“Thanks, Auntie Mo,” Brian said.
“Where’s your mum? I haven’t seen her yet.”
“On her way out,” Shannon said. “She told me she didn’t sleep much last night, and that when you get older, it’s harder to wash away the wrinkles.”
Moira laughed. “Tell your mum that she doesn’t have anything that so much as resembles a wrinkle.” She smiled suddenly and couldn’t help adding, “Tell her I’m sorry she didn’t sleep well.”
She slipped past Brian and the girls and went into her room, where she dialed the Copley and asked for Michael. No answer. She asked for Josh’s room, and he quickly picked up, telling her they’d just talked to the four-man crew Michael had hired and that they would all be ready to go in about half an hour.
“So what are we doing? I mean, we’ve flown by the seat of the pants before, but…”
“We’re going to tape right here today. Traditional Irish cooking. Come on over whenever you’re all ready. Oh! I couldn’t reach Michael.”
“I talked to him earlier. I’ll give his cell a buzz and tell him to be at your place.”
Moira hung up, then gathered the presents before starting down the hall to the kitchen. When she got there, she saw that her sister-in-law had preceded her and was talking to her mother at the sink. She turned as Moira came in, smiled broadly and hurried over to her.
Siobhan was a beautiful woman, with long blond hair and deep blue eyes. She looked wonderful, but she also looked tired, really tired. Her slender features were leaner than ever. She was pale, and there was a hint of mauve beneath her eyes, despite her practiced application of makeup.
“Moira, hey!”
“Siobhan, you look terrific,” she said, hugging her sister-in-law tightly and wondering if she sounded as if she was lying.
“Thanks, but I feel like hell this morning,” Siobhan said with a laugh. “So we’re doing a typical, natural, completely unaffected and spontaneous cooking section for your program, hmm?”
“Completely spontaneous,” Moira agreed with a laugh. “Even though you’ll have to open the door five times so we can get all the right angles on tape, trust me, you’ll be completely spontaneous.”
“I was joking. You want me in it, too?”
“Sure, it will be fun. We’ll whip up some scones first, so the kids can sit in the dining room and eat them, and then the four of us will do all the stuff in the kitchen. A family thing.”
“A family thing? What about the guys?”
“We’ll film them lounging around on the couch, drinking beer, scratching and watching a football game.”
Siobhan laughed. Eamon Kelly, hearing the conversation, instantly protested. “Daughter, how can you say such a thing?”
“Eamon, don’t complain,” Danny said lazily from the kitchen table, where he was playing a game of war with Molly, who was slapping her little hand on the cards on the table with a happy giggle. “Sitting on the couch, drinking beer, watching a game—scratching an itch now and then—sounds like a fine way to spend the day,” he said.
“Dad, everyone knows that you work like a horse,” Moira said, ignoring Danny. “You sit on the couch and take it easy.”
“I’ll be down seeing to the pub, girl, you know that,” Eamon told her.
“I’ll open for you, Eamon,” Danny said. “That way you can watch your daughter at work.”
“I really do have an appointment at one,” Patrick said regretfully.
“Patrick, I thought this was a family vacation,” Siobhan protested.
“Honey, it’s an hour’s meeting with an important client,” Patrick said.
“Auntie Mo!” Molly suddenly wailed. “Presents!”
“Molly!” Siobhan was the one to chastise her that time.
“Hey, I promised her a present ten minutes ago. That’s an eternity when you’re only four,” Moira said. “Molly, catch!”
She tossed one of the wrapped plush leprechauns to Molly, who missed. Danny retrieved the gift from the floor for her, while Moira turned to pass out the gifts for Brian and Shannon. When she was done, she walked over with the music box and set it next to her mother.
Katy looked at her with a question in her eyes.
“It screamed your name,” Moira explained.
“Moira, it’s neither Christmas nor my birthday—”
“Mum, chill,” Colleen said lightly. “Just open the gift, let us ooh and aah, and say thank-you to Moira.”
Katy grinned sheepishly, then opened the present almost as quickly as the children. Molly squealed happily over her stuffed toy, and Patrick let out an affirming, “Oh, wow, cool.”
But Moira was busy watching her mother as she unwrapped the delicate little fairy and her eyes widened with delight.
“Moira, she’s breathtaking.”
“She’s a music box.”
“What does she play?”
Moira picked up the figure to wind it.
“‘Danny Boy,”’ Danny said softly before the music began.
Moira turned to stare at him as the rest of the room watched the little fairy dance. He was watching her strangely, she thought. The light in the room reflected off his eyes, making them appear golden and yet oddly shielded.
“How did you know?” she asked him.
“Lucky guess,” he said with a shrug. “Hey—bacon’s starting to snap.”
“Mary, Jesus, and Joseph,” Katy gasped, seeing her pan smoking.
“I’ve got it, Mum. Go put her on the mantel or wherever you’d like her,” Moira said, quickly flipping the breakfast bacon.
“I’ll grab the eggs,” Colleen said.
“Danny, Patrick, you get the juice,” Moira suggested.
“Juice?” Molly said.
“Hey, where’s Granny Jon?” Patrick asked.
“I’ll see if she’s up,” Danny volunteered, leaving the kitchen.
Katy left the room with her little treasure but was back quickly. With an efficiency that only appeared to be confusion, breakfast arrived on the table. Danny came in escorting Granny Jon, who was apologizing for oversleeping.
“Everything is under control, Mum,” Katy assured her.
“Tea?” Granny Jon asked.
“Strong enough to walk itself across the table,” Moira said in unison with not only her brother and sister, but her parents, as well.
Everyone laughed at that except for Granny Jon, who gave them all an indignant sniff as they grouped around the kitchen table. It was big, but there were eleven of them, and they were tightly packed. For a few minutes the conversation centered entirely around such comments as, “Can you pass the salt, please?” and, “Who has the juice?” and, “Oh, no, Molly, that glass is way too full.”
As Moira was rescuing the glass from her niece, the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” she said, jumping up. “Must be my crew.”
She poured some of the juice from Molly’s plastic cup into her glass, set it down, then headed for the door. When she opened it, she saw that Michael had arrived. There was a nip in the air, and she shivered as she felt the chill. Michael didn’t seem to notice it. He looked like an ad for Armani, in a long wool coat and black scarf.
“Morning,” he said. His voice was nicely husky.
“Good morning. Come in, it’s freezing out there.”
“The cold is okay, but last night was awfully lonely,” he told her.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “My dad, you know….”
“I’ve got it perfectly,” he said softly. “It’s still just a shade, well, you know, lonely.” He was looking over her shoulder. She saw that Danny had followed her to the door.
“Michael, good to see you. You must be a man accustomed to the cold, standing around on the porch like that. What’s your pleasure, coffee or tea?”
“Coffee,” Michael said, moving in as Moira shut the door. He slipped out of his coat, allowing Moira to hang it on the eighteenth-century hall tree, and removed his gloves, meeting Danny’s eyes. “Coffee, ple
ase. I think I’ve had six cups this morning, and it still doesn’t seem like enough.”
“Right you are. One coffee coming up.”
Danny turned to get Michael coffee, his attitude as courteous and casually friendly as could be.
“Don’t trust him,” Moira whispered to Michael.
“Oh?”
She shook her head, leading him into the kitchen.
“Morning, Michael. Bacon and eggs—or oatmeal?” Eamon asked, rising to shake Michael’s hand in greeting.
“Nothing, thanks, I grabbed a bite early.”
“Michael, you haven’t met my sister-in-law, Siobhan, yet,” Moira said, introducing the two.
“Hello, Siobhan. A pleasure.”
“Very nice to meet you,” Siobhan replied, studying him with an open smile.
“Was that bacon and eggs you decided on?” Katy asked.
“I think he said he ate, Mum,” Moira said.
“They’re only happy, and they’ll only love you, if you eat, you know,” Danny warned Michael.
“Then bacon and eggs it is,” Michael said.
“Now, Dan O’Hara, that’s not at all true,” Katy protested. “Though surely everything here will be better than at your hotel.”
“Oh, I’m positive of that,” Michael said. “But, Katy, all this food…And you’re just going to clean up and start cooking again so we can film?”
“I’m cooking again because we’re planning on having dinner,” Katy said. “And I’ve lots of help.”
“Except for me,” Patrick said. “Appointment,” he explained. “And I want to go by and check on the boat.” Besides his wife and children, his one real love in life was his boat. He kept it berthed at the docks in Boston because he loved going out on the open sea, except that it was something he seldom did in winter when the seas were too rough. It was a nice toy, forty-five feet, sleek as a devil, with sleeping facilities for eight people.
Patrick glanced at his watch. “If fact, I’ve got to get moving. Moira, I’ll try to be back in plenty of time to do my part, sitting on the couch, scratching, drinking beer—and doing the dishes, as well. Sweetheart…” He paused by Siobhan’s chair to give her cheek a kiss.
She didn’t offer him anything more.
“Okay, Munchkins,” he said to the kids, delivering only slightly distracted kisses to the three of them. “Behave now, okay?”
“The kids are always fine,” Eamon said. Moira was curious at his tone. She wondered if her father wasn’t a little bit disturbed by her brother’s exit.
“Bye, then,” Patrick said, taking his coat from the hall tree. Maybe he felt all eyes on him. He turned at the door. “Honest, I’ll drink a lot of beer and do a lot of scratching,” he said. Moira offered her brother a slightly pained smile. His eyes fell on his wife.
But Siobhan wasn’t watching him. Her eyes were purposely lowered as she buttered toast for Molly.
Patrick departed, and Danny cleared his throat. “Well, now, can’t let Patrick be the only bad child. I’m off for some cigarettes. Nasty habit, I know. I’ll keep it outside. Katy, do you need anything while I’m out? Something traditionally Irish you might be missing for your meal?”
“Now, Danny, you know that between the pub and the house, we don’t often run out of what we need,” Katy said.
“Actually, I think we’re a bit low on butter,” Colleen murmured. “The real thing, no margarine.”
“Colleen, we can’t be making a guest go to the store,” Katy said.
“Sure we can,” Colleen said quickly. “He’s not a guest, he’s a big brother, remember?”
“Katy, how much butter?” Danny asked, starting for the stairs that led out through the pub.
“Better make it two pounds. We’ve a full house,” Katy said.
“Right,” Danny said. “I’ll be back soon. I don’t want to miss the fun.”
“You told my father you’d open up the pub,” Moira reminded him.
“And so I did. I guess I, like Patrick, will have to do my share of scratching and guzzling a bit later.”
With that he left, but something about his departure seemed odd to Moira.
Only Michael was still eating. Siobhan rose, picking up plates from the table. “I’ll wash,” she said.
“Fine, I’ll dry,” Colleen added.
“Then I’ll get the rest,” Moira said, quickly busying herself with plates and condiments.
“Now, let Michael finish his meal before you go stealing his plate,” Eamon told her.
“Right, Dad.” As she took her grandmother’s plate, she saw that Granny Jon was looking curiously at the floor. But she looked at Moira quickly, as if her attention had never been anywhere else. “The kids drop something?” Moira asked, ducking.
But the kids hadn’t dropped anything.
Granny Jon had been staring at the brand-new pack of cigarettes that lay on the floor beneath the chair where Danny had been sitting.
Patrick hurried down the street, tightening his wool scarf around his neck and hiking up his collar. Having spent the majority of his life in Massachusetts, he was accustomed to weather that could be brutal far into the spring. Stopping at a traffic light, he stomped his feet and spoke aloud to himself. “No wonder the fucking Pilgrims all died,” he muttered. He looked up. At least, for the moment, there was no snow. Just a blue sky with puffs of white clouds, fast-moving.
The light changed. He suddenly looked back, struck by an eerie feeling of being followed.
No one on the streets except a kid on a scooter. Wait till the ice forms toward night, kid, you’ll be sorry, he thought. It was a Saturday morning, still fairly early. Bostonians took some time to get going on Saturdays. Still, it seemed as odd to him that the street was empty as if it had been full.
Why had he thought someone was following him? Nerves? Guilty conscience? Maybe it was just the weather.
He moved quickly, then glanced back again. No one there.
Still, that feeling. Unnerving. As if he heard silent footfalls echoing in his mind.
Someone’s breath, whispering at the back of his neck.
Right. And maybe he was being followed by leprechauns, little people in green, trailing along behind him.
And maybe he’d just been home too long, listened to too many stories as his parents and grandmother entertained the kids.
Tales about fairies, mischievous leprechauns…
And then, of course, there were banshees, black shadow creatures tracking a man, wailing in the night, foretelling his death.
He looked back once again and hesitated, eyes scanning the street.
There were no fairies, no leprechauns or banshees. Both the good and the evil in the world came from men.
He started forward with determination. He had made up his mind, set his course.
He was going to do what he thought was right.
6
Moira was delighted to see that her mother was a natural in front of the camera. After a few minutes of being a little bit nervous about the camera, the lights and the overhead mike, held on a pole above her head by a total stranger, she was just fine. Katy Kelly loved to cook. She warmed to her subject, instructing her daughters and talking about being a little girl in Dublin, how times had changed drastically in a way, and then again, not at all. Somehow, in the midst of cooking, instructing Colleen to keep an eye on the cabbage, Moira to watch the meat and Siobhan to make sure that the mixture of chopped cabbage and onions was properly sauteed for the colcannon, she also got going on the temperament of the Irish people. Too many people thought of Ireland as a divided island, she said, but what they forgot was that over the years everyone had become Irish. Northern Ireland might technically be part of Great Britain, but Eire was a great place whose spirit entered the souls of those who loved her. The Vikings had come and invaded and created terrible havoc, but then many had settled and stayed. The English had begun coming to conquer in the eleven hundreds, but from those ancient invaders had come some of the m
ost well-known Irish surnames of today. Being Irish was more than being born on the island, more than heritage. It was a spirit of warmth, of storytelling, of a special magic, and it was in so many Americans today.
Moira, meeting Josh’s eyes at one point, signaled her pleasure with her mother’s natural dialogue, as well as her amazement. Josh gave her a thumbs-up and a big smile. It was going to be a good show. Her family was charming. It was all going to work.
Eamon Kelly was beaming with pride at his wife. Watching them both, Moira realized that she was lucky in many ways. So many of her friends had parents who were divorced, had never known what it was like to grow up in a household with both a mother and a father. And her parents weren’t together just for the children or any other practical reason. After all these years of marriage, they still loved one another.
Michael and Josh were getting along wonderfully with her family, and the crew was great, too. She watched some of the tape as they reran it, and it was excellent. Katy was pleased, blushing at the congratulations bestowed on her by both her family and the crew. She was like an old pro when Josh asked that she repeat steps over and over again so the cameraman could focus with more detail on exactly how to prepare the meal.
The kids had been taped sitting at the table, but then, not long ago, they had disappeared. While Josh was busy talking about how to edit the segment, Moira wandered into the family room. Granny Jon, who was scheduled to have her moment in the sun discussing, naturally, the elements of a really good cup of tea, was busy with needlework as she waited. She told Moira that the kids were in the pub; they had grown restless, and Danny had returned to entertain them.
“I didn’t see him come back,” Moira murmured.
“He was careful not to disturb the work, but he told your father he’d open the pub, and so he did, taking the kids down to help set up,” Granny Jon said.
“I’ll walk down and see how things are going,” Moira said.
When she got downstairs, she realized how late it had gotten. The lunch crowd had come and gone. Danny was behind the bar, while Chrissie Dingle, Larry Donovan and a new young waitress, Marty, whom Moira had never met before, worked the floor. Joey Sullivan and Harry Darcy were cooking in the kitchen. Brian, Shannon and Molly were at a table in the corner. When Moira approached them, she discovered that Danny had brought them Irish coloring books. Molly’s leprechauns were bright purple instead of green. Moira rather liked them.
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