AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He lapsed into silence again, staring now into the empty bottom of his glass. I didn’t prompt him this time. I wasn’t looking forward to hearing the end of this story.
“But she hadn’t gone home. Three days later they found her body in the River Liffey,” he said at last.
“Do you think she …?”
He looked up before I could finish the question. “I don’t know,” he said miserably. “Did she kill herself? Did she fall? Did someone push her? I’ll never know. But what does it matter? It might as well have been me who pushed her into the river. It was my fault she died.”
I shook my head. “You can’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”
He grimaced. “That’s what Moira said. She told me that Jeannie had been weak.”
I winced, and he nodded at my reaction. “Yes, I know, how craven was I to listen to her? But I did because I wanted desperately to forget Jeannie. I spent the next three and a half years with Moira, learning to drink and indulge in other inebriants, and acquiring expensive and dangerous tastes. In my worst moments I found myself thinking I’d been lucky that Jeannie had died…and then I would drink to forget I’d ever had that thought. It’s a miracle I finished college. Somehow I managed to keep writing. I had one teacher who believed in me despite my debauchery and he got me the fellowship to Oxford. I thought Moira would be thrilled. She was always talking about getting out of Ireland, but then it turned out she’d made other plans. She and Dugan were going to Paris together to study painting. She told me not to worry, that we’d see each other on holidays, that we’d figure something out.”
It was just what I’d said a moment ago about Paul and me.
“Instead I figured out that I didn’t mean anything to her. I’d just been an amusement. I sobered up then—literally and figuratively—and started writing about Jeannie, always hoping, I think, to find her again in my poetry.”
“And you haven’t…been with anyone since?”
He put his empty glass down on the table and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and looked up at me. Despite all he’d drunk, his eyes were clear. “Not seriously. I’d had enough of girls like Moira and when I meet someone who reminds me of Jeannie…Well, I remember what I did to her. I see her face…So, my relationships don’t usually last too long.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that there are more than two kinds of women? That not every woman is an innocent like Jeannie—or a bitch like Moira?”
He laughed at that. “You make a good point. Perhaps…”He leaned farther forward, his hands braced on his knees. For the second time tonight I thought he was going to try to kiss me…but he was just getting to his feet. “…perhaps I should consider that when I haven’t had quite this much to drink. Thanks for telling me about Nicky Ballard,” he said, walking to the door. I followed him. “I think it’ll help in dealing with her. Maybe between the two of us we can keep her from going the way of her mother and grandmother.”
“That’s why you worry so much about your students,” I said when we reached the door. “Because of what happened to Jeannie.”
“I’d like to think I’d care even if Jeannie were still alive. Look at you. You care about your students and nothing so awful happened. You’ve still got your Paul.”
“Yes, I do,” I said, opening the door for him. He rocked forward unsteadily on his heels, but this time I had no illusion that he was going to kiss me. He was just drunk. I gave him a little push out the door. “Think you can make it across the street?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he assured me. “I just hope I can make it upstairs without breaking any ornaments or dragging down the holly swags on the banister.”
I wished him good luck as he turned to go. He staggered a bit at the foot of the porch steps, but then I saw that he was just looking at one of the frozen ornaments Brock had made for me—the one with the fairy stone embedded in the ice. After a moment of studying it, he weaved across my front lawn, leaving a meandering trail of footprints in the new snow. I watched until he made it across the street up to the porch. Then he turned and waved as if he’d known all along that I’d been watching him.
I got out my phone to call Paul when I went back in, guilty that I’d missed our midnight call, but I didn’t want to call rightaway. While I was feeding Ralph—he’d stayed hidden when Liam was here—I wondered if I should tell Paul that I’d spent the evening with the new Irish heartthrob writer-in-residence. I’d already told him all the girls had crushes on him. Or maybe I should just tell him I’d been busy grading term papers.
“What do you think, Ralph?” I asked the little mouse as I scooped him up in my hand and carried him upstairs. “A little white lie? Or maybe it wouldn’t hurt to make Paul a teensy bit jealous just so he doesn’t take me for granted.”
Ralph’s cheeks were bulging with cheese so he didn’t answer. Not that he’d shown any talent for communication so far, magic doormouse or not.
But Paul had spared me the choice between lying and teasing. When I got upstairs and flipped open my phone I saw that there was a text message from him.
Missed your call tonight and have to GT bed early. Change of plans: I’m coming to NYC for interview and have booked room at Ritz-Carlton Battery Park and cancelled your flight to L.A. I’ll explain when I see you. <3 Paul.
I texted back asking him who the interview was with. It was unusual for a university to interview over the winter break—and even more unusual for Paul to stay at a hotel as pricey as the Ritz-Carlton. But since he didn’t reply I’d just have to wait until tomorrow to find out what was going on.
I fell asleep quickly, no doubt aided by all the bourbon I’d drunk, but then woke with a start in the middle of the night. What if Paul had booked the fancy hotel because he was planning to surprise me with the news that he’d finally gotten a job in New York? And what if he was planning to celebrate by asking me to marry him? It had long been understood between us (I couldn’t remember who had first broached the subject) that we’d get married as soon as he got a job in New York and we could live together. Why else would he pay for such a fancy hotel? And why, I asked myself with my hand clamped over my left breast, was my heart beating so hard? I sat up in bed andlooked toward the window. No moonlight poured in tonight, no shadow branches fell on the floor. I got up and walked to the window, my bare feet cold on the uncarpeted floor, and saw why. It was snowing again—a soft, feathery snow that absorbed the moonlight and cast a hushed pall over the outside world. I sat on the windowsill and looked up at the flakes spinning out of the black sky. They looked like an unwinding spiral staircase. Ralph crawled out of his basket and curled up in my lap. I sat watching the snow for a long time, wondering why I didn’t feel happier.
The next few days were consumed with finals, grades, and student conferences. I tried calling Paul but my calls always went to voicemail. When I texted him he texted back that he’d explain everything when we saw each other in the city on the twenty-second. Paul was lousy at keeping secrets. He probably knew that if we talked I’d get him to tell me where he was interviewing and why he’d booked the room at the Ritz-Carlton. When I found myself hoping that he wouldn’t get the job I knew I had a problem, but I pushed the thought away and focused on my last conference of the semester—the one with Nicky Ballard.
Although I hadn’t seen Liam Doyle since the night of the first snow, he had emailed me.I’ve got an idea about Nicky Ballard, he had written and then gone on to explain a plan he had for keeping Nicky on the straight and narrow. I was supposed to implement the first part of the plan on the last day of the semester. Most of the students had already left for their homes, but Nicky, since she lived in town, had volunteered for the last conference slot. Since there was a faculty holiday party that started at sunset, I came to our meeting dressed up.
“Wow!” Nicky cried when I took my coat off. “You look great!”
“Thanks, Nicky.” I was wearing a silver dress that I’d boughtlast Christmas at Barney’s and the diamond studs my aunt had given me for my twenty-first birthday. “I do plan to change my shoes.” I held up a pair of silver heels over the sheepskin boots I had on.
“It’s a good thing you’re wearing the boots,” Nicky said. “It’s supposed to go down into the teens tonight.”
