Keeping Faith

“He didn’t want to be a daddy, huh?”

“Well, it wasn’t just him. He had to go back to Ireland and he expected me to go with him…. I mean, he wanted me to go, or I thought he did, but the idea of having the baby so far away from home terrified me. Plus, he didn’t really seem ready to settle down—”

“Yeah, that’s like Rocky.” Jen lit a cigarette. “I mean there’s no way he’s ready to do the family thing.”

Hannah nodded sympathetically, although she was pretty sure Jen wasn’t in any hurry to go the kids-and-suburbia route either. The difference was that Jen and Rocky were in agreement. Jen understood what Rocky wanted, recognized his limitations. With Liam, she’d always had this idea that he would magically turn into a responsible father figure. She’d wanted it so much she couldn’t see that it was clearly not what Liam had wanted.

“Everything probably turned out for the best,” she said. “Faith’s really happy and well-adjusted, and…” The lights dimmed and the crowd was looking expectantly at the stage. Her heart started banging so hard she felt dizzy.

Transfixed, she watched a slim dark-haired guy in black jeans and shirt walk slowly across the stage, his face caught in the white pool of a spotlight. Liam. Without a glance at the audience, he sat down on the stool, picked up a guitar and began to sing.

“Wow.” Jen leaned close to whisper in Hannah’s ear. “What a babe.”

SOME SHOWS WERE MAGIC, Liam knew that. The energy of the crowd, the music, voices from the audience singing along, filling the room until it literally seemed they could raise the roof. Others never really got off the ground. Something was missing. He would go through the motions, sing the songs that had always worked, but the magic wasn’t there. Before he’d finished the first set, he knew that tonight was one of those times.

“Thanks.” He smiled out at the audience, acknowledging the subdued applause. The club was smaller than most they’d played on this tour, the crowd jammed against the far wall or seated at the small tables in front. Intimate, but the lighting made it difficult to pick out faces.

“It’s good to be in California again,” he said, trying to warm them up. “You’ve some very strange weather here. That hot wind as though the devil himself is breathing down your neck. We’ve nothing like it back home. Except for my dog’s breath, that is.”

Polite laughter. He glanced over his shoulder, nodded to Brid to join him. Worrying about her wasn’t exactly helping things. Half an hour earlier she’d had another fainting spell and he’d thought they might have to cancel the show, but she’d insisted she was fine. As she came over to stand beside him, he felt the crowd respond to her as they always did. Smiling, he held out his hand to her.

“A few years back,” he told the audience, “I met a beautiful woman who completely changed my life. Brid Kelly.” This time the applause was much louder. From the back of the room, someone whistled.

And then they held hands to sing a song they’d written together. Face-to-face, bodies swaying. She had on a filmy white dress that he’d joked looked like the lace curtains in his auntie’s parlor, but it swirled around her and her red hair streamed all over her back and shoulders and she looked as if she’d just floated down from a cloud to join him.

She smiled into his eyes as they sang and he knew that at least half the audience would decide they were lovers. The press back home had come to pretty much the same conclusion, which meant that whenever he was seen with another woman, he was accused of cheating on Brid. It didn’t exactly make for long-lasting relationships. Brid found the whole thing hilarious. “You’re like my brother, for God’s sake,” she’d say. Still the stories persisted. Finally, he’d stopped trying to deny them.

They did a couple more songs together and then he brought Brid’s hand to his lips and the audience applauded enthusiastically. As they broke for intermission, he heard a crash from the side of the room and looked over to see what was going on. A woman in a hurry to leave the room had toppled one of the small tables, sending glasses crashing to the floor.

“Obviously not a fan,” he said with a grin at Brid as they left the stage.

HER HEART THUNDERING, Hannah stood in the lobby, back against the wall, waiting for Jen to come out of the rest room. All she wanted now was to get the hell out. Forget the second act. She’d seen all she needed to see.

At that moment Liam walked through the swinging doors of the bar and looked straight into her eyes. Her brain froze. Had he recognized her? His eyes flickered and widened.

“Hannah?” He shook his head slightly. “Hannah. My God, I don’t believe—”

“Hi, Liam.” Suddenly she didn’t know what to do with her hands. Liam. She was talking to Liam. Close enough to touch him. His hair was different. Shorter, trendily mussed on top. A few lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Wiry still, with the same street-smart look that used to excite her, even though she’d never seen him in as much as a scuffle. Her parents, sensing the same quality, had been less enamored of it. He wore a watch now—something he hadn’t done then—with a heavy black leather strap. Other than that, he looked pretty much as he had the night she had told him she was pregnant.

God, she couldn’t think of a thing to say. None of the dreams she’d had of what she’d do if she ever saw him again—what she’d say, how she’d look—had her just standing there, tongue-tied.

She found herself studying his mouth, something vulnerable about his upper lip that had always gotten to her; the lower lip she’d once taken in her teeth. How was she supposed to talk calmly and rationally to him? The bar was emptying, people milling around, talking in clusters. The red-haired singer and a couple of the band members drifted by, cast glances at Liam, then at her, and disappeared. Jen emerged from the washroom, started over, saw Liam and stopped. With a wave at Hannah, she made her way back through the swinging doors.

“So…” Liam nodded slightly. “It’s been…how long?”

“Six years…thereabouts.”

“I didn’t recognize you at first.” He kept watching her, as though he were cataloging the changes the years had produced. “The last time I saw you, your hair was down past your waist.”

“It’s been short for a long time now,” she said. “Easier to take care of.” He nodded again, his gaze fixed on her. Self-conscious under his scrutiny, she touched her hair, remembered how he’d always liked it long. All her old insecurities were bubbling away just below the surface. She’d been thinner then. Younger. Was he thinking that? Comparing her to the redhead? Damn it, what did it matter what he thought? Someone with a hell of a lot more going for him than Liam Tully wanted to marry her. That said something, didn’t it?

“So why are you here?” Thumbs hooked into the pockets of his jeans, he rocked slightly on his feet. “You’ve developed a taste for Irish music you didn’t have a few years back? Is that it?”

“I’ve always liked Irish music, Liam.” Her face went warm. “That wasn’t one of our problems.”

“Right.” His mouth hardened, then he glanced over his shoulder at the double doors to the bar. “Well, I hear the band starting up again. I’d better get back. Good to see you again.”

Stunned, she stared at him. He looked so much like Faith, it was unnerving. His mouth curved exactly like hers so that even when they were serious, a smile always seemed to be lurking. The identical way they both held their heads off to the side, a little quizzical. The same dark, dramatic brows. A total stranger would immediately see the resemblance. How could he not even care enough to ask?

“Nothing changes, does it?” The words shot out before she could think about them. “Music always came first. Obviously it still does. Your daughter’s doing fine, by the way.”

He stared at her. “My daughter.”

“Your daughter. Who will be six on Saturday. Probably just slipped your mind, huh?”

“You had an abortion,” he said.

“An abortion?” She blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“Your mother told me you had an abortion.”

“My mother?” Incredulous, she gaped at him. “My mother told you I had an abortion?”

“The day you told me you were pregnant,” he said, his voice devoid of inflection. “You were more than a bit upset about it. Something about being too young for the responsibility, as I recall. We had a fight and you left. When you didn’t come home that night, I went to see your mother. You’d gone away, she said, but she wouldn’t tell me where. The impression she gave me was that you were off having an abortion somewhere.”

“My God, Liam. I…I can’t believe this. There was never any discussion about an abortion. Why would my mother tell you that?”

“Obviously that’s a question you should ask her,” he said. Then he turned and walked back into the bar.

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER THE SHOW, there was a party at a big house on the beach. The friend of a friend of a friend. Liam stood out on the deck drinking a beer and watching the palm trees and the play of lights on the water while the festivities roared on in the lighted room behind him. The music had turned Paddywhack Irish, a great deal of whooping and diddly-diddly dooing. Mick, the Wild Rovers’ fiddler, had launched into “McNamara’s Band,” a tune he would never deign to play sober, and the accompanying clapping and foot stomping was so enthusiastic, Liam could feel the vibration under his feet.

He had a daughter. He repeated the words to himself, trying to make them seem real. A daughter. And he didn’t even know her name. Hadn’t asked her name.

“I have a daughter,” he told Brid when she came to see what he was doing out there all by himself.

“God, they’re banging saucepan lids in there.” She cupped her hand around her ear. “You have a what?”

“A daughter.”

Brid looked at him for a moment, then disappeared and returned a moment later with a plate of carrots. With a nod, she directed him down to the far end of the deck, away from the noise. “All right, what’s this about?”

“That girl I was talking to tonight.” He drank some beer. “We were married for about a year. She got pregnant, and I thought she’d had an abortion. Tonight she tells me that wasn’t so. Apparently, her mother lied to me.”

Brid leaned her elbows on the railing, staring out at the water. “So this girl,” she said after a minute, “what’s her name?”

“Hannah.” Actually, he’d always called her Hannie. Now he thought of her as Hannah. He eyed the plate of carrots. “You didn’t eat any of the barbecue stuff?”