He reached the front door, unaccosted, unheralded, and unnoticed. He refused to acknowledge the heavy weight trying to press down upon him. Should he fish the key out of the mailbox and let himself in? Or would it be better to ring the doorbell? This was his home, yet he hadn’t lived here in so long. Walking in unannounced felt wrong, especially when he wasn’t expected.
He opted to ring the doorbell. He heard the muffled chimes echo inside, but nothing else. No approaching steps, no calling out of a sing-song “Coming!” to greet him.
He waited quietly for a minute or so, then pressed the glowing white button again.
Maybe they weren’t home, he reasoned. Maybe they’d gone shopping, or were visiting Kathleen’s family. He stepped back and looked again, noting that despite the dark, gray skies, no lights were on inside the house. Walking around to the back, he peered into the detached garage, spotting his father’s Ford Galaxie 500, half covered by a cloth tarp.
Should he come back later, he wondered, knocking at the back door before coming around to the front again? No, it was too cold, and despite the ride, his leg was aching. He would go inside to wait, but would leave his duffel just inside the door to announce his presence so they wouldn’t think someone had broken in.
He reached into the mailbox hung beside the door and felt around for the key his mother always left there, but found nothing. He checked under the mat and the top of the doorframe, but those, too, were keyless. He was wondering exactly what he was going to do next when he heard his name called.
“Jack?”
Jack turned around to find Mrs. Fitzsimmons staring at him as if he was a ghost.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered. She looked so much older than he remembered. Her auburn hair was now a silvery grey, her cornflower blue eyes dim, her face etched with the lines of a mother who had lost her only son. “I can’t seem to find the key. Do you know when my mother and Kathleen will be back?”
Her eyes widened; she pulled the heavy, hand-knit shawl tighter around her shoulders. “You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
She stared at him, and that’s when he saw the pity in her eyes. “You’d best come with me, Jack.”
She turned and started walking carefully across the snow-covered ground to her house next door. Dread pooled in his stomach, and he suddenly knew without a doubt that he didn’t want to hear whatever it was Mrs. Fitzsimmons had to say.
“I’d really just like to go inside for a while, Mrs. Fitzsimmons, but I can’t find the key.”
“I have a key,” she confirmed without turning around. “But you’d best hear what I have to tell you first.”
With no other choice, Jack pulled his coat tighter around him and trekked over the snow-covered ground toward his boyhood friend’s home.
Chapter Seven
September 2015
Pine Ridge
“Well?” Shane asked, following Michael into the small office he kept at the hospital. The others had gone back to their families, but would be returning in shifts to ensure that someone was at the hospital around the clock. Michael’s office was more comfortable than the waiting room, and had the benefits of a comfortable couch, its own full bathroom, and privacy.
“Well what?”
“Is he really going to be all right?”
Michael rubbed the back of his neck, willing away the tension. It had been a hell of a long day and it wasn’t over yet.
He knew what Shane wanted him to say, but he couldn’t give his brother the guarantee that everything was going to be okay. Their father had come through the surgery all right, and was responding well to treatment, but they were far from out of the woods yet. The usual vague platitudes weren’t going to cut it, either. Shane had the uncanny ability to sense bullshit a mile away.
“The man just had a triple bypass. He’s doing the best he can under the circumstances.”
Shane digested those words, and as expected, called him out. “And what are you not saying, Mick?”
Michael closed the door, then dropped down behind the desk into the leather chair. “Sit,” he commanded.
Shane did. Unlike some of the others, Shane was fairly reasonable. Kane, Jake or Sean would have stubbornly crossed their arms and refused on principle alone, demanding he just lay it on the line.
Michael pulled open a drawer and extracted two glasses and a bottle of the Bushmills Single Malt he kept there, then poured them each a shot.
“That bad?” Shane asked, accepting the glass.
“It could be better.”
“I thought you just said the surgery went well.”
“It did. But there’s a lot more damage than we thought.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning... we dodged the bullet this time, but the gun’s still cocked and loaded.”
Shane swirled the whiskey in his glass, then tossed it back. Once again, Michael silently appreciated his ability to process bad news with thought and reason rather than brute force. “Does Dad know?”
“I don’t know. Jimmy Yim stepped up today and did us a favor, but he’s not familiar with Dad’s history beyond what I was able to tell him and what he was able to glean for himself.”