Peony Street (9 page)

When Claire got home her father was asleep in his recliner with Mackie Pea on his lap. Her Uncle Curtis was sitting on the couch watching a golf match on television. Curtis had been so fond of Claire growing up that he had been like a second father to her. For some reason seeing him made Claire’s heart hurt.

“Hey, Claire Bear,” Curtis said. “Welcome home.”

He jumped up off the couch and hugged her, kissed her cheek. He smelled like he always did; a combination of cigarette smoke, gasoline, and the spearmint gum he loved to chew. Her father woke up as she came in and seemed very confused to see her.

“It’s awfully late, young lady,” he said. “Don’t you have school tomorrow?”

Claire exchanged a look with her Uncle Curtis, who gave her a sad smile.

“It’s Saturday, buddy,” Curtis said. “There’s no school tomorrow.”

“Where’s Mom?” Claire asked.

“She’s on nights,” her father said.

Claire was pretty sure he was referring to the nursing home where Delia worked twenty-five years earlier.

“She went to a baby shower,” Curtis said. “The Deluca gal’s.”

“Liam’s sick,” her father said, and Claire felt as if her heart had stopped.

“What?” she said.

“The medicine makes him sick at his stomach so he can’t eat. He’s losing too much weight. Doc wants to put him in the children’s hospital in
Pittsburgh.”

He looked so bereft. Claire couldn’t speak for the tears in her eyes and the lump in her throat. Her Uncle Curtis put on his jacket and squeezed her shoulder. His hazel eyes, just like his daughter Hannah’s, were full of sorrow and sympathy.

“I better get on home,” he said. “You stop by the station tomorrow, sweetheart. We’ll get caught up.”

He waved to Ian and left through the front door.

“You might just check on your brother,” Ian said. “See if he needs anything before you go to bed.”

“I will, Dad,” she said, and fled to the bathroom.

Claire ran the shower to cover up the sound of her crying. She didn’t want to upset her father or have to explain. Her mother was waiting on the other side of the door when she came out. She walked with Claire to her bedroom and shut the door behind them.

“It was so sad,” Claire said. “Dad told me Liam was sick and I should check on him.”

“He sometimes forgets that Liam died,” Delia said. “By tomorrow he won’t even remember what was said.”

“It’s so awful,” Claire said.

“He started asking after Liam a few months ago. The first time I told him Liam died a long time ago, and he got so upset Doc had to give him a sedative. Now I just tell him Liam’s staying the night at Curtis’s, or Fitz’s. It’s kinder that way, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Claire said, wiping her mascara from under her eyes with a tissue. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. It’s not fair.”

“When has life ever been fair to this family?” Delia asked her. “Or anyone else, for that matter?”

“You deserve to enjoy life,” Claire said. “Let me help you. I have money now, lots of money, actually. I can hire people to help you.”

“Isn’t it just like rich folks to throw money at every problem.”

“I’m not just some rich person; I’m your daughter.”

“And a very good one,” Delia said. “Get some rest and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

“I love you, Mom,” Claire said.

“I love you, too,” Delia said. “Now go to sleep.”

“Hey, before I forget,” Claire said, “did you give Sammy a silver key ring with a bottle opener on it?”

“No,” Delia said. “But if you have a chance to look in that tin of his see if he’s got my Kennedy silver dollar. He calls it trading even if he’s secretly taken it and hasn’t given you anything in return.”

Claire lay in bed, tired but not able to sleep. She tossed and turned and stared at the ceiling. Eventually the alarm clock glowed midnight. Shortly thereafter there was a tap on her window. She parted the curtains and was surprised to see Scott. She knelt on the bed and opened the window.

“What are you doing?” she asked him.

“I can’t call or knock on the front door; I didn’t want to wake your dad.”

“What’s going on?”

“I brought your purse and your clothes. You can pick up your carry-on and rental car tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Claire said as she hoisted her belongings in through the window. “What’s the latest?”

“Tuppy’s family came to identify the body today. They don’t know his phone password so we have to subpoena the service provider. It may take weeks.”

“If I could get my hands on his phone I could probably figure it out,” Claire said. “I’m the one who helped him set it up when he started working for Sloan.”

“We may find it, yet,” Scott said. “Either way, you can’t leave town for awhile.”

“That’s okay,” Claire said. “Mom and Dad need me here. It may take me more than a couple weeks to sort them out.”

“I know what that’s like.”

“Is something wrong with your mom?” Claire asked.

“She caught a cold at Christmas and it’s just held on. Now she gets so short of breath she can’t walk very far. Doc Machalvie’s been saying for months she should have tests done. I finally talked her into going. Her appointment’s on Monday in Morgantown.”

“Is it just me, or do you suddenly feel like the roles have reversed?”

“Definitely,” Scott said. “I don’t know why I’m so surprised, but I never thought about what would happen when my mother got old.”

“Your mom and my mom are not old.”

“Not yet,” Scott said, “but they’re definitely slowing down.”

Claire shivered and Scott smiled at her.

“You’re going to catch pneumonia,” he said, and then glanced appreciatively at her nightgown.

“Stop that,” Claire said. “I’m closing the window.”

“Sorry,” Scott said, but he was smiling.

“Goodnight,” Claire said, and then pulled the window sash back down, and closed the curtains.

Claire lay back down and closed her eyes. She went to sleep thinking about Scott, but it was Sam she dreamed about.

Her cousin Patrick was already in the Rose and Thorn when Claire arrived.

“Claire Bear!” he called out from behind the bar.

Claire wiped her Jimmy Choo Mary Jane heels on the entryway mat and took off her black Burberry trench coat as Patrick came around the bar, which covered most of the wall to her right. He made his way down the narrow space between the long wall of booths on the left and the small tables in the middle, which had mismatched chairs upended on top of them.

Patrick swept her up in a tight, warm hug and swung her around until she was dizzy.

“Stop, Patrick,” she protested. “I’m gonna puke.”

He let go and laughed as she tried to regain her balance.

“You look great,” he said. “Like a serial killer, but a hot one.”

Her Armani white shirt, Calvin Klein black wrap sweater, and Marc Jacobs black pants were on day three and starting to show it. She was looking forward to the return of her carry-on bag.

“Thanks,” she said. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“I could stand to lose a few pounds,” he said, patting his belly. “But then I’d be so damn handsome I’d never get any work done for all the women fighting over me. You see my dilemma.”

Patrick did look the same, other than a touch of gray at the temples of his dark hair, some laugh lines, and the extra weight on his muscular six-foot-two frame. His bright blue eyes twinkled mischievously and his smirky smile was punctuated by a cleft chin that any leading man would envy. As had been the case with every relative she’d encountered so far, Claire felt an irrational homesickness just looking at him.

‘Why do I still feel homesick when I’m home with the very people I missed when I was away?’

Patrick was playing bluegrass music on the bar sound system, music which also pulled at her heartstrings. Claire couldn’t listen to fiddle music without tearing up, and went out of her way to avoid it out in the world beyond Rose Hill. It had been next to impossible to avoid it in Scotland, where every other pub played traditional music.

The only thing more difficult than listening to it was singing it; Claire hadn’t sung anything for years. She used to be the girl who sang whenever anyone asked her to. In a church or seated on top of the bar in the Rose and Thorn, Claire would gladly sing her heart out. Unfortunately the naive confidence she had as a teenager in Rose Hill quickly gave way to a self-conscious vulnerability as soon as she left.

“Silver threads and golden needles cannot mend this heart of mine …”

She hadn’t heard that song in at least twenty years but could remember every word. She could remember sitting on top of the bar singing that very song as Scooter Scoley played his fiddle and grinned at her like a possum. He had wanted her to go on the road with his band, The Snufftuckers; instead she ran away to
Hollywood with Pip.

‘An impulsive decision that launched my crazy career,’ Claire thought. ‘I wonder what I would’ve done differently if I knew then what I know now.’

The bar looked and smelled the same as it had since Claire was a child. It was a pungent combination of cigarette smoke embedded in the yellowed paint, the fragrant oil soap used to clean everything, and what must have been gallons of spilled beer and whisky soaked into the wood floors. It was acrid, it was sweet, it was sour, and it smelled like home.

The blue vinyl booths and the seats of the swiveling stools attached to the bar were patched with duct tape, and the square tables all tilted slightly at different angles. The huge mirror set into the majestic hand-carved back wall of the bar was smoky around the edges, as befitted a work of art shipped across the
Atlantic Ocean over a hundred years before. The only change she noticed was a gargantuan flat screen television affixed to the back wall.

Many evenings Claire sat in the last booth at the back of the bar, completed her homework, drank sodas, and read books while her mother served and cleaned. This bar had been her father’s dream, his retirement plan, and a bone of contention in the community when he was promoted to chief of police. As a compromise he sold it to his wife for a dollar, and as far as Claire knew the bar was still in her mother’s name. When Patrick came of age he took over the bartending duties, and later Hannah had come to work as a waitress.

It was in this bar that a nineteen-year-old Claire broke the news to her parents that she was moving to California with Pip. Her mother wept into a white bar towel, and her father slammed his fist on a table top.

“This will all end in tears,” he’d warned her.

And it had.

Claire sat down at the bar and accepted the mug of coffee Patrick offered. The rim was chipped but it was clean, and had the logo of his sister Maggie’s store, Little Bear Books, on the side: a drawing of a bear cub wearing big glasses, sitting with a large book propped open on his little bear legs.

“Too cute,” Tuppy would have said, “nauseatingly so.”

Thinking of Tuppy, Claire felt a loss where two days ago, with him alive, she would have felt next to no regard at all. Claire hadn’t kidded herself that they were ever real friends; Tuppy had formed a strategic alliance with Claire despite his being an unrepentant, pretentious snob. He’d made many cracks about what a redneck Claire was, what a bump on the log she came from, and had slyly asked if her family tree forked or was everyone “related?” But he had also looked out for her when it was important, and hadn’t thrown her under a bus in order to look good to their boss, which he could so easily have done many times.

“Think you’ll do much time for killin’ that guy?” Patrick asked her.

“I’m still walking around,” Claire said. “They must not think I’m too dangerous.”

“Tiny Crimefighter just wants you to think you’re off the hook,” Patrick said. “When Theo got murdered I was one of her prime suspects, and she stalked me like a buck in deer season. Of course she also wanted to jump my bones.”

“Tiny Crimefighter?” Claire asked. “Do you mean Sarah?”

“Hannah named her that,” Patrick said. “Sarah’s the sharp claw of the law.”

“She’s very intense, isn’t she?” Claire said. “Did you sleep with her?’

“Naw,” Patrick said. “The crazy ones are great in bed but more likely to shoot you if they catch you running around.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Church,” he said. “Unlike you lazy Methodists, we Catholics go visit the Lord’s house every Sunday.”

“You’re here.”

“I go to the early Mass. Father Stephen skips the homily and we’re out in thirty minutes. Everyone else goes to the later one, the long one.”

Although Claire’s father was raised Catholic her mother had refused to convert, something that had made a sworn enemy out of her mother-in-law Rose. Claire’s Grandma Rose used to say to Claire, “You may look like one of mine but you’ve got that French blood in you; that’s what killed your brother.” Grandma Rose was not a cuddly kind of grandparent. She loved her three sons and her Catholic grandsons, but everyone else was viewed as a potential underminer or usurper of her role as matriarch.

Claire held out her mug for a refill and Patrick obliged.

“What’s this meeting about?” Claire said. “Hannah was kind of vague about it.”

“The old folks are starting to wear out. We need to sort out what will happen with the businesses.”

“Isn’t that up to them to decide?”

“And let my mom stick me with the bakery? No, thank you. It’s better if we come to an agreement among ourselves and tell them how it’s gonna be.”

“Why involve me, though? I don’t live here. I don’t have a stake in the outcome.”

“This bar should rightfully pass to you.”

“You’re the one who’s kept the business going. You deserve to have it. I certainly don’t want it.”

The front door opened and an unfamiliar person came in. He was dressed like one of the many mountain biker/hiker/campers that swarmed the area in the late spring and summer: rain poncho, olive-colored fatigue pants, hiking boots, and a sunburned nose. Claire was reminded that tourists always underestimated how cold it was here in late spring, and couldn’t believe that you could freeze at night but still get sunburned during the day.

“You open?” he said.

“No, sorry,” Patrick said, “not on Sundays.”

The man looked confused but left.

Patrick took the “Private Party” sign from under the counter and went up to the front to put it on the outside of the door. Meanwhile Claire looked around.

‘Do I want this?’ she asked herself.

She imagined working behind the bar, serving the locals, students and tourists at the tables and booths, late into the night, every day but Sunday.

“I don’t want it,” she told Patrick when he came back.

Patrick shrugged.

“Suits me,” he said. “But your folks need you here.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get them sorted out before I go. Mom says they’re doing fine.”

“Well, she would, wouldn’t she? Delia’s the first in line to offer help and last in line to ask for it.”

“If she needs someone to clean the house, or someone to help with Dad, I can pay for that. It doesn’t have to be me.”

“So you’d pay some stranger to help your own family before you would?”

“That’s not such a horrible idea, Patrick. I’m not a bad daughter because I don’t want to move back to Rose Hill and babysit my senior parents. I can pay for an assisted living facility or a nursing home when they need it, but I don’t think they’re going to need that for awhile.”

“That’s so cold,” Patrick said. “Family used to mean something to you.”

“I’m completely normal,” Claire said. “It’s just the rural, backward, clannish way everyone lives around here that seems normal to you.”

“We take care of our own.”

“Exactly. You don’t want some outsiders coming in here, trying to change things, trying to bring the town into this century, let alone the second half of the last century.”

“I guess you like those new condos down on
Lotus Avenue.”

“Mom said they replaced a row of condemned houses full of black mold and asbestos. Change happens. It’s not all bad.”

“Soon none of us will be able to afford the property taxes we’ll have to pay in order to live here.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I’m not. You think anyone who grew up in Glencora still lives up there? Not unless they sold some huge piece of property to a developer or started a tourist business.”

“Lots of tourist money comes into this place,” Claire said.

“But they used to go back up the mountain after closing time,” Patrick said. “Now they’re buying second homes here and renting them out. The woman who bought the diner doesn’t even make hamburgers. I ordered a turkey sandwich and it came covered in this green slime that looked like frog snot. For crissakes, there’s a friggin’ tea room next door.”

“A tea room?”

“Knox Rodefeffer’s second wife opened it. Her son goes to Eldridge, and she’s from Boston, where according to her they do everything right. My mom got into a huge, screaming fight with her. We could hear it in here over the music.”

Claire pictured her fierce Aunt Bonnie having a go at the unlucky tearoom owner and pitied the poor woman.

“I’m sorry to hear about next door,” Claire said. “I know you wanted to buy it and expand the bar.”

“She outbid me. I had the mortgage lined up and a down payment saved and she offered Gwyneth twice what it was worth. She offered to buy the bar, too, said it was an eyesore. Rich witch, with that smug smile on her face, looking down her nose at me. We’ll be lucky to hold on to this place. You can’t smoke in here anymore, you know, and there’s an actual law against smoking on the street out front. If our taxes keep going up it’s just a matter of time before we have to sell it to some trust-funders who think they’re gonna get rich roasting gourmet coffee or micro-brewing beer.”

“That’s awful,” Claire said. “I’m sorry about what’s happening in Rose Hill. I don’t want any of the family businesses to close.”

“That’s why I wanted to expand the business, to try to save the place,” Patrick said. “We need some new fixtures, a commercial kitchen, and a dance floor with a stage for a band. I’d like to have a trivia night and a karaoke night. We have to market this business to the college kids and tourists, not just Jimbo, Pudge, and the rest of the locals.”

“I’d pay a lot to see Pudge Postlethwaite sing karaoke.”

“He’s actually a very solid baritone. I bet you didn’t know that.”

“You should have the bar, Patrick,” Claire said. “It means more to you than anyone.”

“It doesn’t matter who runs it if it goes under. None of us wants the bakery and I can’t run the gas station and the bar. You remember Hatch?”

“Hannah’s boyfriend in high school; of course I do.”

“Curtis is of a mind to sell the gas station to him.”

“What about Curtis’s four boys? What about Hannah?”

“I can’t see Hannah sitting in there all day chewing the fat with those old geezers, can you? None of Curtis’s boys are moving back here to Rose Hill. They’re like you; they can’t stand the place.”