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

She was large and extremely pregnant but she was still in her regular jeans, though they sat way below her belly. One of Doug’s oxford shirts, the sleeves rolled up, coupled with her usual Doc Martens, completed the look. From the back, she didn’t even look pregnant. When Maeve had been with child, she had looked like a beach ball; even her head had been fat, in her memory.
    “What’s the matter?” Jo asked. Behind her, couples streamed out of the room, the women stretching their legs, the men checking their phones.
    “Margie Haggerty. What did she want?” Maeve asked.
    “You,” Jo said. “I told her that you had left for the day and wouldn’t be back until the morning.”
    “Did you tell her where I went?”
    Jo frowned. “You know me better than that.” She punched Maeve’s shoulder. “I’ve got your back, girl. You know that.”
    “Thanks.” Maeve leaned against the wall next to the water fountain and closed her eyes.
    “What’s going on?” Jo said. “You do not like those girls.”
    “Women. They are women now, Jo.”
    “Yes, but they were girls once, and I have a feeling that’s where all of this started.” It finally dawned on Jo. “She was married to Sean Donovan, your dead cousin. The murdered guy.”
    Maeve looked away.
    Jo had a way with words. “The woman in the too-tight blue suit.”
    “Yes, but that’s not it,” Maeve said. “It was a long time ago. Our families weren’t close. The father was a drunk and the mother was just horrible. I tried to stay far, far away from them.”
    “Then why did they come to the funeral?” Jo asked.
    Maeve shrugged. “That’s what you do.”
    “Your people confuse me,” she said. “Sitting shiva is its own kind of dysfunction but at least my people talk about stuff. Try to work it out. Go to therapy.”
    “Yeah, not the Irish.” Maybe therapy would have helped her, but she had been raised to think of it as a sign of weakness. “If you’re Irish and you know someone, even tangentially, and they die, you go to their funeral,” Maeve said. “And you especially make sure to hit the after party.” She looked around, marveling at the girth of some of the pregnant women around her. Had she looked like that once? How had she remained erect? “My father and I traveled the tri-state area going to wakes and funerals and eating rubber chicken at post-funeral luncheons. I can’t explain it. It’s just what you … we … did.”
    Jo studied her face for any sign that she was joking. “Sounds like fun.”
    “It’s just the way it was,” Maeve said. “I don’t entirely understand it myself. But I’m breaking the cycle. I’m not dragging my girls to any Haggerty funerals in the near future, that’s for sure.”
    Jo stopped by the refreshment table outside the birth class, and shoved a Girl Scout cookie in her mouth. “And call me crazy, but I could swear she was carrying.”
    “Carrying?” Maeve asked.
    “Yes. There was a bulge in the back of her jacket. Carrying. A gun.” Jo put another cookie into her pants pocket. “For later,” she said, when Maeve raised an eyebrow.
    Maeve didn’t comment; she wasn’t one to talk. After all, her own gun was tucked safely up into the seat of the Prius, ready to be taken out, if she ever needed it. Yes, she understood that pleasant middle-aged women who looked like her—nice, gentle, a baker, for God’s sake—didn’t carry guns, especially where she lived, a tony suburban county near New York City. A yoga mat? Sure. But a gun? She would put money on the fact that she was the only woman she knew with a gun and who knew how to use it. It was her secret and she kept it close.
    She was careful, having carved out a spot under the seat, sure that it wouldn’t fall out. She had driven over so many potholes, testing her spot, that when she was done, she had needed a new alignment. No one would ever find that gun. She was sure of that. And if either of the girls ever drove the car, she put it