LITMIR.BIZ

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estate sale in Lenox, along with an antique dressing table, bureau, and wardrobe.

      The first thing she did after Pat left was strip off all the old striped wallpaper, rip up the carpeting, and get rid of the bedroom suite they had bought with their wedding money.

      She gave that to Sharon, who was thrilled with all those polished cherry Ethan Allen pieces.

      Of course, they didn’t fit in the small rectangular bedroom of her ranch house, so she put the armoire in the living room to hold her television and all those Hummel figurines she collected, and used one of the nightstands as an end table. Fiona privately thought it looked out of place beneath a stack of paperback romance novels and a ten-dollar Wal-Mart lamp, positioned beside the sagging orange and brown plaid couch.

      When Sharon moved in with her daughter last month, she offered the furniture back to Fiona, who told her to go ahead and sell it at her tag sale. In the end, Sharon reported, it was hauled away by a young family in a battered pickup truck, who had paid for it mainly in ones and fives.

      Fiona found some satisfaction in knowing that those people, who could never afford new furniture, were enjoying her luxurious bedroom suite.

      She found much more satisfaction in mentioning that to Patrick and watching him turn purple with fury.

      “There was nothing in the divorce agreement that specified what I had to do with the furniture I got in the settlement,” she pointed out. “If you thought there should have been, you should have spoken up to your attorney. Oh, wait, I forgot…Legal issues aren’t exactly your strong suit.”

      That, of course, alluded to the fact that he flunked out of law school not long after they were married. She had no idea he was even struggling, though she should probably have guessed.

      When he came home and told her, she walked right out the door, with no intention of ever going back.

      Fate intervened by way of a positive pregnancy test.

      Oh, well. At least she wasn’t stuck with Patrick Hagan forever.

      She divorced him the moment her business was comfortably established, and immediately reclaimed her maiden name.

      It isn’t that she’s particularly eager to be associated with her estranged parents in any way, but it was better than keeping Hagan. Besides, she likes the alliteration. Fiona Fitzgerald Public Relations…It really flows quite nicely.

      Things have a way of falling into place.

      These days, Pat takes Ashley to dinner at least once a week and she spends every other weekend with him, from after school on Friday afternoons until eleven on Sunday mornings. Fiona insisted he have her back that early so that she can take Ashley to noon mass with her. Pat was raised Catholic, too, but he hasn’t gone to church in years.

      Fiona stopped going, too, for awhile, after they got married. She stayed away from the church until—

      She stops the jarring wisp of thought before it can balloon into a full-fledged recollection.

      No, she doesn’t like to think about that.

      The sins of the past belong in the past. You can’t change them.

      All you can do is go to mass every Sunday, and pray for forgiveness.

      She still attends Saint Vincent’s Church, the parish where she and Deirdre made their First Communions. But she diligently avoids the ten o’clock mass her parents have attended for thirty-some years. She doesn’t like to see them unless absolutely necessary; nor does she want Ashley to spend time with them, knowing they’re apt to fill her ears with self-righteous garbage—most likely about the sins of her mother and aunt.

      Back in her college days, Fee all but wrote off her parents when they disowned her twin sister.

      She softened a bit after Ashley was born, though—in part because she was desperately lonely, but mostly because she needed someone to watch Ashley so she could begin working as a freelance PR consultant for a small local agency. She and Pat couldn’t afford childcare and her mother was willing to acquiesce, free of charge.

      That worked out for awhile. Then Fiona got divorced—in her parents’ eyes, a crime as serious as Deirdre’s homosexuality—and it was all over. Just as well. She certainly doesn’t need anyone looking over her shoulder these days.

      Hearing a car’s tires crunching on the gravel driveway below her bedroom window, Fiona quickly pulls on a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt from the hook behind the closet door. She hurries down the stairs just as Ashley, giggling about something her father is saying, is opening the door.

      With her dark hair and eyes, porcelain skin, and lanky figure, Fiona’s daughter looks so much like her father. Acts like him, too, with her increasingly lackadaisical attitude. Sometimes, Fiona just can’t relate to her daughter—and sometimes, she secretly, ashamedly, even resents her.

      “Hi, Mom! Guess what? We went to Applebee’s! I love Applebee’s! So does Dad!”

      Fiona hates Applebee’s.

      “That’s great, Ash.” She musters a thin smile for her daughter, conscious of Pat looming on the other side of the threshold. He hasn’t been invited to cross it since the divorce.

      Fiona flicks a lighter over a cigarette—both because she wants one and because Pat is a militant antismoker. She turns her head to blow a stream of smoke well away from her daughter’s face and asks, “Listen, did you feed your goldfish this morning?”

      “I forgot.”

      “Again?” Fiona’s jaw tightens. She’s so much like her father. “You really need to learn how to be more responsible. Can you please go down and feed it?”

      “Right this second?”

      “Right this second.”

      “Okay.”

      Ashley won the goldfish at a carnival Pat took her to last spring. She brought it home, sickly looking, in a plastic sandwich baggy, and informed Fiona that she had already named it Bubbles La Rue.

      She then begged to keep it here, rather than at Pat’s place, saying her father might forget to feed it. Fiona agreed, on the condition that she keep the bowl in the basement playroom, and secretly assuming the fish would last all of a day or two. A week at most.

      Somehow, like a philodendron that mysteriously thrives without regular watering, the stubborn creature has hung in there ever since, despite Ashley’s sporadic care.

      “See you tomorrow morning, Daddy.” Ashley stretches on her tiptoes to kiss her father.

      “See you tomorrow morning, Princess.”

      Only when Ashley is skipping away does Fiona look at Pat. He’s already turned on his heel, about to leave.

      “Wait a second.” She doesn’t say his name. She hasn’t, in conversation, since their marriage ended. There’s something too intimate, too cordial, about addressing someone by name.

      He turns back. “Yeah?” He casts a disdainful look at the lit cigarette in her hand.

      “Cynthia Reynolds called right after I got home about fifteen minutes ago.”

      Pat waits silently for her to go on, standing on the brick doorstep, his black eyes expressionless and fixed on hers. Clearly, he knows who Cynthia Reynolds is.

      Fiona didn’t, when she called. Not right away. It took her a moment to realize that she’s the mother of one of Ashley’s friends.

      For some reason, it bothers her that Pat knows that detail. Then again, he has plenty of time and attention for Ashley and her friends and their parents. What else does he have to do?

      “She’s taking Meg to the mall tomorrow for lunch at the new Rainforest Cafe,” Fiona tells him in the brisk tone she uses with Emily at work, “then to see some new Disney movie. She invited Ashley to join them.”

      In

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