn’t reach his chin.

“Sorry about that,” she said with a wobbly smile. “Thanks for not sounding an alarm. It’s just false labor—it happens every now and then. I saw the doctor this morning, and she says it’s perfectly normal. The baby’s not due for a month. The doctor says it may be a little early, but it’s not imminent. A couple of weeks, at least.”

Bryce had removed his arm, but in his mind he still could feel those shaking shoulders. That was normal?

“But even so…shouldn’t you tell Kieran?”

“God, no.” She laughed softly. “You’ve seen how he treats me. If I told him about this, he wouldn’t let me out of bed until the baby was born. He’d be spoon-feeding me parfait night and day. I’d go crazy.”

From what Bryce had seen tonight, he judged Claire McClintock to be a pretty sensible lady. He decided, on the spur of the moment, to trust her.

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t say anything.”

She squeezed his arm. “Thanks,” she said. “You know, I—”

But just then the peaceful blue midnight was shattered by the sound of gunfire. Bryce started, his heart accelerating under his dinner jacket, but almost immediately he figured it out. Of course. Up and down these normally quiet streets, people were celebrating, ushering in the New Year with sparklers and firecrackers and half-heard, half-drunken renditions of “Auld Lang Syne.”

In the middle distance church bells began to ring.

The library doors opened, and the others spilled out onto the porch, carrying glasses of champagne. They left the doors open, so that the stereo could reach the garden. It, too, was playing “Auld Lang Syne,” which in this clear starlight sounded more poignant than anything Bryce had heard in a long, long time.

Suddenly the cell phone in his pocket rang. He glanced at the caller ID, and for a minute his heart began to race again. The area code was 213, the area code for Los Angeles, California.

Excusing himself, he answered it, moving to the edge of the porch so that he wouldn’t disturb the kissing and laughing and hugging going on among the old Heyday buddies gathered there.

“Hey, McClintock, this is Joe. Hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Of course not,” Bryce said. Joe was the police officer who had been shepherding the Kenny Boggs issue through the system. He was a good guy.

Bryce realized that his voice sounded dull, so he put more energy into it. “No problem, Joe. What’s up?”

“I just wanted to tell you the final hoops have been cleared. Everything’s in order. You can even have your gun back if you want it.”

No. He didn’t want it.

“Thanks,” Bryce said. He paused. “I mean it, Joe. Thanks.”

“Forget it. I just— I mean, I also wanted to say…I hope things go good for you there in—what the hell was the name of that burg you came from?”

“Heyday,” Bryce said. “Heyday, Virginia.”

Joe laughed. “Yeah, in Heyday. I wanted to say Happy New Year, you know. I hope it’s a good one for you, McClintock. You deserve it.”

Bryce swallowed hard and thanked him, surprisingly touched that Joe had remembered and made the effort. It was only nine o’clock in California.