Page 45 of The Women of Wild Hill
“So, if you could send Calum motherfucking Geddes a message in hell, what would it be?”
Brigid snorted. “If I thought sending a message to Calum would do any good, I’d have done it a long time ago.” She could hear how pompous that sounded. “I knew him back in the day,” she explained, realizing a split second later that she’d spilled another bean.
“Is that right?” The man sounded skeptical. “What day was that?”
“Mid-nineties. He dated my mother for a minute when I was a teenager.” What the fuck. Brigid was glad this wasn’t a formal interview. She couldn’t seem to stop talking. There was something about her companion that loosened her tongue and let down her guard. She felt comfortable in his presence, like she’d known him before in some other life.
“How did his wife and family feel about that?”
The question pulled her back to earth. Brigid couldn’t tell fromhis pleasant tone or neutral expression if he’d been joking. “Excuse me?” One thing was certain—it was a strange thing to ask someone you’d just met on a plane. “For your information, he was in the process of getting divorced at the time.” Brigid shifted her attention to the window and hoped her guest got the message.
Thankfully, the man seemed to sense that the conversation was over. “I’m going to go back to my seat now, but it’s been a pleasure chatting with you. I’m Liam, by the way.” He held out a hand.
“Brigid.” She shook his hand out of politeness.
Liam. The name rattled around in her head for the rest of the flight. That was the problem with all these damn gifts, Brigid thought. The past, present, and future could get mixed up. The name meant something, but whether he was someone she’d once known or someone she was meant to meet—that, she couldn’t determine.
When the plane landed at JFK, Brigid made a point of catching up with him on the jet bridge.
“Hey,” she called out.
Liam turned to see her coming and paused. “Hey,” he responded as if he’d been waiting all along for her to come up behind him.
“I apologize if I was bitchy back there,” she said when she reached him. “I’m here in New York to tend to some unpleasant business. Also, my house in California burned down.” She wasn’t above whipping out that particular get-out-of-jail-free card.
“I’m sorry to hear that. For the record, I wasn’t offended at all, Ms. Laguerre,” he replied. “In fact, I was flattered you’d talk to me in the first place.”
“So you know who I am.”
A smile at that moment could have come off as patronizing, but Liam’s felt oddly indulgent. “Everyone on the plane knew who you were,” he said. “Don’t worry, though. I made sure nobody snapped any pictures while you weren’t looking. Dunno if anyone’s ever mentioned it, but you drool just a little when you sleep.”
Brigid laughed. “Then I guess I owe you one, Mr....” She raised her eyebrow as if expecting him to fill in the blank.
“Geddes,” he said. “My name is Liam Geddes.”
Brigid could only recall a few moments in her life when she’d been caught completely off guard. This was one of them. “Calum’s son.” She could see it now. The charm, easy wit, and broad smile—all things his father had possessed as a younger man. Liam gave a nod to confirm.
Brigid stopped in the middle of the jet bridge, forcing passengers to stream around her.
“I’d stay here and keep talking, but I suspect you’re going to need a little time to get used to that information,” Liam said.
“Fuck,” she responded.
“It’s all good,” Liam assured her. Then he walked away, pausing only for a moment to glance over his shoulder. “I’ll be on the Island this week to bury my father. I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll be seeing you soon.”
Brigid watched as Liam Geddes vanished into the crowd. A young man scrolling through his texts rammed into her from behind. He seemed prepared to make a scene until he met Brigid’s famous eyes. Then the anger slid off his face as his tongue tied itself in a knot. It was an odd kind of power, Brigid thought. The incident would be erased from her memory by the end of the day. But this man would be telling the story of bumping into Brigid Laguerre for the rest of his life. Might as well make it a good one, she figured.
“My fault, handsome,” she told him and planted a peck on his cheek.
BRIGID HAD KNOWN LIAM’S NAMEfor well over thirty years. When she and Phoebe first met Calum, he’d shown them pictures of his son, who was only a few years older than they were. He’d promisedto introduce them all at some point. It wasn’t something teenage Brigid ever took seriously. The men who fell for Flora promised all sorts of things—as if that were all it took to win women over. The sisters expected nothing and were never disappointed. Still, Calum had been different from the others. For reasons she’d never been able to fathom, he was the only man her mother had loved.
Back then, Brigid knew Calum was married. It seemed like bad luck, but she didn’t give it much thought. Flora certainly wouldn’t have given a damn about Calum’s marital status. To her, marriage was just another convention their kind needn’t follow. Even if Brigid had felt the urge to investigate Calum’s home life, her research options were severely limited. The internet wasn’t much of a thing in the early nineties, and neither was Calum. His marital woes weren’t of interest to anyone. That changed, of course, in the years after her mother died.
A DRIVER FROM HER FAVORITEcar service met Brigid at arrivals at JFK with a sign that readMrs. Addams, her usual alias. Soon Brigid was sitting in the back seat of a sedan on her way out to the Island, wondering what other surprises the Old One had in store for her. A few miles from the airport, they passed a wide, rubble-filled gap in the townhouses that lined the road. Weeks earlier, a tornado had cut a five-mile-long swath through Queens. The media had quickly moved on to other weather-related stories, but here in the city, the wound remained fresh. Two little kids were playing with feral cats that had taken refuge in the debris.
The three-hour drive took Brigid from the working-class row houses of Queens, past commuter towns, pine barrens, and then pristine, white beaches. She’d spent thirty years turning down invitations to entertainment moguls’ Island getaways. Never once in all that time had she traveled farther east than the airport in Queens.
“You sure this is the right place?” the driver asked as he pulled to the side of the road.
