Page 12

“She’s such a sweet girl, Molly. She laughs a lot. And she’s so pretty. Just like her mother. Ah, love, how I wish you could see her.”

Michael Finnegan stood in the cemetery by his dead wife’s grave. The flowers he’d taken from the vase on his kitchen table were resting at the base of her headstone.

“She’s so curious about the world. She’s got a good appetite, too, and she’s growing like a weed.

She likes to be in the shop. Thinks it’s the greatest fun to watch the cash register open and close.

And speaking of the shop, did I tell you we’re looking into buying a warehouse, Fiona and me?

The business is growing by leaps and bounds… ”

Michael was babbling, talking about anything and everything that popped into his head. He kept it up for a good ten minutes, until there was nothing left to say—except for the one thing he’d actually come to say.

“Maybe you already know why I’m here. You always seemed to know what I was going to say ages before I said it. I read your note, Molly. The one tucked in your cookbook. About…about Mary. I never even knew it was there. Fiona found it, just tonight, and… ”

His words trailed off as fear overwhelmed him. Who, exactly, are you afraid of, lad? he asked himself . A dead woman? Or your own bloody self?

He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep lungful of air.

“I…I love her, Molly. I do,” he said, the words tumbling out of him.

“Not the same as I loved you. I’ll never love anyone the way I loved you.

And I think she cares for me, too. Not the same way she cared for Ian’s father, I’m sure, more like a second-chance sort of thing.

” He ran a hand through his hair. “Jaysus, I’m makin’ it sound like a pile of leftovers, like something you find at the back of the icebox, but it’s not.

It’s love, real love. But maybe just a little quieter, a little softer.

” He smiled. “She loves Nell, too. She’s so good to her.

I want you to know that. And Nell loves her right back.

And it’s not right for a little girl to grow up without a mother.

Without someone to teach her about dresses and hairstyles and such. ”

He paused then, trying to swallow the emotion that was rising in him.

“I don’t even know if she’ll have me,” he added.

“But if she does, I might not…I might not come as much as I’ve been doing.

It wouldn’t be right. But I’ll still come sometimes.

I’ll bring Nell, too. When she gets a little older.

I’ll tell her about you, Molly. I’ll show her pictures.

I’ll never let her forget her beautiful mother… I’ll never forget my first love…”

The tears came then, hot and fast, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. Sometime later, when his chest had stopped hitching and his cheeks had dried, he looked down at his hands, clenched into fists. His wedding ring glinted up at him in the lengthening summer light.

“Ah, Molly. What do I do with this?” he whispered.

It didn’t seem right to keep it, but he couldn’t just toss it away, either.

He remembered that his wife had been buried with her ring and he decided he would leave his ring here, too.

With her. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like the right thing to do.

He squatted down and started to work a small hole in the grass at the base of her headstone with his fingers.

When he’d dug down a good six inches, he wiped his hands on his trousers, then pulled at his wedding band.

He flinched a little at how naked his hand looked without it.

He kissed the ring, and was just about to drop it into the hole, when out of nowhere, a voice shouted, “What on God’s green earth are you doing, Michael, you daft lad?”

“Jaysus!” Michael yelped, his heart hammering. He looked around wildly. “ Molly ?”

An instant later, a young woman came into view. She was walking through the cemetery, several yards to his left. His heartbeat slowed a little. He passed a shaking hand over his brow.

“Of course it’s not Molly, you great eejit,” he whispered to himself.

The woman didn’t see him; he was still on one knee.

She carried a baby girl on her hip. Two more small children trailed behind her like ducklings.

She was the one who’d spoken—she had to be; there was no one else around.

A boy, about seven years old, stood a few feet ahead of her on the pathway.

Michael guessed he was the Michael she’d been shouting at.

“It’s come apart again, Mammy!” the boy hollered, and Michael saw he was holding a shoe in one hand and its sole in the other .

“Take ‘em both off,” the woman said wearily as she caught up to him. “We’ll fix it when we get home.”

Dublin, Michael thought, as he listened to her voice. With a little New York mixed in. A few years off the boat now .

The boy did as he was told, and Michael saw that he had no socks on his pale feet.

The family walked on, then stopped at a small, plain headstone not far from Molly’s.

Michael could see them clearly, but they had not noticed him.

Remembering his task, he looked down at the hole he’d dug, but before he could bury his ring, something drew his eyes back to the woman.

Her children’s faces were all scrubbed. Their clothing was patched but clean. They were wiry, but there was a little bit of meat on their bones. The mother, though…she had dark smudges under her eyes and hollows in her cheeks. Her shoulders poked up under her thin cotton blouse.

Michael knew what was going on. He’d seen it before. In Hell’s Kitchen. In London. And long ago, back in Ireland. A mother didn’t eat so her children could.

The woman lined her brood up around the headstone, then said, “C’mon on now and say a prayer for your daddy.”

A widow , Michael thought. Can’t be more than twenty-five.

The children pressed their hands together. They bowed their heads.

“Dear God, our daddy was a very good daddy…” one began.

The others quickly chimed in.

“He loved us very much.”

“He loved hotdogs, too.”

“With sauerkraut and mustard. ”

“Dear God, can you please see to it that our Daddy gets extra hotdogs for his supper tonight? With chipped potatoes on the side?”

“What kind of prayin’ is this?” the woman scolded. “Askin’ God for hotdogs!”

“Mammy, can we pray for some hotdogs for ourselves, too? I’m hungry.”

“No, we cannot. God doesn’t just rain down hotdogs, does He? And in the middle of a cemetery, no less!”

“Why not? God can do anything He likes. Remember Jaysus and the loaves and fishes? Everyone was hungry, and then Poof ! Presto-chango ! Plenty to go ‘round.”

“Michael McGowan, I’d like to remind you that Jaysus is your lord and savior, not some street-corner magician. Now say a prayer for your poor Daddy. A proper one!”

The children started again, and the woman watched them, nodding and listening, straightening a collar, tucking a tendril of hair behind an ear. Tears shone brightly in her eyes as she did, but by the time her children finished their prayers, she had blinked them away.

Michael, who’d been watching them the whole time, suddenly nodded as if he’d heard something. Or someone. He stood up, tamped the dirt he’d dug up down with his toe, and made his way over to the woman.

“Excuse me, Missus,” he said quietly, not wanting to startle her.

She quickly turned around, a worried expression on her face. “Were we makin’ too much noise? I’m so sorry…”

“Not at all,” said Michael. “I just wanted to…well, here…” He h eld out his ring.

The woman looked at it, then she looked up at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I can’t take that,” she said, shaking her head.

“Yes, you can.” Michael gently took her hand, turned it over, and placed the ring on her palm.

As he closed her fingers around it, he bent close to her and in a low voice said, “What happens to that lot if you end up six feet under, too? Go to O’Dowd’s pawnshop.

Eighteenth and Tenth. They’ll give you decent money for it.

Use it to buy food. Eat some of it yourself. ”

“Thank you,” the woman said, flinching a little under his scrutiny.

It was painful when people saw the things you tried hard to hide; Michael knew that well enough. Touching the brim of his cap, he took his leave.

“Wait!”

He turned around, a questioning look on his face.

“This ring…was it yours?”

“Aye, it was.”

The woman gave him a sad smile, one that said she understood. “You are very kind. I wish there was something I could do for you in return.”

Michael jammed his hands in his pockets and looked at the sky.

He thought about asking Mary to be his wife.

He imagined himself going down on one knee and actually asking her, and he felt his heart quail.

Fiona said Mary cared for him, but did she still?

After stepping out with Milton Duffery, with his underwear factory, and his fancy concerts, and his diamond ring from Tiffany’s?

“There is something, missus,” he said, looking at the young woman again .

She nodded earnestly. “Anything.”

“Have those kiddies say a prayer for me, too.”