Forever Mine: Callaghan Brothers, Book 9(64)

What would his final gift be, he wondered?

She came to him then, not as a ghost or an apparition, but as a remembered image in his mind. If he kept his eyes closed, he could imagine her sitting next to him. She was always with him, in his heart, but until his heart attack, these private moments were the only times he allowed himself to feel her.

A warm presence surrounded him even as a sense of peace settled over him.

“Hi, baby...”

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It was some time later when he opened his eyes again, the ghost of a smile on his face as he sensed another familiar presence.

“Come on out, then,” he called.

Shane moved out of the shadows and into the dwindling light. “I didn’t want to startle you,” he said in explanation.

“I know.”

Was this how it was going to be, Jack wondered? His kids checking up on him when he was out of sight for more than an hour or two? Skulking in the shadows for fear of startling him into another cardiac arrest?

Shane sat down beside him. “Taryn got worried when you didn’t show up at the Pub,” he said, as if reading Jack’s mind. Knowing Shane, he probably had. The boy had inherited his mother’s uncanny ability to read people.

“Taryn did, eh?” Jack asked with a quirk of his lips. He’d bet Taryn wasn’t the only one. He knew full well that it was easier to pin that kind of concern on the womenfolk than fess up to it. He wouldn’t call his son on it, though. He’d done the same thing more times than he could count, often beginning a conversation with ‘Your mother is worried’ or something along those lines.

“Yeah.”

“You have already told her you’ve found me, then,” Jack guessed by Shane’s lack of action. “So she will worry no longer.”

“I texted her, yeah.”

“Good.”

They sat there like that, father and son, for several long minutes. It was a comfortable silence.

“I hear her too,” Shane said finally.

Jack watched a leaf as it floated downward, settling among the potted flowers. “Who?”

“Mom,” Shane said quietly. “I mean, not like you and I are talking now. More like feelings, really. Nudging me one way or the other. Subtle clues and warnings, when I listen hard enough.”

“And you think it’s your mother?” Jack asked carefully.

Shane turned to him. “I know it is,” he said with conviction. “And you do, too.”

Jack said nothing.

“My only question is, what is it that she’s telling you these days?”

Leave it to Shane to find a way to ask what they had all been wondering without making him feel like a delusional old man. “That’s between me and her.”

Shane nodded, as if that was what he’d expected. “Lacie said she told you our big news.”

The abrupt change in subject matter was neither unexpected nor unwelcome. That was another thing about Shane—– the boy knew when to move on. “Aye. Congratulations, son.”

“Thanks. Lacie’s worried she’s not ready.”

“Bullshite. The woman is going to make a fine mother.”

“That’s what I keep telling her.”

“Aye, and you are going to be a fine father.”

“I hope so. I have one hell of a role model.”

Jack swallowed down the lump in his throat. It wasn’t Shane’s words as much as the sincerity with which he’d said them that had the emotion swelling up. Damn it all, he had never been a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, and he wasn’t about to start now.

“I guess we’d best be going before Taryn calls out reinforcements.”

Shane chuckled. “Probably.”

“Thank you, son.”

“For what?”

“For keeping up your mother’s grave.”

It was Shane’s turn to look away. He nodded once. It was enough.





Chapter Twenty-Four


November 1985

Pine Ridge

“Thank you,” Kathleen murmured, as yet another guest offered their condolences. She stood just past the open grave, next to her sister and father as the receiving line continued. On the outside, she was composed and suitably subdued, but Jack saw the raw pain in her eyes. After a year-long battle with ovarian cancer, her mother had passed on. Her goal had been to hang on long enough to welcome her newest grandchild into the world, but sadly, it was not to be. In a tearful goodbye, she’d told Kathleen that she would keep their unborn child company until he (or she) decided to make his (or her) appearance.

Kathleen’s mother had often teased Jack, telling him that he needed to rearrange his chromosomes and make a daughter so that Celina would have another little girl to play with. Celina was Erin’s third child, and the only female among the predominantly male (eight) grandchildren. Since Erin had undergone an emergency hysterectomy after Celina’s birth, Kathleen was her only hope of gaining another granddaughter.

If he could have controlled such a thing, he would have. After six boys, Kathleen would probably appreciate a little girl, one who would wear pretty dresses and play with dolls instead of catch snakes and frogs and play Army. She’d never say so, of course. She loved her boys, and said as long as they were happy and healthy, she was happy. But he didn’t fail to miss the way her eyes lit up when she spotted something girly and picked it up for Celina, nor the way she coddled Brian and Adonia’s new baby girl, Alexis.