One Year Read Online Free

back.
    Megan raised an eyebrow. “Just be sure you save room for dinner, please.” And then she turned to Alexis. “What a ridiculous thing to say to a twelve-year-old. They always have room for more food.”
    Alexis laughed.
    â€œIt’s time for dinner,” Danica called from the door of the dining room. “Grandma says to come quickly so it won’t get cold.”
    The Fitzgibbon family took their usual places at the table—Mary Bernadette at one end and her husband at the other—and Paddy led them in a traditional grace: “Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, Amen.”
    â€œSo, what’s your New Year’s resolution, Grandpa?” PJ asked, taking a roll and passing the basket to his wife.
    â€œI’m afraid I haven’t decided on one yet,” Paddy admitted.
    â€œYou need to make a resolution to make a resolution,” David suggested. “Pass the gravy, please.”
    â€œI think that one should make a resolution every single day of the year, not just on the first of January. And keep it, of course,” Mary Bernadette said.
    â€œWhat sort of resolution, Grandma?” Danica asked, dropping a large pat of butter onto her mashed potatoes.
    â€œTo be productive,” Mary Bernadette told her. “To avoid physical as well as spiritual laziness. Sloth is a sin.”
    Pat grinned. “I thought a sloth was a four-legged tree-dwelling animal from South America.”
    His mother gave him a look that Alexis thought could wither a freshly bloomed rose on its stalk. “Sin is nothing to joke about, Pat,” Mary Bernadette said.
    Pat looked like he was about to utter a retort, when David unwittingly—or not, Alexis wondered—intervened. “My New Year’s resolution is to eat an entire gallon of ice cream at one time.”
    â€œJust don’t come to me when you’ve got a stomachache afterward,” Megan told her son.
    When the pie, cookies, and coffee had been brought to the table with some fanfare, Mary Bernadette took her seat again. “I think,” she said, “that it’s time for a toast to the year ahead.”
    Everyone raised his or her glass.
    â€œTo the Fitzgibbons,” Mary Bernadette said, with her famously dazzling smile. “May the new year bring us peace and prosperity.”
    â€œTo the Fitzgibbons!”
    Alexis saw Pat lean into his wife and whisper something.
    â€œDo you have something you want to share with us all, Pat?” Mary Bernadette asked, eyebrows raised and glass still in the air.
    Alexis bit her lip. Next to her PJ could barely hide a grin. Megan, too, looked ready to laugh.
    â€œNo, Mom,” Pat replied. “Nothing at all.”

C HAPTER 4
    J eannette and Danny Kline were at the Fitzgibbon house for their weekly dinner of pot roast, glazed carrots, and roasted potatoes, followed by a game of Monopoly. Banshee watched the proceedings from atop the fridge. Every so often Mercy would trot into the kitchen and with a swish of her tail knock any unattended game tokens or silverware off the table. Then Paddy would bring her into the living room with strict instructions for her to stay there. And before long she was back in the kitchen, tongue lolling. “That dog,” Mary Bernadette would say. To which Paddy would murmur, “Now, Mary.” The Fitzgibbons and the Klines had met at the Church of the Immaculate Conception more than fifty years before, when Father Murphy was in charge of the parish. The Klines had three daughters. The two older girls, Margaret and Kathleen, had long since moved out of state and married. Between them they had five children whom, unfortunately, Jeannette and Danny rarely got to see. Mary Bernadette might have felt pity for her friends if it were not for the fact that the Kline’s youngest daughter, Maureen, still lived in Oliver’s Well—she