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TWENTY

I followed Lizzie into her bedroom and closed the door. “It was inevitable,” I said. “A bunch of them have been coming to the restaurant almost every night and circling him like flies on shit. Which one is it?”

“None of the usual suspects. This one’s a dark horse. Her name is Connie Gilchrist.”

I shrugged. “Never heard of her.”

“Me either. Dotty said she moved into town about a month ago. She’s renting a house over on Oriole Drive.”

Dotty Briggs was one part night manager, one part den mother, one part hawk. Not much happened at McCormick’s—or in Heartstone, for that matter—without Dotty digging up all the dirt.

“What else did Dotty tell you?”

“Connie is about forty, honey-blond hair, pretty smile, nice body?—”

“I don’t care what she looks like,” I said. “I want to know how someone shows up in town, and a month later she’s got her hooks into our father.”

“Her hooks ? That sounds a little harsh. You don’t know anything about her.”

“Fine,” I said, sitting down on the bed. “Tell me what you heard.”

Lizzie turned on a lamp and killed the overhead light. “Okay,” she said, lowering her voice. “It was a dark and stormy night...”

“Damn it, Lizzie, does everything have to be a joke with you?”

“It’s not a joke. I’m trying to paint a picture here.”

“Sorry. It just sounds like the opening of a 1940s movie. Go on.”

“Anyway, Dotty said one night about three weeks ago it was pouring like crazy. The place was practically dead—almost as many staff as customers—and this Connie walks in. She’s definitely not a barfly looking for someone to pay for her drinks. She’s classy—nice clothes, perfect makeup, even though it’s raining. She sits down at the bar and orders two Manhattans. Dad makes them and offers to bring them over to a table. She says no thanks. She met her husband at a bar. They were both drinking Manhattans.”

“So, where’s the husband in all this?” I asked.

“Dead. He died a year and a half ago. Apparently, this little ritual with two drinks is her way of celebrating their life together.”

“That’s perfect! The grieving widow meets the grieving widower.”

“Relax. That’s what Dotty thought at first. Her antenna went up, but she said all they did was talk. Connie drank half of one drink, half of the other, and left after about an hour.”

“And I’ll bet she came back the next night,” I said.

“You’d bet wrong, sister. She hasn’t been back since.”

“You just said Dad’s got girlfriend.”

“Did I say that? Oh yeah... maybe that’s because you always think what’s on your mind is more important than what’s on mine, so I might have beefed up the facts a little to get your attention.”

“Well, now you’ve got it. What happened?”

“Dotty couldn’t listen to every word, but mostly they talked about what it’s like to lose a spouse, and before Connie left, she gave Dad the name of a bereavement group she was going to.”

“Dad hates the idea of support groups.”

“Apparently, he’s come around. Dotty’s pretty sure Dad has been meeting her there a couple of times a week. She spotted a pamphlet on his desk— Comforting You in Your Time of Loss .”

“ Comforting ? That sounds like code for having sex.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Maggie, do you really think Dad has been walking around in a funk because he wants to get laid? He’s lonely. His marriage to Mom was about companionship, about getting on a Harley and driving wherever the road took them. All these women who have been throwing themselves at him are scaring him away. Connie might be the first one who really understands what he’s going through. So, she convinced him to go to a support group—isn’t that what Mom wanted?”

“Alone—not with a date! I don’t trust this woman. She could be another predator like Rita Walsh, trying to get inside Leon Brennan’s pants before his wife was even in the ground.”

“You know what your problem is?” Lizzie said. “You have sex on the brain.”

“And you have your head in the clouds. So, Connie got him to go to a few meetings. How do you know he’s not going back to her place afterward and banging her?”

The overhead light snapped on. “Why don’t you ask him?”

It was my father.

“Not that my sex life is any of your business, but before you start turning speculation into rumors that quickly become gospel, let me go on record. I’m not banging anybody.”

“Dad, I’m sorry,” I said.

“You should be. Your mother and I discussed three things about sex before she died. First, she gave me her blessing to have sex whenever I was ready. Second, she gave me a list of warning signs to look out for, so I don’t confuse a hot meal and a hot body with a genuine down-to-earth woman.”

I expected him to go on, but he stopped. He just stood there staring at me, his arms folded across his chest.

I couldn’t deal with the silence. “What was the third thing?” I asked.

“She said, ‘Finn, if I were you, I wouldn’t ask Maggie about her sex life. The less you know, the better off you’ll be.’”

I closed my eyes and buried my head in my hands.

“So then, you’ve been going to these bereavement meetings,” I heard Lizzie say.

“I have. Not the ones at St. Cecilia’s. I know too many people there. I’ve been going two or three times a week, sometimes at United Methodist, sometimes the Episcopal church over on Greenwood.”

I put my hands down and opened my eyes. “Are they helping?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. They say that time heals all wounds, but they also say that misery loves company, and it helps to know that other people are going through the same emotions that I’m going through. Some of us go out for coffee or drinks after the meeting, so that helps a little too.”

“Well, I guess that’s a good thing,” I said. “It gives you a chance to meet people you can hang out with—maybe go to a movie or dinner or something.”

He smiled. “Let me explain something to you, sweetheart,” he said. “I have a dozen friends who keep inviting me to go bowling, play poker, take in a ball game—the list goes on. I don’t have any trouble finding someone to do things with. But when your mother died...”

He paused and swallowed hard. “When your mother died,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes, “I lost the only person in the world I could do nothing with.”

He opened his arms, and Lizzie and I both fell into them. “Don’t worry, girls. We’ll get through this—the three of us.”

He hugged us both, told us he loved us, let go, and left the room. Lizzie looked at me, gave me a half shrug, and followed him out the door.

I dropped back down on the bed, and in that moment, as my own eyes filled with tears, I knew that I had never loved him more—or loved myself less.