“Aye, no, you didn’t. But I’m afraid if I stay here I’ll be falling in love with you.” He bowed his head and laughed, then ambled off to join another white-haired gentleman at the far end.
Colleen grinned at the flirtation and backed up to take his vacated spot, still gazing at the photo. Her mom, or the woman who had given her life. The laughing woman in the white dress on her dad’s arm looked like her. Curly dark hair, large wide-set eyes, a smile that reached high onto her cheekbones. Yet, this Colleen had a face full of freckles, a smattering across her nose and cheekbones like sprinkled stars.
“You know those people?” a voice asked behind Colleen and she turned, her hand reflexively coming over her heart. She faced a gentleman, most likely her dad’s age, holding a tray teetering with beer and whiskey glasses.
“Partly, yes.”
He nodded his head toward the wall. “This is the wall of O’Sheas.”
Colleen took in the man’s kind blue eyes and furrowed forehead. “That’s my dad.” She pointed at the photo.
The man set the tray on the bar and threw his hands in the air. “Sully told me you might be coming tonight. You’re Colleen.”
She blushed, feeling the heat of it in her face and under her arms. “Yes.”
“Welcome.” He took her right hand in both of his wide callused palms and pumped her arm up and down. “Let me take your coat.” Which he did, and hung it on a hook behind the bar. “Expect you’ll be staying awhile?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Sit.” He pulled out a bar stool and then placed two fingers in his mouth to emit a loud whistle. The bar crowd was silenced and he hollered out, “We have Colleen O’Shea with us here tonight. Now you make her feel welcome.”
The remainder of the night was loud and blurred and she felt as if she were in a lucid dream. The accents, deep and rich, carried her along. She sipped whiskey and met second cousins and a slew of townspeople who had all adored her mom, and a few who remembered and loved her dad. Colleen O’Shea had been an only child, they said, and look now, they exclaimed, her only daughter here at last. “We knew you’d come back one day,” almost all of them said. “This land draws people home.”
There were the few, a pair of sisters who’d been Colleen’s best friends, who blamed Gavin for the loss of Colleen. And they told her so. “If your da had just stayed where he was meant to be, and married the woman he was meant to marry, none of this would have happened.” After all of the backslapping and hugs, Colleen was speechless at the sudden turn of tide, at the implications cast as quickly as a slap across the face.
“But,” she said to the one sister, Maury, her hair feathered with gray and piled high in a bun that was springing loose from its bounds. “But there would have been no great love and there would have been no me.”
“Well,” said the second sister, Elana, younger but wearing the same hairstyle, her lipstick too orange and too thick, “that very well might be true, but we’d have our best friend and we’d have never known about you at all.”
Colleen gripped the edges of the bar and nodded at the sisters, feeling the sink of despair, of the irreversible despair, of death. “My dad is gone now, too,” she said. “And I’m so sorry you lost your best friend, my mom.”
They seemed to soften but not enough to answer. They turned in unison and bowed their heads close together as if discussing a plan of action. Colleen turned away and took the few steps toward the left side of the L-shaped bar, where she could see the sisters’ faces as they looked at only each other. Loss and time dug long trenches in every life, and memories, regrets and pain filled in the deep furrows. The sisters had filled their troughs with bitterness, and Colleen felt, quickly, out of the corner of her heart, that she had a choice, that they all had a choice of how to fill those long empty places—with forgiveness, with bitterness, with rage or with, above all, love. She’d made some wrong choices and some right, if there was any right or wrong about it all. She would choose differently if she had the chance to rewind, but she was here now, in a land across the sea where she could begin again. Choose again.
The pub was overflowing with life, and every life its own universe of joy and pain, of love and loss. This was a mirror to South Carolina. This was the same and it was different and it was her dad and mom’s pub, and it was where she began.
Soon, Colleen showed off her prowess at the Guinness tap and bowed at the applause. When the owner, a second cousin named Millie Walsh, closed the bar hours later, Colleen was met at the front door by Sully, who offered to walk with her to her rented room.
As they ambled side by side in the darkness, a sliver of moon blurry beneath the cloud cover, he asked, “Was that to your liking?”
“If it wasn’t, there would be something wrong with me, I believe.” Colleen laughed. Jet lag, whiskey and beer made her feel as though she were half floating above the sidewalk.
He, too, laughed and then stopped so that Colleen did also, turning to face him a block from her cottage. The streetlight lit his face, the furrows of his wrinkles casting shadows across his smile. “May I tell you a story about your mum?”
“I’d like that.” Colleen’s heart raced and she took a step closer.
“When your mum was a little girl, she wanted to travel the world. She kept a globe in her bedroom and when I’d come to see her da, my uncle, she would bring it out to me. She would spin it and spin it, pointing to the places she meant to one day visit. When her parents died together in that accident, she knew that those plans were to be put aside, that she must run the pub, possibly for a long while. And then she met your da. We here in town weren’t so happy at first, thinking she’d run off to the States with this American. But she didn’t. Your da, he became one of us quick as a wink. He did his best to learn some Gaelic and most of all he honored and loved your mum. When she discovered she was to have you, she told me, ‘This is the one who will see the world.’”
Colleen’s breath caught in her chest and her hands flew to cover her mouth as a cry threatened to erupt. Light rain began again, misting them both.
“Did I go making you upset? I didn’t mean to now.” Sully took her good hand in his and kissed her cheek. “That story was meant to make you happy.”
“Sometimes I cry when I’m happy,” Colleen said and squeezed his hand.
Sully nodded. “Aye, I think the Irish know a thing or two about that.”
Colleen allowed the misty rain to settle on her face, on her hair and hands. “She never left here, though. This was her home. It was where she was born, and where she died.”
“It was.” Sully nodded. “Which means that in many ways it is also your home. Although you must find your own place to settle and live because we all know that home must be a place that shelters your life.”
“A place that shelters your life.” Colleen repeated the words and stared at the man for a long while with the bay behind him, the soft rain and the whitewashed thatch-roof cottages surrounding them.
“I will see you tomorrow, then?” Colleen asked. “I think I’d like to stay awhile in this place and hear some more stories about my mom.”
“Indeed.” Sully bowed and began to amble along the sidewalk for the last block to Colleen’s cottage.
The clouds above Galway Bay puckered, tumbling toward each other and away. The whip and whistle of the wind gathered at the edges of the night and blew Colleen’s hair around her face, into her eyes and the corner of her lips, carrying the past and the future all together.
Epilogue
The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.
Meghan O’Rourke, The Long Goodbye
THREE MONTHS LATER . . .
Half-hidden in the high branches and Spanish moss, the tree house appeared like a small cottage that had been built snuggly into the nook of the oak.
It sat steady and level, the metal roof shimmering in the November sunlight. A ladder, much larger and safer than the one Colleen, Hallie and Shane had climbed long ago, had been attached to the trunk, pink ribbons hanging off the sides, fluttering in the wind. Behind it, the river was flat and calm at ebb tide. Colleen heard her nieces’ voices, muffled and laughing in the branches, their voices blending with the afternoon frog croaks and birdsong.
Colleen gently closed the door to the taxi and dropped her backpack at her feet next to her suitcase. She inhaled the river-soaked air and smiled. She hadn’t told anyone but Beckett that she was returning today. He would arrive soon, but she wanted to surprise her nieces and Hallie first, then Shane.
For three months she’d rented a whitewashed cottage with a thatch roof, hiked the land of West Ireland, met distant relatives of her Irish mom and written an outline and first chapters of the travel memoir. She’d had her cast removed after seven weeks and begun to type even faster. She hadn’t traveled much, but instead had become deeply familiar with the small town and its people.
She’d kept in touch with her family, sending letters and texts, updating them with photos and e-mails. She’d sublet her apartment in New York, and hadn’t promised anyone when she’d return because she hadn’t known. As time had stretched out in Ireland, there came a moment when she understood why her dad had decided to stay, reasons that went beyond his love for his wife Colleen. It wasn’t one quality of the land or the people, one person or pub or house that attracted her; it was the mix and mash of it all, a seductive quality not unlike the Lowcountry. A land alive and surreal, changing with each tide and wind. A land where the trees seemed as old as the earth, and the water had spent a lifetime thrashing against the tide and rocks, begging her to dance with it. A lush land, of every shade of green, that surrounded her and asked her quietly, in the night air, in the stormy sea, in the curved roads, green pastures and fairy circles ringing the trees, if she would stay and allow it to make her its own.
For a little while Colleen, too, had thought she might stay. She befriended her neighbors and became involved in the community. She found enough friendship to sustain her and enough solitude to write. In the midst of her writing, the realization flowered—since she’d arrived she hadn’t known what to do about home, but the in-between space allowed the decision to grow and become what it must until she was certain—the pulse of the water and the heartbeat of her family on the other side of the sea drew her home—a place she chose.
As she wrote, and as the stories spread across the pages, she understood that there is and always would be heartbreak. Always. It was the cost of love. To live her life in fear would not do. Walter hadn’t only destroyed her faith in love but had also offered her a new belief: that getting close to anyone would destroy her. Getting close to Walter wasn’t the same as becoming close to anyone else. The world was not made solely of Walters—to believe the lie kept her in bondage to fear. “Don’t move on anymore,” Hallie had cried out when she left. “Don’t move on.”
As the cab backed away and honked, two little faces appeared in the window of the tree house. Colleen couldn’t make out one from the other, but she waved.
“Aunt Lena!” Rosie’s voice called out clearly and then Sadie’s voice joined in.
With loud squeals of delight two little girls scurried down the ladder, both jumping before the last step to land in the soft grass and run toward Colleen. They flew into her, arms and legs flying, their voices rising still higher.
“You’re home!”
“Did you bring us presents?”
“Are leprechauns real?”
“I lost another tooth.”
“Will you stay in our room with us?”
They talked over and above each other while Colleen tried to hug them both, two squirming little girls. They fell to the grass in laughter.
The commotion brought Hallie to the back steps, one hand on her hip, the other shading her eyes as she looked up toward the tree house, where her girls were supposed to be. She wore a pair of jeans and a white linen button-down fluttering in the breeze. Her hair, shorter and loose around her face, touched her shoulders. Not seeing what she meant to see, she shifted her gaze to the lawn, where Colleen and the girls were now tangled together in a heap.
“Lena?” Hallie asked in a quiet voice, walking toward them slowly as if she might make her disappear.
Colleen stood up and brushed off her jeans. “Hey, sis.” She smiled at her sister and reached for a hug.
Hallie came into her arms, holding tight. “You didn’t tell me you were coming home. I would have made you a nice dinner. I would have . . .”
Colleen let go and kissed her cheek. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t tell you. I don’t want you to do anything.”
Sadie and Rosie bounced around like pogo sticks, wanting Colleen’s attention.
“Are you really home?” Hallie asked.
“It looks like it.” Colleen spread her arms wide, hugging the property, the river, the house and all its inhabitants.
“I was afraid you’d stay there. I was afraid you’d be just like Dad and not come back.”
“Ah, but Hallie, Dad did come back.”
“But not for a long time and only because of tragedy.” Hallie shook her head and smiled. “I’m so happy you’re here. We saved your bedroom for you.”
“There is so much to tell you.” Smiling at her sister and then her nieces, Colleen felt a fullness that could only be happiness. “But there’s plenty of time for that.”
The sound of a car made them both turn to see Shane’s Jeep rattle up the driveway and pull to a stop. Out of the driver’s side he emerged and from the passenger side stepped Beckett. She knew they’d become close friends while she was away and Beckett had brought Shane along, knowing he’d want to be part of the reunion.
Colleen didn’t know where to rest her eyes—on her brother or her friend—but they approached together and hugged her tightly between them. She laughed and pushed them both away. “You’re squashing me. Stop.”
Shane spoke first. “Lena,” he said and then paused. “Colleen, welcome home. I am so damn happy you’re here.”
“Lena is good with me,” she said and smiled at her brother, gently nudged his shoulder with hers. “I’m very happy to be home.”
She turned to Beckett and gave him her full attention. They’d been writing to each other and talking on the phone, long conversations. She’d found herself saving moments and thoughts of the day to share with him each evening. But no promises had been made, no plans solidified. He kissed her, softly and quickly with everyone watching. She touched his cheek. “Hi there, Beckett.”
“It’s mighty fine to see your face, Colleen Donohue. Mighty fine.”
“Yours, too.” She kissed him again.
Silence fell and into it Hallie asked the question they all might have asked. “Did you find out what home is?”
Colleen held Beckett’s hand and looked directly at her sister, allowing their gaze to hold, allowing everything they were and had been and would be to settle between them. “I think so, yes. I believe home is a land that calls for you, a place that shelters. It’s a family with all the complications that a family can be.” Colleen looked at her brother and nieces and then at Beckett. “This is my home.” She kissed Beckett, and then smiled at her family. “Because now I understand—home is more than a place, it’s a love story.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have long been fascinated by the role of memory in our lives—how it both allows us to look back in fondness and yet is also capable of keeping us captive to pain or loss. Who are we without our memories? How do they define, center and hold us? I attempted to answer these questions—as I do most inquiries that keep me awake—in story.
Although the pages must be written alone, the story unfolded with the input, help, brainstorming and encouragement of many
others. First, I want to acknowledge and thank Dr. Jim Ray (son of the brilliant writer Cassandra King) of the Neurodegeneration Consortium at MD Anderson Cancer Center for allowing me to interview him ad nauseam about Alzheimer’s research and treatment. Dr. Ray is on the forefront battling this horrific illness and yet spent time with me to help me understand how it affects both the patient and the families. Any errors are mine alone.
My writer tribe was there with me to brainstorm and carry me through when the story seemed to be falling apart. I love all of you. Thank you most directly to Mary Alice Monroe and Kathy Trocheck (aka Mary Kay Andrews), who worked through the plot tangles with me, who helped me name the pub and title the book, and who were there through the dark night to help me find the heart of the story.
My friends—all of you—God bless you for having to put up with me through the heads-in-the-cloud phase, through the on-the-road phase, through the I’m-overwhelmed phase. I love you each and all.
My agent, Marly Rusoff, has been there to strengthen and encourage. My stellar team at Berkley/Penguin Random House continually offers unwavering support. I offer over-the-top gratitude to my editor, Danielle Perez; my publisher, Claire Zion; Danielle Keir; Craig Burke; Roxanne Jones; Fareeda Bullert; Betty Lawson; and my sales team. You are the dream team in so many ways.
To Meg Walker at Tandem Literary, whose calmness and insight only make this a better journey from beginning to end.
To Ellen Edwards—we have worked on over seven books now together and your keen eye, compassionate spirit and steady hand always make my stories more than they would be without you.
And always to my beloved family, I love you and would not and could not do this without you.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. In the prologue, we are at a wedding that has gone horribly wrong. Have you been a part of or heard about a wedding that fell apart at the last minute? Should Colleen have disappeared like she did or stayed to face the situation? Should she have replied to her sister and family or ignored them?
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