Keeping Faith

“I’ll take care of it.” Margaret removed plastic-wrapped chicken from the fridge and carried it to the stove. “Rose said she had indigestion all night after that last thing you made.”

“Tuna casserole?” Hannah looked at her mother. “How could she get indigestion from that? I used the same recipe you always use.”

Margaret grinned. “Well, doll-baby, no one ever accused you of being Julia Child. Faith made me promise that I’d never get old because she didn’t know who would make the kind of food she likes.”

“Little brat.” Hannah shook her head. “I tried really hard with those potato skins she wanted.”

“I know.” Margaret’s smile turned conspiratorial. The chicken breasts flattened out on a cutting board, she began slicing them into strips. “Don’t worry, Hanny, you have plenty of other talents, my love.”

Feeling disgruntled now, Hannah resisted the urge to ask Margaret to name the other talents. She knew Margaret would list qualities like sweet and generous, which had never struck Hannah as much to crow about. They certainly hadn’t been enough to keep Liam interested. Margaret was back on Deb again.

“…and she just didn’t sound happy about Dennis, so all I said was I’d like to see her married and she immediately flew off the handle and went on and on about how she’ll get married when she’s ready and she’s not about to do something stupid like…well, you know what I’m saying.”

“Yeah.” Hannah put her teabag in a cup of water, put it in the microwave and stood passively, watching the seconds count down. She knew only too well. Something stupid like Hannah did when she ran off with Liam Tully, then compounded the foolishness by marrying him in a Las Vegas chapel, only to return home three months pregnant and on her own.

Debra could run off with an Elvis impersonator and set up housekeeping in a Ralph’s supermarket parking lot and no one would be surprised. But not levelheaded, dependable Hannah. If she spent the rest of her life in chaste contemplation, she would never live down what the family referred to as her Liam Lapse. Her father’s death from a heart attack had been blamed on it and Margaret, who had never previously touched alcohol, dated the start of her evening consumption of wine to that time. “We all suffered,” her aunt Helen frequently reminded her.

“Just talk to Deb, will you?” Margaret asked. “At least she won’t yell at you.”

Hannah took her tea from the microwave. The temptation to remind Margaret that it was up to her to work out her problems with Deb blazed briefly, then died. Even feeling as she did right now, kind of let down and confused about Liam coming back, her inclination was not to cause an argument. Ms. Congeniality, Deb called her. The downside was that Hannah often did things she didn’t really want to do. Like last Saturday, when she’d gone with her aunt Rose to the World’s Largest Singles Mixer because Rose hadn’t wanted to attend alone.

God, what a nightmare that had been. A guy with a toupee that looked exactly like a small furry animal napping across his scalp had refused to believe Hannah didn’t want to dance with him. She’d stood her ground, though, and eventually he and his furry friend had disappeared into the crowd. It wasn’t quite so easy to say no to her mother.

“I’ll talk to Deb,” she said. “This time. After that, you’re on your own.”

Lately, Hannah reflected, it seemed as if she and her mother had reversed roles. As a kid, Hannah had needed constant reassurance from Margaret that one day boys would pay attention to her, that the pimples would go away and that, as unlikely as it had seemed at the time, she would actually get breasts. Now she was constantly doling out reassurances to Margaret and monitoring her mother’s wine consumption much as Margaret had once sniffed for signs of teenage drinking. She hoped to God that by the time Faith needed monitoring and reassurance, Margaret would need less.

She decided not to say anything about Liam.

AFTER THE GIG, Liam shoved the sweaty clothes and boots he’d worn during the performance into a duffel bag and joined the other musicians making their way to the bus. The equipment had been packed up and stowed while he and a few of the others had gone next door for a couple of pints. The mike stands, lights and speakers. The guitars and drums, the audio effects and mixing console, T-shirts and merchandise. Packed up, stowed away, ready to start all over again.

In the bus, he sat up front for a while chatting with some of the others, then made his way down the aisle to the lounge in the middle. Yawning, he stretched out on one of the couches, hands pillowed behind his head. As buses went, this one was pretty plush. Microwave cookers and hi-fi. Mood lighting and couches. A far cry from the VW van they’d use in the band’s early days. That one had been reliable only for breaking down at least once a day.

But now they were touring internationally. The Wild Rovers, all eight of them. No chartered jets yet, but this wasn’t bad. Three days out and, as always, he felt the rhythm beginning to develop. Another day, another town. Pile off the bus, pile onto the bus. Stopping sometimes in the wee hours to traipse into an all-night place in the middle of nowhere for hamburgers and chips. Blinking in the fluorescent lights, bleary-eyed and half-asleep. Then back on the bus, collapsing into the bunk to fall asleep, rocked by the motion of the road. Waking to blinding sunlight creeping in around the black window shades. On the bus, off the bus. Set it up, tear it down. Different day, different town. He loved it. If there was a better way to live, he didn’t know about it.

Someone pushed his feet off the seat, and he looked up to see Brid Kelly, long red hair streaming down her back and skin so white that in the murky light of the bus she looked luminous. She had on jeans and a thin sleeveless top. If there’d been enough light, he knew he’d be able make out the outline of every bone in her rib cage. Brid could be a poster child for famine relief. He worried about her and not just—as she sometimes claimed—because he’d never find another singer who understood his music the way she did.

She was holding a large plastic bowl and a beer, which she held out to him.

“Thanks.”

She smiled and dropped down beside him. “How you doing, Liam?”

“All right.” He sat up and eyed the bowl. “Is that cabbage salad you’re eating again?”

“It is.” She waved the plastic fork. “D’you want some?”

He drank some beer. “Have you eaten anything but cabbage salad in the last three days?”

“I have.” She grinned. “Yesterday, I ate a carrot and three radishes.”

He shook his head. She’d nearly collapsed after yesterday’s show and he hadn’t bought her excuse that it was the heat. “You’re a skeleton, already, for God’s sake. You’ll make yourself ill, the way you’re going.”

“Ah, come on.” With a wave of her hand, she dismissed his concerns. “I’ll be fine. Nice and slim for when I walk down the aisle with Tommy Doherty.”

“Tommy Doherty.” Liam swung his feet back up on the couch and over her lap. “You’ve been talking about walking down the aisle with Tommy Doherty ever since I’ve known you.”

“This time I mean it. I’ve had it with all this.” She dug her fork into the cabbage. “I’m ready to start making babies.”

“Another thing I’ve heard at least a hundred times.”

“Right, well, it’s time now.”

“I won’t hold my breath.”

“You’ll see, Liam. I’ve had enough of it. On the road for weeks at a time. What kind of life is it anyway? Always away from your friends and family.”

He didn’t answer. He’d heard her sing the same song so many times he could recite it by heart. She’d get back to Ireland and insist she was through. They’d have to find a new singer. But then plans for the next tour would get underway, and he’d see her wavering. The truth was, the music was as much a part of her life as it was Liam’s. She was every bit as addicted to the life.

“What about you then, Liam? You never feel like putting down roots somewhere? You don’t miss being close to someone?”

With an elbow on the windowsill, he watched the road. “If I do,” he said, “I take a couple of aspirin until the feeling goes away.”

Brid pushed his leg and he turned to smile at her, then went back to watching the white lines flash past. Only one time had he ever considered packing it all in. About six years ago now. A marriage, brief as a blip in time. She’d missed her family, hated the long absences and frenetic craziness of his life. Because he’d loved her, he’d seriously considered settling down. Until he’d found out what she’d done.

He’d channeled his anger into the music and the following year he made the UK charts for the first time. Betrayed. That was the name of the single. And now, in a nice bit of irony, his next gig was in her hometown, where it had all started.

CHAPTER TWO

THE DAY AFTER HANNAH read about Liam coming back, she was standing in the kitchen making a salad for dinner when her sister Debra announced that she was pregnant.

“Don’t tell Mom,” Deb said. “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do about it.”

“You’re kidding.” Hannah dropped into the chair opposite her sister.

“Well, God, you don’t have to say it like that. It was okay for you to get pregnant but no one else can?”

Hannah held up her hand. She wasn’t in the mood for Debra. “If you want to talk,” she said, “we’ll talk. Otherwise, you can take your damn attitude and leave.”

“Zowee.” Debra’s eyes widened. “Chill out, Hannah. What are you so steamed up about anyway?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on.” Debra peered at her. “It’s something. You had a fight with Allan? You had a fight with Mom? You got fired?”

“For God’s sake, Deb.” She got up from the table, filled a glass with water from the fridge dispenser and sat down again. “Tell me what’s going on with you.”

“I missed two periods and I threw up twice this week at work. Dennis freaked when I first told him, but once he got over the shock he thought it was kind of cool. Now he’s saying I can move in with him until the baby’s born. After that, who knows?”