Emilie Richards - The Parting Glass

“It’s not much—”

“All my life I lived in a room with twenty girls, sometimes more. I yearned for space like this, for a place where I could move without stumbling over someone.”

He knew what she was doing, knew the effort this forced spate of optimism was costing her. He loved her more for it. “You’ll need to be careful where you move here, as well. Or you’ll end up on the ground below.”

“But it will be our ground, won’t it? Not charity. No one reminding us that we didn’t earn it and we’re lucky to have it. No sisters to beat us if we aren’t thankful enough. Yes, it’s meager, Liam. But I’m sorry about what I said before. If there are mice, they’ll be our mice, won’t they? And if the icicles form inside, then we’ll know exactly where to patch, and we’ll thank them for the insight.”

“I’ll get a job. I know there’s work here, lots of it. I’ve been told so by every man I’ve encountered. We won’t be in the house long. And I’ll patch the floors. There’s driftwood on the lakeshore. I’ve been told that, as well. I’ll patch, and we’ll make it a home until we can find better.”

“I never expected to have this much. I have you, and our darling Irene, and I have this new land of ours, away from all our sad memories. We’ll start again here. The three of us.”

He set Irene down, and she ran to the window where her mother stood. Brenna lifted her daughter in her arms.

“Smoke,” Irene said, pointing down the hillside.

“A sign of progress,” Brenna said. “A sign of good things to come.”

Liam followed his daughter. Brenna held out an arm, and he let her enfold him. The only moments of pleasure he’d ever experienced had been due to this woman. He felt the warmth of her breast pressing against his side, smelled the wind-tossed scent of her hair. He put his arms around the only two people in the world whom he had ever loved, and Liam Tierney counted his blessings.

Megan pulled into the parking lot of the Whiskey Island Saloon in Casey’s red Mazda and turned the key in the ignition. She didn’t move to open the door. Her hands gripped the steering wheel, and her foot continued to rest on the brake. She closed her eyes and reminded herself to breathe.

When she opened them again, nothing had changed. No fairy godmother had waved a wand in the intervening seconds to restore the rubble into a functioning Irish-American pub. The Whiskey Island Saloon would be a work in progress for weeks, maybe months, and Megan was going to have to accept the fact that life as she had known it was never going to be the same.

The driver’s door opened. Startled, she looked up and saw her sister staring down at her. “You like my car so much you don’t want to return it?”

“How did you know I’d be back today?” Megan stared up at Casey. “Is this sisterly ESP?”

“Nick called Jon and told him what happened. I brought Charity for you and came to get the Mazda.”

Niccolo’s phone call to Jon didn’t surprise Megan. He was already acting like a husband, even though they’d only been married two weeks. He’d fallen into the role like Olivier into Hamlet.

“It’s a long drive by yourself.” Casey extended a hand. “He was sorry you had to make it alone. Not the way to end a honeymoon, huh?”

Megan hefted herself out of Casey’s car. “Nobody’s fault.”

“Jon says Nick’s mother had a heart attack? She’s in Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh?”

“Chest pains. They put her in yesterday morning for tests. I haven’t heard any results yet, but Nick thought he ought to be there. He flew out last night. It was too late to make the drive home, so I stayed there alone until this morning.”

“You had what, four nights together? Not much of a honeymoon.”

At least they had been blissful nights. The lake lapping at the shore, Niccolo’s lovingly chosen wines, gourmet meals prepared together, moonlight walks, the glowing eyes of nocturnal animals in the forest beyond their cabin. The big, soft king-size bed.

“It’s a bad break, but it couldn’t be helped,” Megan said. “Marco told him not to make the trip home, but you know Nick. If he can’t help, he doesn’t exist. And she is his mother.”

“You deserved longer. Between the tornado, the bids and estimates, the insurance adjustor, now this…”

“Hey, we were lucky to have any time at all. Between renovations here and Nick’s work at Brick, it might be years before we can get away again.”

“Don’t even say that. You have to make time for each other.”

Megan started toward the kitchen door. The old maple tree was gone now, and so was Niccolo’s Honda Civic. The first brand-new car he had ever owned was a shiny silver cube in a Cleveland junkyard. Even the shifty-eyed insurance adjustor, who had clearly wanted to issue a modest check for repairs, had gasped when he saw it and declared it a total loss.

“I don’t suppose the contractor’s spent much time here,” Megan said. She had come to terms on the renovations with a man from Westlake before she left. Casey had volunteered to supervise whatever visits the contractor wanted to make before Megan came back. “With all the rain you’ve had and everything else, I bet he’s hardly been here.”

They entered through the kitchen. It, like the rest of the saloon, had been picked clean. Before the brief Michigan honeymoon, Megan had hired a moving company to take everything that wasn’t nailed down to a storage facility while the repairs commenced. The front facade of the building was shored up just enough for them to begin clearing the rubble, but security would be an issue until the walls were restored and doors could be installed again and locked.

“Megan, about the contractor.” Casey followed her sister into the saloon proper, although there was nothing very proper about it now. “That’s part of why I came looking for you.”

Megan waved a hand as if she were wafting away the scent of boiling cabbage. “Look, I know he’s no peach to deal with. He’s got the manners of a bulldog, but his references are good. And his was the only estimate that even came close to the amount the insurance company is willing to reimburse us for. We’re still going to have to come up with thousands of dollars ourselves. Expanding and improving went out the window fast.”

“He never gave you the estimate in writing, did he?”

Megan frowned, turning to search Casey’s face. “He said he’d send it to Nick’s—our house. It’s probably there. Why?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Casey, what are you trying to say?”

“He called me the day before yesterday. He reworked his figures before he put it all in writing. He was way off, Megan. Now he says he can’t do it for what he promised. His new estimate’s in line with the others. It’s a lot more.”

“He can’t do that!” Megan felt a surge of anger starting at her toes. “He already gave me a figure!”

“Not one you can hold him to. He had the square footage wrong, and the price of lumber’s gone up in the last week. He says the only way he could do it at what he originally thought was to do a really shoddy job of it. And you don’t want that.”

Megan felt as if she’d been punched. She should have known the estimate was too good to be true. “We should have had more insurance. I knew it. I just didn’t get around to doing anything about it.”

“Jon and I will help, Megan. You know we will. And the others are going to pitch in—”

“What others?”

“The family. The offers are pouring in. Everybody’s going to help get the saloon up and running again. Maybe it’s ours on paper, but it belongs to all the Donaghues. All the memories and the connections to the past.”