Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [149]
He raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me this isn’t the first you’re hearing of it.”
Composure, she thought. Sometimes it helped her to focus on a single word. Composure.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m sure that …” But she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“I am so sorry,” he stumbled. “It was Alice’s news to share, not mine. I must have gotten confused. I thought the whole family was in agreement on this.”
She fixed her face with a plastic grin. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “It’s fine.”
Ann Marie felt like she couldn’t breathe. She needed to get away from him. She needed to talk to Pat.
“The chicken salad!” she said, louder than she had meant to. “It needs paprika.”
“Paprika?”
“Yes!” she said. “Just look at it! It’s so bland. I usually add grapes but I didn’t have any. Paprika will do the trick! I’ll have to go over to the cottage and get some. I’m sure there’s some over there. Things like paprika have a way of sticking around forever over there. Okay, well.”
Before he had time to respond, she was out the door, making a beeline for her car, the only place she could get decent cell reception up here.
Her anger surprised her. She thought of the money they had spent to build that huge house and cover all the regular costs, the snowy days when her husband had driven out here to shovel off the flat porch roof, the hours they had both put in, the countless times she had bitten her tongue just to keep the peace. And this was how her mother-in-law planned to repay them?
The Lord never sends us more than we can handle, she reminded herself. But she felt like she might have a breakdown, right then and there.
She dialed Pat’s cell instead of his work line. She was much too upset to have to make pleasantries with his secretary. When he answered, she told him everything in a rush.
“You must have misunderstood him. This isn’t the sort of thing my mother would do,” Pat said, but Ann Marie could tell that the wheels in her husband’s head were already turning. It was precisely the sort of thing Alice would do, and they both knew it.
“Goddamn it,” he said loudly, giving her a start. “I’ll drive out there after work tonight and we’ll talk some sense into her.”
She nodded. “Good. Oh, but Maggie’s here.”
“So?”
Ann Marie dropped her voice to a whisper, as if anyone could hear her out there in the car. “Is this really something we want to discuss in front of her?”
Maggie would no doubt tell Kathleen, and she didn’t need Pat’s sisters getting involved. It was hairy enough already.
“She’ll be gone in four days and you’ll be here,” Ann Marie said. “Should we wait until then to talk to Alice?”
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe it’s a good idea to sleep on it anyway, and take a few deep breaths. I just wonder if she was in her right mind when she told him. Maybe she hasn’t actually signed anything. I need to talk to Jim Lowenthal about the legality of all this.”
His lawyer. Ann Marie began to cry. She didn’t know how she could physically manage to get through the next few days, let alone lunch with Alice and that horrible priest. Having Maggie there would be a blessing. It would stop her from saying something she might regret.
As if sensing her thoughts, Pat asked, “Do you want to come home and we’ll go back up there together on the first?”
If it weren’t for the fact that her dollhouse was coming any day now, she might have said yes. But Ann Marie would have to stay.
She tried to sound positive. “No, it’ll be all right. It’s just—I don’t understand why your mother would do this to us.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized there was no point wondering why Alice had done it. The Kellehers were crazy people, that was all.
Ann Marie felt crazy herself at the moment. She had the strongest urge to do something wicked. She remembered when her brother was a kid and used to put bags of dog poop on people’s front stairs and set them alight. And the time he chopped the head off every tulip in their neighbor’s front yard.
She wanted to say that this family would be the death