Chapter 49
“What do you make of that?” Maeve asked, after they’d driven away from the gardener’s cottage.
Therese had taken the daguerreotype out of the wooden box and was studying it. “I can’t quite believe she invited us over, and voluntarily gave us Kathleen’s stuff. Essentially, she’s admitting what we’ve been saying all along—that her grandfather fathered Kathleen.”
“What I find bizarre is the fact that Esme hasn’t spoken to her own brother in thirty-five years. And then he suddenly shows up, snooping around and asking questions about that portrait.”
“And us,” Therese reminded Maeve. “What if Geoffrey’s the one who’s been messing with us? Slashing our tires and trying to run us down?”
“For what reason? He can’t know anything about our portrait of Lady G. And he’s never even laid eyes on us.”
“As far as we know,” Therese said, adding an ominous, theatrical “mwahahahah!”
“Okay, the turn for the airport is coming up,” Therese announced three hours and two wrong turns later. “Remind me why we’re going to the airport now instead of our hotel?”
“We’re dropping the rental car at the airport, then taking the shuttle bus to the hotel, which should be like a mile away,” Maeve said, keeping her eyes on the road.
“That way we don’t pay for an extra day for the car, and we don’t have to screw around with turning it in tomorrow morning.
We’ll get up, grab our bags, and catch the hotel shuttle back to the airport. ”
“Got it,” Therese said. “I still wish we had time to go out and really experience Dublin.”
“Maybe next time,” Maeve said.
“You sound like Mom.”
“Sometimes that’s not a bad thing. We had a great time in Ireland. Can’t you just leave it at that? We took the trip Mom wanted us to take, and got the answers we wanted…”
“And one of us met a super-fine guy…”
“Enough already,” Maeve said wearily. “We’re not living in one of your rom-com fairy tales. It’s reality time, Therese. We’re out of money. Neither of us has a job, or prospects, and yes, hopefully we’ll be able to sell the portrait soon, but we can’t count on that for income.”
“I can,” Therese said, arms crossed over her chest.
“Just navigate, okay? I don’t want to miss our turn for the rental car return and have to loop all the way around again because you’re in pout mode.”
“Whatever.”
Five minutes later, Therese’s cell phone rang. She glanced down at the caller ID and her mood brightened. “It’s Scotty. But also, you’re turning in two kilometers, whatever that means.”
She tapped Connect. “Hi, Scotty. What’s shakin’?”
“Therese, it’s great to hear your voice,” Scotty said. “How’s Ireland?”
“Awesome. We’re flying out for home first thing in the morning.”
“Perfect timing. I think I have some moderately good news for y’all.”
“Put him on speaker,” Maeve said.
“Okay, Scotty. I’m putting you on speaker because Maeve is driving. What’s the story? Did somebody arrest Reverend Jerome and force him to give us back the money Mary Helen donated?”
“Hi, Maeve,” Scotty said. “I’m afraid the news isn’t that good.
I did want to let you know that I was finally able to track down Arletha, the bank teller.
She was staying in Jamaica, helping her sister recuperate from surgery, but she’s back in Savannah now.
I’ve been driving past her house every day, leaving my business card.
She finally called yesterday. I explained why we were reaching out to her, but she seemed pretty wary of me.
I guess she doesn’t trust lawyers. Anyway, she did say she’d be willing to talk to y’all. ”
“That’s great,” Maeve said. “One of us will call her as soon as we get back to Savannah. Have you heard anything from anyone at the bank, like Hoot Wooten?”
“Not a peep,” Scotty said. “Hoot’s definitely dodging my phone calls.”
“He won’t be able to dodge me,” Therese said. “I’m gonna march my ass right into that bank and demand answers. And if I have to cause a scene, well, that’s something I excel at.”
“Ask me how I know,” Maeve said.
“Whoops! Here’s the rental return exit,” Therese said. “Scotty, I’ll call you after I get home.”
“We’ll both call,” Maeve said. She was in the middle of changing lanes when her own phone, which was sitting in the car’s console, dinged with an incoming message.
“See what that is, okay? I don’t want to miss a text from the airline.”
“It’s from an international number,” Therese said, tapping on the bubble.
She glanced over at her sister. “Want me to read it?”
“Yeah.”
Hi Maeve. This is Angela Grogan. I meant to send you these photos earlier. Thought you might want these to remember us by. Lovely meeting your sister, by the way. Fondly, A.
The first photo showed a pair of red-haired little boys, their faces smeared with chocolate.
The second was of Maeve, with a little girl sitting on her lap, holding a kitten.
The next photo was of a long picnic table littered with plates and platters of food, both sides filled with grinning adults and children, including Maeve, hamming it up for the camera.
There was another, of what Therese assumed was Liam and another brother, arm-wrestling with family members cheering them on.
Therese described each photo as she tapped it, watching her sister’s face to gauge her reaction, which so far was Maeve’s version of feigned disinterest.
The last photo showed Maeve and Liam, standing in a bright green meadow. His arms were wound around Maeve’s waist. They were both smiling blissfully, their heads haloed in the late-afternoon sun.
“Oh my,” Therese said. “This one is frame-worthy.” She enlarged the photo and held it in front of her sister’s line of vision.
Maeve glanced at it, then back at the road.
“Want me to text her back, tell her thanks for the memories?” Therese asked.
“Never mind. I’ll do it when we get to the hotel. Just close the text please and put my phone back in the console.”
Therese tapped the photo of Maeve and Liam and texted it to herself before closing the text box.
Maeve heard the whoosh of the text being sent and noted the guilty look on her sister’s face. “What did you just do?”
“I texted that picture of you with Liam to myself.”
“You had no right,” Maeve started, but Therese waved away her objection.
“You would have deleted that photo. Like you want to delete Liam.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Liar. It’s a great photo of you, Maeve.
You’re completely relaxed, the light is doing marvelous things for your skin, and you’re grinning like a loon.
Like a smitten kitten. Meanwhile, Liam is looking at you the way Bogie looked at Bacall.
Like Tom Hanks looked at Meg Ryan at the end of You’ve Got Mail.
It’s the look of a guy who’s totally besotted. ”
“You’re crazy,” Maeve said.
“There’s the lane for Hertz,” Therese said, pointing, and effectively ending the conversation.
“Oh shit.”
Maeve stood in the doorway of their room at the Airport Marriott. “No,” she said emphatically.
Therese looked over her shoulder. The room was clean, but it held only a single bed.
“Hell no,” she said, dropping her carry-on bag. “I’m not sleeping in the same bed with you. This isn’t even a queen. It’s like a double, maybe.”
“This is not the room I reserved,” Maeve said. “I booked a double queen.” She marched over to the phone on the nightstand and dialed the front desk.
“Hi. This is Ms. Dunagin in 408. My sister and I just got into our room, and there seems to be a mistake. I booked a double queen room, and even prepaid for two beds. But there’s only one bed here…” Her voice trailed off as she listened to the front desk clerk.
“I know, but we’re two adults. We haven’t slept in the same bed since we were children.”
More inaudible chatter.
“I don’t want a refund for the up-charge,” Maeve said, her voice getting louder and shriller. “I want the two beds I reserved. At this point, we’ll take twins, if that’s all you’ve got.”
More inaudible chatter.
“No. We don’t want a complimentary basket of snacks. That’s not going to cut it. We want two beds.”
“Ask them if they have a rollaway,” Therese said. “I’ll sleep on it.”
“We’d be willing to accept a rollaway,” Maeve conceded.
A minute ticked by. “Hello? Anyone there?”
Maeve slammed the receiver down. “There’s some kind of conference that’s taken over the whole hotel. Every room is booked, and they claim they don’t have rollaways.”
“Kill me now,” Therese said. “Should we try to switch hotels?”
“We can’t. I got a discounted rate because we prepaid, and it’s nonrefundable.”
“Sucks,” Therese said. “But I call dibs on the right side of the bed.”
The sisters bustled around the room, busying themselves to keep from bickering.
Maeve checked and double-checked their flight times.
She unpacked her outfit for the next day, set out her toiletries on the bathroom counter, leaving half the counter clear for Therese’s stuff, which she hadn’t bothered to unpack.
Therese left the room and came back with a full ice bucket.
She rattled the bucket under her sister’s nose.
“Look! I never thought I’d be so glad to see a whole bucket of ice.
” She rifled around in her carry-on bag until she found a pint bottle of Tarrymore whiskey.
She poured some over the tumbler of ice and held the bottle out to her sister. “Want some?”
“No thanks. But you know, you can’t just take a bottle of whiskey back to the States. You’ll have to declare it when we go through customs.”
“I used to take liquor back all the time without declaring it when I went down to the islands,” Therese countered. “I just hide it in my bag with my dirty laundry. No customs agent wants to go rummaging around in a lady’s unmentionables.”
Maeve rolled her eyes. “Fine. Get yourself arrested for a stupid bottle of whiskey. But I’m not bailing you out.”
“Nobody asked you to.”
Therese turned on the television to drown out the deafening silence of Maeve’s annoyance and flipped channels until she found what she was seeking—reruns of Friends.
“Look.” She pointed at the television. “It’s the Friendsgiving episode, where Monica puts the whole turkey on her head, and Rachel makes the trifle with mashed potatoes.”
“How many times have you seen that?” Maeve asked.
“Over the years? Probably a couple dozen times. It’s my second favorite, after the one where Ross uses the self-tanner.”
“Isn’t there anything else on? At all?”
“I don’t want anything else,” Therese said. She stretched out on the right side of the bed, plumping the pillows under her head. “Friends is my comfort watch.”
“Dinner?” Maeve asked, waving a hand in front of Therese’s face. She’d fallen asleep and Maeve had turned the television off.
“Huh?” Therese sat up and looked around the room. “What time is it?”
“Almost seven. We could go down to the lobby to eat, or order room service. I’m thinking room service. I want to take a shower and get to bed early.”
“I’m thinking lobby café.” Therese swung her legs over the side of the bed and grabbed her purse.
Maeve ate what the room service menu called shrimp with linguine.
She twirled the noodles around her fork and fished in the thick greasy white sauce for shrimp.
In total, she counted four of the shrimpiest shrimp she’d ever seen.
But the garlic bread was semi-warm, and she had a glass of a not-obnoxious Chianti that made up for her entrée.
She puttered around the room, showered, and got ready for bed, checking her phone every fifteen minutes to see if Therese would message that she was on her way up. At nine, she allowed herself to look at the photos Angela Grogan had texted.
Memories of that day flooded her central nervous system with dopamine.
Liam’s family was funny and warm and welcoming to his “lady friend.” With her fingertip she touched the photo of Claire sitting on her lap, playing with the kitten, and she chuckled anew at the arm-wrestling photo of Liam and Cormac.
But the last photo stopped her in her tracks.
She and Liam had been sharing a private joke.
He was staring into her eyes, his mouth stretched into a wide smile, and Therese had been right.
She was looking at Liam with open adoration.
She felt a confusing mixture of embarrassment and longing.
That day, that golden moment, was an elixir she wished she could bottle.
But the moment was past, Maeve thought. It had slipped through her fingers, never to return.
Therese was wrong. Maeve had no intention of deleting this photo. She would still be looking at this picture decades from now, wishing she could recapture that fleeting magic.
She fell asleep clutching the phone close to her chest.
Hours later she heard the click of a key card. The room was dim, the only light coming from a clock radio on the nightstand. She heard Therese bump into something and curse softly. She checked the time. It was nearly 3 AM.
“Go ahead and turn on a lamp,” she said groggily. “I’m awake now.”
“Sorry,” Therese said. “I’ll just be a minute.
” She switched on the bathroom light. Maeve heard water running, then the toilet flushed.
Therese came out of the bathroom dressed in the T-shirt she wore to bed.
She climbed in beside her younger sister, clinging to the edge of the bed to put a little distance between their bodies.
Maeve turned on her side to face away from her sister. She was almost asleep again when she heard Therese’s voice, her breath soft and warm in her ear.
“Please don’t be mad at me, Maevey.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Good. You know, you’re one of the smartest women I’ve ever met. But what you’re doing, running back to Savannah and away from Liam, is the single dumbest thing you’ve ever done in your life.”
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” Maeve said, not bothering to suppress a yawn. “Now, go to sleep.”