The Parting Glass (62 page)

“I won’t be swamped.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve decided to stop pursuing funding for Brick. I’m downsizing. We’ll make do with what we have and whatever comes our way from St. Brigid’s or local fund-raisers. When the right situation comes along without strings and without requiring me to give up my married life and my wife, then maybe we’ll expand. Meantime, I’m going to be satisfied with things the way they are.”

She thought about all the kids who needed Brick who wouldn’t have access to it now. She started to protest, but he silenced her with a kiss.

“I’ve given this a lot of thought. Brick won’t be any good for anyone if the director is exhausted and lonely, Megan. That’s the way it is.”

She wondered what she could do in return, and the answer came quickly. “Maybe you
should
stop this endless search for funding, at least for a while. But I don’t want you to stop the tunnel tours. I’m sorry I was such a bad sport about that. I was so afraid you still wanted to be a priest that I couldn’t see you just needed to be a pastor. Helping people glimpse God is what you’re all about. You don’t need to wear a collar to do it, or have a church filled with people, but you do need to be free to act when the spirit moves you.”

His eyes showed his pleasure. He picked up her hands and squeezed them. “Thank you.”

There was so much more she wanted to tell him, but first things first. “Would you like to go upstairs with me? I’m going to take a shower and climb into bed. I’d like it if you’d climb in with me.”

He brought her hands to his lips. “More than you know, but there’s something I’d like you to see first. Do you have the energy for a short drive?”

She wasn’t sure if she should be excited or disappointed. “Sure, if you think it’s important.”

“I think you’ll be glad we went.”

“Let me wash up a little first.”

Five minutes later they were in Niccolo’s new Ford Focus, the replacement for the Honda that hadn’t survived the pre-tornado winds. The moment he made his first turn, she knew exactly where they were going.

“Did you finish the renovations?” She leaned slightly forward, as if that might get them there faster.

“You’ll see.”

“Surprises annoy me.”

He shot her a grin. “I’ll have to remember that
next
time.”

“You’re not going to say another word, are you?”

“How much sleep have you had in the past twenty-four hours?”

“Okay, okay…” She leaned back and closed her eyes.

He parked where the maple tree had once stood. The spot was clearly marked by a sign with her name on it. There was room for only one car.

“Way cool,” she said. “My own spot? Never had one before.”

“I know, and that was a mistake. Now you do.”

“Thank you.” She got out and noted new landscaping, small but flourishing green shrubs, and tall terra cotta pots filled with blooming chrysanthemums in shades of bronze and rust. It was a huge leap from parking beside a rusting Dumpster. Another universe. “Nobody will ever see this but me, Nick.”

“And your point?”

“You did this just for me?”

“I told you I’d fall at your feet if you let me.”

“I like this a lot better, thanks.” She gave him a quick hug.

“Come in and see the rest.”

She followed, waiting as he unlocked the kitchen door. The kitchen had been finished before she left, but now she saw the newest touches. Brightly framed pages from early twentieth-century ladies’ magazines took up every extra inch of wall space, recipes and colorful advertisements. One was a step-by-step lesson on corning beef.

“Oh, where did you get them? They’re perfect.”

“I saw the magazines at a shop on Lorain. I bought a dozen.”

“You’re so good to me.”

“Come see the rest of it.”

She noted other additions to the kitchen. A bright red enamel jug to hold scrub brushes, a cobalt blue dishrack on the shining stainless steel sink. Her hands twitched. She was ready to cook for a hundred people, but that reminded her of another decision she had made.

“Nick, are we going to be able to open next week, or the week after at the latest? As soon as I get stocked and publicize it?”

“I don’t see why not. With a christening party.”

“As soon as I can afford to, I’m hiring more help. If you’re cutting back on your hours, then so am I.”

“You’ve given that some thought?”

“I don’t see why I have to be at the saloon at night anymore. I think I was spending all that time here because I was lonely. Now it’s time to let go of all those details and find good people who can take care of them for me.”

“I like the sound of that. Are you coming?”

“Yep.” She followed him into the saloon proper and stopped. It was spectacular, better than she could have imagined. The layout had been subtly altered from the tried and true. The gleaming walnut bar curved where it hadn’t before, giving better access through the front door. More shelves lined the original mirror, each just tall enough for a bottle. Built-in booths flanked one corner, giving twice as much seating in an area that had only held two tables. Elisha’s quiet nook was a reality, and the idealized mural of Ireland, the Brick kids’ own creation, was nearly finished.

There were other new features, too, but she didn’t take the time to note them all. She hugged him hard. “It’s done?”

“It’s done. Every last nail.”

Family photographs they had salvaged were back on the walls, along with new photographs of more recent Donaghue family members. The green walls were a slightly different hue, mellower, she thought, and more contemporary. The wood wasn’t as dark as the original, and the lighter wood, along with brass chandeliers, gave the room a warmer glow.

“It’s perfect.” She couldn’t believe it, but it was. After everything they had been through, it was perfect.

She walked to a wall and gazed at a family portrait she had seen a million times, but it held new meaning for her now. She pointed at one man, blond-haired, serious, dressed in a perfectly pressed suit. “My grandfather, Glen Donaghue.”

“I know. Your aunt told me when we were putting them on the wall.”

She thought about Glen and Clare, about Liam and the money that was hidden somewhere inside this building. “Have I got a story for you.”

“And I have one for you. But I don’t want to tell mine here. Can you stand one more trip?”

She was fighting true exhaustion, but she nodded. “One quick trip. Then home to bed.”

“That’s incentive enough. Come on.” He took her by the hand and led her back into the kitchen. He opened the door into the basement and flicked on the light. “Ready?”

“I don’t know. Am I?”

They didn’t stop in the basement, which had yet to be renovated. They continued through to the tunnel. Somehow she had known that was where they were going.

“I’ve run some more lights down here. I think we need to think long and hard about how to use this space in the future.”

“What about the image?”

He switched on the lights, and the tunnel glowed softly. “See for yourself.”

She followed him, flashlight in hand, just in case. They stopped where the image had been, where she had found him on their wedding day, alive and miraculously unhurt.

Only the remnants of the image were visible. She was surprised to hear her own moan. She felt curiously choked up at the sight. “No…”

“It began to fade when we ran the new pipes.”

“So it
was
caused by a pinpoint leak in the old ones?”

“Or poorly sealed joints, condensation…” He shrugged. “We’ll never know for sure. But it’s almost gone now. With all the new ventilation we installed upstairs, it will be completely dry by the end of the week.”

“No more miracle.” She was sadder than she would have imagined.

“Well, that depends on the way you look at it.”

He put his hand on her shoulder and pointed above the fading outline. “What do you see up there?”

She saw a wall and a ceiling. The ceiling was beamed, and in some places the plastered walls rose only as high as the bottoms of the beams. There was a space between ceiling and wall here, as there was in other parts of the tunnel.

“It doesn’t look any different than the rest of the tunnel,” she said.

“It might have looked different to Liam Tierney. I’m sure he found some way to mark it.”

“You know?”

He nodded. “Casey told Jon the whole story of Liam and Glen in one of her phone calls from Shanmullin. He told me.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Darn them. I was scooped!”

“You can tell me your version later. Okay?”

“Why did Jon tell you?”

“I’ll show you.”

For the first time she noticed a stepladder leaning against the opposite wall. Niccolo dragged it across the corridor and set it up in front of the image. Then he climbed to the top step and reached inside the crack. He pulled out a tall cannister, narrow, but large enough to hold spices, perhaps, or coffee.

Megan didn’t need to be told what was inside.

He rejoined her on the floor. “On the night that Liam died, he came here looking for Glen. He must have gone out this way.”

“He did. I remember Irene saying so. He claimed he didn’t want to be spotted by McNulty’s goons.”

“He came down here. He must have looked hard for a place to hide the money. It probably wasn’t difficult to find a tin to hide it in. Even then, the basement area was used for storage. He emptied a can, or found an empty one, and put the money in it. Then he looked for a place to hide it.”

“Why the wall?”

“I guess we’ll never know. Maybe there was a ladder in use nearby and it was easy to climb up and drop it inside. It was a perfect little hiding place. There are boards running between the joists. This was resting on the top one, nice as you please. He’d wrapped a chain around it. I think the very end of the chain might have dangled just at the top of the wall, not so anyone else would notice it, but so that he could spot it if he came back. It probably fell inside at some point.”

“If he came back?”

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that he’d hide it here? I think he did it because he didn’t really expect to come out of the situation alive. Either he had a premonition of his own death, or he just knew McNulty’s men too well. Whichever it was, he knew that if he died and Glen didn’t, Glen would help his wife.”

“And before he died, he told Brenna in a phone call where to look for the money.” Megan thought for a moment. “Or maybe Liam thought that even if he died and Brenna didn’t retrieve it, at least the money would be found by family someday. His family.”

“The leak dripped against the tin. A drop here, another there. The tin was placed in such a way that the water dripped off of it on both ends, down the plaster, eventually to the floor, leaving a trail each time. The ends of the cannister sat right where the Virgin’s eyes were supposed to be. Depending on how often the water was used each day, the leak dripped off the tin at different speeds and angles, making her look like she was crying. Eventually the plaster below it was soaked.”

“Like an ink blot. The plaster absorbed it the way paper absorbs ink.” She took the tin from his hands. “How much, Nick?”

“Open it and see. I put it back so you’d have the pleasure of treasure hunting, just the way I did.”

She struggled to pry off the top, rusted now, and not happy to give up its wares. If Niccolo hadn’t already removed the top once, it wouldn’t have yielded for her smaller hands at all.

It came off after one exasperated tug. She stared inside before she reached for the money. The tin fell to her feet. She was astounded at the number of bills. “Lord, what a haul!”

“There are one hundred of them.”

They were thousand-dollar bills. One hundred thousand dollars. She gazed up at him. “I can’t believe it. It’s so much.”

“I guess we know why McNulty wanted his money back so badly. It’s a lot of money now. Then it was a fortune.”

“All these years. Just sitting there, Nick. Here all this time.”

“Sitting there, channeling water against the plaster, creating its own sort of miracle.”

She thumbed through the bills. She couldn’t believe how many there were. Then she knew exactly what she wanted to do with them.

“When Jon told you the story, did he tell you about Liam’s childhood?” she asked.

“I know a little, from things I heard along the way.”

“It was fairly miserable. He never had any help or guidance. Everything he became he became entirely on his own. If someone had just reached out a hand to him along the way, he probably never would have died the way he did.”

“What are you thinking?”

She looked up from the money that had caused nothing but death and destruction. It was time to change that now. Past time. “This belongs to Peggy and Casey, too, Nick, I can’t do anything without their permission. But I’m pretty sure they’ll agree. We’ll put some aside for Kieran’s therapy and education. That’s easy. But the rest should go to Brick. A memorial for Liam Tierney.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Of course you can. Don’t you see? You’re helping the Brick kids on to the right path in life. If someone had helped Liam, think what he might have become. We can’t enjoy this money, and none of us would want to. It’s a different sort of money laundering, Nick. We’ll make something good from something bad, and we’ll honor Liam as we do it.”

He didn’t reply, but gratitude shone in his eyes.

She smiled and touched his cheek with the hand that wasn’t filled with a new start for Brick. “What made you investigate? How did you find it? Was it just curiosity when the image started to fade?”

“No, it was more than that. When the Virgin began to disappear, I thought the time had come to do some checking. I hadn’t wanted to probe too closely before. I didn’t want to be the man who destroyed a miracle, even if I didn’t really believe that’s what it was. Too many people would have been outraged.”

“And when it began to disappear?”

“I came down here one afternoon on a break, and I stared at the fading image. It’s hard to explain, but I felt such sadness that the image was evaporating. I wanted to check out the wall behind it, but at the same time I didn’t want to. I guess I wanted to believe in the possibility of the divine as long as I could.”