The Parting Glass. Emilie Richards

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СКАЧАТЬ Lorcan was jailed in Liverpool. I don’t know for what. By the time he made it back to Shanmullin, his family was gone. All of his brothers were dead by then, and his parents had gone to Cleveland years before to live their few remaining years with Terence’s widow, who had remarried a man named Rowan Donaghue. Lorcan was poor and illiterate and didn’t know how to get in touch with them or even if they were still alive. The village priest was dead, as well, and by then a good portion of Shanmullin had emigrated, too.”

      “Your name is Donaghue, not Tierney.”

      “Lena, Terence Tierney’s wife, had a son by Terence, born after his death. When she married Rowan Donaghue, Rowan adopted little Terry, and they changed his name to Donaghue. They went on to have many more children, but Terry’s my ancestor. So technically, my sisters and I are Donaghues by adoption, not that it matters. We all have the same great-great grandmother.”

      “And Irene’s grandfather stayed on in Ireland and worked the land?”

      “Irene says that Lorcan was in his forties by the time he came back to Ireland, tired and bitter. He married a local woman, had one son, Liam, and died years after.”

      “Liam is Irene’s father.”

      “That’s right.”

      Finn knew the rest. In the early 1920s Liam and his wife Brenna had abandoned Ireland for the United States, hoping to start a new life. Irene had been only a small child at the time and remembered little about those years. “I suppose all this somehow explains why Irene’s family didn’t find any Tierneys in Cleveland.”

      “Exactly. Lena married a Donaghue and changed her son’s name. That was many years before Liam arrived in Cleveland, and apparently he never talked to the few people who might have remembered, including Lena herself, who was an old woman by then. Irene just happened to find out about us on the Internet. The Cleveland Plain Dealer did an article about the history of the saloon my family owns, and Terence Tierney’s name was mentioned because Lena was the founder and he was her first husband.”

      “Odd that Irene would still be looking for relatives, don’t you think?”

      She combed her hair back with her fingers, a lovely, feminine gesture he hadn’t been privy to in a long time. “Not really. She never married, and she has no children. We all want to feel connected, don’t we? She’s not well. I think the idea of wanting some part of you going on into the years is natural.”

      He froze, fingers gripping the steering wheel. At one time he’d understood that need himself.

      Peggy looked over her shoulder at her sleeping son. “Kieran’s my bid for immortality, I guess. Do you have children, Finn?”

      He could not bring himself to answer casually, and that angered him. The question was simple enough. The answer was impossible.

      “You’ll meet my daughter Bridie,” he said at last. “She visits Irene when she can.” He had expected more questions, but she was surprisingly perceptive and didn’t ask them.

      Just in case, he changed the subject. “We’re nearing the village. Sneeze and we’ll have passed it before you open your eyes again.”

      “It’s all so beautiful.” Peggy’s gaze was riveted outside the window.

      “Yes, you Americans always seem to think so.”

      “And you don’t?”

      “There’s been hardship here, the likes of which you probably can’t imagine. It’s only now coming back to life. Not always with the old families. With new people and holiday cottages, and people working from their homes. You see leprechauns and fairy hills, and I see people who work too hard and earn too little.”

      “Yet you stay? There must be a draw.”

      They passed through the main street of the village, lined with colorfully painted buildings nestled shoulder to shoulder. Mountains hung like stage props behind them, and the ocean sparkled in the distance. A brook ran through the center of a tiny town square. As villages went, it was picturesque and tidy. He imagined she was enthralled.

      They were out in the country again before he answered. “I stay because I stay,” he said.

      The last kilometers were silent. He pulled into the gravel lane lined with a spotty hedgerow that ran to Irene’s cottage. He risked one glance at Peggy Donaghue. She was leaning forward, and even though her son stirred behind her, she didn’t turn. “Oh, look at this. This is where my sisters and I came from, Finn. And it’s so glorious. How could Terence Tierney ever have left?”

      “I’d suppose he was starving.” He pulled up near the house and turned off the motor. “Irene will be out to greet you, count on it.”

      Peggy opened her door and took a step toward the thatch-roofed cottage. He was almost sorry it was so charming, with its whitewashed stones and paned windows. Finn watched as Irene opened the traditional half door, a door she’d painted brilliant blue and let no one dissuade her. He stayed in the car as the two women eyed each other. Then he shook his head as Peggy covered the distance between them at a sprint and fell into Irene’s withered arms.

      chapter 7

      The Tierney Cottage had been remodeled in Irene’s lifetime. Her mother, Brenna, had remarried several years after their return to Ireland, and Irene’s stepfather had been a man of some wealth. He had purchased the land that the Tierneys had worked for centuries as tenant farmers, and more beyond it. Together he and Brenna added bedrooms and a kitchen with an inviting fireplace. And when the cottage became Irene’s after their death, she added electricity, gas heat, fresh plaster and imagination.

      Peggy lay in bed a week after her arrival and stared up at the beamed ceiling in the room she shared with Kieran. Not a cobweb hung there; not an inch of the ceiling was stained or peeling. The cottage was pristine. Irene might have refused a live-in companion until Peggy’s arrival, but she hadn’t refused household help. The day she’d realized she could no longer keep the house spotless, she hired a neighbor to come and clean each morning and lay the turf fire. In good weather Nora Parker bicycled over bumpy roads, cheerful and ready, after the exercise, to put the place to rights. She made breakfast, too, and even though it was only just seven, Peggy could already hear her bustling around the tiny kitchen.

      Nora’s existence was a welcome surprise. Peggy had expected to clean and cook, but Irene had explained that she could never sack dear Nora or worry her by letting Peggy take on any of her jobs. Nora brought news from the village, fresh groceries and a blithe presence that disguised the analytical soul of a military commander. No one except Nora had the same stiff standards as the mistress of the house, and the two women gleefully plotted each morning to rid Tierney Cottage of every hint of dust.

      The evening had been almost warm, and Peggy had slept with the windows open. This morning a cool breeze stirred the lace curtains, but sun beamed outside the windows. The house smelled pleasantly of centuries of peat fires, an organic, earthy fragrance imbedded deeply in wood and stone. The breeze smelled of the ocean, a quarter of a mile in the distance.

      Peggy wondered, as she did every morning, what her ancestors had thought upon rising each day. Had they been so worn with hunger and care that they cursed the rocky windswept promontory on which some more romantic forefather had built their home and grazed their sheep? Had they cursed the invader who had taxed them heavily and sent their food to market when they needed it to feed СКАЧАТЬ