* * *
“I like your brother,” Keely said as Mary Margaret slept in her infant seat and she and Jack finished up the leftover beef stew. She made great stew and knew it but had never quite mastered how not to make enough to feed a small army.
“Uuummmpf, “ Jack answered, taking another bite of buttered bread.
Keely tried to decide if this was an improvement over the dead silence that had fallen right after Jack had introduced Tim to her, then grabbed his bag from his brother, turned on his heel, and left them standing there.
It was now five o’clock and this was the first she’d seen him since then, and considering the way he was making sure his mouth stayed full of food, clearly he still wasn’t ready to talk.
So okay. So she’d talk for him.
“Yes, I really like him. We had an early lunch together, you know, before he had to leave for Philly. That’s why I served dinner early, because I had an early lunch.” She mentally kicked herself, ordered herself to stop blabbering. “He told me all about Cecily and her brother, Joey, and even a few stories about the two of you when you were kids.”
Jack took another bite of stew. If he kept his head bent any closer to the plate in his effort to avoid her eyes, he could just dive in and forget about having to use a fork.
“So then he asked if I liked kinky sex, and I said, sure, love it... so I’ve asked Petra to baby-sit and I’m driving down to Philly tonight, to meet him after the game.”
Beef stew, Keely learned as she wiped down the fruit centerpiece, the glass tabletop, and a small bit of wall, had remarkable sticking tendencies once propelled, spit actually, by a man who then glared at her as he choked, coughed, then slammed down his fork and stomped out of the kitchen.
Well, what was a girl supposed to do? Tiptoe around, keep her mouth shut, pretend she didn’t know that Jack Trehan had probably just lived through one of the most miserable days of his life? Some other girl, maybe. But not her.
She’d come back to the house after lunch with Tim, hoping to see Jack’s car down at the garages, but he hadn’t come home.
She’d walked around the house with Petra, delighting in the new furniture, adjusting a lamp shade or two, planning where she’d like to see an arrangement of pictures, thought about the placement of a mirror, mentally hired painters.
She’d let Petra put Mary Margaret down for her nap and finished picking out drapes and blinds and the necessary hardware, then faxed a “rush” order to her supplier via her laptop computer.
And she’d looked out the window. A lot. But Jack hadn’t come home.
By three-thirty, she’d settled herself on the new couch in the den and begun sorting through the VCR tapes that had been piled beside Jack’s chair, a chair that was now mercifully banished to the garages.
The tapes had all been neatly hand-labeled, and she’d inserted one into the VCR. The label said WORLD SERIES. GAME SIX.
She’d fast-forwarded through most of it, always watching for moments Jack appeared on the tape. He had been on the mound that day, and he’d gone six and two—thirds innings, then left with the score five-to-two, in favor of the Yankees. “As the crowd gives Trehan a standing ovation,” the commentator said, “we remind you that this may be the last time any of us sees the great right-handed ace in a Yankee uniform. Jack Trehan undergoes a second rotator-cuff surgery next week.”
“Yes, Bill, that’s right,” another commentator said as Keely watched Jack come back out of the dugout, tip his hat to the cheering hometown crowd, “and that reminds me of something Don Drysdale, another great, said years ago. I’ve got it right here. Drysdale said, ‘A torn rotator cuff is a cancer for a pitcher, and if a pitcher gets a badly torn one, he has to face the facts, it’s all over baby.’ For Jack Trehan’s sake, let’s hope it’s not all over baby.”
Keely had cried then, watching Jack as he took that bow, more serious than smiling, watching as he disappeared down the dugout steps one last time.
She’d ejected the tape and done her best to ignore the one-labeled ESPN, FAREWELL NEWS CONFERENCE as she stacked all of the tapes inside the new end table.
Jack must have spent the time since his retirement sitting in this den, watching those same tapes, over and over again. Why didn’t he just poke a sharp stick in his eye? It couldn’t hurt any worse than that.
Keely wrung out the cloth one last time, then hung it over the built-in rack beneath the sink.
Why wouldn’t she let him alone? He deserved time to mourn his lost career, didn’t he? She’d spent the first week back under Aunt Mary’s roof sitting around in her rattiest pajamas, eating butter brickle ice cream from the container and feeling grease collect in her hair. Everybody deserved time to mourn a lost dream.
The thing was, she’d still be sitting on her Aunt Mary’s couch if she’d been left alone, if Aunt Mary hadn’t told her that she had two choices—shape up or ship out—because as of Monday morning, she was charging her niece rent.
Nobody was telling Jack Trehan anything. He had enough money to sit on his duff for the rest of his life, replaying the VCR tapes, holding his own pity party. Not that this was her problem. She had a house to decorate, a career in Manhattan to resurrect. But Mary Margaret deserved more. Japan might be out of the picture now, but Jack still had to figure out that he was in charge of his cousin’s welfare.
Certainly not Cecily, not after she’d heard about Jack’s flaky, irresponsible cousin from Tim. And definitely not Joey Morretti, who had to have all the brainpower of a doorstop. It didn’t matter if Cecily finally came home; she couldn’t be allowed to regain custody of Mary Margaret, control over Mary Margaret’s future.
Keely saw that. Now she had to make Jack see it... and all while making sure she did not let her heart become involved, not with Mary Margaret and most definitely not with Jack.