tell.
They had become close these past years while Sam trudged around the world with Jeffery. Sometimes she found herself jealous of their closeness. Even now he wanted to protect his grandmother and didn’t like tattling on her, even when the entire house smelled of burned cookies.
Sam opened the window. Cold air filled the room but the smoke and smell lifted quickly.
“It’s okay,” she told them both when the alarm finally stopped screeching.
Her mother pulled out the cookie sheet and shook her head. “Such a waste.”
“Leave it,” Sam said. “I’m taking you both out to dinner.”
They stared at her like she was speaking in a foreign language neither of them understood. She realized she couldn’t remember how long it had been since the three of them had eaten out.
“I get to choose the restaurant.”
Iggy and his nanna exchanged looks.
“Go on.” Sam waved her hands at them. “Go get cleaned up. And dressed up.”
Sam was ready before they were. She had found a skirt she hadn’t worn in years and put on a long sweater and high boots. When her mother came down the stairs in a burgundy knit dress and the peacock-print scarf Sam had brought her from Italy, Sam hardly recognized the beautiful woman before her.
“This is all right?” her mother asked, worried by Sam’s dumbfounded stare.
She kissed her mother’s cheek and said, “You look so pretty.”
Her crusty, nagging mother blushed like a schoolgirl.
Sam was going to check on Iggy, thinking the boy might need help. But her mother had told her, “Leave him be. He’s fine. He said he’s a big boy now.”
He came marching down the stairs, watching his feet as though he didn’t trust the rarely worn leather dress shoes. Sam swallowed hard, but the lump stayed in her throat. He looked like a little man in his trousers and white button-down shirt with red suspenders that matched his red bow tie.
“I tie it for him,” her mother said, then shook her hands in a go-away gesture.
Sam’s cell phone rang and all three of them froze in place as if the ring had stung them. The two people she loved most in this world looked at her briefly with an innocent anxiousness before their eyes automatically switched over to disappointed resolve.
Sam glanced at the caller ID, though she already knew it had to be Jeffery. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. In all the years as his camera technician she had always been there. Jeffery was just another reporter without a camera on him, but Sam knew he could replace her tonight and all the nights to come with a snap of his fingers.
Of course, no one would put up with him as much as she did or for as long as she had. Sam and Jeffery had become like an old married couple, ignoring each other’s idiosyncrasies, taking the good with the bad. It had been Sam’s experience that marriages and relationships usually ended up with one person taking the brunt of the bad. Her mother and son certainly had in the last few years of her relationships with them.
Sam’s finger hovered over the phone as it continued to ring. She saw her son put his hands under his suspenders, getting ready to flick them off his shoulders, and she put her hand up to stop him.
“Don’t you dare,” she said to him, then moved her finger over the phone’s faceplate, taking Jeffery’s call and sliding it to Ignore. Before it could start ringing again, she shut the phone off.
“Let’s go,” she said, but neither her son nor her mother moved. They stared at her, almost as stunned by what she had just done as Sam was.
CHAPTER 58
Patrick opened the door and recognized the woman without an introduction. By the surprise on her face, he knew she recognized him, too.
“She said you looked exactly like your father.”
“Maggie said that?”
“No. Your mother.”
“So you’re Kathleen O’Dell?”
“And you’re Patrick.”
“Maggie’s not here.” But he opened the door and invited her in anyway.
She hesitated, but only for a second, staring at him as if she were seeing a ghost.
“I know she’s not here. I didn’t come to see Maggie.”
Now Patrick wished he hadn’t been so quick to open the door. Maggie had a security camera. He could have easily avoided this and just pretended to not be here.
“You keep in touch with my mom?”
“From time to time.” She made her way into the living room. “Don’t look so surprised. How do you suppose we kept the two of you from finding out about each other all these years?”
He didn’t like the sarcasm in her voice. She might resemble Maggie in looks, but her brusque manner was nothing like Maggie. Not two minutes after their introductions and Patrick could detect a cruel edge to this woman.
“What is it that you wanted to see me about?”
“My, I don’t recall your mother mentioning how rude you are.”
He felt the flash of heat crawl up the back of his neck.
“Perhaps you could get me something to drink?”
She followed him into the kitchen like she knew her way. Stopped at the island counter and watched him take out two glasses from the cabinet and open the refrigerator. Before he brought out the pitcher of ice tea she stopped him.
“You must have something a little stronger than ice tea. I know you were tending bar at college, so you must be old enough to drink.”
“You know exactly how old I am,” Patrick told her, allowing his irritation to show.
She looked at him for a second and he saw a deep sadness in her eyes as she said, “Yes. Yes, I do know exactly how old you are.”
It had taken Patrick’s mother a lifetime—Patrick’s lifetime—to admit that he was conceived during a three- month affair with Thomas O’Dell. Growing up, he knew little about his father except for the bits and pieces he kept in a Nike shoe box. It wasn’t until five years ago, when Maggie came looking to meet him at the University of New Haven, that Patrick learned the secret that Thomas O’Dell’s wife and mistress had kept for more than twenty years. He wondered what Kathleen O’Dell hoped to accomplish by coming here today.
He pulled out the bottle of wine that he and Maggie hadn’t finished the night he fixed them dinner. He exchanged the tea glasses for goblets, popped up the cork, and poured. At first he was going to stick with tea for himself but then he decided this conversation might go down better with some wine.
There was only half a bottle left. He emptied it into the glasses and slid hers over to her side of the center island, where she had already made herself comfortable on one of the bar stools. Patrick remained standing, taking his old bartender stance, and then remembered how Maggie and Sam had taken these exact positions during their midnight confrontation.
“Maggie has a misguided sense of obligation to you,” Kathleen O’Dell said, taking a healthy gulp of the wine.
“Unlike you and my mom.”
“Why in the world would I feel any obligation to a bitch who tried to steal my husband?”
Patrick kept himself from flinching at his mother being called a bitch.
“What is it that you want to talk to me about, Mrs. O’Dell?”
“I want you to leave. Pack up and get out of Maggie’s life.”
“Maggie invited me to stay here. I didn’t ask her for a place to stay.”
“But of course you jumped at the offer.”
“I’m pretty sure this isn’t any of your business.”
“So what will it cost?”
