“Why not?” I queried sharply.
“What if it doesn’t work out?”
“Are you worried she’ll turn whackjob on you?” I returned, and before he could answer I went on, “Because if you are, don’t worry. That’s for cheaters. Everyone knows that. And if you could stay with Mariel for as long as you did and not stray, you have nothing to worry about.”
“That’s not it.”
“What is it?”
“You two are very close and if—”
“She makes you laugh.”
“She does, but—”
“She’s beautiful. Stylish. She has her own money.”
“This is true, but—”
“She thinks you’re handsome. She loves spending time with you. You make her laugh.”
“That means a lot, MeeMee, however—”
“However nothing,” I snapped. “We girls, we need it. We need the grand statement. We need to know that nothing else matters, nothing, not one thing but the shot you’re willing to take at you making us yours. You’d risk anything. You’d do anything. Logic and manners and her living right across the street and sisters as best friends don’t factor. Nothing does. Caution is thrown to the wind and you’d go against everything you believe in just for that one chance. That one chance to start building something. So if you do that in the beginning, when life happens, we know you’d do whatever you gotta do to keep us happy.” I paused before I finished, “This, of course, does not include if all this happens while you’re married. But that’s the only exception.”
Lawrie was silent.
“Lawrie,” I hissed. “Did you hear me?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“You are not,” I bit out.
“If I don’t, how can I call Robin?”
I rocked to solid then tore my phone from my ear and hung up on him.
“You need the grand statement?”
My eyes cut to Mickey who was standing on his side of my bed in his pajama bottoms, looking at me.
“Don’t ask questions you know the answer to, Mickey Donovan. You’re the king of the grand statement.”
His face got soft right before he stated, “Buckle up, baby.”
“I know,” I agreed. “Robin is a whackjob, just the good kind, but this isn’t going to go easy because Lawrie has his own baggage too.”
“Not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
He moved from his place by the bed across the room, past me, to his jacket he’d thrown over the arm of the daybed. He shifted it, dug into it, pulled out some tri-folded papers and walked to me.
He then held them out to me.
I took them but didn’t look at them.
“Itinerary,” he declared. “Shit’s sorted. Even called Conrad. He’s takin’ the kids and in two days, we’re goin’ to the Keys.”
I blinked.
“How big a rock he buy you?” he asked.
“Three and a half carats,” I answered automatically.
“Then prepare to drag your hand around, darlin’, ’cause you know I’ll have to best that shit and do it soundly.”
At that, I dropped the paper, threw myself in his arms, pushing back until we hit bed and went down on it, me bouncing on Mickey.
Then I was all over him.
“Babe, don’t know if the kids are asleep,” he told me (my kids, his were at Rhiannon’s).
“They won’t hear.”
“What if they—?”
I lifted my head, my brows knit and glared at him. “Are you about to whisk me away to the Florida Keys and ask for my hand in marriage?”
“Well…yeah.”
“Then we’re fucking to celebrate.”
His mouth twitched. “Fucking?”
“Fast, hard, rough,” I dipped closer, “and quiet.”
My breath left with the swiftness of him rolling on top of me.
“To be quiet, I gotta do all the work,” he declared. “You get on top, you moan and do it loud.”
That was okay by me.
I grinned.
My guy kissed me.
Then he fucked me.
We were as quiet as we could be.
After, me cleaned up and back in my nightie, Mickey in his pajama bottoms, we were tangled up in the dark in my bed.
“Love you, Mickey Donovan,” I whispered.
“Love you too, soon-to-be-Amelia Donovan,” he whispered back.
Amelia Donovan.
God.
I closed my eyes and pressed deep into his body.
His arms convulsed around me. “Shit, you like that.”
“Happy,” was all I could say.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
I tipped my head back and looked at his face in the shadows. “A flash?”
He slid his hand up my back, over my shoulder to cup my cheek. “No, baby. See, ’bout nine months or so ago, give or take a few weeks, this spitfire brunette moved in across the street and those flashes became history. Now I live life blinded and that is not a bad thing.”
That moved through me, setting me soaring, and I bent my neck and shoved my face in his chest so he wouldn’t see me crying, even in the dark.
He felt it since I was shaking uncontrollably (and might have let out a sniffle) and he gathered me closer.
“Don’t like my woman crying in my arms.”
“Ha-ha-happy tears.”
“Cut it out anyway, Amy. Yeah?”
My head tipped back again and I declared, “You can’t order me to stop crying happy tears, Mickey.”
“I just did.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen.”
“It already did, seein’ as you’re layin’ into me and no longer crying.”
I glared at him through the dark because he was right.
“Fuck,” he muttered, “I can actually feel that angry heat and now I wanna fuck you again.”
“I don’t actually have anything pressing on my schedule for the next oh, I don’t know, eight to nine hours, Mickey.”
“Jesus, you’re a smartass.”
“Bitching about me being a smartass is not fucking me, Mickey.”
I ended that on a gasp because I ended that being flipped to my stomach then Mickey’s hand was yanking up my nightie right before it dove right in my panties. It curled, I spread my legs to give him better access and he found me.
“Where’s the smartass now?” he murmured in my ear.
He didn’t allow me to answer. My clit, still sensitized from earlier, got a tweak from his finger and I had to concentrate on that while my hips twitched.
“Yeah,” he growled with satisfaction.
“You’re annoying,” I breathed, squirming.
“Challenge, Amy. Repeat that when you’re sittin’ on my face in five minutes.”
Oh God.
I kept squirming.
He swept the bedclothes off me.
“Lift your hips, baby. Wanna see that ass working for me.”
Oh God.
I lifted my hips.
Mickey kept at me until he was done with that and he dragged me onto his face.
It took a while to get to the fucking but it was a pleasurable while, and when we were again clothed and tangled under the covers, I had no smartass left in me.
So I fell asleep in the arms of my guy knowing soon we’d be lazing around in the sun of the Florida Keys and I’d be doing it wearing the huge-ass rock he was going to give me.
* * * * *
I walked into my house, past my beloved dining room table, straight to the kitchen.
I put my purse and bag on the counter, turned to go to the fridge to assess dinner options and stopped dead.
I stood and stared.
It took a while for me to reanimate my body. But when I did, I shuffled sideways, my gaze glued to the wall beyond the dining room table.
Blindly, I dug into my purse until I found my phone. I activated it without looking at it and continued n
ot to look at it as I did what I had to do by rote, lifted it to my mouth and demanded, “Call, Mickey.”
I put it to my ear.
“Hey,” he greeted after one ring.
“Hey back,” I whispered.
He said nothing.
I stared at the wall.
On it was my Mother’s Day present.
Mickey in cahoots with the kids had arranged for a photographer to come to the house when the bluebells had taken over.
Mickey had been right. When they bloomed they were so profuse it looked like Cliff Blue was floating on a cloud of flowers over the sea.
It was the physical manifestation of my world. The home I shared with my loved ones suspended in beauty.
We’d all got dressed up (kind of, the girls did, the boys wore nice shirts and jeans) and the photographer had taken our picture in front of the house. Mickey and me in the middle pressed close, his arm around my shoulders, mine around his waist. His other arm was around Pippa. My other one was wrapped around Cillian’s chest. He was standing slightly in front of me (something he couldn’t do now since he’d had a growth spurt in the time that had past and was now taller than me). Ash was beside me. She’d been caught laughing, her eyes to the camera, her cheek to my shoulder, her arms around my middle. Auden was standing close on the other side of his sister, holding her hand.
Outside Ash, who was laughing, we were all smiling.
Happy.
Now, printed huge, beautifully framed with two lovely sconces arching over it to make it an even bigger feature than it already was, that picture hung by the dining room table, pictorial evidence I had everything a woman could need.
Me and my family floating on a cloud of blue, blinded by a flash of happy.
Mickey ended the silence.
“You saw it.”
“I love you,” I whispered.
“Same here.”
I smiled and fought back the tears.
It took some time, Mickey gave me that time, and when I succeeded, I asked, “Have a taste for anything for dinner?”
“I’ll get Tink’s, bring it home,” he answered.
“Then we’ll eat Tink’s at the dining room table.”
His voice was soft when he replied, “Works for me.”
It worked for me too. He had his kids. I had mine.
So it worked perfectly.
“See you later, honey,” I said.
“Yeah, baby. See you.”
We hung up.
I walked to the picture and flicked the new light switch that now had five dimmer controls. One for the chandelier over the dining table. One for the kitchen lights. One for the kitchen pendants. One for the living room lights.
And one for my picture.
It was daytime. I didn’t need that light.
But from that day forward, whenever I was home, that picture was lit.
Every day.
Reminding me, even though I knew it down to my soul, that I had all I needed.
* * * * *
I wandered down the hall to the den, and once I hit it, I went right to the desk and dumped the bags and my purse on top. I slid the envelope out of one then dug in the other and pulled out the tissue wrapped parcel. I unwrapped it unveiling the pretty frame I’d bought at the reopened shop on the jetty.
I was about to put the picture I’d had printed at Walgreens in it when my phone in my purse rang.
I set aside the frame and picture, dug my phone out, looked at the display and took the call.
“Hey,” I greeted.
“Hey back,” Mickey replied. “Listen, babe, you do payroll?”
I looked to the computer on the desk.
The den was the den.
It was also another guest bedroom now that the other side of the room was taken up with a massive, slouchy sectional with a pullout.
Further, it was a family room where Auden and Cillian played Xbox when they were at my place since the girls (and Mickey and I) weren’t big fans of them hogging the TV in the great room.
It also now had shelves on every wall not taken up with windows or the TV, beautiful walnut ones Mickey had put up with the help of Jake (and Cillian and Auden).
And last, it was the office for Donovan Roofing and Contracting.
I was Mickey’s office girl. I did payroll, returned calls (or picked them up when I was at the desk), scheduled Mickey to meet with clients, typed up quotes, ordered materials, sent invoices, dealt with receivables and played bookkeeper (with tutoring from Robin).
Mickey’s business had taken off.
Ralph beat him on some bids but those who paid attention to referrals and online reviews went with Mickey. Not to mention, he’d gotten the roofing contract for the build around the golf course at the Magdalene Club. A huge job. A real coup. Thirty houses and not little ones. Mini-mansions.
In fact, there was so much work Mickey had twenty-eight employees. And his business wasn’t even a year old yet.
I didn’t get a salary. This was because Mickey’s house was on the market and we were getting married in a small, harvest-themed wedding (reception to be held at Lavender House) the day before Halloween, so what was his was going to be mine very soon anyway (as per me, we’d had words but Mickey gave in eventually).
And I loved doing it. I loved helping. I loved watching Mickey’s business flourish. I loved seeing him happy in his job. I loved knowing when he started his work day he was doing something he enjoyed, something that was his.
Since Mickey’s house was on the market, even though our wedding wasn’t for three months, when it sold, even if we weren’t yet married, they were moving in.
Then again, they were there most of the time already.
If they weren’t, I, and if I had my kids, all three of us were over at Mickey’s.
Total Brady Bunch.
It was fantastic.
“Yeah, honey, I run it every Thursday morning before Dove House,” I told him something he knew. “Direct deposits will be in accounts tomorrow.”
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Why?” I asked.
“Jerry fucked up his timesheet. Forgot some overtime I asked him to do.”
“Tell him he can just submit it with the next one and we’ll make the alteration then.”
“Says he needs the money, baby. The divorce.”
One of Mickey’s crew, Jerry, was in the throes of an ugly divorce that included an ugly custody battle. His attorney’s fees were out the roof.
“Right,” I said, snatching up a pen and sliding a pad of Post-its my way. “Give me the hours. I’ll run another payroll and he’ll have two deposits, the second one is the overtime. But he needs to give you the timesheet to bring home tonight so I can have it on file.”
“Will do,” he replied and gave me the hours. I wrote them down while he asked, “Your day been good?”
I looked to the frame and the picture sitting beside it, ready to be inserted.
Then I looked to the shelves.
There were DVDs, CDs, books, picture frames and knickknacks in them. There were a lot of shelves and they were new so they were far from filled. But I figured when Mickey and his kids moved in, that would happen easily.
All of them had something in them, though.
But one of them had only one thing.
A broken, black, folded up umbrella.
My heart squeezed.
“No,” I answered Mickey’s question.
“What’s up?”
I looked away from the umbrella.
“Nothing,” I mumbled. “We’ll talk when you get home.”
His voice dipped when he repeated, “What’s up, baby?”
He heard it in my voice even if I was trying to hide it. He read it. Now he was worried.
I dropped my eyes to the picture on the desk and reached out a hand to touch it with my finger.
“Amy?” Mickey called.
“Mr. Dennison passed this morning,” I whispered, my voice suddenly clogg
ed.
“Fuck, Amy,” Mickey whispered back.
I stared at the picture of Mr. Dennison and me. He was sitting in a recliner in the lounge at Dove House. I was sitting on the arm, leaned in and kissing his cheek. He was looking at the camera, smiling.
It was a selfie.
I was getting good at them.
I’d learned after Mrs. McMurphy, and now I had tons of pictures on my phone of the residents, Dela with the residents, the staff with the residents, the kids, me, even Mickey with the residents.
“Peaceful,” I said.
“That’s good,” he replied gently.
I made the noise as the tears came.
“Shit, baby,” Mickey whispered, then louder and more firm, “Comin’ to you. Got somethin’ to do, then I’ll be there. Home in an hour. I’ll run Jerry’s shit, don’t worry about. You relax. I’ll text the kids. We’ll order pizza. Quiet night at home with the family. Yeah?”
Quiet night at home with the family.
That could cure anything. Even help balm the hurt of losing Mr. Dennison.
I sniffled and agreed, “Yeah, Mickey, sounds good. But I’ll run Jerry’s thing.”
“Okay, Amy. Be home soon.”
He’d be home soon.
That, alone, could cure anything.
“All right, Mickey. See you.”
“Love you, darlin’.”
I smiled as a tear slid out of my eye. “Love you too.”
“Later.”
“’Bye.”
We hung up, I rounded the desk and made short work of running an additional payroll so Jerry could get his money.
Then I put the picture of me and Mr. Dennison in the frame. I took it to the shelf with the umbrella and set it up.
I took a step back and stared at it, allowing more tears to fall.
Then I swiped them away, turned and left the room knowing, as the years passed, that shelf would get filled with frames.
I’d only ever have one umbrella. I’d eventually have masses of frames.
But I’d have thousands of memories.
* * * * *
I was cleaning the house when I saw it.
The weekend before, after Mickey closed on his house, he and his kids had moved in.
Although it was bittersweet, the Donovans saying good-bye to their home, it was not traumatic.
Then again, for months, they’d had two homes and a big family so they were used to me, my kids and our space.
Ash and Cillian had elected to keep the bedroom furniture I had in the guestrooms, Cillian doing this stating an excited, “I feel like a lumberjack in that bed! Totally cool. And I’m so lumberjacking when I’m not going Mach three.”