A Gift for All Seasons

He pulled into the driveway of his parents’ compact, two-story house in St. Mary’s. In her usual cold-weather attire of leggings, fisherman’s sweater and fleece booties, a grinning Kate O’Hearn Shaughnessy greeted them at the front door, hauling her granddaughter into her thin arms. If you looked past the silver striping Ma’s bangs and ponytail, the fine lines fanning out from her bright blue eyes, you could still see the little black-haired firecracker who’d rendered Joseph Shaughnessy mute the first time he laid eyes on her at some distant cousin’s wedding forty years before. What his mother lacked in size, she more than made up for in spunk. And a death-ray glare known to bring grown men to tears.

“Go see Poppa,” she said, bussing Lili’s curls before setting her on her feet. “He’s in the kitchen.” Then she lifted that same no-nonsense gaze to Patrick he’d seen when he’d come out of his medically induced coma at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. If there’d been fear or worry, he imagined they’d been kicked to the curb before he’d even been airlifted from Landstuhl. “I made vegetable soup, you want some?”

“Sure.”

Feeling like a burrowing gopher, Patrick followed her down the narrow, carpeted hall to the kitchen, careful not to let his wide shoulders unseat four decades’ worth of baby pictures, school photos and wedding portraits plastering the beige walls. Like most of the houses in St. Mary’s Cove proper, the house had been built in a time when people were smaller and needs simpler. That his parents had raised seven kids in the tiny foursquare was amazing in itself; that they’d never seen the need to upgrade to something bigger and better was a living testament to the “be content with what you have” philosophy they’d crammed down their kids’ throats right along with that homemade vegetable soup.

Not that flat-screen TVs, cell phones and state-of-the-art laptops weren’t in the mix with seventies furnishings and his grandmother’s crocheted afghans. His parents weren’t Luddites. But their penchant for shoehorning the new into the old had, over the years, shaped the little house into a vibrant, random collage of their lives.

This was also the home, the life, he’d returned to in order to heal, the safety and stability it represented restoring his battered psyche far more than the damn lotion he applied every single day to keep his skin supple.

Joe Shaughnessy glanced through dark-framed glasses perched on his hawkish nose, still-muscled shoulders bulging underneath plaid flannel. Like Ma, there was no sympathy in his eyes, ever. Or in his voice. At least, not now. But his brothers had told Patrick how, when Pop heard, he’d gone out into the postage stamp of a yard behind the house and bawled like a baby.

And for damn sure he’d hang them all by their gonads if he knew they’d ratted on him.

Already seated on the booster seat that had been a permanent fixture for years, Lilianna slurped her soup, dimpled fingers curled around her spoon. For her grandmother, she’d eat vegetable soup. For him, no way.

Patrick released a tense breath, then plopped beside her at the scarred wood table that had seen many an elbow fight over the years. Sunlight flooded the spotless room, gilding maple cabinets scrubbed so many times the original finish was but a memory, flashing off the same dented, decaled canister set that’d been there forever. Even the minimal updates they’d done ten or so years before—changing out the laminate counters, the cracked linoleum floors—had somehow left the comfortable shabbiness undisturbed.

Patrick pulled April’s card from his shirt pocket, handed it to his father. “Got a lead on a job.”

“Yeah?” Joe telescoped the card until it came into focus. Time for new glasses, apparently. “Where?”

“The old Rinehart place.”

His father’s eyes cut to his. “Somebody bought it?”

“One of her granddaughters decided to turn it back into an inn. Sam hooked us up.”

His forehead knotted, Pop returned the card, broke off a piece of homemade bread and sopped up the broth left in the bottom of his bowl. “Last I heard, Amelia Rinehart had let the place go to rack and ruin. I’m surprised the girls didn’t just unload it—”

“We had our wedding reception there, you know,” his mother put in, setting a bowl of soup and two thick slices of bread in front of Patrick, then sitting at right angles to him. “Back in its heyday.”

“Not to mention ours,” Pop added with a chuckle.

Patrick frowned. “You did?”

Ma swatted at him with a crumpled napkin. “Go look at the wedding pictures on your way out, that’s the Rinehart. Or was. It’d been in Amelia’s husband’s family for years, they turned it into an inn right after the war. Was quite the destination in these parts for some time. But after he died, she stopped taking in guests. Except for her three granddaughters, every summer—”

“May I be s’cused?”

Ma leaned over to wipe Lili’s soup-smeared face, then shooed her off. Only after they heard the clatter of toys being dumped out of the plastic bin in the living room did his mother say, “Old gal was a strange bird, no other way to put it. Rumor had it she rarely talked to her three daughters, even the one who stayed here in St. Mary’s. But she loved her granddaughters. In her own way, at least.” She leaned back, the space between her graying brows creased. More toys crashed. “You went to school with one of them, didn’t you?”

“Melanie, yeah,” Patrick said, spooning in a bite that was more potatoes and carrots than broth. “For a while. But she and her mother moved away before she graduated.”

“That’s right, they did—”

“You really think the gal’s serious?” his father wedged in, clearly done with the small talk.

“Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Because she’ll probably go bankrupt in the process?”

“I’m guessing that’s not an issue,” Patrick said, which got a brow lift from his father. “She more or less indicated that money’s no object. In any case, you got some time later this week?”

“Me? What do you need me for?”

Patrick had learned a lot since coming on board almost a year before, but he was still a rookie. And it was his dad’s business. “It’s looking to be a big job. I can design it, sure, but you’re the expert at discussing time frames and giving estimates. Besides, people trust you—”

“That’s a load of bull and you know it.”

“About people trusting you?”

His father gave him a hard look. “No.”

“Only trying to keep you in the loop,” Patrick said, focusing again on his lunch.

“That’s what cell phones are for—”

“I remember those girls as all being such pretty little things,” his mother said, rising to clear Lilianna’s bowl and cup. “The one who’s sticking around—she grow up okay?”

“For God’s sake, Kate,” his dad said with a heavy sigh.

“What? I’m just making conversation, honestly! And you’re the one pushing the boy to handle this on his own!”

Shoveling in another bite, Patrick let them bicker. Really, God love them for encouraging him to put himself back out there, to find a girl smart enough to appreciate him for who he was, for their refusal to accept his appearance as an impediment to that goal. Too bad he had no intention of following their well-intentioned advice. He’d taken enough risks—and suffered the consequences—for a lifetime, thank you. But it wasn’t until he’d stopped fighting so hard to prove to himself, and everyone else, that nothing had changed that he’d finally learned to accept that everything had.

And with that acceptance came a kind of peace, one that had barely begun to release him from the guilt and the self-pity, the nightmares he’d thought would choke him for the rest of his life. That first morning he’d awakened and realized he’d slept through the night he’d wept with gratitude. So for damn sure he’d hang on to that peace with everything he had in him. Not only for his sake, but for his daughter’s, who deserved at least one coping parent.

One with both feet firmly planted in what was, not what should have been.

Or might be—

Patrick’s cell rang. He dug it out of his shirt pocket, only to frown at the unfamiliar number before bringing the phone to his ear. “Patrick Shaughnessy—”

“Mr. Shaughnessy, it’s April Ross.”

His stomach jumped; there was more Southern in her voice than he remembered, something sweet and smoky that tried its damnedest to get inside him.

And letting his parents listen in to the conversation was not happening. He pushed away from the table to stalk out of the kitchen and down the hall.

“Ms. Ross. What can I do for you?”

“Would tomorrow morning work for you to come out? It occurred to me, what with it already being the end of October, we should probably get going as soon as possible. Don’t you agree?”

This said as though her bolting like a scared rabbit had never happened. Interesting.

“Tomorrow would be fine. Around nine?”