next meal was coming from. And I liked the idea of being able to stay in one place for a while.”
“It’s not being weak wanting to provide a better life for your child. Maybe you need to talk it out with Aiden. Tell him what you just told me. Let him know how he made you feel. Let him know that if you come back, it can’t be like it was, with him letting his sister or anyone else treat you like that.”
“Won’t he fire me for being too demanding?”
“He needs you more than you need him,” Harriet told her.
“That’s not true,” Carla protested. “He has everything.”
“He has everything material. The only reason his sister could influence him like she did was because he’s lonely or emotionally fragile or something. He’s suffered a lot of loss this last year.”
“Including you?” Carla asked softly.
“That was his doing. I guess I’m in the same spot you are. Michelle has been our only real problem. I just worry that, if he ditched me so easily when his sister went off the rails, what else might do it?”
“Maybe he’s right. If either of us had a sister, maybe we’d understand why he’ll move heaven and earth to help her. Maybe she is a one-off, and nothing else would cause him to treat us so badly,” Carla said.
“Or maybe we’re being the perfect victims.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“I guess I’m not the right person to ask.”
“It helped to talk about it—thanks for listening. I guess I better go.”
“Let me know how it goes,” Harriet said and rang off.
“Come on, boys,” she said to her furry bed buddies. “We need to get you fed, and I need to get cleaned up before our breakfast date gets here.”
Scooter jumped off the bed and started dancing around her feet. Fred swatted at the excited dog then ran down the stairs.
True to his word, Colm Byrne was on her doorstep at three minutes after eight. She had just come downstairs, tucking her cell phone into the sling the doctor had insisted she wear when she was up and about. As far as she could tell, that was the only thing the sling was useful for.
“Hi,” she said as she opened the door. “Come on in.”
“Where can I put this?” he said and held out a white cardboard baker’s box balanced on his right hand; his guitar case he held by its handle in his left.
“Follow me.” She led him into the kitchen, where he set the guitar down. He opened the box, revealing four individual-sized pies. Two were quiche of some sort, and two looked like miniature fruit pies.
“Cook said if we ate our eggs, we could have our fruit pies. And her pies are to die for.”
“They look great and smell even better,” Harriet agreed.
She pulled two plates one-handed from her cupboard and gathered silverware and napkins.
“I hope you don’t mind eating in the kitchen,” she said.
“I prefer the kitchen. My dear mother always fed us kids in the kitchen. It makes me feel a little like I’m home.” He rolled up the cuffs of his white button-down shirt before reaching into the box to lift out the quiches and place one on each plate. Harriet noticed the edge of a tattoo on his arm.
“Is that a tattoo?” she asked. “Can I see it?”
He pulled his shirtsleeve up, revealing a familiar stylized peace sign.
“Do you like it?” he asked, rubbing his hand over it.
“I like the colors,” Harriet said, trying to think of something positive to say about the tattoo.
“This was the first one I got,” he said with a rueful smile. “My friends and I all got the same tattoo when we were eighteen years old. I was the youngest in the group, and the day after I passed my eighteenth birthday, we all went and got matching ink. My mother almost had a stroke.” He smiled. “It was my first big rebellion.”
“The first of many, I take it?” She smiled back.
“Do you have any?” he asked. “Tattoos, that is. I can see you’re a rebel at heart.”
“No, my parents would have killed me. I definitely was a rebel, but I never really had the urge to be marked in such a permanent way.”
“We considered it a rite of passage.”
“Was that peace symbol a common image when you got it?” she asked.
“There were plenty of people with peace signs, but we had the artist modify ours so it would be unique.”
Harriet knew she’d seen it