“He insisted that every symbol in our dreams is linked to sex,” Gus said. “Absolute rubbish and I told him so. He didn’t like being contradicted by a woman, I can tell you, especially a foreign one, so we thought we’d better make a hasty retreat.”
“When did you come back?” I asked. “Why didn’t you get in touch with me?”
“We arrived back a few days ago,” Sid said as I brushed away tears of joy. “But Daniel wanted us to be part of the surprise. He asked us not to contact you before the house was ready. As a matter of fact, we helped him with the finishing touches.”
I looked around at the dainty end table with a white cloth and a vase of flowers, at the clock on the mantel, and beside it even a china dog like the one we’d had before.
“It’s not exactly as it was,” Daniel said, coming to join us. “But we tried our best to make it look the way you remembered it. I’ve left the things that need a feminine touch for you—the drapes and the bed linens and that sort of thing.”
Until I had a baby I had rarely allowed myself to cry. Now the tears trickled down my cheeks and I threw my arms around his neck. “You did all this without breathing a word to me, and when you are so busy at work too. You’re a grand sort of man, Daniel Sullivan.”
Daniel gave Sid and Gus an embarrassed smile. “I had quite a bit of help from various people at police headquarters. And your friends here. Everyone has been most kind.”
“So you’d no idea that the house was almost rebuilt?” Gus asked.
I shook my head. “Whenever I asked Daniel, he indicated that things were progressing slowly and I’d have to be patient.”
“It was lucky that she came home in the middle of a heat wave in July and was glad to go straight to my mother’s in the country,” Daniel said. “If she’d been living here in the apartment with me, it would have been harder to do everything without giving the game away.”
“I’m quite overwhelmed,” I said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“For once Molly Murphy is lost for words,” Sid said dryly, giving Gus a nudge. “We never thought we’d see that day, did we?”
“Come and see the rest of the house,” Daniel said. “I shouldn’t be spending too long away from work.”
“And I shouldn’t leave Liam for too long with Mrs. Heffernan,” I said. “She’s a little old to be minding a lively youngster.”
“Who is this Mrs. Heffernan?” Sid asked.
“The caretaker at the building on West Sixty-first Street where Daniel has been living,” I said. “I’ve been staying out in Westchester with Daniel’s mother but I decided it was time we came back into town so that I could look after my husband again. Not that it would have been easy in that tiny apartment with no real cooking facilities.” I turned back to Daniel. “So can we really move back into our house?”
He led the way out of the front parlor and pushed open the back parlor door. “Like I said,” he turned to answer, “there are still some finishing touches that only you can make. We need bedding, and drapes, and kitchen utensils. I have no idea what women need to cook with—apart from a stove. We have one of those, and some pots and pans.”
I took in the back parlor with its mahogany dining table and chairs, a sturdy sideboard, and a desk like Daniel’s former one tucked into a corner. The window looked onto our little square of backyard—now wild, and overgrown, and littered with builder’s debris. Plenty of work to be done there. Then I went through to the kitchen—new table, new shelves holding a couple of pots and pans, and beneath them …
“Well, what do you think?” Daniel asked me.
“We’ve never had a gas cooker!” I exclaimed. Until now I’d always had an old cast-iron stove, and I’d envied those like Sid and Gus who had been able to upgrade to a more modern form of cooking.
“You’ll find it so much more convenient, Molly,” Sid said. “And we’ll look after Liam while you go shopping for the things you still need.”
Dishes and silverware, I thought. And cheese graters, and washboards, and a meat safe—the amount of things I needed was overwhelming. And they all cost money. I had been told that the police department was helping out with the rebuilding of our house, since it was an act of retaliation against the arrest of a gang leader that had destroyed it in the first place, but would that largesse stretch to replacing everything I had lost?
Then I had a thought that brought a smile to my face. “Can we move back here in time for Liam’s birthday?”