Chapter 3
Mary Helen Dunagin’s brick split-level house, only a few blocks away from her sister’s, was crammed with a dizzying array of sofas, chairs, and tables. Every flat surface was crowded with the beloved knickknacks the owner had collected over decades of haunting yard sales and thrift stores.
Mary Helen favored Hummel and Goebel porcelain statues, along with Precious Moments figurines.
There was a china cabinet full of Lladró figurines of the Blessed Mother.
The walls, painted the color of chocolate milk, featured a timeline of parochial school photographs of Maeve and Therese over the years, as well as dozens of Franklin Mint and Royal Doulton collector’s plates.
All of it had accumulated a depressing sheen of dust.
Over the fireplace, which had never worked in Maeve’s lifetime, was placed her mother’s most prized possession, an oil portrait of what Mary Helen claimed was her great-grandmother, Lady Geraldine Fitzhugh.
“Girls,” Mary Helen would say, pointing at the portrait, “this is your heritage. Our family’s heritage. This artist, Valerian DeJongh, was famous. You can look him up in books. His paintings are in art museums all over the world. Promise me you will never let this portrait leave our family.”
When they were little girls, Therese would make up fantastic stories about the lady in the gauzy blue dress—she was a princess who lived in a castle and had magical powers, or a movie star who’d been tragically murdered by her married lover.
As teens they would speculate on the reason for Lady Geraldine’s bemused expression.
Maeve bumped headlong into Therese as she was heading into Frannie’s … kitchen. Her sister was leaning over the dining room table, surveying a picked-over platter of tea sandwiches, with an empty plate in one hand and a tumbler of amber liquor in the other.
“Sorry,” Maeve muttered, trying unsuccessfully to sidestep her sister.
Therese held up the tumbler. “Who sprung for the hard stuff? I thought Mama expressly forbid anything stronger than cheap Chablis and Pabst Blue Ribbon.”
“I did!”
The sisters turned in unison to face a jovial bald man with a flushed face and a wide smile.
“Uncle Keith!” Therese exclaimed. “There you are!”
Their uncle flung an arm around each of the women. “And here you are. My two beautiful nieces.”
He kissed each cheek in turn. “And look at you, getting along so nice. That would make your mom, God rest her soul, so happy.”
Keith Dunagin took a step backward and lifted the ever-present 35-millimeter camera around his neck, aimed, and clicked off a couple of photos. “Come on, girls. Don’t look so sad. Your mom is in a better place now.”
Maeve managed a half-hearted smile and Therese smirked.
“Everything at Mass was just beautiful,” Keith said. “What a crowd! Did you know, they had to open up the cry room just to accommodate the overflow? I haven’t seen a crowd that big at Blessed Sacrament since your dad’s funeral. Mary Helen would have loved it.”
“I guess so,” Maeve said wearily. She nodded toward the kitchen. “I’m gonna go help Frannie clean up.”
“Hold up a minute, will you?” Keith went to the sideboard and pulled a bottle of Wild Turkey from the jumble of liquor and wine bottles. He poured two inches into a tumbler and gestured toward Maeve. “How about a little nightcap?”
“I shouldn’t,” Maeve said. She lowered her voice. “Frannie’s looking kind of frail today. I think the funeral and all of this took a lot out of her.”
“I’ll help Frannie clean up the kitchen,” Therese said. “You have a drink with Uncle Keith.”
“Actually, I need to have a word in private with both of you,” Keith said. “That’s why I waited around until everyone else cleared out.”
He handed the tumbler of bourbon to Maeve and led both sisters into the living room. Maeve sat at one end of the sofa and Therese sat at the opposite end. Their uncle took the recliner, but sat forward, hands braced on his knees, with a serious expression on his usually jovial face.
Keith Dunagin was the youngest of the six Dunagin brothers, the midlife surprise caboose born eight years after Will, who was Maeve and Therese’s father.
While his older brothers had all gone straight from high school into jobs working in the port of Savannah as longshoremen or tug pilots, Keith had surprised the whole family by going off to college and then pharmacy school.
With the financial support of his older brothers, he’d taken over a failing convenience store on a prominent downtown corner and promptly made it a success, adding a soda fountain and free deliveries.
A lifelong bachelor, it had been Keith who’d stepped up to support Mary Helen and her preteen girls when Will Dunagin died suddenly of a massive heart attack in his late forties.
He’d hired Mary Helen to answer the phone and run the pharmacy cash register, and when she showed a surprising talent for organization, he’d named her store manager.
And although their mother had never told them so, the sisters always assumed it had been Keith who’d paid the tuition for parochial school and later, Maeve’s years in college.
“How are you two holding up?” he asked now.
“Fine,” Maeve said. “Just, you know, still a little overwhelmed. It’s hard to believe she’s really gone.”
“You took great care of her, Maevey,” Keith said.
“Nobody could have done more.” He glanced over at Therese, who was busily picking at the seam of the plastic slipcover with her long, purple-painted fingernails.
“And you, Terri, I know you must have been heartsick that you couldn’t get home in time… ”
“Completely heartsick,” Therese said, jumping to her feet. “Okay, I really need to get out to the kitchen to give Fran a hand. Maeve’s right. This has all been too much for her. Good to see you, Uncle Keith.”
She bolted from the living room as though her hair were on fire.
Keith watched her go and sighed. “I really do need to talk to both you girls. There’s something I promised your mother I’d do.”
Maeve shrugged. “Sorry. You know how she is.”
“I do,” he said softly. “Do you think it would be okay if I stopped by the house tomorrow to get this thing taken care of? It’s really kind of important.”
“I can only promise that I’ll be there,” Maeve said. “No idea what Terri’s plans are.”
“I’ll come by early,” he promised.
Therese placed the leftover sandwiches and cookies in Tupperware containers and stowed them in the fridge.
The house was finally quiet. Aunt Bernie and the cousins had left, along with Maeve and Uncle Keith.
She’d sent Fran, who’d protested only mildly, to bed an hour earlier.
Now she loaded the last plates and glasses in the dishwasher and switched it on.
She wiped down the yellow Formica countertops, swept the floor, and took out the trash.
Finally, she topped off her tumbler with bourbon and took it out to the front porch. Moths and bugs swirled in the halo of the yellow light and cicadas buzzed from the shrubbery. It was after eleven, and the street was so quiet, it made her uneasy.
She pulled her phone from the pocket of her jeans, but there were no missed calls or texts.
Nothing at all from Bean. It had been more than a week.
She shrugged, knowing that she’d heard the last from him.
“Good riddance,” she muttered, taking a swig of bourbon, letting it swirl around in her mouth, then enjoying the burn as it slid down her throat.
A slip of newspaper fluttered to the stoop beside her.
Normally, Therese didn’t read newspapers.
She got her news from her phone, or from whatever cable station flashed across the television before she fell asleep at night.
But two days ago someone had left a folded-up copy of The New York Times on a bench in the Macon Greyhound station, and her phone was out of juice, and she was bored.
The bus to Savannah didn’t board for another hour.
The headline on a story in the arts section caught her eye, but it was the accompanying photograph that took Therese’s breath away.
VINTAGE IRISH PORTRAIT FETCHES RECORD PRICE AT AUCTION
The woman in the portrait was the exact twin of Mary Helen’s ancestor. Same hair, same gown, same jewelry, same expression on her face. Attributed to the same artist. Everything was the same. Except that this portrait had just sold for $1.2 million.
She’d torn the article out of the Times and tucked it away.
Now she took another sip of bourbon. Finding that newspaper in the bus station in Macon was fate, she’d decided.
Mary Helen had always believed in fate, and Therese believed in it too.
This time, the luck of the Irish was finally in her favor.
All she had to do was convince her bossy little sister that she knew what she was talking about.
Therese stumbled back inside her aunt’s house. She was heading to the kitchen to rinse out her tumbler and place it on the dish drainer, but as she passed through the dining room, she noticed there was still an inch of amber liquid left in the bottle of Wild Turkey.
It would be a shame to waste Keith’s generosity.
She poured the last of the bourbon into her glass and sat down on the sofa to sip it.
Her eyelids were heavy. She was tired, and okay, well and truly drunk.
There would be hell to pay from Maeve if she somehow managed to bang up the Beast on her way back to Mama’s house.
She could hear Frannie’s soft snores from the other side of her bedroom door.
“Might as well stay put,” she muttered, slipping off her boots. Her aunt wouldn’t mind if she slept over. Therese knew she’d always been Frannie’s favorite.
She fetched the neatly folded crocheted afghan from the back of Frannie’s Laz-Z-Boy, pulled it up to her chin, and stretched out on the sofa in the den. She was asleep within minutes.
“Therese, honey?”