The Crow of Connemara (2 page)

2

T
HE CHICAGO WEATHER promised to be a shock. Even in early May, the heat threatened to overwhelm the sweater Colin Doyle was wearing. He pushed his glasses back up his nose as he peered myopically at the crowd near the Arrivals gate.

His sister Jen waved at him as he emerged, rushing over to him after a moment's hesitation. Her short hair was disheveled, as if she'd just hurriedly toweled it dry after a shower. She wore her smile in the same way she wore a business suit. When he hugged her, he heard the smile break and a sob escape. “How's Dad?” Colin asked as he embraced Jen.

“No better,” she answered, sniffing as she stepped back. “Sorry. I promised myself I wasn't going to cry when I saw you.”

“My face sometimes has that effect.”

That brought back the smile momentarily. “Silly as always. Good. I've missed that.” He saw her glance at the gig bag on his back, his Gibson J-45 safely ensconced within; she said nothing, but her lips tightened a bit, and he wondered if she were going to say something about it. “Let's hit the baggage carousels and get home,” she said instead. “You're sure you want to stay with me and not Mom? You know she's expecting you at home, in your old room.”

“I'm certain she is. I'm just not sure that's where
I
want to be.” Colin gave a shrug. He lifted his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “Or is that going to be a problem with you and Aaron? You
are
still seeing him, aren't you?”

Jen's quick blush gave him the answer, and suggested more.

The first time he'd heard about Aaron had been last semester . . .

Last semester . . .

Colin slid into a booth at the Starbucks on University Way NE with a grande latte. He pulled out his phone, which claimed it was 6:32 in the morning—8:32 back in Chicago. He touched the link for his sister Jennifer. He heard the click of the connection, a long hiss of static, and finally a ring. A second ring. A third.

“Colin? Do you have any idea what time it is here?” Her voice was simultaneously sleepy and irritated.

“8:30, give or take a couple minutes.”

“Yeah, in the morning. Saturday morning.”

“I wanted to get you before you left the apartment.”

“It's a cell phone, dear; you'd get me whether I was in the apartment or not. And on Saturday, ‘before I leave the apartment' means, oh, somewhere before one in the afternoon. Maybe later. It's Saturday, damn it.”

“You complain a lot. What happened to the ‘Don't worry what time it is, little brother, just call me whenever you get a chance' story you gave me when I left?”

He heard her yawn; a male voice muttered something indistinctly in the background. “My brother Colin in Seattle,” he heard Jennifer say. “Go back to sleep.”

“Oops,” he said. “Jen had company last night. Sorry. Anyone I should know?”

Colin thought he heard the sound of bare feet on hardwood; she'd left the bed. “Hah, you're not in the least bit sorry, so don't even try to apologize. And no, you don't know him, and as to whether you
will
ever know him . . . well, that's not decided yet. It probably depends a lot on when you come back here.” She yawned again, sounding a bit more awake, and he heard dishes clattering in the background: she'd moved to the kitchen.

“What would Mom and Dad say?”

“I'm not in the habit of discussing my sex life with them. And not with you either, little brother. Speaking of which, how's yours? You know Mom's half-terrified you're going to bring home some young undergrad coed, probably from the Music department, with a grandchild already incubating in her belly.” Colin heard something liquid being poured, and Jen taking a cautious sip: coffee. He took a sip of his own before he answered.

“Not much chance of that at the moment, I'm afraid. I'm too damn busy. So who's this paragon?”

“His name's Aaron Goldman.”

“Aaron Goldman? He's Jewish?”

“Yes.” He could almost see her eyebrows raising with the affirmation, as if in challenge.

“And how has that gone over with the parental units?”

Her sigh scratched at the speaker of the phone. “It's not 1950 anymore, Colin. In case you hadn't noticed, we're in a whole new century, and Irish Catholics marry Jews all the time now. They marry Latinos and African-Americans, too. Guys marry guys, women marry women. Or have you regressed back to another era since you went to the left coast? I thought things were more liberal out there.”

“Sure, all that goes on, just not in the Doyle family. Heck, I remember Tommy getting lots of grief back in high school for dating a Methodist. Somehow, I can't see Dad letting his grandchild go to temple wearing a kippah.”

Another sigh rattled the speaker. “I'd like to point out that I'm neither married, pregnant, nor considering a conversion. And Mom said she thinks Aaron is very nice, thank you. Now, let's talk about you, since you called . . .”

...They had, though he hadn't told her then what he'd already been thinking.

“Hello?” he heard Jen saying now. “Earth to Colin.” Colin shook away the memory.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just not enough sleep. So Aaron's still in the picture?”

“He is, but I do have an extra bed in my office at the apartment, and you can have that if you decide to stay with me instead of Mom.”

Colin nodded. “Good. I don't think I slept more than a few hours last night. I'll probably end up crashing pretty soon, and I'd rather do that at your place, if you don't mind.”

“Not a problem for me, though it might be for Mom. But we can decide that later. Right now, let's get you to the hospital. Everyone's there.”

Colin lifted his chin in agreement and started walking down the corridor to where the signs pointed to the baggage area. “So . . . tell me about Dad,” he said as they walked. “He's going to be all right, isn't he?”

He saw her eyebrows raise at that, but he also saw her press her lips together again, as if to hold back the comment she wanted to make. “I'll fill you in once we're in the car . . .”

On the drive to the hospital, Jen told him that there'd been little change since the phone call he'd received the day before, and the changes that had occurred weren't heartening. His father had been found collapsed on the floor of his downtown Loop office by one of the janitorial staff, after his mother became worried about him not answering his phone and called the building owners. No one knew how long he'd been down, unconscious and barely breathing. The doctors were saying it had been a massive coronary event, that their father had been too long without oxygen, that there'd been too much resultant brain damage, and that his body was failing. His kidneys had shut down; the circulation to his extremities was poor.

“They're telling us it's our decision to make. They can keep him on the vent and see if he improves, but . . .” Jen stopped, biting her lip. He saw her eyes filling with tears, and when she blinked, twin streaks rolled down her cheek. She took one hand from the wheel to wipe at them, almost angrily. Colin reached over to place his hand on her shoulder. He could feel her trembling underneath his touch.

“S'okay, Jen. I wish I'd been in town and able to get here sooner.”

“You're here now,” she told him. “That's all that matters. Mom and Tommy'll be glad to see you.”

Colin wasn't quite so certain of that, especially not given the news that at some point he had to relay to them—when the time was right, which it certainly wasn't now, not with his father's condition.
That has to wait. There'll be a moment soon enough.

He could only hope that was right. He sighed and laid his head back against the seat rest, watching the once-familiar landscape scroll by.

Home. At least it once had been. Somehow, it no longer felt that way.

Colin wasn't so certain that Jen was entirely right as the elevator doors opened on the lounge of the Cardiac ICU unit. His mother and Tommy were sitting in chairs near the nurse's station, conversing with his Aunt Patty and a man he didn't recognize who was wearing a business suit. Tommy was also dressed in a suit; even from this distance, Colin could tell it was expensive. His mother was wearing a black dress and looking as if she were going out for an evening on the town. Diamond earrings sparkled below her carefully arranged and dyed-too-dark hair.

Tommy looked their way as the elevator doors opened and nodded, as if in approval. He leaned down to speak in his mother's ear, and she glanced toward the elevator. There was a frown on her face before she theatrically arranged it in a smile. He would see weariness in the way her face sagged, though, and that told him how much she'd been affected by his father's illness.

“Colin,” she said, rising and holding out her hands. “It's so good to see you again, my dear.”