Whiskey Island (49 page)

“I still don’t see why he’d slash my tires. It would be more his style just to grab Ashley and fly back…home before I even knew he was in town.” She held up her hand. “But I considered it. I called my contact and discussed it with her. She agrees it’s not his style, and we’re probably still safe here for the moment.”

“What kind of life is this for Ashley?”

“A better one than living with a man who gets his sexual kicks with little girls.”

He winced. “It’s not a perfect legal system.”

“I don’t believe in vigilante justice, but I don’t believe in letting children suffer, either. Not if I can prevent it. Never again.”

“Is Ashley’s mother continuing to pursue this in court?”

“She’s doing what she can. It’s a little hard from jail, but there are people helping her. If the judgment is reversed, Ashley can finally have a normal life. If it’s not, she’ll be in hiding until she’s old enough to be out of danger.”

“And her mother will stay in jail until then.”

“Quite possibly.”

Jon was quiet so long she thought he had decided not to say any more. When he spoke at last, she knew he had simply used the time to plan.

“If you’ll tell me the father’s name and where he lives, I can do some investigating.”

“You need to stay out of this. You’re putting your career in jeopardy just by knowing this much. And, Jon, I’ll deny I told you the truth if anyone asks.”

He didn’t raise his voice, but it grew firmer. “Tell me the father’s name. Let me worry about what I should and shouldn’t do.”

She had to ask the obvious. “Can you promise you won’t turn me in? That you won’t notify the authorities in the state where he lives?”

“I don’t like having this conversation. You shouldn’t have to ask.”

Despite his protest, she could see by his expression that he didn’t blame her. “And the answer?”

“You should know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. Just let me see what I can find out. I’ll be careful. It won’t lead back to you.”

“Ashley’s name is Alice Lee Rayburn. Her mother’s name is Dana and her father is Bobby. He made his money in land development, and he lives in Palm Beach, Florida. That’s where Dana’s in jail.”

“I was hoping it was California. I have friends there.”

“One chance in fifty.” She settled back against his shoulder. “Do you understand why I’m doing this? Really understand?”

“I understand I’m looking at the real Casey Donaghue. But you have to get back on the straight and narrow, Case. There are a million ways to help kids. The system failed once, and you went down with it. So now you’re getting back at it—”

“It’s not that simple!”

“No, it’s not. But can you deny that you’re trying to make things right by doing this? That this is a way of paying penance because you still feel guilty and angry at what happened to that little boy?”

“I’m just helping a little girl stay safe.”

“And when you’re finished, will you be able to find other ways of doing it inside the system? In an agency that doesn’t overload its caseworkers? In a different situation entirely, if that’s what it takes?”

She hadn’t thought that far ahead, but she realized he was probably right. She was paying for what she’d done by putting her own future on the line. She had chosen the riskiest way to help in order to redeem herself.

She wondered if she would even know redemption when it happened. “I don’t know what I’ll do. Right now, I just have to see Ashley through this. One day at a time.”

“And what about us? Are we one day at a time, too?”

She started to say “of course,” but the words stuck in her throat. “You really know how to pick ’em,” she said at last.

“I really do.” He touched her cheek, his fingers warm and sure. His lips were just as warm and just as sure. She willingly, wholeheartedly, gave herself up to his kiss.

31

N
iccolo planned to finish transcribing Father McSweeney’s journal, but halfway through, he had stopped typing the painstakingly perfect script into his computer and just settled back to read. The transformation occurred on the evening when he first read Rowan Donaghue’s name.

Rowan
Donaghue. Rowan
Donaghue, who might well be Megan Donaghue’s great-great-grandfather.

And what of Lena Tierney, the woman Father McSweeney mentioned often and fondly? Was she Rosaleen of the Whiskey Island Saloon secret recipes?

Niccolo knew from the journal that Lena Tierney had gone to work at the rectory as a housekeeper. From careful reading and transcribing, he had learned that Father McSweeney often said what was most important in ways that were hardest to interpret. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that he told stories more often than he reminisced. He was a man of God, and clearly he took his position seriously, to the point of not wanting anyone who might read the journal after his death to glimpse the full extent of his struggles.

But the struggles were apparent to Niccolo, who had struggled himself with many of the same feelings and issues. The struggle to stay focused. The struggle to keep himself apart, yet be constantly available to those who needed him. The struggle to view each member of his flock with the same priestly love, never to favor one above the other or wince when a troublesome congregant spoke his mind.

He had sensed, almost from the journal’s beginning, that McSweeney was a man of strong emotions. That he fought his own inclinations on many levels and experienced a heightened awareness of the world and the people around him because of it. Niccolo wondered how McSweeney had come to choose the priesthood. Had he experienced a genuine call, or had he been channeled into the seminary because of his place in the family or because he’d shown talent in his studies?

Whatever the answer, unlike Niccolo, whatever doubts McSweeney had experienced had not led him away from the priesthood. Iggy reported that Patrick McSweeney had served St. Brigid’s until his death sometime at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Unfortunately, the journal did not continue until then. It stopped just after a pointed reference to James Simeon.

At three in the morning on the night after his spaghetti dinner with Megan and Ashley, Niccolo stared at the final pages and couldn’t believe his bad luck.

Lena Tierney had been employed by James Simeon before she went to the rectory to work for McSweeney. Something had happened at the mansion on Euclid Avenue that had greatly disturbed McSweeney, so disturbed him that he had hired her away from Simeon and made her his new housekeeper.

McSweeney was particularly fond of Lena. Niccolo had picked this up almost from the beginning, before he had made the tenuous connection to Rosaleen of the Whiskey Island Saloon. McSweeney held her up as an example of Irish womanhood, because of her warmth, her spirit, her willingness to struggle. He spoke of her as he spoke of no others. If Lena Tierney had faults, they were not faults that were visible to the priest.

And then something had happened to her, something so terrible that McSweeney’s journal rang with self-condemnation.

Niccolo closed the journal with the same regret he would have experienced if the final pages of an engrossing novel had been missing. A story had unfolded in the journal’s pages, and now the story had, for all practical purposes, ended. There was no copy of this particular “novel” on any library bookshelf, and there was no one to relate the story’s conclusion. Unless McSweeney had continued to keep a journal after this one ran out of pages, and unless Iggy had found it in St. Brigid’s archives, Niccolo would never know the exact connection between Rowan Donaghue, Lena Tierney and James Simeon.

He set the journal on his bedroom desk, stood and stretched. It was past time to go to bed, but he hardly felt sleepy. He was aware that he was not alone, that Josh slept in a room at the end of the hallway and might continue to sleep there until he was old enough to live on his own. Niccolo had taken on a young man’s future with a few simple words, and although he didn’t regret it, he did wonder how he could have been so impulsive.

No one had ever wanted Josh, and Niccolo had promised the boy this was no longer true. How could he ever turn his back on him, knowing that it would be one more rejection in a lifetime filled with them?

He thought about Megan’s reaction to his news. She had been unhappy with him, not because he’d offered Josh a home, but because he was always taking on the burdens of others. She did the same herself, of course, but refused to acknowledge it. Somehow that made it palatable for her. She could love as long as she didn’t admit it. She could help as long as she denied she had.

She could lie in his arms and insist she was only there temporarily. Perhaps, as long as he let her pretend, she would stay with him.

But he wasn’t at all sure that she would. Because as much as he cared about her, he was not blind to her faults. She was at war within herself. Right now he was the enemy.

He wandered into the hallway and down the stairs. Hot milk with amaretto was his mother’s favorite cure for sleeplessness. A hot toddy and endless cycles of the rosary, guaranteed to put even the most hopeless insomniac to bed for the night.

He was heating the milk when he heard a noise in the doorway. He turned to find Josh watching him. The boy didn’t look sleepy. Niccolo suspected he hadn’t slept at all.

“What’s up?” Niccolo asked.

“I just heard a noise and thought maybe, well, you know, someone was trying to get in.”

“Nope. Just me. Want some warm milk?”

Josh looked dubious, but he nodded.

Niccolo poured a second cup for the microwave. “Having trouble sleeping in a new bed? It must seem strange to be here.”

“There’s moonlight coming in my window.”

“We’ll put up shades tomorrow. Remind me.”

“Oh, I’m not complaining. It’s just, well, I never saw the moon like that. There’s no moon where my dad lives.” He smiled sheepishly. “Well, I guess there’s a moon, but like, no windows you can see through. There’s blankets over them, you know?”

He didn’t, but Niccolo nodded.

“And it’s quiet here. Nobody yelling.”

Niccolo thought there was a fair amount of traffic for a side street, but he didn’t point that out. Apparently, compared to what Josh was used to, his house was in the country. “It was noisy when you stayed with friends, too?” He took his milk from the microwave and put Josh’s inside.

“Winston’s apartment is real small. Everybody kind of sleeps in the same place. You can always hear people breathing, coughing.” He shrugged. “Joachim’s house has people all over. His little brothers sleep with you no matter where you go.”

Neither family had much in the way of possessions, but somehow they’d made room for this boy when they could. Niccolo was warmed by that thought. “You’ll get used to the quiet, but you can play a radio if you want, to help you sleep. I’ll put one in there for you. Just keep it low enough that it doesn’t keep me awake.”

Josh looked surprised. “You don’t mind?”

“Why would I? I mind you not sleeping. You can’t do well in school if you don’t get your rest.”

“I don’t do well in school anyway.”

“You’re plenty smart enough. But when you have lots of other things to worry about, it’s tough. Maybe now that you’re here and there’s not so much to think about, you’ll be able to work a little harder. And I’ll help.”

“How come?”

Niccolo waited until Josh’s milk was out of the microwave before he answered. He passed the cup to him, then gave him a jar of honey and a spoon, while he added amaretto to his own. “Because I can,” he said at last. “It’s pretty simple. You need a place to stay, and I have one. You need a friend, and I can be one.”

“You like kids. How come you don’t have any?”

“I was a priest.” The words came out easily, and he realized that he’d grown so comfortable with his past that he didn’t hesitate to share it. “Priests don’t marry, so they don’t have kids.”

“You’re not a priest anymore?”

“Not the way I once was, no.”

“Are you, like, a Catholic?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m not.”

“You don’t have to be Catholic to live here. It doesn’t matter to me. If you want to go to Mass with me sometime, you’re welcome. If you don’t, that’s fine, too. But I’d like it if you went to somebody’s church once in a while. I think it might help you.”

“My dad says everything they say in church is a lie.”

Niccolo was noncommittal. “Does he?”

“He’s mad all the time.”

“I’m glad you’re not.”

“I’m mad sometimes.”

“We all get mad.”

“You, too?”

“Yep.” Niccolo sipped his milk.

“You don’t get mad at Winston. Most people do. He’s always in trouble in school. Not so much since he started coming here, though.”

“No?” That surprised Niccolo. “How come?”

“Winston’s real smart, only nobody ever notices. But you let him do things here, like putting him in charge of painting the den. He’s good when he’s in charge of things. He gets things done. He figures out how to make things happen. Only in school, they don’t want him figuring things out. They want him to be quiet and do whatever they say. And he’s not good at doing what other people tell him to. He’s kind of learned that here a little, too. He listens to you. Not to nobody—anybody else much. But maybe a little more in school.”

Niccolo thought that might be the longest speech of Josh’s life. “You’re a loyal friend. And I’m glad Winston likes to come here. I like him. He’s going to be a success at something important.”

“Winston?” Josh sounded astonished. “He was gonna drop out of school. We were gonna…”

Niccolo raised an eyebrow and waited.

“Run away,” Josh mumbled. “Only he was worried about his mom and Elisha. So he wouldn’t go.”

“Neither of you is going to drop out of school,” Niccolo said pleasantly.

“Winston says you’re on his back about high school.”

“Does he?”

“He says it’s none of your business what he does.”

“It is as long as he continues coming here. That makes it my business, doesn’t it?”

Josh considered that. “Maybe that’s the reason he keeps coming back. Because he wants it to be your business. So he can stay in school and blame it on you.”