by Luanne Rice
That’s when Rory knew she and Dar were on separate pages. Deep down, Rory believed this trip fell into the category of tilting at windmills as well as a chance to forget about losing the Vineyard. The letters were one thing, but finding their father was another. Too much time had passed. He could have moved or died. And besides, what would they really want with a father who had so clearly abandoned them?
But Dar seemed wild, a little out of control, like the teenager she’d been during the years after their father had left. She focused on the road with ferocious concentration, punching the shift into high gear when they reached the highway heading east.
Rory hadn’t slept well, but she’d stayed in bed until Dar had come to get her up. She wondered if Dar felt as moved as she, to be sharing a room again after all these years. And oddly, this crazed side of Dar felt familiar, took Rory back to their childhoods, when they’d all gone a bit mad, losing their father.
“Do you think you can trust the dockmaster?” Rory asked.
“What?” Dar said, already far ahead in her mind, strategizing their next moves.
“I mean, he didn’t actually know, or even see, Dad. It could be one of those legends he told you about.”
“He seemed sure of his own memory,” Dar said.
“Okay. But I mean, how did he know Dad was working at the seaport? We’re leaving that lovely town to go to Cobh, which makes me nervous, and I don’t know why. It doesn’t even sound the way it’s spelled. I just liked it where we were. It felt like a good home base.”
“We can always go back.”
“I guess,” Rory said, staring out the window at more lovely green scenery. She found herself wondering about Jonathan. She’d called before school to check on the kids, had a good talk with each of them. They missed her, but sounded so happy to be with their dad. They’d put him on the line.
Speaking to him had unleashed the demon. Even as they drove through the stunning and quiet countryside, she found herself dissecting their conversation. He’d said that although Alys wasn’t staying with them, he wanted to spend a day with her that weekend.
Dar had spotted the turnoff for Cobh, and had her turn signal on a good minute too soon. The city came into view, a crescent of impeccably restored Georgian houses, then, a level below, colorful row houses in the shadow of a sprawling steel-gray cathedral with a skyscraping steeple.
“Too bad Delia wasn’t here to see that,” Rory said. “You know how much she loves cathedrals.”
“She’ll be here tomorrow. That must be St. Colman’s, where Dad was baptized. She’ll want to visit.”
“That might even make up for missing out on Kinsale.”
Holding the wheel, leaning forward, working the left-hand shift, Dar drove down the hill to the docks. Rory saw a boat launch ramp, fishnets drying on a steel fence, a shabby—compared to Kinsale—fleet of sailboats, fishing boats, work boats. She opened her guidebook and read.
“Hmm,” she said. “‘During the past two centuries, the port city of Cobh was the staging spot for people on their way to North America. Famous transatlantic liners called in at this harbor, transporting the masses to the United States and Canada. The Lusitania memorial may be found on the quayside. Victims of the tragedy are buried at Cobh’s Old Church cemetery.’” She paused, glancing at Dar. “The famine tragedy cemetery, the Lusitania-sinking tragedy cemetery . . .”
As they drove along the dockside, Dar seemed to stare into every face, examine every boat—and there were hundreds of each. Rory’s talk with Jonathan had left her feeling upset and insecure; she spied an Internet café and knew she had to log on.
“Hey,” she said, trying to sound normal. “Why don’t I jump out here, get us a couple of coffees. I need a break from tea. You can park the car, and we’ll start asking around.”
“Good plan,” Dar said.
“I’ll find you,” Rory said.
So they parted, and Dar drove away. Rory watched her round the corner, then hurried inside and paid the attendant for twenty minutes on the Internet. She breathed more deeply just to be sitting at a computer.
She logged on, used keithfarm to open his Gmail account, and read. She steeled herself for e-mails to Alys. They missed each other; he reassured her that he loved her, thanked her for understanding about the kids. Alys had written a bitchy reply about Rory being unreasonable, and Jonathan hadn’t disagreed. But there were other, sweet e-mails—to friends on the Vineyard, lamenting the sale of Rory’s family’s house. She read them over and over.
There was one to Andy Mayhew. Rory would never have expected Andy to have a computer. She thought he was firmly rooted in the pre–e-mail world.
I think they have to return to the Vineyard by closing. It’s been pushed back to the first week of May. You have that long. Let me know how I can help. Jonathan
And Andy’s reply:
She’ll be gone a long time, a trip she had to make. I’d have gone with her, but this is my busy season. She has Rory with her instead. You know what a jerk you are to let her go. Alice is like cotton candy. Pretty and tasty, but that’s all there is. With the McCarthy sisters you get a lifetime of complications and depth. Think about it, man. Midlife crisis.
Jonathan:
She spells her name “Alys.” She loves me and that counts. Rory and I will always love each other, but we stopped wanting the same things. She’s so wrapped up with the kids and her family; it was a long time in hell while her mom was dying. And you know I loved Tilly too. Something broke when she passed. The glue that had held us all together. All that Vineyard joy was suddenly replaced by sadness. I can’t live that way. Life is too short.
Andy:
Sorry for the misspelling. And sorry for butting in.
Jonathan’s final reply:
Rory and her sisters get back out here early May. That doesn’t give you much time. I’ll be out there this weekend visiting my parents with the kids. See you Friday night or Saturday morning. Make sure Harrison’s around. We all want to see him, too.
Rory felt immensely gratified by Andy’s skepticism and experienced true respect for him. She had assumed that all men had their heads turned by beautiful younger women. Both loving and hating her husband was exhausting. She felt confused by that, and by whatever Jonathan had agreed to help Andy with.
She was just about to get the coffees when Dar walked in and found her at the computer station.
“Busted,” Rory said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You might like to know our guys were e-mailing about us.”
“Our guys?”
“Jonathan and Andy. Andy spoke up for me about Alys, and he made a really sweet comment about you and me.”
Dar nodded in a way that let Rory know she didn’t want to talk about it.
“Don’t you want to know what he said?”
“No,” Dar said. “Come on, let’s get going here. I’ve got the coffees.”
“Why don’t you want to know?”
“Because if Andy wanted me to, he’d tell me himself.”
“Fine,” Rory said, letting the fringe of her short dark hair fall across her eyes so Dar wouldn’t see how hurt she was.
“It’s not good for you,” Dar said. “That’s what I care about. Let this thing with Jonathan and the girl play itself out. Then see how you feel—not how he does. Come on now, let’s go.”
Rory could have argued with her but chose not to. She was struck by how similar Dar’s view was to Andy’s. Rory gazed at her sister, wondering if she realized how rare that was.
Dar walked the docks without knowing what she was looking for. Rory was with her but seemed distracted by shops and flowers and people-watching. Dar had to admit it was frustrating to not be on the same wavelength regarding their search; it felt to her Rory might be afraid of what they might find—especially if they actually found their father.
As they strolled along, they drifted apart. Rory had her digital camera out and was snapping shots of typical
Irish storefronts—doors framed and painted with glossy, deep, rich colors. Above the doorway the proprietor’s or shop’s name was stenciled in gold. She turned to the pots of flowers and small garden plots that seemed ubiquitous throughout the parts of Cork they’d seen.
Dar spent her time speaking to boat captains, showing them her father’s picture, asking if they knew or remembered Michael McCarthy, if they’d heard the story of his solo crossing aboard the Irish Darling. But most of the captains she encountered were young. Some thought they’d heard a tale about some Irish guy sailing the Atlantic in a tiny dory; he’d supposedly made it here to Cobh only to disappear. It was like a fairy tale, some of them said.
“I heard he worked in the seaport,” Dar said.
“Well, you’re looking at the seaport,” one captain said, waving his hand around.
“What was his trade?”
“Carpentry. Boatbuilding.”
“You might try the sheds and loft up and down that wharf over there.” He pointed. “He’d make a good living doing the carpentry. Everyone needs things fixed and repaired. He’d be an old guy by now?”
“Yes,” Dar said.
“Well, good luck in your search.”
Dar thanked him and headed toward the wharf. Rory hung back, taking pictures, while Dar turned toward the boatbuilding sheds and barns. Once again she showed her father’s picture, went through the story. After the first few blank stares, and another few shakes of the head, it seemed to her that everyone in the Cobh marine industry was too young and uninterested in anything beyond their day’s work to help her.
And then she came upon a large wharf building with a curved arched sign over the double-wide doors leading straight to iron tracks down to the water, a heavy-duty boat launch. The sign, in gold, said McCarthy Manufacturing. Dar stared at it for a long time. The listing Delia had found on Google. They’d dismissed it then, but what they manufactured was obvious—through the open doors, Dar spotted several boats in various stages of production. She walked inside.
Again, she saw nothing but young men and some women—fiberglassing one cabin top, sanding a long, wide wooden hull, transporting a lead keel by forklift to the back of the loft. Dar followed it. The forklift reached a dead end, lowering the keel carefully to the floor.
Dar looked up. A pulley system was in place, attached to thick-hewn rafters, and above them a window overlooking the workplace. She found wooden stairs, the treads worn away in the middle, leading upstairs. She headed up quickly, holding the smooth, round handrail.
She emerged at the top into a single room that ran the width of the building. The space seemed to be out of the nineteenth century: wooden file cabinets along one wall, a grandfather’s clock, a brass barometer marked McCarthy’s behind the dials, one large oak partners desk with only one person seated there.
He appeared to be slightly older than Dar, with short salt-and-pepper hair and wearing an impeccable white shirt and jeans. He was bent over the only modern equipment in the room: a seventeen-inch MacBook Pro just like Dar’s, referring to the screen while jotting down notes on an order pad.
“I saw you come in,” he said, without looking up. “What’s your business?”
“No business,” she said.
“You’re not a tourist, are you? Because this shop isn’t on the tour. You could get hurt in here, all the equipment moving around. Or if a boat went off the rails, you’d be in heaven before you’d know what hit you.”
“I’m not a tourist,” she said.
He looked up with piercing blue eyes, waiting for an explanation.
Dar took a breath. “The sign says ‘McCarthy’s,’” she said. “Is that your name?”
He nodded. “Been in the family two hundred years. We fought the British in boats we built.”
“My name’s McCarthy, too,” she said. “Darrah McCarthy.”
“So you’re an American tracing your roots,” he said. “You’d be better off up the hill, at the cathedral. Ask Monsignor if you can go through the records. There are plenty of parish records for all the searching you want.”
“I’m not tracing my roots. I’m looking for this man,” she said, showing him the photo. “It was taken a very long time ago.”
He stared at the picture a long time. “What do you want with him?” he asked.
“You know him?” Dar asked.
“I didn’t say that. I’m just curious.”
“He sailed his boat transatlantic, a twenty-eight-footer called Irish Darling, from Massachusetts to Cobh. He did it solohanded.”
“You sure he made it here?” the man asked.
Dar nodded. “He called home from Kerry, but someone in Kinsale told me he’d sailed on to Cobh.”
“Home?”
It took her a moment, but she got the words out. “He was my father.”
The man continued frowning at the picture, tapping it with his finger. Then he looked up—not at Dar, but somewhere in the middle distance. This went on for several minutes.
“You must have heard of him,” she said, “even if you never met him. People talked about what he did. The dockmaster at Kinsale knew the story. He told me my father worked at the seaport here.”
Silence as the man stared into space.
“What’s your name?” she asked, partly to see if he was still awake.
“Tim,” he said.
“Who do you share the partners desk with?”
“No one,” he said. “Used to be my father and uncle, but they’re long gone. I run the place myself.”
He glanced up at her, seemed to make up his mind about something. “Michael McCarthy was an intrepid soul.”
“You did know him!”
“Knew of what he’d done. It was all the family talked about for a while. Come here,” he said, rising. They walked to the far end of the office. The rough-wood walls were papered with architectural renderings of sailboats, fishing boats, freighters. Tim pointed out the original drawings of the two ships they’d built to fight the British.
There were figureheads of saints and angels, their faces holy, their paint peeling, their wings and scepters worm-eaten; beneath them were wooden transom signs made to hang the width of the sterns of boats, stating the vessel’s name and home port, some scrolled, others plain, the boat names deeply scored into the wood, painted gold.
Dar looked up and down the rows, knowing she’d see her father’s there. She remembered when he’d worked on the sign himself, as elaborate and fancy as any here, and told her why he was naming the sloop after her. But his transom board wasn’t among the others, and she felt her shoulders hunch forward.
“Here,” Tim said, pointing at a four-by-twelve-inch rectangle of oak hanging at the very end of the row.
Dar leaned forward to look. The block was carved in bas-relief: scrolls on either end, curved like a banner, in lettering that read Irish Darling. Seeing the words made something come alive inside her, and tears pooled in her eyes.
“You did this?” she asked.
“When I was seventeen,” he said. “I was as enamored as everyone else over your father’s feat. When I learned he’d built the boat himself, that sealed it. Suddenly I knew what I had to do. A few spare boards from my grandfather’s lumber shed, a hammer and screwdriver, and a few brass fittings from my own tool belt.”
“My father would have been proud to know he’d inspired you,” Dar said.
Tim stared at the block of wood he’d carved. “I’d forgotten this was here until you came in.” He took it down. “I want you to have it.”
Dar held it, looked up at him. “Please, keep it here. It will mean more to me somehow. Did you ever meet him?”
“I apprenticed beside him. When your dockmaster friend said he worked at the seaport, this is what he meant.”
“What was he like? Did he say anything about his family?”
“I was seventeen. All I cared about was boats, making them and sailing them.”
“Is he—is it possible? That he�
�s still alive?”
Tim shrugged. The frown was back, the moment was over. He hung the board back on the wall, but Dar got the feeling he was doing it only to placate her. Perhaps she’d offended him by not accepting the gift.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “Your carving would mean the world to me. I’d like to take it if you’ll let me, so I can show my sisters.”
“Your sisters,” he said.
“I have two. Rory and Delia. They’re here with me now. Well, Rory is, and Delia’s landing tomorrow morning.”
“Enjoy Ireland,” he said.
“We will, it’s beautiful, but . . .”
“Don’t just stay in Cork. Visit Kerry and Connemara. Sligo if you make it that far. You driving?”
“Yes.”
“Hard with the left-hand shift, I bet. I had hell trying to drive on the right in America.”
“Where did you visit there?”
“It’s yours,” he said, ignoring her and once again removing the carved sign from the hook on the wall. “Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I have work to do.”
“Isn’t there anything more you can tell me? What happened after he stopped working here? Did he live in town? Did he stay in the area? Did you ever find out if you were related?”
“Different McCarthy,” Tim said. “An entirely separate branch of the clan.”
“But what about the rest? Where he lived, and if—”
“Look,” he said sharply. “There’s one person who might know, if she’s willing to see you. It’s doubtful, I’ll be honest. She lives in a nursing home a short ways north, in the Blackwater Valley.” He wrote down the address and directions.
“Who is she?” Dar asked.
“My mother,” Tim said. “Who loved him.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Rory and Dar stood stone-faced at the arrivals gate at Cork Airport, waiting for Delia to clear customs. They’d argued last night, with Dar wanting to go to the nursing home right away, and Rory saying they had to wait for Delia.