Page 49 of What Love Can Do

He let the pain come. For the first time in a month, he did nothing to suppress the wave of tears that rose, peaked, and swelled over. His shoulders shook from the emptiness of loss, felt the gaping hole in his heart, as if someone had punched the breach into his chest then filled it with gallons of grief.

Mam hadn’t told him about this house or her former life to spare him the pain of a place she’d thought he’d never be able to visit. He still didn’t agree with that decision, but he could accept that she wasn’t perfect and had tried her best. Again, just like Lilly had.

Quinn sat there for a long time until he realized it had probably been too long. For all he knew, someone had looked out the window and was even now calling the police after seeing a strange car sitting out front.

Did her family—his family, for that matter—still live there? Or was the house now occupied by strangers? Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, he threw caution to the wind and stepped out of the car, crossing the wide driveway to reach the mailbox. God, he hoped there weren’t any security cameras on him, and if there were and someone found out, he would just come clean and explain what he was doing.

I had to know who lived here. It was the truth and easiest explanation.

Reaching a mailbox made of colorful stained glass depicting bunches of grapes, he opened the little access door, keeping an eye on the front bay windows. There was movement inside the house, judging from the shadows flitting back and forth. Quickly, he reached in and felt mail inside. Thank God.

Pulling out whatever fell under his hand, he sifted through advertisements to find a business envelope addressed to Beatriz Phillips-Tulle. Superb, his aunt lived here, and not the nice one either. Panic gripped his chest, and he suddenly realized how wrong, how very wrong it was to come here. If his mother didn’t mention her pre-Irish life to him and his brothers, there must have been a good reason. He was looking for trouble, and still, he had to know, so he could close the door on that chapter.

Curiosity compelled him forward.

One envelope after another read the same name. Carefully, he placed the envelopes back into the mailbox and closed the door. From inside the house, a dog began barking at the window, his sign to leave, but in case they never made it back, he wanted to show his brothers. Pulling out his phone from his pocket, he opened up the screen and selected the camera app, then he began taking picture after picture of their mam’s old house.

He wished Lilly were here to help him through this moment. She might even know some local trivia about the house, like what color it used to be or whether or not they’d built any additions in the last twenty or so years.

The last photos he took were of the tree swing. If he squinted his eyes hard enough, he could see his mother as a little girl sitting on the swing and kicking higher, higher, into the air. He blinked, and the vision vanished.

There, that should be enough.

Jogging back to his car, he climbed in and turned the engine on, breathing a sigh of relief that nobody had seen him, even with the big black dog barking at the window. Quinn slowly pulled into the driveway, made a three-point turn, and backed out again, aiming to drive right off the property.

But just as he was getting ready to leave, another car rumbled into the long, gravel driveway—a Lexus from the look of the headlamps. If he could just drive out without making eye contact, that’d be great. Nerves flittered through him, as the car pulled up, crunching over the tiny rocks and slowing down right next to his window.

The furrowed, concerned brow of an older woman with similar cheekbones to his mother made him smirk and put his foot down on the gas pedal, but the woman’s window lowered, her hand stuck out, and she asked him to stop.

So he did.

He lowered his window as well and threw on a quick smile. He knew exactly who she was, as well as the elderly man sitting in the passenger seat looking rather spaced-out. The woman with dyed ash blonde hair stepped out of the car, leaving the driver door open and approached his window. “May I help you?” she asked, peering inside.

Her green eyes, the crow’s feet around them, and the blushed cheekbones were shocking to gaze at, like looking at an older version of his mother’s ghost. His aunt, Beatriz—alive and in front of him.

The moment her eyes landed on his, her whole demeanor changed. A shadow of darkness seemed to move over her like an eclipse of a very caught-off-guard sun.

“Hullo,” he said, doing nothing to hide his accent. “Was just stopping by to see this house. Hope you don’t mind.”

Beatriz Phillips curled one set of French-manicured nails around the edge of the window. “You have a lot of chutzpah coming here,” she murmured in a way that made it clear that the old man behind her had not yet caught on to who he was. “You need to leave and don’t return unless you’re invited.”

Something about the way she said it stopped him. So did the way she was looking at him, with a plea in her eyes.

She was suggesting, not so much that he shouldn’t be there period, but that he should wait for an invitation. Which meant…there was a chance that he’d be asked to come by one day. That she believed maybe, just maybe there might be reconciliation. Maybe a relationship could be formed, maybe…they’d eventually speak to him.

Hope.

He nodded, understanding where she was coming from. “I’m very sorry. It’s just that I wanted to see…” Where my mam grew up. He didn’t say it. He only watched her face, waiting for the understanding to take over.

“Yes, I know why you’re here, and it’s distressing to say the least.”

“Distressing for me, I would think,” he ventured to say. “More than anyone. Maggie was my mam, after all.”

“Shh…” She warned, glancing behind her at Old Man Phillips sitting in the passenger seat, staring blankly out at the vineyards. “Don’t…are you looking for trouble?”

“No, mum.”

“Then you best be getting on your way. Wait to be invited, that’s how you do it.” She gave him one last dour look before turning and sliding back into her car, punctuating her glare with a shake of her head.

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