Oh, hell no. The last thing she needed was her mother setting her up on blind dates.
“No, Mom. Not interested. And who’s Bill? What happened to Carl?” Every few months it was a different name; Mary didn’t even bother trying to remember them anymore.
Catherine Murphy exhaled heavily in sufferance, refusing to be sidetracked. “You need a man, Mary.”
Mary sighed; clearly her mother had reached the end of her patience and was abandoning all precepts of subtlety and going for an all-out attack. “No, I don’t.”
“Well of course you do,” Catherine clucked. “Everything in life is better with a man by your side.”
It wasn’t that Mary disagreed, exactly, but unlike her mother, Mary didn’t believe that just any man would do. It had to be the right man. Mary closed her eyes and prayed for strength and patience. Another flash of golden hair and glowing eyes filled her mind’s eye, this time accompanied by a pang of longing. She immediately opened her eyes and tried to dispel the image.
“You don’t have to marry him, honey, if you don’t want to be tied down just yet. You don’t want to scare him away anyway. Just let him adjust your attitude a little, and if it’s good enough - ”
“Mom, I have to go.” There was no way she could listen to her mother drone on and on about the benefits of sex on a regular basis again. She just didn’t have the strength.
“Mary, don’t you dare hang up on me! You need to - ”
“I love you, too, Mom.” Mary ended the connection and turned off her phone, tossing it on the counter to avoid the ten or so callbacks she’d get in the next few hours. Leaning back in the recliner, she exhaled heavily, promising herself that next Sunday, she was going to be in the shower when the phone rang.
Chapter Five
Aidan cruised down the main street of Birch Falls. Again. The sleek Benz caught a few curious looks, but he was beyond caring. Borrowing the kid’s POS Honda had convinced him that he definitely preferred his own vehicles, if for no other reason than they had working defrosters and didn’t smell like stale beer and McDonald’s French fries.
Like Pine Ridge, Birch Falls wasn’t a very big town, but it was spread out over a fairly large area. There was one well-defined main strip, with a lot of streets that branched off and divided the area into different sections.
Driven by a strange compulsion he couldn’t explain, Aidan had taken to trolling the streets in an attempt to find something that looked familiar. He wished, for the hundredth time, that he had paid more attention when Mary had given him a ride back to Tommy’s on New Year’s Day. As it was, all he could remember was the gentle way she had smiled at him and the light vanilla and jasmine scent in her Jeep.
He shouldn’t be doing this. Mary obviously had no interest in seeing him again. If she had, she would have called by now. But here he was anyway, driving around aimlessly like some creeper, looking for anything that might give him a clue where to find her again.
Aidan sighed. If he had no luck today, he might just have to break down and ask Lexi’s husband Ian for some help. Ian Callaghan had a reputation for being able to find anyone anywhere, but Aidan had to believe that locating a specific “Mary” in “Birch Falls” might even be beyond Ian’s mad digital stalking skills.
One more time. Aidan drove south another mile or so, well past the last stop light in the town proper, and made a right. West for one block, then north. When he got to the city limits on the other side, he’d head east, then south, then back to the beginning.
He must have covered at least three quarters of the town at least twice, but as the early winter darkness began to fall in earnest, he worked his way back toward the center of town and the multitude of streetlamps and lighted businesses concentrated there. It was unlikely he would find anything useful out in the darker, less populated regions, not when he had no idea what the exterior of her house even looked like.
The bright lights of O’Leary’s Diner caught his attention, and Aidan smiled. He knew Conlan O’Leary, having met him several times at various Callaghan events. Conlan was the maternal grandfather of the Callaghans and their Connelly cousins in Birch Falls. Aidan liked him; the man even insisted that Aidan call him Daideo – the Irish version of “grandfather” - like all the others.
Reluctant to return home just yet, Aidan found himself pulling into the parking lot.
“Aidan, lad, this is a pleasant surprise!” Conlan looked up over a pair of bifocals to greet him with a smile. “Come. Sit. I’ll just be a mo’...”