Whiskey Island (16 page)

She seemed to think about it. “Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Somewhere on the east side. An old Tudor in Shaker Heights, with ivy growing up the sides and a sunroom looking out over a shady backyard. A slender, professional wife who brings work home from the office a couple of nights a week, and two well-behaved children who color quietly before bedtime or watch one carefully selected and intellect-enhancing thirty minute show on public television.”

“I sound dull.”

“Centered. Intelligent. Hard at work on the rest of your life. A fan of Baroque music and Greek philosophers.”

“Make that Gilbert and Sullivan and
Monty Python.
”

“You’re a Gilbert and Sullivan fan?”

“Fanatic.”

She was beaming enthusiastically. “What do you know? Me, too. And I like Brahms, Charles Ives, English madrigals, anything Celtic, late disco and early hip-hop, particularly if I can’t understand the lyrics.”

He took the opportunity to switch the topic to her. “Why do you work so hard to keep all that hidden?”

She didn’t take offense, as he’d been afraid she might. She seemed to know where he was leading, and even though she was dragging her feet, she was letting him pull her along. “You’d have to understand my life, Nick, to understand me.”

“I’m willing.”

She chewed for a while. Sipped the last of her wine and let him fill her glass again. “What do you think you know?” she asked at last.

He had expected just this question. He might have missed the “sentimental” Megan so obvious in this apartment, but there was also a cut-through-the-baloney side to her that was undeniable.

“I know that the homeless man I saw the night of the carjacking is more than a neighborhood phantom, Megan. I think he’s related to you.” He paused. “I think he may be your father.”

She didn’t sigh, but she took a long time to exhale. He was reminded of a helium balloon quietly deflating. “What makes you think so?”

“Someone’s living in the woods down by the new Whiskey Island marina. I found a…” He couldn’t say the word
hole.
“A shelter he erected. There was a snapshot inside it, a picture of three young girls, and one of them looked like you. You were scowling into the camera.”

“I don’t remember that picture.”

“Was it you, Megan?”

“I can’t say.
You
saw the picture, not me.”

“Is it possible the man is your father?”

She set down her fork and picked up her wineglass, swirling the contents until a whirlpool formed. “Is it possible my father is living in Peru kidnapping tourists in the name of liberation and justice? It is. Is it possible that at this very moment he’s crawling backward up Mount Kilimanjaro on his hands and knees to set a world’s record? Or teaching children in rural Arkansas the fine art of Chinese dragon kites? Do I
know
where my father is or what he’s doing? No. Do I know if he’s alive? No. Do I care?”

“Do you?”

“No more than he cared about the three daughters he walked out on.”

She didn’t sound angry, at least not very. She didn’t even sound hurt, although he suspected that part of her was too deeply buried to witness. She sounded like the Megan he’d imagined before tonight. Straightforward. Unsentimental. Self-assured.

“You think the homeless man is your father, don’t you? Why else would you be so determined to keep me away from him?”

“I think he may be, yes. Casey did see a man the night of the carjacking, and she suspects it’s Rooney. Uncle Frank has heard reports of a man who matches Rooney’s description living on Whiskey Island. So yes, there’s a better chance he’s hanging around here than climbing mountains or kidnapping tourists. Besides, those things would take a clear head.”

“He’s an alcoholic?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what he is, exactly. Except the man who nearly destroyed our lives.”

“Why don’t you tell me the whole story?”

She stared at him over the rim of her glass. “Why? You stopped doing this for a living, didn’t you? Why does this matter to you? You can’t save every homeless man in America just because one died on the front steps of your church.”

There
was the anger. Not as far under the surface as the sadness. He didn’t say anything, just met her gaze until her cheeks flushed.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “Low blow.”

“Difficult subject.”

“Why do you want to know all this, Nick? Some things can’t be mended. Some people don’t want to be helped.”

“He may have saved my life. He may have saved your sisters and Ashley.”

That silenced her, as if this was an aspect of her father she didn’t want to contemplate.

“His name is Rooney?” Niccolo said, to encourage her.

“Short for Rowan. It’s a family name. The original Rowan Donaghue was married to Rosaleen, of the Irish recipes. But my father was always Rooney, even to us. Never Daddy. Just Rooney.”

“What kind of father was he before he left? Was your mother still alive?”

“She died just after Peggy was born.”

“Is that when Peggy went to live with your aunt and uncle?”

“No. I raised her myself until…” Megan drew an audible breath. “Until Rooney took off. Until they wouldn’t let me anymore. At least, not by myself.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen when Peggy was born. A woman came in to take care of her and do some housework during the day when I was in school. But the rest of the time, Casey and I took care of her. Me, mostly. Casey was only ten, too young to be responsible.”

“So were you.”

“No, by then I was as responsible as any adult. I’d helped my mother for years. My mother tried to do it all, but she couldn’t manage. Rooney was in charge of the saloon, but he drank more than he served, so Mama had to try to keep things going there. When I was little they owned a house down the street so Rooney could come and go to work easily, but when things started to deteriorate, they lost the house and most of their belongings, and we moved into the apartment above the saloon. Two tiny bedrooms. Casey and me in one, and my parents in the other.”

The words had poured out in a rush. She stopped now, as if she realized how intense she’d sounded.

He prompted her to continue. “So you took care of the family while your mother tried to take care of the saloon.”

“In a funny way, the saloon became an extension of home. I really grew up there. When we wanted to spread out we went downstairs to play, and everybody welcomed us. My mother ran a tight ship. Back then it was a family place, even more than it is now. No drunks, no cursing, no fights. She had a heart condition, and she was easily fatigued, but when she wanted a man to leave, he went. Meekly. If he didn’t, every man in the place would have converged on him. In those days Rooney still managed the cooking, but Mama was the one who kept things together, who kept the
family
together.”

“Things fell apart after she died?”

“Everyone tried to keep things going. I took over the cooking, but I was too young to serve drinks. Rooney did that, along with hired help and family members who were concerned about what was happening to the saloon and to us kids.”

She smiled a little. “Every night some Donaghue turned up to help. Only no one ever admitted it. They’d just dropped by to have a beer or a piece of Irishman’s pie or a chat, don’t you know. They ended up behind the bar or in the kitchen, serving, washing up, bouncing Peggy on a knee, while I cooked the special for the next day and tried to study at the same time.”

Niccolo couldn’t imagine this. Megan was a dynamo. He’d seen that in person. But the life she was describing was no life for a teenage girl.

“We managed that way for almost three years. My grades weren’t good, but I was keeping my head above water. Then one morning I woke up to take Peggy to the bathroom and I realized Rooney’s bedroom door was open and he was gone. He just walked out.” She shrugged. “That was the last of Rooney. People claimed to see him from time to time for a while. Rooney sightings, we called them. But they got fewer and fewer, and finally stopped altogether.”

“Until now.”

She gave a short nod.

“I don’t understand how you kept Whiskey Island in the family, Megan. You were what, sixteen?”

“Nearly seventeen. It’s not so hard to imagine. I quit school so I could stay home and work full-time. I got my GED a year later.”

He felt his way. “You’ve painted the picture of a big, loving, even helpful family. Why did they allow it?”

“They didn’t
allow
it, Nick. After Rooney disappeared, the family wanted to sell the saloon and parcel us out until we were old enough to be on our own. I told them if they tried, we would run away and take Peggy with us. I meant it, and they knew it. Whiskey Island Saloon isn’t much, but it was the only piece of home we had left. And if they’d taken it away from us, it would have broken my heart.”

She sat back, clutching her glass but not drinking. “So they tried different compromises. They would hire somebody to run the place until we were old enough to do it ourselves, but the price tag was living with relatives. Aunt Deirdre and Uncle Frank wanted Peggy, but they were worried about taking us, too. They were afraid, for good reason, that we would argue about every decision they made for her. A great-aunt in Warren said that Casey and I could live with her, but she was so far away we knew we would hardly ever see Peggy. There were a slew of other compromises offered, but the only thing I wanted was to stay at the saloon and stay together.”

“You said earlier that Peggy spent a lot of years with your aunt and uncle?”

Megan cleared her throat. “In the end, that was the one thing we couldn’t fight. Peggy stayed with the Grogans during the week and came home most weekends, and Casey and I visited her whenever we could. The rest of the family still came in to help and watch out for us. We hired extra employees, which they happily paid for. And I ran the show.”

“Losing Peggy was hard.” It wasn’t a question. He’d heard it in her voice.

“She was
my
baby. I had raised her. She was healthy and happy with me. I quit school to keep her, but in the end, that wasn’t good enough. I had to let her go or I would have lost everything. And I had Casey to think about.”

“Casey wasn’t doing well?”

“Casey was always a rebel. After Rooney left, she really cut loose. I had my hands full.”

He felt his way. “Your father’s absence was particularly hard on her?”

“Of the three of us, Casey needed him the most.”

He remembered something Casey had said the night of the carjacking. “The night we met, Casey said she hadn’t been back home in years.”

“She hadn’t. We had a fight. She took off right after high school.” Megan didn’t elaborate.

He was sure there was more to
that
story but doubted he would hear it tonight. “That must have been hard on you.”

“She sent Peggy postcards every month or so, but no one knew where she was for a couple of years. The cards were always from different places, impossible to track. Then she called me one night. She was twenty by then, attending college in Pennsylvania. After that she called pretty regularly. A year later I went to see her and took Peggy with me. From that point on, Peggy spent part of every summer with Casey, and the three of us stayed in touch by phone or letter. I visited sometimes, once Casey settled in Chicago.”

“But she never came back home.”

“No.” Megan paused, as if trying to decide how much to add. “Not until now.”

“How do you feel about all this? Not emotionally, but logically?”

She swished the wine in her glass until it was in danger of spilling in her lap. “How can I argue with success? Peggy bloomed. Aunt Deirdre and Uncle Frank adore her, and she adores them. She doesn’t seem to feel we deserted her. Casey’s finally home at last. I guess everything turned out.”

“You still wish things had been different.” Again it wasn’t a question.

“I wish Rooney had stayed around and pretended to be a father until I was really old enough to take charge. Yes.”

“And you’re angry at him.”

She had been honest to that point. Niccolo had felt she was struggling to tell the truth. But now her expression hardened. “I don’t waste emotion on Rooney Donaghue. When he walked out of the Whiskey Island Saloon, he walked out of my heart.”

“Do you know why he left?”

“Because he couldn’t cope with reality.”

That wasn’t a trait Rooney had passed on to Megan. Even at sixteen, she had coped against enormous odds, and coped well. But there was a legacy of grief under her brave words. Grief and anger and confusion.

“Were you close to him, Megan? Before all this? Before he fell apart?”

“I don’t think he fell apart. I think he just gave up.”

“Were you close to him?”

She shrugged, and the answer was clear in her eyes. She had been close to her wayward father. She had loved him dearly.

Niccolo sat back, too. “What do we do now?”

“Not a damned thing, which is what I’ve been trying to tell you all along.”

“He’s a hero. And if he’s living where I think he’s living, he could be a dead hero very shortly. It’s still winter. If we have a turn of really bad weather, he could die out there.”

“He’s made it this far. Apparently he has some resources. And he has family all over the area. Any of them would help if he asked. I might despise him, but I wouldn’t turn away a stray cat if it needed me.”

“In other words, let Rooney deal with this. Let Rooney make the decisions, even though he’s obviously not a man who thinks clearly.”

She was silent so long he was afraid she wasn’t going to answer. “Look, I’ll tell you one more thing. When Rooney was still living with us, sometimes he would wander off in the evenings. I never knew where he was or when he’d come back. So I’d turn on a lamp and put it in the front window of the saloon. Or if we were closed for the night, I’d put it in the apartment window. Wherever I was. It would be on all night until he made it back safe and sound.”

Nick felt a knot in his throat. She, on the other hand, was dry-eyed. “After Rooney left us for good, I didn’t tell anybody he’d gone. I pretended he was off doing this or that. Believe it or not, I managed the charade for most of two months, and every night I turned on that lamp to guide him back home. Finally somebody figured out what was going on and called my hand. And for the entire month that the family was trying to decide our fate, I turned on that stupid lamp and prayed Rooney would find his way back. The night Aunt Deirdre came to take Peggy, I sat by the window all night with the lamp beside me and waited for my prayers to be answered.”