Page 19 of I Can't Even

She patted my cheek as I stood there stunned. Babs had bragged about me? I couldn’t reconcile it. I had to assume she’d done it to save face. The Babs I knew was pissed that I was in New York and therefore out of her control. Mrs. G stepped past me into the house to commiserate with her friends. I wondered what else Babs had said about me?

The thought fled as soon as I turned and saw him standing there. Liam was a mere foot away from me and I knew, I knew absolutely, that he had heard what Mrs. G said and judging by the way his jaw was clenching, he wasn’t happy about it.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Liam said.

There it was, the low reverberating bass that was Liam Mahony’s voice. It may have been nine years since I’d heard it, but like a tune that gets stuck in a loop in your head, I’d never forgotten it or how it made my insides bloom like flowers reaching for the sun.

“Thank you,” I said.

We stared at one another. Up close in daylight, we had the opportunity to take in the changes time had wrought. Liam was harder, more chiseled, as if the softness of youth had fallen away to leave behind the more defined and resilient planes of a man.

I imagined he saw the same changes in me. I had borrowed one of Soph’s dresses for the service rather than buy something new. The blue with the flared hem was slightly flirty yet reserved at the same time. I wore my hair up in deference to how much Babs had disliked my curls—I even wore mascara and lipstick, again, just for Babs. One stray curl had fallen free of my updo and curled around my neck. I saw him study it as if it was the key to unlocking the girl he’d once known.

“Well,” I said for lack of anything better to say. This was not the time or place to try and make apologies or explanations, although they were his due.

“Well,” he repeated.

Obviously, this conversation was going nowhere fast.

“It was a lovely service, Julia.” Mrs. Mahony, Liam’s mother, hugged me close before she moved to stand beside her son.

Mrs. Mahony was a handsome woman with a square jaw and arching eyebrows. She wore her gray hair long and didn’t wear make-up, something that had always driven Babs crazy. Mrs. Mahony was the down-to-earth sort, and her husband the Professor, who had joined us, was very much her complement with his thick gray beard and dark-rimmed glasses. He, too, gave me a quick hug. My fondness for them had never diminished over the years and I was relieved to see their affection for me hadn’t either, despite the circumstances of my abrupt departure.

“Your mother was an extraordinary woman,” Mrs. Mahony said.

Given that my mother had never kept her disapproval of my relationship with Liam quiet, frequently complaining to the Mahonys that their son was a bad influence on me, I found her words very kind.

Professor Mahony removed his glasses and polished the lenses with a cloth he took from his pocket. He appeared thoughtful. “I can honestly say I never met anyone quite like her.”

I smiled because I knew Babs would have approved the sentiment as it was spot on. There was no one like Babs Blumer and I doubted there ever would be again.

More people came in the door and the Mahonys took their leave as they needed to drive back up the coast to the retirement home they’d moved into when Liam bought their house. Liam let his parents walk ahead of him. He looked like he wanted to say something but then he shook his head.

We stared at one another for a few seconds and then with a curt nod, Liam turned and left. I could read in the stiff set of his shoulders beneath the fitted charcoal gray suit exactly what he was thinking. Ex-girlfriend confronted, feelings successfully held in check, neighborly duty done, game over.

Yeah, not even close, buddy. I hadn’t booked my return trip to New York yet. I wanted to make sure my sisters were okay first but also, after the other morning, I was determined to try and explain to Liam why I’d left the way I did. After nine years, I owed him that much or maybe I owed it to myself. Either way, the overdue conversation was absolutely happening whether he wanted to participate or not.

Chapter Seven

“What is she still doing here?” Em asked. “Did you tell her she could stay?”

“Hell no,” Soph said. “You know I can’t stand her.”

“Don’t look at me,” I replied as they both turned to do just that. “You know how I feel about her.”

We were standing in the kitchen, glancing out at the living room where a few stragglers from the gathering lingered over the last of the wine. Soph had given the caterers the signal to clean up in the hope that the remaining guests would take the hint and leave us to our grief.

More accurately, it was time to meet with Babs’s attorney, Mr. Howard Loren. He’d come for the service and asked our preference for the reading of the will. We’d decided to save us all a trip and have him tell us after the get together so that we knew what we were dealing with and could plan accordingly.

Unfortunately, Paisley Lawson, our obnoxious cousin on our mother’s side of the family was one of the lingerers. What can I say about Paisley? She was Babs’s older sister Jean’s only child and smack between me and Soph in age. She was thirty-one, a serial marrier with three ex-husbands, gobs of money from the divorces, a bottle blond with a faux tan and fake tatas, platypus lips and, well, you get the picture.

Simply put, Paisley was a horror. She was spoiled, selfish, and mean. She had the same light blue eyes as Babs and Aunt Jean, but Paisley’s were full of myopic malevolence.

My cousin had a way of studying you as if she knew all of your secrets. It was unsettling. Added to that she knew just what to say to make you feel badly about yourself all while couching the words in what sounded like a compliment but totally wasn’t.

If we had to chuck her out, we’d need to draw straws to see who’d do it. Yes, this was just like who was going to catch and release the spider in the bathroom or answer the front door when a salesman knocked. Sisters or not, when it came to Paisley, bugs, or salesmen, it was every woman for herself.

“Let’s get Mr. Loren to do it,” I whispered to Soph. She looked at me as if I was a genius. Admittedly, I had my moments.

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