the physical agony had tempted him to check out, he’d remember he had a baby who still needed him—even if her mother didn’t—and he’d somehow find the wherewithal to make it through another day. And another. And one more after that …
“C’n we give the punkin a face tonight?”
Patrick spared another glance for his daughter, out of habit, taking care to avoid his reflection.
“Not yet, baby,” he said, focusing again on the flat, field-flanked road, the vista occasionally broken by a stand of bare-limbed trees. “It’s too early. If we do it now, it’ll get soft and sorry-looking by Halloween.”
“When’s that?”
“Five sleeps.” He grinned in the mirror at her. To her, he was just Daddy. What he looked like didn’t matter, only what he did. And what he’d done, since her mother left, was make sure his daughter knew that he wasn’t going anywhere, ever again. “Think you can wait that long?”
“I guess,” she said on a dramatic sigh that reminded him all too much of Natalie, which in turn reminded him of Nat’s brave-but-not expression after he was finally home for good, only to watch his marriage sputter and die. Not really a surprise, after what had happened. As opposed to his ex’s decision to give Patrick full custody of their daughter, which had shocked the hell out of him.
“Where are we going?”
“Back to Grandma’s.”
The silence from the backseat was not a good sign. Patrick preempted the inevitable protest by saying, “Sorry, honey, I’ve gotta go back to work.”
Among the many blessings of being one of seven kids, most of whom lived within a few blocks of each other, was that there was always someone to take care of Lili. In fact, his mother and oldest sister Frannie—at home with four of her offspring anyway—usually fought for the privilege. His child was in no danger of neglect. But over the past few months, Lilianna had become clingy and anxious whenever Patrick left. Especially since his ex’s rare appearances only confused Lili, rather than reassured her.
He pulled into the driveway of his parents’ compact, two-story house in St. Mary’s. In her usual cold-weather attire of leggings, fisherman’s sweater and fleece booties, a grinning Kate O’Hearn Shaughnessy greeted them at the front door, hauling her granddaughter into her thin arms. If you looked past the silver striping Ma’s bangs and ponytail, the fine lines fanning out from her bright blue eyes, you could still see the little black-haired firecracker who’d rendered Joseph Shaughnessy mute the first time he laid eyes on her at some distant cousin’s wedding forty years before. What his mother lacked in size, she more than made up for in spunk. And a death-ray glare known to bring grown men to tears.
“Go see Poppa,” she said, bussing Lili’s curls before setting her on her feet. “He’s in the kitchen.” Then she lifted that same no-nonsense gaze to Patrick he’d seen when he’d come out of his medically induced coma at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. If there’d been fear or worry, he imagined they’d been kicked to the curb before he’d even been airlifted from Landstuhl. “I made vegetable soup, you want some?”
“Sure.”
Feeling like a burrowing gopher, Patrick followed her down the narrow, carpeted hall to the kitchen, careful not to let his wide shoulders unseat four decades’ worth of baby pictures, school photos and wedding portraits plastering the beige walls. Like most of the houses in St. Mary’s Cove proper, the house had been built in a time when people were smaller and needs simpler. That his parents had raised seven kids in the tiny foursquare was amazing in itself; that they’d never seen the need to upgrade to something bigger and better was a living testament to the “be content with what you have” philosophy they’d crammed down their kids’ throats right along with that homemade vegetable soup.
Not that flat-screen TVs, cell phones and state-of-the-art laptops weren’t in the mix with seventies furnishings and his grandmother’s crocheted afghans. His parents weren’t Luddites. But their penchant for shoehorning the new into the old had, over the years, shaped the little house into a vibrant, random collage of their lives.
This was also the home, the life, he’d returned to in order to heal, the safety and stability it represented restoring his battered psyche far more than the damn lotion he applied every single day to keep his skin supple.
Joe Shaughnessy glanced through dark-framed glasses perched on his hawkish nose, still-muscled shoulders bulging underneath plaid flannel. Like Ma, there was no sympathy in his eyes, ever. Or in his voice. At least, not now. But his brothers had told Patrick how, when Pop heard, he’d gone out into the postage stamp of a yard behind the house and bawled like a baby.
And for damn sure he’d hang them all by their gonads if he knew they’d ratted on him.
Already seated on the booster seat that had been a permanent fixture for years, Lilianna slurped her soup, dimpled fingers curled around her spoon. For her grandmother, she’d eat vegetable soup. For him, no way.
Patrick released a tense breath, then plopped beside her at the scarred wood table that had seen many an elbow fight over the years. Sunlight flooded the spotless room, gilding maple cabinets scrubbed so many times the original finish was but a memory, flashing off the same dented, decaled canister set that’d been there forever. Even the minimal updates they’d done ten or so years before—changing out the laminate counters, the cracked linoleum floors—had somehow left the comfortable shabbiness undisturbed.
Patrick pulled April’s card from his shirt pocket, handed it to his father. “Got a lead on a job.”
“Yeah?” Joe telescoped the card until it came into focus. Time for new glasses, apparently. “Where?”
“The old Rinehart place.”
His father’s eyes cut to his. “Somebody bought it?”
“One of her granddaughters decided to turn it back into an inn. Sam hooked us up.”
His forehead knotted, Pop returned the card, broke off a piece of homemade bread and sopped up the broth left in the bottom of his bowl. “Last I heard, Amelia Rinehart had let the place go to rack and ruin. I’m surprised the girls didn’t just unload it—”
“We had our wedding reception there, you know,” his mother put in, setting a bowl of soup and two thick slices of bread in front of Patrick, then sitting at right angles to him. “Back in its heyday.”
“Not to mention ours,” Pop added with a chuckle.
Patrick frowned. “You did?”
Ma swatted at him with a crumpled napkin. “Go look at the wedding pictures on your way out, that’s the Rinehart. Or was. It’d been in Amelia’s husband’s family for years, they turned it into an inn right after the war. Was quite the destination in these parts for some time. But after he died, she stopped taking in guests. Except for her three granddaughters, every summer—”
“May I be s’cused?”
Ma leaned over to wipe Lili’s soup-smeared face, then shooed her off. Only after they heard the clatter of toys being dumped out of the plastic bin in the living room did his mother say, “Old gal was a strange bird, no other way to put it. Rumor had it she rarely talked to her three daughters, even the one who stayed here in St. Mary’s. But she loved her granddaughters. In her own way, at least.” She leaned back, the space between her graying brows creased. More toys crashed. “You went to school with one of them, didn’t you?”
“Melanie, yeah,” Patrick said, spooning in a bite that was more potatoes and carrots than broth. “For a while. But she and her mother moved away before she graduated.”
“That’s right, they did—”
“You really think the gal’s serious?” his father wedged in, clearly done with the small talk.
“Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Because she’ll