Three Fates

“Punch me, yell at me.”
    “That would make it easier for you.” She needed her cave, her solitude. And some scrap of pride. “I asked you to go. If you have any conscience about what you’ve done, you’ll respect that.”
    Without a choice, he went to the door. He turned, studying her as she stood framed by the window. “The first time I looked at you,” he said quietly, “really looked at you, Tia, all I could think was you had the loveliest and saddest eyes. I haven’t been able to get them out of my head since. This isn’t over, none of it’s over.”
    She let out a long breath when the door shut behind him. “That’s for me to say.”
     
     
    THE STREETS WERE steep in Cobh. Like San Francisco, they speared up from a bay at a leg-aching angle. At the top of one was a pretty house painted a pale water-green with a colorful dooryard garden behind a low, stone wall.
    There were three bedrooms, two baths, a living room with a TV that needed upgrading and a comfortably sprung couch covered with blue-and-white checks. There was a small parlor and a dining room as well, both used only for company. There, the furniture was ruthlessly polished and the lace curtains were soft with age.
    On the wall of the parlor were pictures of John F. Kennedy, the current pope and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That particular trio had always made Malachi so uneasy, he rarely sat in the room unless given no choice.
    Until he’d turned twenty-four and had moved into the set of rooms over the boathouse, he’d lived in that same house, shared one of the bedrooms with his brother and fought with his sister over her time in the upstairs bath.
    As long as he could remember, the kitchen was the gathering place. It was the kitchen he paced now, while his mother peeled potatoes for dinner.
    He’d been back only two days, and on the first he’d been buried in work. He’d taken out one of their two tour boats himself, as Rebecca had pointed out he hadn’t pulled his weight in that area for a good chunk of the summer. Then he’d hacked through paperwork until he couldn’t see straight.
    He’d put in a full twelve-hour day, and another ten on his second day home. But he hadn’t been able to work off the anger, or the guilt.
    “Wash these potatoes off,” Eileen ordered. “It’ll give you something to do besides brood.”
    “I’m not brooding. I’m thinking.”
    “I know brooding when I see it.” She opened the oven, checked the roast. It was Malachi’s favorite, and she’d made the Sunday meal in the middle of the week in hopes of cheering him up. “The girl had a perfect right to toss you out on your ear, and you’ll just have to live with it.”
    “I know it, but you’d think she’d see the logic of it all after sleeping on it. At least give me the chance to make it up to her. She wouldn’t answer the damn phone or the door. Probably tossed out the flowers I sent. Who knew she had such a hard side to her?”
    “Hard side, my aunt Minnie. Bruised feelings is what she has. You made it personal when you should’ve kept it businesslike.”
    “It got personal.”
    Eileen turned back and softened. “Yes, I see it did. That’s the wonder of living, isn’t it, never knowing when something or someone’s going to turn you down a different road.” She started peeling the carrots that would go around the roast with the potatoes. “Flowers never worked on me either when your father was in the doghouse.”
    Malachi smiled a little. “What did?”
    “Time, for one thing. A woman’s got to sulk a bit and know a man’s suffering for his sins. And after that a good crawling’s in order. I like a man who knows how to grovel.”
    “I never saw Da grovel.”
    “You didn’t see everything, did you?” Eileen chided.
    “I hurt her, Ma.” He set the potatoes aside to drain. “I didn’t have the right to hurt her that way.”
    “You didn’t, no, but you didn’t start it all with that in mind.” She wiped her hands on a dish towel, hung it back over a hook. “You were thinking of the family, and your own pride. Now you’ve got her to think of as well. You’ll know what to do next time you see her.”
    “She won’t see me again.”
    “If I thought a son of mine gave up so easily, I’d cosh you over the head with this skillet. Haven’t I worries enough with Gideon off with that dancer?”
    “Gideon’s fine. At least he’s made contact with a connection in all this who’s still speaking to