You'll Always Have Tara

by Leah Marie Brown

  “Thanks a million, Catriona. Really.”

  “Go on with ya,” she says, waving her hand. “The festival is the last weekend in October, it’s a bank holiday. That means we have three weeks to design your brand and logo, order labels and marketing materials, buy supplies, secure a commercial kitchen, and implement a social media campaign.”

  “Is that all?” I collapse against the back of my chair, already overwhelmed with my mission to become a cookie mogul. “Brand? Logo? I don’t know anything about branding.”

  “Relax, Tara,” she says. “Marketing is my unique skill. I already have some ideas. Boozy Bites is a cute name, but I think it might strike the wrong note. A lot of your recipes are based on old Irish and American recipes, right?”

  “Yes. I was inspired by some of the Victorian-era cookbooks I found here in the castle. I tweaked them by adding a little Southern flavor.”

  “Didn’t ya say someone wrote in the books? One of the cooks who used to work at Tásúildun?”

  “Mrs. Cumiskey.”

  “That’s the note we need to strike. Play up the whole castle-Victorian-cook angle.”

  “You think?”

  “I know!” Her eyes sparkle with the light of inspiration. “Downton Abbey has made people interested in life below stairs. I think I read somewhere that Mrs. Patmore, the cook, was one of the most popular characters on the show. Maybe we use Mrs. Cumiskey’s name but add something to make it more current and a little irreverent.”

  “Like what?”

  “We can brainstorm first thing tomorrow.” She pulls her bowl back toward her. “Now, scoop me up some more of that pudding and let’s talk about another aspect of your future.”

  “What aspect?”

  “Me bleedin’ brother.”

  “Aidan,” I say, pretending my heart didn’t just skip a beat. “What about him?”

  “He bloody loves ya,” she says, fixing me with a serious expression. “Ya know that, right?”

  “What?” I sputter. “Aidan? In love with me? Now who’s off her nut? Aidan is not in love with me.”

  She narrows her gaze and crosses her arms. “Don’t ya know he’s been in love with ya since ya both were wee ones? Ya were his first love, Tara Maxwell. Sure, he’s dated other women, even loved them, but no love is as powerful, poignant, and enduring as a first love.”

  First love. Isn’t that how I have always thought of Aidan? As my first love? I loved Grayson. I really did, y’all, but it was more of a kissing-cousins kind of love. I never pined for him, never felt a pulse racing kind of passion for him. I know that now. Grayson Calhoun is my Ashley Wilkes. He’s the boy from the respectable family everyone expected me to marry, the boy I convinced myself I had to marry, just had to marry, because he was a good catch, a great match. But Aidan . . .

  Aidan Gallagher is my Rhett Butler. He is dangerous and exhilarating. He is the sort of man who would flout propriety and tradition to get what he wanted. The sort who would ask me to dance while I was still wearing widow’s weeds.

  I love Aidan. I fell in love with him when we were teenagers, but doubts rolled in like the morning miasma that blankets a Carolina swamp. Doubts so thick, so disorienting, they made me turn away from the truth and cling to what I told myself was solid, real.

  Like Scarlett, I have been a fool. A silly little fool chasing after a boy who didn’t want me even though I had a man who did, a man who wanted me something fierce.

  “Do ya love our Aidan, Tara?”

  I look at Catriona’s sandy blonde hair and startling sea blue eyes and the weight of her question hits me hard, knocking the breath from my lungs.

  “I do,” I whisper. “I really do.”

  “Have ya told him?”

  I shake my head.

  “Why not? Ya used to tell each other everything.”

  I think of the open, easygoing boy Aidan was and the guarded, moody man he had become.

  “He’s changed.”

  “Our Aidan is a changed man, Tara, but he is still a good man. Do ya know why he changed? Has he told ya what happened to him while he was in service?”

  I shake my head.

  Catriona exhales and sits back.

  “He has a hard time talking about what happened to him over there,” Catriona says, softly. “Don’t ya know our Aidan has always been a sensitive man; still is, beneath his tattoos and behind his fearful scowls.”

  I remember the tender way he held me close and kissed my forehead that morning on the lake and the stricken expression on his face when he saw me get out of Sin’s car the next day. Both times I felt as if he was holding back, giving me only a glimpse of what he was really feeling.

  “He is so guarded now.”

  “He is guarded, but he isn’t unfeeling. Our Aidan has too many feelings, that’s the problem, and every day he battles to keep his emotions from overwhelming him.” Catriona’s bottom lip trembles and I realize she is making a valiant effort to her emotions from overwhelming her. “Aidan was on a mission with his squad when they came across a wee lad standing in a mine field, keening pitifully. Aidan was the squad leader and he made the call to try to save the lad. He followed the tracks in the sand to the boy and was headed back, slowly, when the first shot rang out. It turns out the lad was a decoy for an ambush. One of Aidan’s men accidentally trigged a mine. There was an explosion and our Aidan was wounded by shrapnel. He woke up in a field hospital days later to discover he had saved the wee lad, but lost three of his men, three of his friends. He blames himself for their deaths.”

  “What? Why?”

  “He believes he made the wrong choice.”

  “That’s ridiculous! What choice did he have? He couldn’t have walked away and left that child in a mine field. Not Aidan.”

  “We know that, but he thinks he should have placed his squad’s safety over the well-being of the child.” Catriona’s face crumples and my heart breaks for her. The Gallaghers are a close-knit family, but Aidan and Catriona have always shared a special bond. “He blames himself. He says he let his emotions get in the way of logic and training.”

  “My God.” I imagine him in a field hospital, wounded and wracked by guilt, and I can’t breathe. I want to go to him, put my arms around him, tell him how proud I am of the man he has become. “He could have died that day. He could have been shot or . . . He risked his life to save another human being. What could be more logical, more right, than that?”

  Catriona shrugs. We sink into silence, the rhythmic drip-drip of the leaky kitchen faucet suddenly amplified in the hush. To think, I took Aidan’s quiet, guarded demeanor personally. I made it all about me-me-me when it had nothing to do with me. I have done that a lot throughout my life—allow my less-than-rosy self-esteem to color the way I perceived other people and their feelings for me. It’s about Aidan being in pain. Not me. He’s afraid to trust, to love. He is right. He has told me how he feels, in quiet, meaningful ways, but I was listening for the honeyed words, the flamboyant declaration. I wanted profuse poetry that would convince me he loved me . . . and that I am worth loving. I have been so selfish, so absorbed in healing my wounds, I never stopped to imagine Aidan has wounds of his own.

  “He has a scar behind his ear,” I say, remembering the way he flinched when I ran my finger over the mark. “Was it caused by the shrapnel?”

  “It was.”

  “Is he okay now?” The question sounds ridiculous once I have spoken it. “Did he suffer permanent damage? Is he still in pain?”

  “Physically?” She shakes her head. “Some wounds go far deeper than flesh, tissue, and bone. Our Aidan has made a full physical recovery, but he suffers.”

  So I was right. The moodiness. The insomnia. The dead-eyed stare. Aidan has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I want to grab my iPhone and google PTSD, but I already know what I need to know. PTSD is a deep, soul-lacerating wound that can’t be seen and can’t be easily cured. I think of Aidan—sweet, charming, ready with a laugh Aidan—suffering with a wound
that might never heal and it kills me. Kills me. My neck suddenly feels too heavy to support. I drop my forehead into my hands and let the tears fall—drip, drip—onto the scarred wooden table. Catriona begins speaking again, but it takes a while for her words to sink into my consciousness.

  “. . . he wasn’t our Aiden when he returned from Afghanistan. Sure, he looked like our Aiden, but his eyes were distant, as if he were trapped in a place far from Ireland. It was sheer murder watching him sit at the kitchen table with that vacant expression on his face, his cheeks hollow from weight loss. We were almost relieved when it was time for bed. Then he started having nightmares. Screaming and crying.” She swipes a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “There’s nothing more brutal than watching your big brother weep like a wee lad.”

  I nod sadly. “Growing up, I was taught to smile and sweep it under the rug, dahlin’. It’s the Southern way. But some can’t be swept under the rug, can they?”

  “No, they can’t.”

  “I am sorry, Cat.” I squeeze her hand. “Truly, I am. I hear how much you have hurt—how much you’re still hurting—and it breaks my heart.”

  I reach across the table and squeeze her hand. Then, I set myself to pouring her a fresh cup of tea and finding a clean napkin so she can dry her tears.

  Steadier, fortified with hot tea in her belly, she tells me about Aidan’s first days home after being wounded in Afghanistan.

  “We were too much for him, coddling and nursing as if he were a wee lamb with a gammy leg. He used to come here, to Tásúildun, when our mamming became too much for him. And then, he came home one day and said he was moving to the auld shepherd’s cottage up in the hills to manage Tásúildun’s orchards for your aunt.” She takes a sip of her tea. “Herself knew our Aidan would find his peace through purpose. He always loved this land and tending it gave him a reason to get up in the morning, a purpose.”

  “Is that how he got the idea to start Bánánach Brew?”

  “The cider was your aunt’s idea.”

  “It was?”

  “Aidan grew up working on our farm and he used to make cider with our grandfather. Your aunt had loads of apples—more than poor auld Mrs. McGregor could turn into jams and cakes—so she told him to make cider.”

  A wave of grief washes over me. Living in my aunt’s home, spending time with the people she loved, should make me feel more connected to her, but it only makes me feel her absence more keenly. It also makes me confused. Why did she leave Tásúildun to me? Aidan is obviously more worthy of the inheritance and Sin more capable of preserving it.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I don’t like the ending scene of Gone with the Wind. Never have.

  After telling Scarlett to be kind to poor old Cap’n Butler, Miss Melly Wilkes takes her last melodramatic breath. Ashley Wilkes is wandering around his shabby parlor all zombie like, clutching one of Miss Melly’s orphaned gloves, and wondering how he will live without her.

  While comforting Ashley—the unworthy and highly confounding object of her affection—Scarlett has an epiphany: Ashley’s been toying with her all these years. He’s nothing but a sly, genteel cat in a frock coat and starched collar, idly batting her about like a ball of worsted yarn when all along he had his sights set on that skinny old Melly Mouse. Scarlett realizes she has loved something that doesn’t exist. The revelation doesn’t upset her though, not truly, because she also realizes she loves Rhett Butler. She leaves the honorable Ashley Wilkes wallowing in a puddle of his own high Victorian tears to run through the fog-filled post-Antebellum streets of Atlanta to Rhett. Oh, Rhett.

  Rhett kicks her to the curb, y’all. Scarlett professes her love for him and he looks at her like she’s a sad old mangy stray and says he doesn’t give a damn.

  Not one damn bit.

  Then, as cool as a cucumber with a pencil mustache and pinstriped trousers, he picks up his carpetbag, dons his hat, and walks off into the fog.

  I hate that someone as shrewd and clever as Scarlett O’Hara couldn’t see what should have been as plain as the arched raven brows on her pretty little face: that Rhett Butler loved her something fierce. Simple, simpering Miss Melly could see it—so why couldn’t Scarlett?

  I have been thinking about that scene all night and I am still thinking about it, now, as I sit in Mrs. McGregor’s cozy room, zoning out on another Moone Boy rerun. Haven’t I acted like Scarlett O’Hara? First, I imagined myself in love with Grayson Calhoun, my very own Ashley Wilkes. I was so blinded by my desire to capture the cat’s attention, I couldn’t see that I was just a ball of yarn, a meaningless diversion. I have been flitting between Sin and Aidan, flirting with them like Scarlett batting her eyelashes at the Tarleton Twins throughout the Wilkes’s annual barbeque.

  Sin pops his head in Mrs. McGregor’s room.

  “Sorry,” he says, smiling. “I have a conference call in a few minutes. Would you mind turning the telly down just a notch?”

  “Not at all, luv,” Mrs. McGregor says.

  Mrs. McGregor pushes a button on her remote until Moone Boy’s theme song is a soft drone in the background.

  “What are you watching?” Sin’s dark brows quirk.

  “Moone Boy,” I say. “Have you seen it? It’s laugh-out-loud hilarious.”

  “No, I haven’t,” he says. “It’s brilliant?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Great gas,” Mrs. McGregor agrees.

  “I guess you can’t judge a program by its wretched theme song, can you?”

  He waves and then he is gone. I look at Mrs. McGregor beneath raised brows, my mouth hanging open, feeling like someone just said my biscuits need more butter or my pecan pie has too many nuts.

  “I like this song.”

  “So does Aidan,” Mrs. McGregor says.

  “How do you know?”

  “He was whistling it last week.”

  I listen to Sin yammering in Japanese down the hall and have my own Scarlett-like epiphany. Why? Why, oh why sweet baby Jesus? Why have I wasted years pining over the wrong man? I must have been plumb out of my mind thinking I could spend the rest of my life with a man as boring and predictable as Grayson Calhoun. And I sure enough was plumb out of my mind for entertaining the notion that there was a choice between Rhys Burroughes and Aidan Gallagher? There’s no feckin’ choice.

  “I have to go,” I say, leaping to my feet. “I have to go right now.”

  “Now?” Mrs. McGregor glances out the window. “Are ya sure ya want to go now, luv? Me bones are—”

  “God bless your wise, auld bones, Mrs. McGregor”—I move toward the door—“I don’t doubt their ability to forecast weather, but I have to go. I just have to.”

  Her lips curve in an all-knowing smile.

  “Go on with ya, then, and good luck.”

  I am almost out the back door when I remember I don’t have a shiny Mercedes waiting for me in the courtyard outside the castle. I hurry back to Mrs. McGregor’s room.

  “Mrs. McGregor,” I say, sticking my head into her room. “Can I borrow the keys to my aunt’s Range Rover?”

  “Borrow? What borrow? The Rover belongs to you now, luv. The keys are in the top drawer of the desk in the library.”

  “Thanks a million.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Bánánach Brew Farms. I have to see Aidan.”

  “Like that?”

  I look down at the blue flannel Nick and Nora pajamas Callie gave me as a Bon Voyage gift. The jammies were a good-natured gag gift meant to poke fun at what Callie called the inhumane Irish climate. They’re a size too large and printed with cartoon images of breakfast foods like cinnamon swirl toast, waffles, slices of ham, and squat pots of tea with smiling cartoon faces. They’re not very flattering, but they’re cozy and warm.

  Miss Belle would pitch a cardiac arrest-inducing hissy fit if she knew I was off paying a social visit to a gentleman friend wearing flannel cartoon pajamas, but I don’t give a Fig Newton what Miss Belle
thinks. I highly doubt old, prune-faced Miss Belle ever felt the way I feel right now, like I will die, just die, if I don’t tell Aidan I love him. I swear I am not trying to be ugly, but can you honestly tell me a woman who spends hours each day pondering the proper angle one should raise their pinkie while sipping tea has it in her to feel a burning, yearning, all-consuming kind of passion?

  I don’t think so, y’all.

  “Yes, like this.”

  “Take a brolly then. It’s going to—”

  “Thanks.”

  I run down the hall and into the library. I yank open the top desk drawer, grab the only ring of keys in the drawer, and run back down the hall to the kitchen. I stick my feet into my shiny green rain boots and grab the umbrella off the hook.

  The drive to the farm takes an eternity, down narrow, rutted roads. I don’t like driving on Irish roads on sunny days, so I sure as hell don’t like driving on them on a dark, rainy night, slamming the brakes and gripping the steering wheel at each curve in the road, praying there’s not a fat, wooly sheep around the bend.

  By the time I finally pull to a stop between the barns, my flannel top is plastered to my sweaty back and my fingers ache as much as Mrs. McGregor’s arthritic auld bones.

  I try the door to the first barn—the gym—but it is locked and the lights are off. I am clomping across the parking lot in my boots when it starts to rain. Raindrops as big and fat as Irish sheep that drench my flannel pajamas and cause my perfectly curled hair to stick to my face.

  I swing open the door to the cider barn, expecting to find Aidan doing whatever cider maker’s do at ten o’clock at night, but he isn’t perched on a stool, stirring a vat of fermented apple mush with a big wooden paddle.

  The barn appears to be empty.

  I follow the yellow markings on the floor to the tasting area and die, just about clutch my heart and fall to the ground in a Miss Melly death swoon, when I see Aidan sitting at the long wooden tasting table, a fan of cards in his hands, a group of big, burly Irishmen seated around him.