Page 66 of Whale Harbor

“So far only Thomas went and he’s fine. My own appointment is next week. I suppose you girls and your cousins should be tested too. We’ll just get a doctor to take a look.”

“I wasn’t thinking about myself,” she said, sipping her juice. “I was thinking about your other brother. Doesn’t he have to get tested too?”

“Who?”

“Is his name Rian?”

Mac blinked. How odd to hear Rian’s name come out of her mouth. Children were like magpies, they picked up every interesting thing.

“It is,” Mac said.

“Where does he fall? What number.”

“Seventh. Younger than Coleman, older than Thomas.”

“I’ve never met him? Not here and not in Ireland?”

“No.”

“Not even when I was a baby?”

“No.”

“Has anyone told him that he has to get tested for this heart thing?”

“No, Mary.”

“Why?”

Mac shrugged. “Because we don’t know where he is.”

At that moment, someone rang the doorbell and then pounded on the door so hard that Mac startled. It was Mrs. Zeck from one block over, there to yell at Mary because her newspaper had gotten wet on three different occasions, the most recent being that morning, when she found it on her front step without being enclosed in a plastic sleeve.

“Okay,” Mary said in a soothing voice. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Zeck. It won’t happen again. Why don’t I cover your Sunday paper this week out of my tips. Does that work?”

“That sounds fair but tell your helper too,” Mrs. Zeck said.

“I will,” Mary said.

“Who’s your helper?” Mac asked, when Mary returned to the kitchen. “You have a helper?”

“Ahhh, yeah. Bridget and her friend Tara. They deliver the papers and I pay them a flat fee.”

When Mac looked at her blankly she explained it better. “I got the route, I assemble the papers here, and I handle the money. They deliver. All they want is enough money to walk down to Louie’s for candy.”

“That cuts into your profits, doesn’t it?” Mac pointed out.

“Yeah.” Mary examined her fingernails. “But they do most of the work.”

WHEN MARY WAS IN ELEVENTH grade at Divine Child, Lillie got a call from Mary’s guidance counselor, Sister Helena, asking her and Mac for a meeting. Immediately, Lillie worried Mary had gotten a bad grade on something and they were taking her scholarship away. Her scholarship was for all four years as long as she kept her grades up. She played basketball. She was in the National Honor Society. She was nearly fluent in Spanish. She wrote an essay about the movie Forrest Gump that won a regional prize. The prize luncheon was during the week but Lillie and Mac had taken off from work to accompany her. They were seated at a table with other parents from all over New York State when they found out her essay’s main argument was that Jenny was the villain of the movie since she took sexual advantage of Forrest when she was HIV positive, knowing Forrest had the emotional and intellectual capacity of a third grader.

Lillie looked at Mac and laid down her fork. Across the table, Mary looked as innocent as could be. They’d watched that movie as a family and no one had said a word except it was a nice story.

“I don’t think they’d take her scholarship for one bad grade,” Mac said when Lillie shared her thoughts. “Surely they’d give her another chance.” Plus, Mac thought, even if she had failed something, what harm, as long as she’d tried her best. It was an awful lot to keep her marks up in every subject across the board. She’d saved them enough money already.

But Mary claimed she hadn’t failed anything, that she hadn’t gotten a grade below 90 since seventh grade. From where Bridget was standing at the toaster, Mac caught the two sisters glance at each other. Bridget was a freshman at the same school and clearly knew what this was about.

“Then what could it be?” Lillie asked. “You didn’t talk back or anything, did you?”