The Mystic Cove Series Boxed Set (Wild Irish Books 5-7)

by Tricia O'Malley

  A laugh bubbled up in Margaret's throat as her mouth dropped open. “Go on with your bad self?”

  “Ah, Keelin says it sometimes. Must be something the kids say these days,” Fiona laughed with Margaret.

  “So you’re saying that if I just want to be – and am happier without exploring that side of myself – you’re okay with it?”

  “Of course,” Fiona said simply, and Margaret felt a weight ease from her soul.

  “Because I always felt like I made you angry by not following in your footsteps,” Margaret pressed the issue.

  “You made me angry when you left without giving me the dignity of a conversation. You hurt my feelings by not allowing me near my granddaughter. But you would certainly not make me angry if exploring your power makes you so wildly unhappy.”

  Margaret nodded.

  “It does. I think one of the things I’ve learned about myself is that I’m actually okay with not exploring more of that side of me. I like living a more normal life. I’m happy to shield that power as much as I can. I feel like I’ve finally come to really know myself – and that is me. Do you get that? Me is the person who has no interest in her power. I hope you can accept that about me. I do,” Margaret said, meeting her mother’s eyes.

  “Oh darling, I do. I only want you to be happy. If you know your own mind on this, then so be it. I’m not going to hide who I am from you. I certainly don’t expect Keelin to do so either. So, that is something you’ll need to make clear to your daughter. She needs to understand your acceptance of where she is in her life. Especially as she starts forward in her new life with Flynn and working with me as a healer. She needs to hear that from you.”

  “Well, of course I accept her,” Margaret stuttered out, crossing her arms over her chest. Hadn’t she paid for the wedding? How could her daughter not know she accepted what Keelin did for a living?

  “Then you need to tell her that.”

  “I will. I hadn’t realized she didn’t know. I suppose I haven’t made that very clear, either,” Margaret pursed her lips as she thought about it. “Okay, talk with Keelin this week. We’re good on the whole using our powers thing?”

  “We are right as rain, my dear. Now, I’d love to see that pub where they filmed the show Cheers.”

  “You know Cheers?” Margaret asked, laughing as she and Fiona stood.

  “Of course. I do have a television, you know.”

  Margaret looked down at her mother’s smiling eyes and felt a pang for all the moments she had missed with her. Reaching out, she ran a hand down Fiona’s cheek.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t have this conversation earlier,” Margaret said.

  “Everything in its own time,” Fiona said, pulling her in for a hug.

  And wasn’t that just the truth of it?

  Chapter 41

  Margaret shook her head as her mother ordered another round of pints. The tourist bar that had inspired the hit television show Cheers was a far cry from what she’d had in mind for an elegant dinner. Instead of linen tablecloths and a glass of wine, she was eating a burger and drinking an icy cold beer.

  “If only Keelin could see me now,” Margaret laughed at Fiona, surprised to find herself having a good time.

  “This is good for you. Break out of those suits and fancy restaurants,” Fiona observed as she took a sip of her beer.

  “Looks like I’m making all sorts of changes this week,” Margaret said, discreetly checking her phone.

  “You check that phone a lot,” Fiona said.

  “Ah, yes, I suppose I do. Habit,” Margaret said.

  “It must be tough running your own business,” Fiona said, stealing a fry from Margaret’s plate.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say it's easy. But it is easier than it used to be. God, I remember when I was first starting out. I’d have a toddler screaming at my feet while I tried to talk on the phone to potential clients. It’s come a long way since then. Now I have Jan who takes care of a large share of the work, and a really great group of real estate agents working for us. Plus, our admin staff is wonderful. I feel like we’ve created a good culture. I try to offer the best of benefits to my employees and never pay a man more than a woman. I think it shows in the longevity of my employees as well. I have a fairly low turnover rate,” Margaret looked down at her hand, surprised to find her pint glass empty.

  “It sounds like you’ve done a wonderful job. Your office is beautiful, Katie’s a doll, you’re clearly successful – so why do you seem so unhappy?” Fiona asked.

  “I’m not,” Margaret said automatically and then paused, putting her hand up. “Okay, obviously I look like I’m unhappy because I’ve lost a little weight and haven’t been sleeping well.”

  “Because of Sean,” Fiona said, signaling the bartender for another round.

  “No, most certainly not,” Margaret argued.

  “If it’s not Sean then it’s because you're unhappy with your work,” Fiona said.

  “I’m not. I love my job,” Margaret said and then paused. Did she?

  “Do you?” Fiona echoed her thoughts and Margaret glared at her.

  “Stay out of my head.”

  Fiona chuckled and took a sip of her fresh pint. “I wasn’t in it. But clearly I asked a question you were thinking.”

  “I suppose I am – I don’t know. I’m not dissatisfied. I’m just not as hungry as I once was. It used to be a lot more exciting to solve the problems of a new business or work on organizing new processes. But now everything runs so smoothly that I’m not sure what else there is to do,” Margaret admitted, surprised to realize that it was true.

  “Can you sell it to Jan?” Fiona asked, turning to meet Margaret’s eyes.

  “Sell?” Margaret asked, genuinely shocked. She sputtered a bit and took a sip of her beer to calm herself down. The thought of selling her business made her palms sweat.

  “Yes, sell. You could do something else.”

  “Something else? Are you crazy? I’ve spent my whole life working for this,” Margaret argued, growing heated. “Don’t you understand how hard I've worked to get here?”

  “I do. And yet here you sit, a stone underweight, in wrinkled clothing, alone in a prestigious apartment in Boston. You can’t tell me this is what you’ve worked so hard for.”

  It was like a punch to her gut – but who was she kidding? Fiona rarely pulled her punches. Margaret’s mouth worked as she tried to process what her mother was saying. For every defense that popped into her mind, something else contradicted it.

  “I don’t think I ever thought it would work out like this,” Margaret finally admitted.

  “What did you want to happen?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I just saw myself falling in love with one of the doctors or lawyers that I dated, having someone to travel the world with, watching Keelin as she got through school...

  “And now Keelin’s gone and I haven’t dated in a year or two and here I am,” Margaret said, clinking her glass against Fiona’s. “Cheers!”

  “Sláinte,” Fiona said quietly, watching her daughter carefully. “I just don’t understand,” Fiona said finally.

  “Understand what?” Margaret said, staring morosely across the bar at a Sox fan cheering on the game.

  “You’ve never been one to go down without a fight. You picked up and moved to another country when you didn’t like what was happening. You started your own business from scratch. What in the hell is stopping you from living the life you want right now?”

  Margaret gaped at her mother.

  “I…I guess I don’t know what it is that I want,” she admitted.

  “Well, I suggest you figure that out before you wither away,” Fiona ordered. “Now, eat.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Margaret said, stuffing a French fry in her mouth and letting the salty goodness of fried potatoes melt on her tongue.

  Suddenly, she was ravenous.

  Chapter 42

  “What do you want to do today?” Fiona asked from w
here she sat in the gilded front room of Margaret’s apartment. Margaret had slept well for the first time in ages, and she wondered if she could attribute that to the beer she had drank or the first real meal she’d eaten in months.

  “I was thinking we could walk around Faneuil Hall and maybe go to the aquarium? Or we could hit the shops?” Margaret asked, dropping a kiss on her mother’s cheek and sitting on a settee done up in cream and gold fabric. She reached over for the mug of breakfast tea her mother had poured for her.

  “Can we do one of those duck boats?” Fiona asked, her eyes lively with enthusiasm.

  “You want to go on a duck boat?” Margaret raised her eyebrow at her mother. In all of her time living in Boston, she’d never gone on a duck boat. These crazy contraptions were half-boat, half-car. The passengers sat on top and were whisked around the city learning about the Freedom Trail and other historical aspects from tour operators with thick Boston accents. The culmination of the ride came when the car/boat was driven into the water, touring along the Charles River. Margaret had always considered them to be tacky.

  “Sure, it looks like fun.”

  “I suppose we could try that out. Not something that I’ve ever done, but I guess I could use a little fun,” Margaret said, throwing her hands up.

  “When do you want to leave?”

  “I’ll just change into jeans,” Margaret said. The way she was going she’d need several new pairs of jeans. It seemed more and more she was finding herself in places that didn’t require her dressy clothes.

  Hours later, Margaret laughed as her mother wore a lobster bib tied around her neck and cut into a garlic and butter soaked lobster. The duck boat had proven to be a wild ride, and Margaret had found herself enjoying every moment of the ridiculous tour. It had also given Fiona a chance to see a small snapshot of Boston. When Fiona’s eyes had lit up with glee when they’d taken to the Charles River, Margaret found herself happy she hadn’t tried to control their day.

  After the duck boat tour, they’d wandered through the small aquarium on the harbor, shopped at Faneuil Hall, and now found themselves tucked at a casual seafood restaurant by the water.

  “You should try the clam chowder. They say it’s award-winning,” Fiona said and Margaret laughed at her.

  “Every restaurant in Boston claims to have award-winning chowder,” Margaret said with a smile.

  “Hmpf. Well you should try it anyway,” Fiona prodded. Margaret had ordered just a crab cake, since she was used to not being very hungry these days.

  “You know what, I will,” Margaret said, flagging down their waiter and ordering a bowl of the clam chowder along with another glass of white wine.

  “There you go. Need to put some weight back on you,” Fiona observed.

  Margaret sighed.

  “It wasn’t intentional.”

  “A broken heart will do that to you,” Fiona observed.

  “I am not broken-hearted,” Margaret exclaimed.

  “I would know, seeing as I’m the one looking at you. You seem to forget that I went through this once before,” Fiona pointed out.

  “Mom, I was just a kid then. Of course I was dramatically upset over Sean.”

  “I’m talking about me. When I lost your father,” Fiona said quietly, her eyes meeting Margaret’s.

  “Oh, of course,” Margaret said. “Sorry, I know not everything’s about me. I get a little caught up sometimes.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Mom, I barely remember that time. I just know how distraught you were. It was like being sucked under by a huge wave of sadness. I almost couldn’t breathe.”

  “And I’m sorry for that. I should have shielded you better. What was I thinking? Of course my empath daughter would be hit hard by my emotions.”

  “I wish I remembered more of him,” Margaret said.

  “Ah, he was a good man. Larger than life. Stubborn as all get out. And loved with the purest heart I’ve ever known. I was lucky to have him for the short time that I did,” Fiona said.

  “You never wanted to remarry?”

  “No. That was a choice that I was given,” Fiona shrugged.

  “What do you mean, you were given a choice?” Margaret asked, genuinely curious. She’d never heard her mother talk this way about her father.

  “Ah, that’s a story for another time, child. Suffice it to say that I chose well, but another husband wasn’t in the cards for me. I’ve made peace with that. And, I’m happy.”

  Margaret knew what it was like to live alone, and now she wondered if her mother was just as lonely as she was.

  “Aren’t you lonely?”

  “Probably not as lonely as you are. I have friends, the village, my work; Flynn and Keelin are right over the hill. And Ronan. I’m busier than most could expect to be at my age.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Margaret said, beginning to ask another question before she was stopped by her mother’s finger pointing at her.

  “Stop changing the subject. The point is, I know a broken heart when I see one. Tell me what happened with Sean.”

  Margaret opened her mouth to protest but then stopped.

  “He was dating someone else,” she shrugged and looked away, taking a sip of her wine to wet her now-dry throat.

  “He was most certainly not,” Fiona insisted. “That man is not a two-timer.”

  “I don’t know. We had a big fight, I could tell he was lying about dating her, and I stormed out,” Margaret said miserably, pushing her crab cake around on the plate.

  “So you ran.”

  “I ran,” Margaret said, looking up to thank the waiter for her bowl of chowder.

  “Fix it,” Fiona said.

  “I don’t know if I can,” Margaret pleaded.

  Fiona drew back and glared at her, making Margaret feel like she was ten years old again.

  “That man sends you gifts. How many months later? The only thing you need to fix is your damn head,” Fiona said.

  “Mother! He lied to me about being involved with someone.”

  “Oh, please. He wasn’t involved with her. And even if he had been, that man has eyes for nobody but you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve got eyes of my own, don’t I?”

  “I don’t think it's as easy as you think it is, Mother. There is a lot of history between us. So much buried anger and hurt feelings. We keep cycling around and arguing about past hurts.”

  “Bah,” Fiona waved her hand at Margaret, “you waste precious time arguing about the past. For what? To make you more miserable. Stupid. If only you could understand how fleeting this life is – you would embrace love with everything you had and fight for it. No matter what.”

  Margaret saw the emotion in her mother’s eyes and knew that she spoke of her husband.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry if this seems foolish to you. But they’re my feelings.”

  “So work through them. You hold on to stuff for so long you’ll end up dying alone, withered to a stringbean in your gilded cage of an apartment.”

  Anger flashed through Margaret.

  “You don’t get to come here and tell me what to do,” she leaned across the table and hissed at her mother, glancing around to make sure the other diners didn’t hear her.

  “I most certainly do when you’re all but killing yourself over a man that you’re too stubborn to love,” Fiona shot right back.

  “I am not too stubborn to love him,” Margaret all but shouted.

  “So what’s stopping you, then?”

  Chapter 43

  The question echoed through her head on the walk home. Margaret hadn’t been able to answer Fiona’s question and, to Margaret's relief, Fiona had eased up on her interrogation when the waiter came around with the dessert menu.

  “Would you like an after dinner whiskey?” Margaret asked stiffly, as they entered her apartment door.

  “Yes, please,” Fiona said, moving to turn on the lamps around her sitting room.


  Margaret crossed to her wet bar and poured a glass of Middleton Rare for both of them, then walked across the room to settle into a chair. The ringing of her cell phone from her purse jolted her and she moved across the room to unzip the flap and pull her iPhone out.

  “Keelin, at this hour?” Margaret said with a raised eyebrow, calculating that it would have to be after midnight in Ireland. Her heart began to race as she wondered what could be wrong.

  “Keelin, baby, are you okay?” Margaret asked immediately, turning to meet Fiona’s concerned eyes.

  “Mom, I’m great. Everything’s okay,” Keelin’s voice rang out. Margaret could feel her joy through the phone so her panic instantly subsided.

  “It’s awfully late there. I’m just sitting down with a whiskey with your grandmother,” Margaret said, moving to sit down. She reached across the table and gently clicked her glass against Fiona’s.

  “Oh good, you’re both there. I was hoping she would still be up.”

  “I’m not that old,” Fiona grumbled, having heard what Keelin had said.

  “She says she’s not that old,” Margaret said with a smile.

  “I have to tell you something,” Keelin said.

  “Go ahead, love,” Margaret said, smiling over at Fiona.

  “I’m pregnant! I’m not that far along. Maybe even a matter of weeks. I know I’m not supposed to say something this early but I just took a test and Flynn and Ronan are the only ones I can tell and I’m just so excited and I just had to tell you and since I couldn’t run across the field to tell Fiona…” Keelin rambled on, gushing with excitement.

  “You’re pregnant?” Margaret’s mouth dropped open and she turned to Fiona. “She’s pregnant!”

  “I know,” Fiona said simply and Margaret glared at her.