his mother. Those were the times he was drunk—not a happy drunk but ready to explode. Not that he was a bad man. There had been plenty of good times. But his father was a complicated man who detested living his life as an underdog. Basically he didn’t fit into the labourers’ scene. Surely he had been clever? And handsome. Jason remembered how handsome his father had been. Mesmerizing, his mother said. Tall, muscular, graceful like a sleek jungle cat. His father had loved to read. He devoured books, always eager to learn. His grandmother, jealous of her daughter’s love for the man, had called him a savage. He’d never been that.
Towards the end his father told them he had an urge to paint. Time was running out. He had much to learn. Niall Corey had always been able to draw. People. Animals. Birds. Whatever one wanted. He’d left a note for his wife saying he was following Gauguin’s example. Did that mean he’s sailed for Tahiti? Like Gauguin the famous painter he’d certainly abandoned his wife and family.
They’d never heard from him again.
Afterwards instead of burning them, his mother had gathered together all his sketchbooks like treasure. Jason couldn’t pretend they weren’t good though he hated his father for deserting them. His father had filled the sketchbooks with extraordinarily accurate and insightful sketches of all the people around him, his family, his co-workers, his bosses, the Linfields, exquisite pastels of his beautiful mother, Liv as a little girl. His father had always told him one day Liv would break his heart. How right he had been. He wished he hadn’t thought of Liv now. It brought the past crashing back.
He didn’t see Megan until she came alongside the car, tapping on the passenger window so he would open it.
“Hi, Megan.” He lowered the window, making himself smile at her when the very sight of her filled him with shame and a kind of creeping dread. He’d never much liked Megan Duffy. She was pretty enough but an odd little thing. Liv being Liv had always been kind to her. She had even asked Megan to be one of her bridesmaids which hadn’t been in his plans but it was the bride’s day after all. The truth was since the night of Sean Duffy’s twenty-fifth birthday party he absolutely dreaded running into Sean’s sister. “Anything wrong?” he asked, thinking there couldn’t possibly be. He was on his way to see Liv, the love of his life. Nothing could come between him and Liv.
“I have to speak to you, Jason.” Megan was all eyes, blue shadows beneath, pallid skin. She didn’t look well.
A sensation akin to fear ran through him. “Okay then. Hop in. I’m on my way to see Liv. I can drop you off on the way.” He tried to sound friendly but everything about her put him in a panic. It was so claustrophobic with her sitting beside him in the car. He had the weird notion he was going to suffocate. He swallowed on a parched throat—it seemed like his saliva glands had dried up—glanced at her, paying attention to her pallor. “What is it, Megan?”
Her voice was barely audible. “I’m over,” she said.
He was so frantic he laughed. “Over what?”
“Two months.” Now she began to cry, red blotches appearing almost instantly on her cheeks and the tip of her nose. “I’m pregnant, Jason. I’m sick all the time.” Her voice rose to near hysteria. “It’s yours, Jason. Your baby. I was a virgin.”
Most of the guys thought she was. “Don’t do this to me! Are you sure, Megan?” he groaned, realizing with shock he had trembling hands. “It was only one time. I don’t even remember it. I’ve never been so drunk in my life. Oh, why talk about it! Have you seen a doctor?” he asked, feeling desperately ill himself.
“In this town?” Piteously Megan wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Besides, I had to tell you first, Jason. You’re the father. I’ve never been with anyone else.”
“Oh, Megan!” He slammed a fist into his knee, blazing with shame. “How did we let this happen?”
“I’m sorry, Jason,” Megan said feebly. “But you overpowered me. You’re so big and strong. It was near enough to rape but nothing would ever make me tell anyone else that.”
For all her cowered attitude suddenly that sounded like a threat. He trod on the brakes, bringing the car to a halt alongside the kerb. “No, Megan.” He fixed her with a searing stare. “I may have been all sorts of a fool, but I know I would never have forced you—that’s not my style. You’re entitled to be very upset but you must have given me some sort of encouragement?”
Very gently she touched his arm even though he visibly flinched. “You said it yourself, Jason. You were very drunk.” She stared at him, tears welling into her hazel eyes and slipping down her pale cheeks. “I’m so frightened. My father will kill me when he finds out. I’ve never been with anyone else, Jason. Couldn’t you tell? There was blood on the sheets.”
He recoiled. “I saw no blood.”
“You weren’t looking,” she pointed out mournfully. “I had to get you painkillers for your hangover. You were still sick the next day—almost out of it. Do you think I wanted this to happen, Jason? It was a terrible mistake. Olivia is my friend—she’s been so kind to me. She’s never looked down on us Duffys. Mum thinks Olivia’s a real lady. She’s always going on about it like I’m a slut, which you know more than anyone I’m not. This has been a dreadful shock for me, too. You’ve no idea how hard it’s been trying to keep myself together, locking myself into the bathroom. Mum asked me this morning if I had something to tell her. I think she knows.”
“That you’re pregnant?” Jason moved his eyes to her flat stomach.
“Yes,” she said, miserably. “I know what you’re thinking, Jason. You hate me.”
He rested his arms on the steering wheel, burying his face. He didn’t think he would ever smile again. “I don’t hate you, Megan. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Jason groaned in anguish wanting to shut the whole world out. He even had the sensation the blazing sun had disappeared. Where would he be without his beloved Liv? He might as well be dead. There was a taste like metal in his mouth, but he straightened up. “I’ll take care of you, Megan,” he promised. “This is my child, too. My responsibility. I always knew in my heart life didn’t promise me any rose-garden.”
Liv was a beautiful dream. Hadn’t he always had the feeling she was much too good for him.
Megan looked like she was about to reach out to him, but Jason backed right up against the car door, wanting to smash the window out. “Olivia loves you,” she said, her voice so tight the words might have been stuck in her throat.
“She’ll find someone else,” Jason muttered, thinking life for him was all over. Someone who deserves her.
Gradually Jason’s rage receded as pity gripped him. Megan was so small and desperate and her father, Jack Duffy was a brute of a man. A drunk and a failure, Jason could well imagine him being very tough on his daughter. Megan needed his support and so did the baby growing inside her. That baby was his. In the final analysis the baby was the one who mattered. Abandoned by his own father, Jason felt he had no other option but to front up to his responsibilities. “Our child deserves a future, Megan,” he said. “I’m not running away.”
An hour later he had sufficient control of himself to face Olivia. She ran down Havilah’s grand staircase to greet him, her long silky black hair flying behind her like a pennant in a breeze. So beautiful, so slender, so graceful,
