Page 7 of Road Trip
She was on the top step of the porch now, shouldering past her sister.
“How did you get the car keys?” Maeve asked, feeling the rage, the stupid, irrational familiar rage boiling up inside her chest.
“I used my key at the house. And I found the keys to the Beast on the hook by the kitchen door, where she always kept them. Jesus, Maeve, what is your problem?”
Maeve started to say something but couldn’t find the words. “I just…”
“You just can’t deal with anything I do. If I exhale, or inhale, or inhabit the same space as you, it sends you into a tailspin. Right? Well, sorry, sis, but that’s on you, not me.”
“We need to talk,” Maeve said.
“So talk.”
“Not tonight. I’m wiped out. Come over in the morning, after breakfast.”
“Come over? From where? I’m staying at the house. Same as you.”
“You can’t,” Maeve blurted. “I already told you. The place is a mess. Mom turned your old room into her sewing room. There’s not even a bed in there.”
“Then I’ll sleep in the other twin bed in your old room. With you. Or on the sofa in the living room. I’m not picky. I mean, where did you think I was gonna stay?”
“I don’t know. A motel maybe, or at Aunt Bernie’s.”
“Hell to the no,” Therese said. “You know how I feel about cats. Anyway, why should I pay out money for a motel? It’s my house too. You’re staying there, so I’m staying there. I already dropped off my stuff. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”
CHAPTER 3
Mary Helen Dunagin’s brick split-level house, only a few blocks away from her sister’s, was crammed with a dizzying array of sofas, chairs, and tables. Every flat surface was crowded with the beloved knickknacks the owner had collected over decades of haunting yard sales and thrift stores.
Mary Helen favored Hummel and Goebel porcelain statues, along with Precious Moments figurines. There was a china cabinet full of Lladró figurines of the Blessed Mother. The walls, painted the color of chocolate milk, featured a timeline of parochial school photographs of Maeve and Therese over the years, as well as dozens of Franklin Mint and Royal Doulton collector’s plates. All of it had accumulated a depressing sheen of dust.
Over the fireplace, which had never worked in Maeve’s lifetime, was placed her mother’s most prized possession, an oil portrait of what Mary Helen claimed was her great-grandmother, Lady Geraldine Fitzhugh.
“Girls,” Mary Helen would say, pointing at the portrait, “this is your heritage. Our family’s heritage. This artist, Valerian DeJongh, was famous. You can look him up in books. His paintings are in art museums all over the world. Promise me you will never let this portrait leave our family.”
When they were little girls, Therese would make up fantastic stories about the lady in the gauzy blue dress—she was a princesswho lived in a castle and had magical powers, or a movie star who’d been tragically murdered by her married lover. As teens they would speculate on the reason for Lady Geraldine’s bemused expression.
Maeve bumped headlong into Therese as she was heading into Frannie’s… kitchen. Her sister was leaning over the dining room table, surveying a picked-over platter of tea sandwiches, with an empty plate in one hand and a tumbler of amber liquor in the other.
“Sorry,” Maeve muttered, trying unsuccessfully to sidestep her sister.
Therese held up the tumbler. “Who sprung for the hard stuff? I thought Mama expressly forbid anything stronger than cheap Chablis and Pabst Blue Ribbon.”
“I did!”
The sisters turned in unison to face a jovial bald man with a flushed face and a wide smile.
“Uncle Keith!” Therese exclaimed. “There you are!”
Their uncle flung an arm around each of the women. “And here you are. My two beautiful nieces.”
He kissed each cheek in turn. “And look at you, getting along so nice. That would make your mom, God rest her soul, so happy.”
Keith Dunagin took a step backward and lifted the ever-present 35-millimeter camera around his neck, aimed, and clicked off a couple of photos. “Come on, girls. Don’t look so sad. Your mom is in a better place now.”
Maeve managed a half-hearted smile and Therese smirked.
“Everything at Mass was just beautiful,” Keith said. “What a crowd! Did you know, they had to open up the cry room just to accommodate the overflow? I haven’t seen a crowd that big at Blessed Sacrament since your dad’s funeral. Mary Helen would have loved it.”
