Harbour Lights

“I never took you for a coward,” she responded, her tone deceptively mild. “Certainly no one in this household raised you to be one, not your father or Nell or—”

He cut her off before she could add her name to the list. “At least you acknowledge it was Dad and Gram who raised me.”

The barb didn’t seem to humiliate her as he’d intended it to. Instead, she kept her gaze steady.

“Of course I do, Kevin, though if we’re both being honest and direct, I did have a hand in raising you until you were in your teens. It wasn’t until then that Nell stepped in.”

He was about to speak, but she apparently wasn’t through, because she silenced him with a hard look, then added, “And though I’m quite sure you think otherwise, I never intended any of it to turn out the way it did.”

“Oh, really? Then you just went to New York for the weekend and got lost? Maybe developed amnesia?”

She sighed and gestured toward the beach. “Let’s go for a walk, Kevin. We might as well have this out here and now. This fight has been brewing for years.”

She was right. It had been. He’d stored up plenty of things he wanted to say to her, but now that the opportunity had presented itself, he felt tongue-tied.

“You’re just back from a walk and I need to get to Abby’s,” he argued, but he could tell from her unrelenting gaze, she wasn’t going to give in. Maybe it was best to get this over with, let her know there was nothing she could do or say to make amends for the past. In fact, a part of him admired her for not backing down. In her shoes, he wasn’t so sure he’d have been as strong. Recent history certainly suggested quite the opposite. He was lousy at facing hard truths.

“I’m not so old that I can’t take a second walk on the beach, and those children over at Abby’s are probably still in bed,” she said, regarding him with amusement. “Any other excuses?”

“None,” he conceded and turned toward the beach. He strode off across the lawn, then went down the steps without slowing his pace. Let her chase him, if she wanted to talk to him.

To his surprise, she actually kept up with him, despite being several inches shorter and a good many years older. When he glanced over at her, she gave him a faint smile. “Everyone walks fast in New York,” she said with a shrug. “Do your worst. I can keep up.”

The knot in his chest seemed to ease just a little at her show of determination and defiance. He suddenly recalled that it had been a matter of pride to her that she could keep up with him and Connor. With Mick so often away, she was the one who’d even organized the occasional camping trip for the two of them, or gone with them on hikes. She might have looked out of place with her perfect hair and stylish outfits, but she’d never complained and she’d matched them step for step.

Because he didn’t want to dwell on the good memories and because the question had been nagging at him for more than fifteen years now, he finally blurted it out. “Why’d you do it, Mom? I know why you left Dad, but why us?” He couldn’t seem to help the pain that was revealed in that single question.

“Oh, Kevin, I never meant to leave any of you behind,” she said, reaching out to touch his jaw, but drawing back before she made contact. Her expression turned sad. “Not even your father.”

What the devil was she talking about, Kevin wondered. She’d left. What had she expected to happen? Suddenly it dawned on him. “Did you expect Dad to come running after you?” he asked incredulously.

She shook her head at once, then sighed deeply. “Okay, maybe at first I hoped for exactly that, but I knew your father well enough not to expect it.”

In an odd way he was relieved that she hadn’t been that delusional. “Then what did you expect?”

“To have my children with me in New York.”

She said it so wistfully that it stunned him, especially when he knew it was a lie. “Come on,” he scoffed. “You never wanted that. I overheard you tell Dad more than once that you hadn’t signed on to be a single mom. Am I supposed to believe that changed just because you’d divorced him? Did you suddenly get all warm and fuzzy over the idea of raising us on your own?”

She looked stung, then shook her head. “Sometimes I’m still astonished by how much you all heard, when your father and I tried so hard to keep our arguments private. You heard just enough to be hurt, but not enough to understand.”

“Come on, Mom, what’s to misunderstand? If you ask me, you made yourself pretty clear.”

“Actually the point I was trying to make to your father was that we’d agreed to be partners in our marriage, that if he wasn’t going to be around to share in the responsibilities of parenting, I might as well be a single mother. At least then I’d know that everything was up to me.”

Kevin knew she was trying to make a distinction, but he wasn’t sure he bought it. “What’s the difference?”

“I’ll give you an example,” she said at once. “Do you remember the first thing that would happen every time your dad came home from a business trip?”

Kevin thought back, but couldn’t think of anything specific. He shook his head.

“Then I’ll remind you. You or Connor or one of your sisters would greet him at the door with a laundry list of things you wanted to do that I’d already refused to let you do. Mick would automatically say yes, undermining my decision without knowing any of the relevant facts. He loved being the good guy, which left me to be the hard-nosed disciplinarian. Then he and I would end up fighting about it.”

Though he hated admitting it, Kevin did recall exactly how they’d used Mick’s absences to their advantage. On some level, they’d known that their dad’s guilt at being away so much would keep him from saying no to anything. They’d also known that Megan wouldn’t overrule him.

“You’re saying it would have been easier to be the final authority,” he concluded.

“Pretty much.”

“Couldn’t you just have told Dad to butt out until the two of you had a chance to talk? Wouldn’t that have made more sense than divorcing him?”

She smiled at that. “We’re talking about your father. Have you ever known him to butt out? Besides, you know the divorce was about much more than that.”

“I still think you’re revising history,” he said bitterly. “It’s easy to say now that you wanted us with you. How are we supposed to prove otherwise?”

There was a quick flash of hurt in her eyes at his remark, but then she said, “Don’t you really mean how am I going to prove that I’m telling the truth? Okay, fair enough. Do you remember my first visit back here after I left?”

Kevin shook his head. He’d made it a point to be away from the house as much as possible whenever he knew she was coming. He’d been so angry then. And Gram and Mick had let him get away with it, buying whatever excuse he’d offered. They’d gently tried to coax him into sticking around, but the minute he’d balked, they’d given in.

“You spent the weekend with Jake,” she reminded him. “On a camping trip.” She let that sink in, then asked, “How about my next visit?”

He tried to think back, but nothing specific came to mind. “How do you expect me to remember something from that long ago?”

“You seem to remember pretty clearly that I supposedly abandoned you.”

“Well, of course, because that’s exactly what you did.”

Her gaze steady, she said, “No, Kevin, I didn’t, not the way you’re implying, anyway. I was here, time after time. You were all so angry, and who could blame you, but I kept coming back. I encouraged all of you to come to New York. I was supposed to share custody with your father. Mick and I had agreed to that. He provided enough alimony and child support for a place big enough for all of us. My apartment was filled with empty bedrooms intended for you. I had schools picked out. Ask Abby if you don’t believe me. When she moved to New York, she visited the apartment, saw the room I’d decorated for you and Connor with all sorts of sports posters, the one for Bree and Abby with a computer, the perfect little girl’s room for Jess.”

Shaken, Kevin regarded her with disbelief. “Why did you do all that, then never take us with you?”

“Because I was convinced you’d be miserable if I took you away from here. It was the wrong decision, no question about it, but I did what I thought was best for you at the time. Your friends were here. You had family here. In New York, with me working, you all would have had too much time on your own in a strange place, even if I’d arranged for a housekeeper. And, on top of all that, most of you were barely speaking to me. Eventually I had to face the fact that you all wanted to be here, rather than with me. I finally gave up that ridiculously expensive apartment and got one I could afford without any help from your father.”

He hated the image that came to mind of his mother sitting all alone in that large, empty apartment. For an instant, his heart filled with compassion, but it took only a moment before it hardened again. He’d had years to perfect the anger and no time at all to absorb this other side to the story.

Apparently his mother wasn’t expecting a response or even a reaction, because she continued, each word another blow to the wall of defenses he’d erected.

“Instead, I settled for being the outsider,” she said. “I settled for coming again and again for uncomfortable visits, trying to chip away at all that anger.” She gave him a rueful look. “Every one of you kids inherited the O’Brien gene for stubbornness in spades. Not one of you ever cut me any slack.”

“Did you expect us to?”

“I hoped, with time, you would. That’s why I never stopped trying.”

The conversation made him look back from a different perspective, see that period of his life in a new light. Maybe she hadn’t been quite the monster he’d turned her into in his own head.

She looked at him thoughtfully. “Now that I’ve answered your questions, will you answer one of mine?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”