“I guess that’s some sort of qualification.”
A silence fell between them, a rook sounding an alarm from the copper beech near the front porch. The priest bore some resemblance to the tree in the uprightness of his carriage, the thin rigidity of his limbs, the creases on his forehead and bracketing his mouth. It seemed to Kate as if both of them, tree and man, towered over her, magnificent, glowering, immovable. She couldn’t bear the scrutiny any longer. His coldness stunned her. She didn’t understand what she’d done to make him so mistrustful. He didn’t even know her, and he’d already passed judgment. “Well, it was nice to meet you,” she said finally. “I’d best be getting back. To Bernie’s. She’s expecting me—”
“Yes, of course.” He picked up the paper, knocked it against the palm of his hand, once, twice. “I heard she’d taken in a boarder.”
Nothing, those gray eyes seemed to say, as he gave her a long look, escaped his notice. Nothing at all.
Chapter 8
A Cup of Tea & Jealousy
Aileen always went round to Bernie’s for tea on Mondays at 2:00 p.m. Ginger biscuits or shortbread (sometimes both) served on the Carlton Ware plates Bernie found at a secondhand shop in Galway. Aileen had been there when she bought them last year. The Mikado pattern in cobalt blue. Gorgeous, they were. Orange pekoe brewing, scenting the room, the conversation flowing. She and Bernie never ran out of things to say.
Remember the time we tried to build a raft and it sank in the bay and we screamed for help, thinking we were drowning, but Richie Greene saved us—and then we realized it was only knee-deep? Knee-deep!
I thought I’d die of embarrassment.
Richie Greene always had a thing for you, Ailey.
Oh, well, that was over and done a long time ago.
If you say so—
Remember when you put a mud sandwich in your brother’s lunch, Ailey, and he bit into it, thinking it was chocolate?
I should have put a worm in it too. Would have served him right. He was a bastard back then.
Remember when we ran naked down the lane in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep?
And we jumped into the hedge, because Mrs. Mullen opened her door, thinking she heard a prowler.
I thought I’d never get the thorns out of my backside.
Remember when—
They had their own special history, knew each other better than anyone in the world, better than their families, even, because when it came to families, there were roles to play and expectations and arguments. Bernie didn’t have siblings, only a mother and father who doted on her, the longed-for child, until the day they died. Aileen’s childhood had been more fractious. Once her brother shoved her against the wall in a fight over the radio—he wanted to listen to the football match, she to music. Her mother didn’t come out of her room, let the battle rage, numb to everything in the dark silence of that curtained space. It had been her older sister who pushed them apart: “What are you on about now?” A bruise had already been forming on Aileen’s back. She cried, and not for show. He’d scared the life out of her; he’d grown that summer and they’d both forgotten what a difference that made, the advantage it gave him. Her sister thought they might have to take Aileen to the hospital. “And how will we explain that? How?” her sister asked him. “She spat in my face,” he said. “Right in my face.” And Aileen had. But she never said so.
She and her brother got on well enough now, well enough to see each other for the occasional major holiday. She and Moira were the only ones left in Glenmara. Moira. Well, Moira was another story. Moira, who resented her and loved her all at once.
It was easier with Bernie, a lifelong friend who accepted Aileen as she was, who laughed at her jokes and sympathized with her problems, large and small. Aileen could be herself with Bernie, her other self, the self that wasn’t a mother or a wife, just Aileen, Ailey, a girl once more, Bernie the link to her past. Aileen depended on those Mondays, on Bernie.
She noticed the table was set for two, not three. “Has she gone then?”
“Kate? No. She’s delivering the paper.”
“If I’d known you’d needed help—” Aileen sometimes pitched in with the deliveries. She couldn’t believe Bernie hadn’t asked her first. She knew the routes, the customers.
Bernie poured the tea. “I