McKettrick's Heart

“Would you?” Psyche asked. “Where would that leave Lucas?”

Molly couldn’t speak.

“You slept with my husband. You bore his child. And while convention would dictate that I ought to hate you for that, I can’t. You brought Lucas into the world, Molly. Try as I might, I can’t feel anything but gratitude.”

Tears burned in Molly’s eyes. “You are the most amazing person, Psyche Ryan,” she managed, fairly strangling on the words. “Worth ten of me, and a hundred of Thayer. He didn’t deserve you.”

Psyche gave a hoarse chuckle. “Well, I agree with you about Thayer. The man wasn’t fit to lick my shoes. But you, Molly Shields, are an entirely different matter. You are a far finer person than you think.”

Molly shook her head. “I was such a blind fool—”

“Stop,” Psyche said abruptly.

Molly blinked, surprised.

“Yes, you made a mistake,” Psyche allowed. “But something very, very good came of it. And now I’m dying.” She stopped, regrouping. Perhaps absorbing, yet again, the fate she couldn’t escape. “I have no time for hand-wringing or for regrets, yours or mine, so buck up and get over it. The first moment I held Lucas in my arms I forgave you for everything. I blessed you. Now you need to forgive yourself, if only for Lucas’s sake. Can you do that?”

Molly pondered the question, then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “But it won’t be easy.”

“Nobody said anything about easy,” Psyche responded. “Lucas will have fevers, and skinned knees, and all manner of required boy-experiences. Dealing with Keegan won’t be any stroll through the lilies either, but then, I suppose you’ve deduced that already.”

Ruefully Molly nodded again.

“I’ve asked Keegan to be the executor of my estate,” Psyche confirmed. “He wanted to adopt Lucas himself, you know. Leave you completely out of the picture. I refused, because I believe a child needs a mother.”

“How—” Molly choked, cleared her throat, started over. “How can you trust me, after all that happened?”

Psyche smiled. “This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision, Molly. I’m not giving Lucas to you just because you happen to be his birth mother. You’ve been checked out by the best private investigators in Los Angeles.”

“But you said something about not knowing my financial situation.”

“I lied,” Psyche said sweetly.

Molly laughed. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a raw, soblike guffaw escaped her, and she put a hand over her mouth, too late.

Psyche’s pain-weary eyes twinkled. “Perhaps we can be friends, even this late in the game,” she said. “What do you think?”

“I think I’d be honored to be your friend,” Molly answered.

“Know what?” Psyche asked.

“What?”

“Thayer wasn’t good enough to lick your shoes, either.”

Once again Molly laughed. She laughed so hard that she finally had to lay her head down on her folded arms and cry as though her very soul were bruised.

Which, of course, it was.

* * *

AT SUNSET, KEEGAN STOOD looking up at the Ferris wheel looming in the middle of Indian Rock’s small park, trying to work up a celebratory mood. Try as he might, he couldn’t.

Psyche was dying.

McKettrickCo was being torn apart from the inside.

Shelley wanted to take Devon thousands of miles away and install her in some institution so she and the boyfriend could walk the streets of Paris and hold hands in the rain.

What a load.

Keegan, meanwhile, was on tilt, like a pinball machine with a phone book under one leg.

“Dad?”

He looked down, saw Devon standing beside him, flanked by Rianna and Maeve. Rance and Emma would be along later. In the interim, all three of the kids were munching on big pink fluffs of cotton candy, and would most likely be puking up their socks any second now.

“Can we go on the pony ride, Uncle Keegan?” Rianna asked.

“It’s a donkey ride, ding-dong,” Maeve said importantly.

“There’s only one donkey,” Devon pointed out sagely, “so we’ll have to stand in line.”

Keegan sighed. “Sure,” he said.

The girls raced away across the lush grass of the park, past the barbecue being set up under a canvas canopy, and he ambled after them, feeling foolish in his white shirt, dress slacks and gray silk vest. The rest of the men were wearing jeans or chinos.

The donkey was small, and its hide was mangy. It lumbered doggedly around and around a metal center-pole, chained to the mechanism. The creature’s ribs showed, its hooves needed trimming and it kept its head down, as though slogging into the face of a heavy wind. The child on its back kicked it steadily with the heels of his sneakers.

As the animal passed Keegan, making its endless rounds, it turned its head, gazing at him with dull brown eyes. It stumbled, and a wiry little man standing to one side whacked it on the flank with a stick and growled, “Wake up!”

Keegan, in the act of taking out his wallet to give Devon and his nieces money to buy tickets, stopped cold.

The donkey keeper’s gaze sliced to the wallet, as if magnetized, then slithered, snakelike, up to Keegan’s face. Passing him a second time, the donkey stumbled again.

The man raised the switch.

Keegan, without realizing he’d moved at all, was there to jerk it out of the keeper’s hand. He might have flung the stick halfway across the park if there hadn’t been so many kids standing around. Instead, he let it drop to the ground, opening his fingers slowly.

“You got a problem, mister?” the man asked. He wore grease-stained jeans and a grubby white undershirt, and his upper arms were tattooed with intertwined serpents, apparently consuming each other. A plastic name pin pinned to his shirt identified him as “Happy.”

Keegan made a mental note to appreciate the irony later.

“No,” he replied flatly, keeping his voice down. “I don’t have a problem. But you will if you pick up that stick again.”

Happy ruminated, spat. “Old Spud belongs to me,” he said. “I reckon I can do as I please with him.”

“Do you, now?” Keegan inquired, still holding his wallet in his free hand. “You traveling with this carnival? It’s been coming here twice a year for as long as I can remember, but I’ve never seen you before.”