That done, Jack wound his way through town, then turned into the gated drive of St. Patrick’s cemetery. As he had hundreds of times before, he got out of his car and walked up the slight incline to the top of the hill. The sprawling sugar maple was a dazzling array of fiery reds and oranges. He’d chosen this location specifically for its beauty and scenic view, even petitioning to plant this tree here nearly twenty-five years earlier.
Tears welled in his eyes when he saw the half-dozen or so mums already placed there. Mums had been Kathleen’s favorite flower, and Jack always brought them when he visited Kathleen’s grave. Clearly, someone had been covering that for him as well.
He set the pot down amidst the others and sat down on the bench his sons had so kindly placed there for him. It was yet another thing they never spoke of.
Jack leaned back and closed his eyes. It was so peaceful there, with rays of sunlight shining in beams through the leaves and branches. With a hand over his chest, he inhaled as deeply as he dared, drawing in the scents of freshly mown grass and autumn leaves. There was something unique about smell of leaves this time of year. They were sweeter. Richer. As if offering one final gift before they crumbled and decayed back into the earth. It was the natural cycle of things.
What would his final gift be, he wondered?
She came to him then, not as a ghost or an apparition, but as a remembered image in his mind. If he kept his eyes closed, he could imagine her sitting next to him. She was always with him, in his heart, but until his heart attack, these private moments were the only times he allowed himself to feel her.
A warm presence surrounded him even as a sense of peace settled over him.
“Hi, baby...”
––––––––
It was some time later when he opened his eyes again, the ghost of a smile on his face as he sensed another familiar presence.
“Come on out, then,” he called.
Shane moved out of the shadows and into the dwindling light. “I didn’t want to startle you,” he said in explanation.
“I know.”
Was this how it was going to be, Jack wondered? His kids checking up on him when he was out of sight for more than an hour or two? Skulking in the shadows for fear of startling him into another cardiac arrest?
Shane sat down beside him. “Taryn got worried when you didn’t show up at the Pub,” he said, as if reading Jack’s mind. Knowing Shane, he probably had. The boy had inherited his mother’s uncanny ability to read people.
“Taryn did, eh?” Jack asked with a quirk of his lips. He’d bet Taryn wasn’t the only one. He knew full well that it was easier to pin that kind of concern on the womenfolk than fess up to it. He wouldn’t call his son on it, though. He’d done the same thing more times than he could count, often beginning a conversation with ‘Your mother is worried’ or something along those lines.
“Yeah.”
“You have already told her you’ve found me, then,” Jack guessed by Shane’s lack of action. “So she will worry no longer.”
“I texted her, yeah.”
“Good.”
They sat there like that, father and son, for several long minutes. It was a comfortable silence.
“I hear her too,” Shane said finally.
Jack watched a leaf as it floated downward, settling among the potted flowers. “Who?”
“Mom,” Shane said quietly. “I mean, not like you and I are talking now. More like feelings, really. Nudging me one way or the other. Subtle clues and warnings, when I listen hard enough.”
“And you think it’s your mother?” Jack asked carefully.
Shane turned to him. “I know it is,” he said with conviction. “And you do, too.”
Jack said nothing.
“My only question is, what is it that she’s telling you these days?”
Leave it to Shane to find a way to ask what they had all been wondering without making him feel like a delusional old man. “That’s between me and her.”
Shane nodded, as if that was what he’d expected. “Lacie said she told you our big news.”
The abrupt change in subject matter was neither unexpected nor unwelcome. That was another thing about Shane—– the boy knew when to move on. “Aye. Congratulations, son.”
“Thanks. Lacie’s worried she’s not ready.”
“Bullshite. The woman is going to make a fine mother.”
“That’s what I keep telling her.”
“Aye, and you are going to be a fine father.”
“I hope so. I have one hell of a role model.”
Jack swallowed down the lump in his throat. It wasn’t Shane’s words as much as the sincerity with which he’d said them that had the emotion swelling up. Damn it all, he had never been a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, and he wasn’t about to start now.
“I guess we’d best be going before Taryn calls out reinforcements.”
Shane chuckled. “Probably.”
“Thank you, son.”
“For what?”
“For keeping up your mother’s grave.”
It was Shane’s turn to look away. He nodded once. It was enough.
Chapter Twenty-Four
November 1985