Lies That Bind by Maggie Barbieri Page B

Maeve remembered that Jack had been touched that she had given him the card to keep in his wallet; he was a cop and she knew his job was dangerous. Who better to look out for him than the Blessed Mother? He had cried a little bit when he turned it over in his hand and then a little more when he put it in his wallet. She knew now that those kinds of cards were a dime a dozen—you could pick them up at most churches—but she remembered thinking that the rendering of the Blessed Mother on that card was more special and beautiful than any others she had ever seen.
    Maeve looked at the card again. She was beautiful. She looked how Maeve sometimes pictured her mother, even though she knew what her mother really looked like from her memories of her and the pictures that Jack kept around the house to ensure Maeve never forgot her.
    Maeve slid the photos out of the envelope. They were from a time she didn’t remember: The 1964 World’s Fair, her mother looking chic in capri pants and a crisp white blouse; the Jersey shore or a beach on Long Island, her father making like a muscleman, his arms bent like Popeye’s, his head turned to stare at the bulging bicep on his slim arm; her parents with a baby in a christening gown. On the back of that photo was Jack’s handwriting: “St. Margaret’s, 1960. Our girl. Aibhlinn (Evelyn) Rose Conlon.”

 
    CHAPTER 11
    So there it was: the proof she hadn’t wanted, didn’t need. The photograph to prove that there was a sister whom Maeve had never known, who existed somewhere out there, probably not knowing about Maeve’s existence either.
    The thought of that made her heart hurt just a little bit.
    Although she and Jo joked about the secrets kept in families—Jo’s mother still swore that she went to Florida in 2004 on vacation, not to recuperate from a tummy tuck—Maeve thought she was the only one who had any in her family. She had kept things from Jack, things he would never want to have known, but she never imagined that he was keeping one from her as well.
    There had to be a reason.
    The photograph in her hand, she made the decision to drive south. Before she pulled out of her parking spot, she called Jo, who was disappointed to learn that she would be working a longer day than she had originally planned. “It’s been a little crazy,” Jo said, but that usually meant that three people had come in at once, not that the store had been full of people demanding quiches or scones.
    “Crazy is good,” Maeve said. “Good register day?”
    She heard the bell ring as Jo opened the drawer. “Eh,” she said, confirming for Maeve that her crazy and Jo’s crazy were two different things. “A hundred and forty-eight bucks.”
    “Are we good on sugar? Flour?”
    “We’re good,” Jo said. “No flour fairies have visited us recently.”
    “Good to hear.”
    “Oh, but some guy came by looking for Heather.”
    “Guy?” Maeve asked, her antennae going up.
    “Yeah. Guy. Kid. Billy something or other?” Jo said. “He said he was looking for Heather.”
    “DuClos’s Billy?” Maeve asked.
    “Not a clue what that means,” Jo said. “DuClos has a Billy?”
    “His new associate,” Maeve said. “Remember? Going to be collecting my rent. The guy that came the day my father died. You remember, right?”
    But Jo didn’t, “pregnancy brain” being the most likely reason.
    “He was looking for Heather?”
    “That’s what he said.”
    “What did he look like?”
    “Kind of cute. Light hair.”
    Yep. That was DuClos’s Billy.
    “He was kind of mad, too.” She paused. “Said he’d find her.”
    Maeve felt a frisson of anxiety shoot through her body, something that was quickly replaced by anger. She didn’t know who Billy was or what he wanted with her daughter, but if it happened to be something not good, something not on the scale of acceptable, Billy would find himself in very hot water indeed. She had nothing to suggest that his intentions weren’t pure toward her