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“No.”
“Not even in the coffeehouse?”
“Well, once. But only from behind the counter. Maureen covered for me. Told him exactly what I wanted her to say. That I wasn’t going to see him. She said he was angry and sad and, well, spitting nails angry.”
“You threw him out just before calling me. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Shelby, I think you might need to go to him for the explanation. You never gave him the opportunity to tell his side of the story, and I think that’s what’s troubling you now. You wonder if you made the wrong decision about him, came to the wrong conclusions. Maybe he was as duped by Clive Darcy as you were.”
“No, please…”
“People don’t fit neatly into good and evil, black and white. There are lots of shades of grey. Look at yourself.”
Shelby gazed up at the ceiling, sheepishly biting her lip. “Yeah, look at me…” Then she looked back at the doctor and tried to smile. She felt a little better; maybe the catharsis did her good. But see Padraig again? “He keeps telling me to listen to the message on my answering machine.”
“And have you?”
“No. He left it on my land line. Clive’s phone. The one Clive used to arrange my assignments. The light’s been blinking since I returned. At first I figured it was a message from Clive – why the hell would I want to listen to him?”
“So, you have no idea what Padraig has to say?”
“No.”
“Well, you’ll never know unless you push that button or go see him. You don’t need him haunting you.”
“I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“I think you’ll find the words. The outcome may surprise you. If you really loved him and he loved you, there might be something to salvage. If not, at least you’d know for sure.”
“But what kind of relationship can we have now? What we had was built on lies – his and mine.”
The doctor sat back, as stern faced as Dr. Ramsey would ever get.
“I don’t tell my clients what to do, not often anyway. I think you know that. But I do think that when you listen to that inner voice, the honest one, that you’ll do what you need to do.” She waited a minute, then said, “Time’s up, Shelby. I’ll see you next week, if you like. Your regular appointment time is already in my book.”
Chapter Sixteen
The newspaper thrown over the company phone in her apartment still covered the blinking red message light. She had successfully ignored it over the last three weeks, thinking the act of snubbing Clive and Padraig was an act of courage, part of her path to the rest of her life without them both. But now she had no courage, no will left to fight what had been inside her all along.
First message was a routine call from Clive, which she quickly deleted.
The second was recorded the day of her flight after she left her apartment for the airport.
“Shelby, answer this! Please!” Pause “You got to be there, lass. C’mon, pick up…” a frantic Padraig kept on. “Shelby, you there? Damn you, please pick up. You need to hear me.”
The message had come much too late, at least two hours after she left for the airport. She was already in the air by that time, out of cell phone contact, half a world away.
Padraig in a panic and what did it mean?
The third message was from Padraig again, a month later, a day after she threw him out. “Talk to me, Shelby. Call me now…” Same as the fourth and fifth messages, in Padraig’s various states of mind … frantic, angry, the last she heard sounding defeated … until there were no more. She reset the machine and turned away. Then impulsively changing her mind, she turned back and yanked the cords from the wall, throwing the machine against the brick, gladdened to hear it shattered to pieces by the impact.
***
When Shelby had gone into her session with Dr. Ramsey, a week had passed since she’d had had a message from Padraig on her cell phone. Before she’d walked into the office the lack of new messages had been a relief. However, it was no longer a welcome relief when an hour later she walked out of the psychologist’s office with a new purpose burning in her heart. Perhaps no messages cluttering up her cell phone was a message in itself; that Padraig had given up on her and finally walked off to do something new with his life. Wouldn’t it be ironic to find that just when she allowed her heart to race again with thoughts of him, and fill with the hope that they could salvage something from the mess they’d made – that Padraig would have already moved on without her?
Shelby went to his favorite pub: the most likely place to find him after six o’clock on a week night.
