I said, “and June Mahoney is going to drag you to the top of Bent Rock and pitch you into the lake. There’s no way she’ll let this happen.”
“It’s already happened. I mean, we haven’t moved in together yet, obviously, but there has been all sorts of fornication. Trust me, that ship has sailed.”
“Jeeeezus,” Harlan muttered.
“I think it’s cute,” Chloe stated. “And Susie Mahoney is my best friend, so now it’s like we’re all practically related.”
It wasn’t cute. It was all kinds of gross and disastrous. The first real scandal of my new administration. August Mahoney was a good ten years younger than my grandmother and covered in such quasi-pornographic tattoos from his days in the marines that his sisters forbade him to ever go anywhere shirtless. “Have you seen the tattoos?” I had to ask.
Gigi’s coy smirk spoke volumes, leaving no doubt that some of that fornicating was being performed in full light. “His tattoos aren’t so bad. He had a few of them altered, you know—had little bras and panties added to all the naked ones.”
Emily’s stare in my direction was equal parts horror and humor. She was looking at me as if I should be doing something about this, but what?
“Mother, you cannot move in with Gus Mahoney,” Harlan said. “You just . . . can’t.”
“Why?”
His face flushed, and I could see perspiration beading on his forehead. My father was not easily flustered. In fact, I’m not sure I’d ever seen him lose his cool. He was more of the silent, brooding type, but not today. He looked ready to pop a cork.
“You just can’t,” he ground out. “People will talk.”
“Good. Let them. We haven’t had a good old-fashioned scandal around here in ages.”
“But I’m the mayor now, Gigi,” I reminded her. “What you do affects the whole family.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that, Brooke. Every single person on that city council has a skeleton or two in their closet, and so do most of the people who live here. And you know what they say about throwing glasses at stone houses, or however that saying goes. Gus and I are two consenting adults, and what we do is our own business, and if I want to live with him, I’m going to live with him. Now, who wants some pot roast?” She stood up and walked into the house, slamming the screen door in her wake.
I looked around at the collection of expressions on my family’s faces, and no one said a word until finally Ryan stood up.
“I’m starving. Maybe during dinner, we could talk about something more pleasant. Less traumatic? Like world hunger, or Vera VonMeisterburger, or how poor old Bridget O’Malley sat dead for hours in a roomful of quilters?”
Chapter 6
Saint Bartholomew’s Catholic Church was filled to the sills of the stained-glass windows with mourners who’d come to pay their final respects to Bridget O’Malley. Surveying the funeral crowd, I couldn’t think of anyone from the island who wasn’t in attendance. Gigi, my father, and I were sitting in the fifth row, on the right, just as we did every Sunday. Catholics are all about routine, you know. Woe to the unsuspecting visiting Protestant who might sit in the wrong pew. It threw off the entire hierarchy. Emily, Chloe, and Ryan were sitting in front of us, and over to the left, I spotted Gloria Persimmons. At thirty-one years old, she was typically a study in tie-dye, neon, and sparkly accessories, but today she wore a very subdued black dress, although it was adorned with pink dots that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be little iguanas. Her mammoth boyfriend, Tiny Kloosterman, sat patiently beside her as she dabbed at her nose with a tissue. Tiny was the foreman of my sister’s construction crew, and the quintessential version of a menacing-looking guy who was actually an overstuffed teddy bear.
At the organ, Delores Crenshaw’s nine-year-old great-granddaughter was hammering out a medley of Bridget’s favorite tunes with far more gusto than talent. Because nothing says welcome to the afterlife like hearing “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover” banged out by a nearsighted third grader. The sounds reverberated around the lousy acoustics of the historic church until even the statue of the Virgin Mary started looking impatient and uncomfortable.
At last Father O’Reilly took his place near the altar and offered up some prayers and a wonderfully brief but heartfelt speech about a life well lived. He gamely glossed over some of Bridget’s less-than-stellar qualities. Like that thing