Read Online Lies That Bind by Maggie Barbieri - Free Book Online Page A

“Aibhlinn.” A site that was devoted to Gaelic names and their meanings came up immediately. She read the information out loud in the car.
    “Aibhlinn, pronounced ‘ave-leen,’” she said, “translates to ‘the longed-for child.’”
    Longed for.
    She thought back. Her parents had married in 1959, her father in his mid- to late-twenties, her mother a few years behind that. In that era, if an Irish-American couple who followed Church law weren’t pregnant within a few months of marriage, Jack had once told her, something was wrong. People talked. They asked questions. They wondered why there were no children.
    Aibhlinn was “longed for.” Prayed for. She had come quickly only to go away not long after her arrival. Had she died? Or was it something else, something more sinister? That’s why Maeve was here. For answers.
    She looked out the window at her old house. Where was Aibhlinn’s room? Where did she sleep? Was it the same room that Maeve had occupied years later? Did she brush her teeth on the same stool at the bathroom sink and eat her breakfast at the table under the cuckoo clock that seemed to have gone missing at some point between her living there and Jack moving?
    Most importantly, where did she go?
    It pained her that the Haggertys knew something she didn’t, something that they could hold over her like an emotional cudgel. She could almost hear Dolores Haggerty’s voice on that street, making her horrible presence known. “Where’d you get that shirt, Maeve? It’s ugly.” Or “Who cut your hair? A blind man?” Maeve had turned a deaf ear to her taunts and had remained confident and strong. She wanted nothing to do with Dolores Haggerty, something she didn’t feel comfortable saying out loud, even when Dolores asked her to be a bridesmaid at her wedding to Maeve’s cousin. “Too good for us?” Dolores had asked when Maeve declined. “You always thought you were. Your father didn’t do you any favors telling you how perfect you were.”
    I am better than you, Maeve had thought at the time. I’m better and smarter and kinder; all the things that you’ll never be, the qualities that will always elude you.
    Maeve tried to find common ground with Dolores but was never entirely successful; Margie had a softer edge and Maeve found it easier to tolerate her. She imagined it had been hard growing up in the house of an alcoholic and his shrill wife, two people who rarely uttered a nice word, even as they were processing toward the head of the communion line, confident in their goodness and religiosity. Maeve had had her own troubles, but instead of dwelling on them and letting them eat her alive, she had made herself become stronger and more loving, because when all was said and done, she believed in good.
    In being kind. In love.
    Poor Dolores, Maeve thought, as she headed south. She had been “fat” and “stupid” and worst of all, “useless.” The words stayed in Maeve’s memory in association of that time and place, those girls who were now women and mothers themselves. She wondered if they had learned anything, had carried anything good forward. Or if it was only dysfunction and verbal abuse, something that they had known so well and that was probably embedded in their own moral fiber.
    They had never had a chance in hell.
    The Donovan manse was as grand and foreboding as Maeve remembered from the last time she had been here, before Sean died, and even with Christmas lights and a perfectly manicured lawn, it still made Maeve think of a house from a horror movie. There were topiaries and professional plantings that were designed to survive winters in the tony part of the Bronx. She pulled into the driveway, right behind Dolores’s Mercedes, and walked to the front door, stopping to marvel at the landscaping. Just how much money did these people have? Maeve was lucky if she got one of the girls to cut the grass every two weeks in the summer. Maybe, like Dolores, she should get a team