The Tea Series Read online

  “Fine, I’m gone, but remember something important, Cara. You can create as much drama around that stupid trunk as you want. You can accuse us or Bernie or anybody else of anything you want, but when all the dust settles, before you opened that stupid thing, you were happy, you loved everything O’Flynn, and you thought you had a really good life. If you are willing to throw that all away over something that happened a long time ago, something we can’t change, something that you didn’t even remember until today, then you aren’t as smart as I’ve always given you credit for. If something terrible happened to you, Cara, face it, deal with it, and move on. Don’t let a few bad memories, no matter how bad, overwrite a lifetime of good memories.”

  When I didn’t say anything, she walked away.

  I can’t believe she left. I’m sitting on the side of the freaking street, having a nervous breakdown, and my favorite sister shows up to knock some sense into me, and then she just leaves. I’m all whacked-out. What’s her excuse? How could she just walk away like that? I stared into space. Who knows how long that lasted? I’m not really tracking time all that well at this point.

  She knocked on the window and about scared me to death.

  “And don’t think that I’m just going to go away, ‘cause I’m not. You can get as mad and as mean as you want, but I’m not going anywhere.” She stood there and watched me through the driver’s-side window. “Okay, well, I might go away so you don’t run over me, but I’m not going to stay gone.”

  I couldn’t help it. I rolled down the window. “Teagan, I appreciate you wanting to help me, I really do, more than you know, but right now, I can’t do this. I need to think. To remember. To wrap my brain around all of this. I need to get it straight in my own brain. Then maybe I can share it with the rest of the world.”

  “Okay, but remember, I’m not the rest of the world. I’m your favorite sister.”

  “I never forget that. Even if I want to run over you with my car.”

  “See, I knew that’s what you were thinking. You had that twitch you get when you’re about to do something evil, like when you set my alarm clock to crazy loud and then hid it in the saucepan to make it even louder and everyone was yelling at me to turn it off and I couldn’t find it.”

  “That wasn’t evil; that was payback. For when you took all my sunflower seeds out of the bag, licked off the salt, and then put them back.”

  “I like salt.”

  “I know. I’m fine, Teagan. Go home.”

  “Promise to be careful. Promise to drive safe and all that stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  “Turn your phone back on. I promise I won’t call.”

  “Okay.”

  “And call A.J. I might have alarmed him when I called a couple of times.”

  “Great. I warned him you were being crazy. Actually that you were driving me crazy.”

  “Crazy seems to be the word of the day, but I told him that I wasn’t being crazy, you were upset, and I was trying to find you.”

  “I’ll let him know I’m fine.”

  “You aren’t, but I hope you will be soon.”

  “Go home, Teagan.”

  “Okay.”

  I texted A.J.: I’m fine — but I need to talk to you. I need your help figuring out what to do about some stuff that I just remembered from my past. Can you pick up dinner and be with me tonight?

  The tears started again. I hate asking for help.

  It just got worse when his response was virtually immediate. I’ll stop at the BBQ place. Get your usual. Be home at 5:30. Unless you need me sooner. We’ll figure it out. I love you.

  Now I have a moral dilemma. A big one. My parents are coming home from Ireland — of course I’m supposed to be part of that celebration — I wasn’t there to clean or paint or anything else with the rest of the family, and I’m not even sure how Teagan explained that to everybody because I didn’t even bother to talk to any of them about it. I just didn’t show up.

  A.J. has been so good about all this. I’m so lucky to have him. He’s been one hundred percent supportive, totally nonjudgmental, and he’s on my side. That’s not the right way to phrase it. There really aren’t any sides. He’s just gone out of his way to make sure I know he is with me. Completely.

  Back to the dilemma.

  I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about the whole Bernie thing, or if there’s anything I can do after all this time, or if there is anything that I even should do, but my parents are coming home to a different world than they left, and I think maybe I am a different person.

  I’m not the only one.

  Sinead is pregnant.

  Maeve is in love with another woman, which when I stop and think about it, Teagan and Sinead were right; this is gonna cause some problems, even for O’Flynns — or, at the very least, Seamus.

  My parents were finally coming back from the trip they’d waited a lifetime for, and they were going to be all glowing and everything. A second honeymoon in the land they loved, and they were coming come back to a mess of kids that were, well, a mess.

  Do I really want to add to that?

  Then again, why does my stuff always have to be the last thing considered? Why is everybody else’s stuff more important than mine?

  Programming. Isn’t that exactly what Bernie did? Make all their stuff more important than mine? Did they even think about what they were doing to a little girl?

  I’ve thought about it. Actually, I’ve thought about little else. Thank God that Adeline was on the road again, because I hadn’t exactly been giving work much attention. I’d been going through the motions, but it wasn’t like I’d been on top of much.

  Back to my dilemma. Do I talk to my parents about my problem? When? Do I show up at the family party? What are my brothers and sisters going to say about my recent absences? I’m usually the one who leads the charge for this kind of stuff, and I didn’t even call. And why in the name of everything O’Flynn did I feel guilty about not calling? Am I not allowed to have problems? Am I not allowed to have some time for my own personal nervous breakdown?

  If I don’t go, are they ever going to be able to forgive me? This is a big deal for Sinead and Maeve. Not that they’re going to make announcements as soon as my mom and dad walk in the room, but they’ll remember this for the rest of their lives, and I don’t want to be the jerk who blew everything out of the water.

  And you know how my mom is. She’ll know as soon as she walks in the room. At least about Sinead. Which begs the question, why doesn’t she know about Maeve?

  Sinead having a baby is a much bigger deal than my stuff with Bernie, right?

  I should just wait.

  When Mom and Daddy have been home for a little while and everything has calmed down, that’s the time to sit down and talk to my mother and find out what she knew and when she knew it and why the hell she didn’t save me from it.

  On the other hand, and there’s always another hand, why don’t I get to put my needs and myself first, this one time? Why do I always worry about everyone else before I worry about myself? Would I be like that if Bernie hadn’t trained me that way?

  Maybe all the things I do every day come down to what happened with Bernie and my twisted little reactions to it.

  Okay, I’m annoying even myself.

  It was a long time ago.

  It was locked away in the back of my brain forever.

  Maybe that’s where it belonged.

  Never to be spoken of.

  Never to be shared.

  Bring it to my grave.

  Oh, hell no. That is not going to happen. It isn’t a matter of if; it is a matter of when. I needed to talk to my mother about all this.

  I’ll go to the party.

  I’ll be a good little O’Flynn and be supportive of everybody, and tomorrow I’ll go over and sit down and talk to my mom and dad and find out why they thought it was okay to allow Bernie to use me the way she did.

  I took a deep breath. Texted A.J. and l
et him know that I had decided to go to my parents’ house to celebrate. I’ll even go to the airport and meet them there like we’d all originally planned.

  I won’t say anything tonight.

  Tomorrow, the trunk.

  Period.

  My family is insane. Yeah, I said it.

  We all showed up at the airport at virtually the same time. We all parked in about the same place. We got onto the same elevator and all entered the terminal at the same time. All wearing green shirts and jeans. We looked like a very odd and somewhat unorganized family reunion.

  We sat in the waiting area like good little O’Flynns, and every time the tram pulled up and people de-trammed — is that what you call it? — they call it deplaning when you get off the plane — we all got excited but sat back down when my parents didn’t appear.

  Just about the time we all started checking our phones to see if the flight had been delayed, Jordan noticed Mom and Dad. They looked tired, and Mom looked a bit thinner, but they were smiling from ear to ear.

  We all took our turn getting hugs. When it was mine, my mother whispered in my ear, “I’ll hope that you didn’t do anything rash. I’ll not be wanting a party on the first day back. I can assure you of that.”

  “It’s just us. You can welcome back the rest of the world next week.”

  “That will be lovely. Are you alright, love? You don’t feel as if you are.”

  “I’m fine. Been busy. I’m just tired.”

  “Well, not that I believe you, but we will leave that to discuss another time.” She gave me an extra squeeze, which almost made me cry, but I held it to watery eyes.

  “Oh, love, what is it?”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “Well, I’m home now, am I not? We will set it right, Cara.”

  She knew. I’m not sure she knew what she knew, but she knew that something needed to be set right.

  How does she always know?

  And if she always knows, why didn’t she know then? Or did she?

  Back at the house, with ice cream and cookies set out and the kettle on to boil, my parents fussed and praised the changes the family had made to the house.

  It did look great.

  And I’d had no part in it.

  Which nobody mentioned.

  Which meant that either Teagan threatened their lives or I’m more disposable than I thought.

  Even I recognized how stupid and whiney and immature I was being. No need to point it out. Everybody has their moments.

  When Mom mentioned that Seamus’s wife was beginning to show, her head tilted a little to the right, and she went from looking straight into Valerie’s eyes to staring at Sinead.

  Uh-oh.

  She knows.

  How does she do that?

  Sinead just leaned into her boyfriend Howard and smiled.

  Nobody said a word. Or breathed. Or started laughing hysterically, which was the real danger.

  Mom assured us that we would all hear about their adventures at the next family dinner, which would be on Sunday at five; a command performance, we would all be there.

  Daddy said that they planned to go back to Ireland every other year. All they had to do was win the lottery.

  Liam went into a little detail about all the success Morgan and A.J. were having with their project. A.J. seemed a little embarrassed. Morgan was a tad mortified. So Liam ramped it up. It was great.

  At one point, I was almost positive that Jessie and Teagan were going to make their big announcement, but they didn’t. I guess they really are going to do the whole thing where Jessie asks for her hand. I love that. I don’t care how old-fashioned and out-of-date I am. I don’t care that I sound like a middle-aged housewife. Besides, Jessie has been making some plans for a little covert romance, and I really hope he can pull it off. Teagan is not easily surprised.

  On my way out the door, when I gave Mom a hug and welcomed her home, I whispered, “I need to talk to you about Bernie and the trunk and everything. Can I come over in the morning?”

  “Talk now, love.”

  “It isn’t a short conversation or a pleasant one. I think the morning would be better. How about ten o’clock so that you can sleep in a little? Jet lag and everything.”

  “Don’t be silly, love. Come to me whenever you are awake and ready. We will have breakfast. I see that you kids filled the fridge while you were busy with the lot of it.”

  I didn’t have the stomach to tell her that I’d had no part in the house cleaning or painting. Suddenly, the fact that I didn’t made me depressed and sick at heart. I know that it isn’t about me being part of it; it is about my parents coming home to a great surprise. But still, I’m an O’Flynn, and O’Flynns do stuff like this; they don’t sit on their butts and feel sorry for themselves when they aren’t even perfectly clear on why they should be feeling sorry for themselves in the first place.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, Mom. Thanks.”

  It was a very quiet ride home. A.J. was being even more patient than usual, which I didn’t even know was possible, and I’m patient to the point of pathology.

  When we got home I went in and took a long bath. A.J. brought me a cup of tea while I was in the tub. He tries really hard, but nobody can make me a cup of tea that is actually drinkable. I thought about pouring it out, to save his feelings, but I decided that I’m not going to do things like that anymore. It’s not healthy. It isn’t going to kill A.J. to know that I didn’t drink a cup of tea.

  I need to get over all this people-pleasing stuff.

  Now that I know where it came from, I can do that.

  TWO

  “YOU WANT ME to put the kettle on?”

  “It is all but boiled, love. Your father and I had a bit of difficulty settling in last night. We stayed up the majority of the night, reliving the trip, just ourselves, before we start to tell the lot of you all about it.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Quite obviously there is a problem, love. What is it, and what will we do to fix it?”

  We sat at the dining room table. No tea to fortify me. Nothing to keep my hands busy. I couldn’t do it this way. I popped up like a cartoon character and started making a pot of tea. The proper way. Why throw everything off-balance too soon by taking shortcuts in tradition?

  Mom and I chatted about nothing.

  She knew I was having a hard time, and she didn’t want to push me.

  When the tea was brewing in the pot, on a trivet that said Blessed To Be Irish with little shamrocks all over it, I placed cups in front of each of our chairs, along with the milk and sugar — plopped down in their commercial packaging, as my mother hadn’t had a chance to put them in her favorite containers yet — it became obvious I’d used about as much of Mom’s patience as she was willing to donate to my cause.

  “What is it, love? Help me to remember. My mind is still in Ireland. Did you come to lessen the blow of all that has happened while we were away?”

  “What?”

  “I know very well that there have been changes in this family since my departure. Your sister called and shared the news while we were at Trim Castle, in Meath. I thought it a bit of poetry since it took all her courage and the movie Braveheart was filmed there — well, bits of it were — and she was brave to give us a call.”

  “Maybe she just wanted to give you time to acclimate to the idea.” I wasn’t sure which sister had called her and just what she had said. It could be any one of three, or, for all I know, someone else in the family has an issue I don’t even know about. If I mentioned Sinead’s pregnancy and it turned out that Maeve had called to tell them she’d found the woman of her dreams, that would be bad. Worse if I’d said something about Maeve and it turned out to be Teagan calling to say they were engaged. Although she told me that Jessie was going to ask for her hand, and all that traditional stuff, Teagan isn’t that great at keeping her mouth shut. She might call Mom and say something and ask her not to say anything to anybody. Mom is be
tter at keeping secrets.

  Although based on what Teagan said a little while ago about the O’Flynns being full of secrets, and the whole trunk thing, I’m beginning to think there are more secrets in the O’Flynn family secret vault than I ever imagined.

  I want some chocolate more than life itself.

  About fourteen pounds should do it.

  It would help. I know it would.

  “On with it, love. Something is obviously troubling you; what is it that I can help you with?”

  I took a breath so deep, it dawned on me I just might be able to get the whole thing out before I needed more air.

  “I opened Bernie’s trunk.”

  “Well, isn’t that lovely. Did you find anything of interest you were looking for, love? Before I left, you had determined that you would only open one gift at a time. I thought you would be opening some of those little packages with your grandchildren.”

  “No, I haven’t opened the packages; I opened the trunk.”

  “Well, then we’ve made no progress at all.”

  “Mom, I’m trying to tell you something. It’s hard for me. Can you just let me get it all out?”

  “I’m sorry, love.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude.”

  “Cara, there will be none of that. Do not apologize for my rudeness. Now, please, continue.”

  “Okay. So I was at my apartment, and I decided that I would go ahead and open the trunk and just open all the packages at once. For some reason I’ve been putting it off, but when they broke into my apartment and I didn’t even know if all the packages were still in there or not, just because I hadn’t opened them before, in all this time since Bernie’s death, I figured it was time I started.”

  The look on my mother’s face was painful to behold. “They broke into your apartment? Who is ‘they,’ love? Why were we not given the respect of a call?”

  “Mom, ‘they’ turned out to be Adeline’s family. Adeline had her security people on it instantly. Within minutes. I have a whole new security system in my apartment, and they even have a camera outside my apartment door so they could watch and see who was around. I wasn’t in any danger.”