Installment Forty-Four

"Mom, that has got to be the saddest story I have heard in a long time," Deborah said when I recounted for her my reunion with Carolyn. "What's her prognosis?"

"Actually, it's very good," I was happy to report. "She just has to get through this last treatment that has blown her up like a balloon. Amazing, though, isn't it honey? If everyone who has never 'gotten over high school' could have a similar reunion, the world would be a better place!"

"I love it when you make pronouncements Mom. They are so reassuring because they sound like the old you."

It was so good to be with my daughter (even if the only word I heard was 'old'). Glowing with love and filled with empathy for someone she had only heard about in her mother's sad tales of high school, I stepped outside myself as I often did, and wondered how she could possibly be my daughter.

Then her face changed and I knew trouble lay ahead.

"I spoke again with Dad."

"Did you call him or was it the other way around?" I was hoping TBM had called her to apologize but of course that was not the case.

"No, I was stupid enough to call him again. Sean thought you may have been right, that I caught him at a bad moment, so I wanted to give him a chance to redeem himself. Well, he certainly didn't do that."

I couldn't tell her that he had called me again too for another round of ranting. Even the news that he was off the hook financially for his daughter's wedding thanks to his mother's generosity, couldn't stop him he was so wound up.

His baby girlfriend was conspicuously absent this time as background noise. Had she already fled the scene? Something was clearly up and it wasn't just his mother cutting him out of her will. My best guess was that the company must be pushing retirement at him.

"As mad as I am at him, Mom, I'm actually worried he might have another heart attack. He's been mean, but he's still my father and I want him alive at my wedding.”

And so we ended up, yet again, on the subject of Sean's father.

"He found him by the way.”

Say what?

"He changed his last name too, can you believe that?"

That explains why my Google search came up empty. I even tried to find him on Facebook but there are thousands of people with the name Gabriel Kelly.

Could that also be the reason he keeps turning up dead in my nightmares? No need to consult my Argentine psychic Fernando on this one. Gabriel Kelly has ceased to exist. Did I even want to know his new name and whereabouts? No time to decide.

"He's living in Ireland like a hermit in an old cottage and using his mother's maiden name, Shaughnessy."

"How on earth did Sean discover this?"

"Being in the diplomatic service has its privileges. Sean tracked him down through one of his father's former colleagues who has remained a close friend to Sean and his younger sister Kathleen."

My next question hung in the air for what seemed like hours, not seconds.

"Has Sean gotten in touch yet?"

"No. He's afraid of being rejected all over again. Frankly I don't blame him for not rushing into a reconciliation. It's one of the things I love best about Sean. He's not impulsive, like I am.”

I can't imagine from which parent she inherited that character trait.