“Yes. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
“I thought you might leave again.” Hallie shifted to stand and Colleen stayed her with her hand.
“I’m not running away, Hallie. I’m not leaving you or the girls or Shane. I’ve been asked to write a memoir based on my ten travel tips and I’ve agreed.”
“Why would you need to leave to do that? Isn’t this just about the most perfect place to write?”
“The last tip is about going home. I have to figure out what that word means to me, what home really is.”
“How can you even ask? It’s here. Right here in Watersend.”
“That’s true in so many ways. But now that I know about Dad’s time in Ireland, now that I know about the first Colleen . . . my birth mother . . . I need to go to the place where I was born. You get that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Hallie nodded and her gaze wandered to her daughters. “I admit it is easier for me. My home is here. Home for me is now defined by wherever my girls are.”
“Promise me this. Please don’t make plans for Dad or his ashes until I return. Okay?”
“I promise.”
Colleen stared at her sister, weighed the words inside her mind before she said them, making sure she meant them. “I trust you.”
They sat quietly for a long while, listening to Rosie’s and Sadie’s sweet shouts, to the splash of the river against the dock and to Shane’s sawing and hammering. Eventually car tires crunched the gravel drive and they turned to see Beckett’s old Audi pull in and park. He climbed out tentatively, realizing as he glanced toward the yard that the family was watching him. He waved shyly but didn’t come forward.
Colleen stood shakily, exhaustion weighing her down, her heart beneath a slab of grief. She went to him and hugged him. “Thanks for coming by.” She kissed him lightly. “You’ve been so kind.”
“You act like I’m here to say good-bye, which I’m not.” He smiled and then he shook his head. “Wait, it’s you. You’re the one saying good-bye?”
“I am but just for a little while. I’m going to stay and help Hallie and Shane for a couple days, get things settled, but then I’ve decided I’m going to Ireland. To the O’Shea pub.” Colleen held her casted arm level in her opposite hand, relieving the swelling in her fingers.
“It’s my fault.” He grinned with the joke. “I showed you that photo of that pub and now you have to go see it.”
Her laugh was light. “Yes, your fault.”
He gazed at her for a few moments. “You don’t have to do this.” He brushed the hair from her forehead. “You don’t have to run. You know that, don’t you? Please don’t leave, Colleen.”
“I just told Hallie—I’m not running away. I’m really not. This is different.”
“If you’re leaving the grief and loss, try to see that there is also love here. Can’t you see that there can be both?” He touched her cheek and she leaned into his palm.
“What are you saying?” She kissed his palm and lifted her gaze to his as she took his hand in hers.
“That I am quite possibly falling in love with you? Yes. I have no idea what will happen with us, but please don’t leave when it’s just starting.”
“I’m not leaving for good, Beckett, or at least I don’t think I am. I’m going to see what I can find there. I can’t start the book or this journey with myself unless I go. Does that make sense?”
“And you believe Ireland will help you forget and move on? You believe Ireland will fix things?”
“No. Not forget. Never that. And it won’t fix anything; I’m sure of that. But Ireland is where I began. And how can I know where I’m going until I know where I started?” She paused. “Dad once told me that it was the memories that made his story, but that he was the only one who could find meaning in that story. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do. Go to where it all started to find meaning, or at least understand the best I can.”
Beckett kissed her then. “You believe that getting close to someone will destroy you. I know that. But it won’t. Don’t go.”
“I must.” Colleen rested her head on his shoulder and spoke the truth. “My first travel tip was, Know where you are going. It was meant to mean be prepared, be organized, plan outfits, buy maps and stop by the bank for the right currency. But I now know it means so much more. It’s also about a future.” She smiled. “How it starts is how it ends. That’s what Hallie said to me last week. And I think she might be right. I need to go to the place where I began.”
They kissed lightly and he held her. “Then go if you must. When you come back, I’ll be waiting right here.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Your feet will bring you where your heart is.
Irish proverb
Colleen glanced out the airplane window—the clouds were tumbled and gray, appearing impenetrable until the plane burst through and the Emerald Isle appeared below. The plane banked left and dipped; Colleen gasped as the green patchwork-quilted landscape appeared below. In a quick scribble in her open notebook, she wrote, I arrive in a place where all the greens in the world were born.
She hadn’t slept at all on the seven-hour transfer flight from New York’s JFK, where she’d connected from Savannah. Instead, she’d been writing as furiously as she ever had. Her notebook, a small green one she’d bought for the trip, was now one-quarter full with notes and little sketches to remind herself of other times and other trips—a shorthand she’d come to use in her travels. While other passengers slept with their eye masks on, and the flight attendants wandered up and down the aisle talking in subdued tones, Colleen wrote and wrote. While her seatmate—a British woman who wore too much perfume and chewed her food with the noises of a grinding machine—watched movie after movie, Colleen wrote and wrote.
Her work kept the grief at bay until she let down her pen, let down her guard, and it crashed into her as a blindsided punch. But still she kept writing—the work wasn’t profound, she knew that much, but it was honest. It conveyed some small truths. She wrote about how she’d squelched her hurt with travel and adventure; about how she’d avoided intimacy by finding fault in others; she understood slowly and quietly that she could not wait for a man to save her life just as she could not blame a man for ruining it.
After they landed, she moved dreamlike and sleep deprived through the customs line, making small talk with a tall man and his son headed to a golf trip. Colleen felt both untethered and elated as she looked for her bag. Although she hadn’t yet stepped her feet onto the green earth, the mantra I am in Ireland; I am in the land of my birth wound around and around her thoughts like yarn binding her close and safe.
After cashing in her U.S. dollars for euros at the exchange stand, she exited the airport and stood in the soft air of Ireland. It was just another airport, another city, just like the hundreds of others she’d found herself cast upon after a long flight, and yet it was anything but just another city. She stood still for a long while, breathing in and out, wishing she’d slept on the plane, and trying to catalog everything in her sight: sunlight creeping along the grass; the varied accents like musical notes; the soft scents of fresh-cut grass; the gray industrial buildings that might belong to any airport.
“May I help you?” A thin man in a fisherman’s cap startled Colleen and she jumped, dropping her backpack onto the sidewalk as her cast banged against its edges.
“No. I’m good.” She leaned over to pick up her pack and then smiled at the older man with wrinkles on his face like fissures, but pleasant in the creases of his smile. “Just needing a taxi.”
“Well, then you’re in luck.” He tipped his hat and spoke in a brogue so lovely Colleen thought she wanted to record that simple sentence. He pointed at the black taxi directly behind him. “Where would you be needing to go, miss?”
“County Clare.” Colleen rattled off the address of the pub, which sh
e’d already memorized. There was no use in wasting time. If she’d traveled this far to see the place, then she would go straight there.
“Well, that’s grand, let’s be on our way.”
She knew a taxi was extravagant, but she wasn’t ready to drive the windy roads on the wrong side, and she planned on staying in the small town until she decided what to do next. No need for a car . . . yet. Her destination was only an hour away, but by the third curve in the road, Colleen’s head lolled to the side and she was fast asleep. She awoke as the driver lurched to a stop and with a laugh asked, “You’d be liking the pub this early on a Tuesday morning?”
Colleen sat upright and rubbed her eyes, confused for only a moment as she readjusted both her gaze and her thoughts. Outside the window was a view as stunning as any she’d ever seen—Galway Bay glinting in the sun. She opened the door and stepped out, wondering vaguely if she were dreaming.
Here was a land she’d only imagined or seen in photos, a land so green and a sea so blue and a marsh so lush that it seemed to be an animated movie formed of hyper colors and sounds. Gulls cried, a donkey brayed and the bay water splashed and swished on craggy granite boulders that lined a boggy area so bright green it was almost neon. She knew it would take days, maybe weeks, for her eyes to see all there was, to absorb and understand the landscape. This was her geography, a place where she’d been conceived in love and born in trauma. This was the place of herself.
The taxi driver climbed out of the car and stood next to her. “You okay, miss?”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever been better.” She turned to take in the pub behind her, a simple facade next to a restaurant facing the bay.
“Are you sure you’re wanting to be dropped off at O’Shea’s? It doesn’t open until six tonight.”
Colleen glanced back at the driver, and his smile was concerned. “I’m staying only a couple doors down from here. I’ll walk when I’m ready. I just wanted to see it straightaway.”
He pointed at her cast. “You’re sure now? You don’t need help?”
She grinned. “Fit as a fiddle.” She knocked on the cast with the knuckles of her free hand. She quickly paid the man and he drove off.
Colleen’s backpack was flung over her shoulder and her small suitcase sat at her feet like an obedient dog. She didn’t move, but cataloged the details of the pub as though she intended to paint it, needed to memorize it. It was just like the photo she’d seen in the historical office back in Watersend.
It was as though the old photo had shimmered and shaken itself, and then come to life. The side windows and dark green door; the gold lettering above the door stating the name in proud letters; the pots brimming with multicolored flowers of anemone and foxglove; and the window displaying various kinds of whiskey and photos of local townspeople. The structure was simpler and smaller than the Lark—a double door in the middle and windows on either side in perfect symmetry. Colleen felt that if she opened the door she would find the décor to be similar to the Lark, all dark wood and low lanterns, sparkling glassware and taps poking above the lacquered bar. She might find old friends sharing a pint, sharing their lives in the intimate way of pub life.
Sauntering down the sidewalk, an older man approached Colleen. He carried a bag and he walked deliberately toward the bay. He was short and a cigarette dangled from his lips, his face hidden under a cap. As he neared her, she saw that he was even older than he’d appeared, and had a kind face. He stopped and smiled. “Hello, ma’am, are you lost?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Just enjoying the view.”
He nodded at her suitcase and then dropped the cigarette, crushing it beneath his leather boot. She noticed that the bag he carried was in fact a guitar case. “You arriving or leaving our fair town?” he asked.
“Arriving,” she said. “And just now.” She pointed at his case. “A guitar there?”
He glanced down as if he’d forgotten he was carrying it. “Ah, yes. Practice with the band.” He nodded toward the pub.
“You’re going into the pub? I thought it wasn’t open.”
“It isn’t except for setup. You needing a drink?” He laughed and glanced at his wrist, which didn’t have a watch but she got the point.
“Not quite yet. I just want to meet the owners, or the family who owns it.”
He stared at Colleen for a moment, the silence stretching toward the bay and back again to the pub.
She smiled at him. “It’s a lovely place. My dad used to work here . . . a long time ago.”
The man stood still and placed his guitar case next to her suitcase so it appeared that they’d been traveling together. “Your da?”
“Yes. Well, I was hoping someone might remember him, although I know it’s a long shot.”
“Well, you’ll be coming back tonight then.” It was not a question.
“I will.”
“That’ll be grand. You’ll find all the stories you’ll be wanting to hear.”
Colleen brushed the hair from her eyes as the man picked up his case. “Do you know any O’Sheas?”
“I do indeed. I’d be one.”
Colleen stared at him then with new eyes. The fine smile, the pale skin and the jaunty pose. “So am I,” she said. “I’m an O’Shea.”
She hadn’t, until that moment, thought this truth in words. She was, though. She was an O’Shea.
“Well, that is grand.” He smiled and slapped his hand on his thigh. “You’ll be finding quite a number of us here. Too many to count. Have you been doing that ancestry tree all the Americans are doing to find your ancestors?”
“No. My mother, well, I thought the family didn’t own the pub anymore. I thought . . .” Although this stranger might be somehow related by blood, Colleen would not yet share her full story with him. Dare she mention her mother’s name? “I thought Colleen O’Shea was the last one of the family to own it and when she passed . . .”
“God rest her beautiful soul.” The man crossed himself and closed his eyes for a moment before gazing again at Colleen. “Aye, you’d be right about that. She was the last direct descendant, but her second cousin Shawn swooped in to save it after she passed on. And God bless him for that.” The man smiled. “My name is Sully.”
“Nice to meet you, Sully.” She held out her hand. “Colleen.”
The man shook her hand and held to it, his fingers entwined in hers. “Well, well, you are Colleen, aren’t you?”
“You mean . . . ?” She clung to his hand and he to hers.
“Well, here you are now. This is the land where stories come alive. And you, Colleen O’Shea, have always been part of a love story.” He released her hand and picked up his guitar case with a smile so wide Colleen wondered if it hurt his cheeks.
“A love story?”
“Well, yes, you are. Welcome home. Tonight shall be grand.” And with that, he was gone, disappearing around the back of the pub.
She gazed toward the water and realized that if she were to put in one of the sailboats moored to the concrete dock a few hundred yards away, and steer it west and slightly south, she could eventually land at her own dock in Watersend. She would find herself again at the water’s edge in her backyard with the tilting tree house and the one-story home where her sister and nieces now lived, where her childhood had unfolded and where a man named Beckett had told her that he just might be falling in love, if he allowed himself, or if she allowed him to do so.
Colleen gripped the suitcase handle and began to walk the few blocks to her rented cottage, the wheels popping on the cobblestones and uneven sidewalk.
* * *
• • •
The pub crowd pressed in on Colleen as she stripped off her raincoat. It was nine at night and the place was packed to the walls. During the day she’d walked around the town, napped for hours and wrote her first impressions of the town. She found a plac
e for fish and chips and gobbled as though she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Now she stood near the entranceway taking it all in, cataloging it as she would any place she’d be writing about. The hoppy aroma of beer mixed with the scents of rain and warm bodies. The wooden bar was dark and formed an L shape at the end of the room. Men and women were bellied up, placing orders in their thick accents and slapping one another on the back. It seemed everyone knew everyone else and Colleen wondered if this was how a stranger might feel entering the Lark. The room looked and felt as she’d thought, but also deeper and richer, just as though she’d imagined it in three dimensions and found instead four.
The dark wood-paneled walls were nearly covered with framed photos of men in uniform, men in groups, women at the bar or the bay, families and parties, priests and bartenders. And just as in Watersend, there were posters for bands and musicians.
With her raincoat draped over her arm, Colleen moved through the room, not looking at those around her but at the photos. Was her dad here? Her mom? As she wiggled and wound her way to the back of the room, she saw it—a photo of her dad as a much younger man, exactly as he’d appeared in the photo back in Watersend, the one where he was sitting on a stone wall, dressed in a suit with a flower pinned to his lapel. Here, though, there was a woman at his side. She wore a simple white dress with lace sleeves and a short lace veil pinned to her wild curly hair, both of which seemed alive in the wind. She clung to Gavin, both her arms looped through one of his as she leaned against his shoulder. He gazed at her and she at him, and it was clear they were both laughing. All was right with the world for this couple—they had no idea what was coming. Does anyone ever?
Colleen backed up and bumped into an older man. His shock of white hair sprouted in all directions and his Guinness was half-empty. He smiled kindly and stepped out of the way.
“I’m sorry. Did I make you move from your spot at the bar?”
The Favorite Daughter Page 30