Free One Year by Mary McDonough Page A

brunch together at The Angry Squire. But it’s all right.”
    PJ looked at Alexis behind his grandmother’s back and her heart sank just a little. “We can go to the movie some other time,” she told her husband’s grandmother.
    Mary Bernadette bestowed one of her megawatt smiles upon Alexis, and as disappointed as Alexis was, she found herself smiling back. “Why, thank you, Alexis,” Mary Bernadette said. “How nice of you.”
    The two older Fitzgibbons went out first, followed by PJ and Alexis. “Thank you,” he whispered to his wife, and took her hand in his.
    Alexis nodded. How little it took to make the people you loved happy, she thought. Just a little bit of sacrifice here and there.

C HAPTER 15
    M ary Bernadette guided her car down Main Street. There, coming out of the bakery, was Marilyn Windsor, she of the old family diaries. Really, the woman had been unaccountably difficult about them, and for the life of her, Mary Bernadette couldn’t see why she had put up such a fuss about letting the diaries go. It wasn’t as if she really cared for them. How could she have when instead of being kept in a proper archival storage box they had been stuffed in a drawer of a table in her front hall where anyone could manhandle them? No matter now. The Oliver’s Well Historical Association had gotten the diaries in the end.
    Mary Bernadette peered ahead. Was that Alexis’s car parked outside The Angry Squire? No, she realized as she drove past, it wasn’t, but it was a similar make and color. She and Paddy had enjoyed a lovely Valentine’s Day dinner with the young couple at Richard Armstrong’s restaurant, though Alexis hadn’t seemed very excited about the cross of St. Brigid that PJ had given her. Well, to be fair the religion was still new to her. Unlike the other Fitzgibbons, to whom their Catholicism was second nature, Alexis would have to grow into a sense of belonging and comfort. It would happen, given time.
    Of course, there was always the possibility that she could turn out like Pat and Megan, who had moved beyond a sense of belonging and comfort into a state of alienation and, at times, active contempt. But that would not happen to her grandson’s wife, not if Mary Bernadette had anything to say about it.
    It had been at her suggestion that all four of them—Mary Bernadette and Paddy, PJ, and Alexis—had gone to church together for the Ash Wednesday service. “Remember man that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shall return.” Though she had heard her son condemn the words as morbid, Mary Bernadette had always found them of great importance. It was important to keep one’s pride in check and never to forget that life here on earth was not all pleasurable—nor was it meant be. Mary Bernadette had learned that lesson in a particularly brutal way when she lost her beloved William. Since his death there had been many times when she had wondered if perhaps she had found too much joy in her son; perhaps God had taken him away to remind her of the dangers of ignoring the trials and challenges He had sent his children. But the ways of God were inscrutable, and Mary Bernadette would never know why her baby had been taken from her. That there might have been no reason at all—that there might be no God or guiding principle behind the working of the world—was simply not something Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon was capable of conceiving.
    She came to a stop at the red light on the corner of Vine Street and nodded in greeting to Mrs. Kendrick, behind the wheel of the car to her left. Mrs. Kendrick was another member of the Church of the Immaculate Conception; Mary Bernadette had seen her there the day before, three small children in tow. Mary Bernadette very much doubted that Pat and Megan had taken the twins for ashes. For them, the season of Lent was devoid of spiritual meaning and Easter was merely a day on which it was