Con stood until she indicated that he should sit. They were both very formal and restrained, as if one misplaced word would send the earth spinning out of orbit.
Linn perched on the edge of her desk and looked at him. He was wearing a beige turtleneck and tan chino pants, which was dressed up for him. He looked thinner, preoccupied, but as attractive as ever. Linn wanted to feel his arms around her so badly that it was a moment before she could trust herself to speak.
“How did you find out where I worked?” she asked him finally, after a silence.
“By the same method I discovered that I’ll shortly be coming into a piece of real estate,” he answered, watching her face.
Linn sighed in defeat. “I asked Larry not to tell you. He promised me he wouldn’t.”
“He didn’t. His secretary is Kate Costello’s aunt.”
Linn nodded slowly. She should have known better than to think that such a thing could be kept quiet in Bally.
“I’ll not take it, Aislinn,” he said quietly. “That’s no prize to substitute for you.”
“It should be yours, Con. By right of primogeniture the property passes to the eldest son. That’s still the custom, if not the law, in Ireland.”
He stood abruptly, thrusting his hands through his hair. “Christ, Aislinn, don’t quote me common law. You know what I mean. Too much has happened; I’d rather see the place go to charity.”
“You can give it away if you want once you get it. Dispose of it any way you please once it’s yours.”
“You wouldn’t care?”
Linn met his eyes. “I feel the same way you do, Con. Too much has happened.” She forced a smile. “How have you been?”
He stared at her as if she were deranged. “Oh, smashing, brilliant, what do you think? I’ve been grand, just grand.”
Linn looked away.
He grabbed her arm and forced her to face him. “I’ll tell you how I’ve been. I can’t sleep again. Couldn’t sleep before I met you, can’t sleep now. I can, however, drink. I’ve been just a little drunk every day since you left.” He put his palms on either side of her face, looking into her eyes. “I love you. I wake up loving you. I drink myself to sleep loving you. All day long I love you. What am I going to do with all this love?”
Linn tried to twist free of his hands. “Don’t, Con. Please don’t.”
He held her fast. “Aislinn, listen to me. The only one who knows our story is Father Daly. We could go anywhere else in the world but Bally and live as man and wife. Who would know?”
Linn looked back at him despairingly. “We would know, Con. We would. Can you live with that?”
“I can’t live without you!” he said despairingly, letting her go. “I’m trying, but it’s like being condemned to a punishment when there’s been no crime.”
“We could never have children,” she whispered.
“I don’t care if I can have you,” he answered, his eyes pleading.
Linn wrenched herself away from his tortured gaze, emotionally ravaged by the depth of a need which would prompt such a desperate suggestion. “No, Con, no. Our lives would be haunted by the knowledge of our true relationship and in the end it would ruin us both.”
Con seized her again, pulling her into his arms. “You’re ruining me right now. Come with me, Aislinn. Don’t let me go back alone.”
Linn stood like wood in his arms, forcing herself to remain unresponsive.
“Please don’t touch me, Con,” she said quietly.
He released her immediately, stepping back and looking at her with huge, defeated eyes. “I can remember a time when you begged me to touch you,” he said in a low tone heavy with surrender.
She met his gaze, acknowledging the memory of words that could never be spoken again.
He cleared his throat. “All right, Aislinn. I can’t force you and God knows I don’t want to.” He put his hand into his pocket and produced a small jeweler’s box. “I thought you should have this. It was my mother’s and I had the inscription put on before …” He stopped, and then continued. “I don’t know what the bloody hell to do with it; I can’t bear to look at it anymore.” He picked up her hand and put the box into her palm.
Linn opened the hinged cover. It was a Celtic cross, wrought in silver and studded with marcasites. She turned it over and looked at the back.
“Ildathach,” she read aloud. “August 2.”
It was the date of the Fleadh, the first time they’d made love.
“Thank you, Con,” she whispered. “I’ll wear it always.”
“Think of me,” he said, his voice breaking. He turned away and she knew that he was choking back tears. It was terrible to see him so wretched; even his strength and force of will could be sapped by the hopeless need of something, someone, he could never have.
When he turned back to her he was composed, even attempting a smile.
“I’ll go now; I don’t want to upset you any more than I already have.” He took her chin in his hand and said, “Goodbye, my lady. You are my lady, Aislinn, and you always will be though we may never see each other again. A hundred secrets from the past could not change that.” He ran his thumb over her lips tenderly. Linn finally, despite every effort, started to cry.
“Don’t, Aislinn,” he said gently. “I want to remember a smiling face.”
“I’m sorry, Con; I was trying to be so brave. But I’m no good at it. I’m just too weak.”
“You are not; never say that. You are the bravest, strongest woman I’ve ever met. There aren’t many who could go through what you have these past few weeks with only a few tears to mark the experience. I will always think of you as that plucky little lady who took on the whole town and sang for me, showing them all how you felt.”
Linn closed her eyes. She was dangerously close to begging him to stay with her. “Please go, Con,” she said softly. “Don’t prolong this; it’s too difficult.”
His hand fell away from her face. She felt the touch of his lips on her brow and then he said, “I love you, Aislinn. I love you now; I’ll love you forever. Goodbye.”
She heard him cross the room and then the sound of the lock being released. In the next instant the door had closed behind him and his steps were fading down the hall.
Linn clutched Mary Drennan’s cross in her hand and said farewell to Mary’s son.
* * * *
In the next few weeks Linn learned what despondency was. She acquired dark circles under her eyes which no amount of makeup could cover, and she lost weight to the point where her bones were beginning to show. She started wearing bulky sweaters when it was still too warm for them in order to camouflage her appearance. She had to get in shape to face her classes; students weren’t easily fooled and already some of the early arrivals who came in for conferences were watching her curiously, the way people study someone with a debilitating illness.
She tried to go on and be cheerful; there is nothing romantic or even interesting about despair, she told herself. But she bored herself with her own apathy and couldn’t understand how Karen or Anne could bear to be in the same room with her. Linn grew to understand Hamlet’s description of her current state of mind: “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.” No one ever expressed a thought quite as accurately as Shakespeare.
The semester was about to begin when Karen stopped off at Linn’s apartment one morning on her way back from a delivery. She sat across from Linn at the kitchen table and said, stirring her coffee, “Don’t you think this funk has gone on long enough? Don’t you think we should really talk about it?”
Linn sighed wearily. “How much time do you have?”
Karen patted her frosted hair and adjusted her sweater. “For you, Lindy, I’ve got all day.”
Linn got up. “You might as well come into the living room and get comfortable. This is going to take a while.”
Karen picked up her cup and followed Linn, settling on the couch. Linn slumped into a wing chair
and began her tale.
Karen never interrupted once. She refreshed her coffee twice, signaling for a pause by lifting a finger and going into the kitchen to tap the pot on the stove. Otherwise she was still, listening wide-eyed with that particular attention that had always made her a confidante of many. She knew how to concentrate and knew when to keep her mouth shut.
“And so,” Linn concluded, “we have the same father. Kevin Pierce and Mary Drennan were Con’s parents.”
Karen nodded thoughtfully. “And that’s why you broke it off with him, because you think he’s your half brother?”
“I don’t think, I know. I saw the birth certificate myself. Believe me, I checked. I wouldn’t be here with you if there were any doubt about it. I would be with Con on Ildathach.”
Karen rose, putting her cup and saucer on the coffee table. “I see.” She wore an odd expression—not the sadness Linn would have expected, but consternation, as if she were troubled.
“Don’t look like that, Karen; there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
Karen smiled mechanically and picked up her sweater and purse. “I have to go, Linn. Thanks for telling me about it. I can understand better now what you’ve been going through. I’ll give you a ring tonight.” She offered Linn another wan smile and left.
Linn gathered up the cups and brought them into the kitchen, wondering what had caused Karen’s abrupt departure. Her behavior had been odd, to say the least. Then Linn shrugged mentally and dismissed it.
She had enough on her mind as it was.
* * * *
Linn was awakened by the sound of the doorbell ringing in the middle of the night. She sat up in darkness and glanced at the fluorescent dial of her bedside clock. Not night, early morning. Who on earth would be ringing her doorbell at 5:45 in the morning?
It was Karen, who obviously hadn’t slept at all. She looked exhausted and emotionally spent. She brushed past Linn and collapsed on the sofa.
“Karen, what are you doing here at this hour?” Linn asked. “You look as though you’ve been up all night.”
“I have. I’ve been sitting in the Catholic church in Fair Lawn, the one that’s open twenty-four hours a day.”
“Saint Leo’s?”
“That’s right, Saint Leo’s.”
“You drove out from the Village to sit in Saint Leo’s all night? Karen,” Linn said, laughing, “you aren’t even Catholic.”
Karen shrugged. “Same God. It was the only church I knew would be open.”
“Why did you have to go to church?”
“I had a big decision to make and I needed advice from a higher authority.”
Linn belted the sash of her robe and curled up next to her godmother on the couch. “All right, what’s going on?”
To her surprise, Karen took her hand and held it in her lap. Her face was very serious.
“Linn, I was your mother’s dearest friend. I have loved you all your life, looked after you as best I could when your mother died.”
Linn smiled. “No one could have done a better job.”
Karen squeezed Linn’s hand. “I did my best, anyway. But I hope I’ve come to the correct decision here. I am about to break a promise I made to your mother before you were born.”
“What do you mean?” Karen asked, alarmed by Karen’s demeanor.
Karen took a breath. “Regardless of the allegiance I feel to your mother’s memory I can’t stand by and see you ruin your life for nothing. I know she would want you to be happy.”
“For nothing?” Linn echoed, puzzled. What was this?
“Linn, you can have your Connor for your husband. There is no blood relationship between you. Con may be Kevin’s child, but you are not.”
Linn didn’t move, didn’t dare to breathe. He heart leaped at this possibility she had never even considered. Was Karen right?
“Kevin married your mother when she was already pregnant by another man. He was a German exchange student she’d met when he spent the summer at the university where she took courses there. He was on a short term residence program. He never knew about the child; he’d gone back home by the time she realized she was pregnant. She never contacted him, never saw him again after that summer and married your father quickly. You were born early, right?”
“I was told I was premature,” Linn said softly, still dumfounded. “Everyone said my parents had been a good match, so happy together. It never occurred to me that they might have married for anything but love.”
“Your mother never wanted you to know. She was afraid you would think badly of her for her mistake. Kevin knew all about it when they got married. He had lost someone he loved very much and he sympathized with your mother’s plight. They were both wounded souls clinging to each other to get over past problems. I think it started out as a gesture of kindness, his marrying her, but it seemed that they grew close in the short time they had together. I know for a fact that he never regretted doing what he did and that you were the joy of his life.”
“And when my mother died, you and he kept silent for her sake,” Linn whispered.
“That’s right. Kevin knew how much she wanted your good opinion, and he saw no purpose in telling you the truth. He also wanted you to inherit from Dermot, as you just did.”
“Dermot never knew,” Linn murmured softly. “He did leave me his property; he did think I was his grandchild.”
“I suspect that was your father’s last laugh,” Karen said, smiling slightly.
Linn’s eyes roamed the room, seeing nothing. It was too much to take in at once. A wild surge of joy was building inside her, but she was afraid to unleash it, afraid that if she did she would be thwarted again. Could this possibly, wonderfully, be true?
She sought Karen’s gaze. “No one knows?” she asked.
“No one knew except Kevin and me. That leaves me. There are no records to check, Linn. Kevin listed himself as your father on everything. You have only my word, but I swear it’s the truth, darling. Go back to Ireland and find Con. Have the happiness your mother would have wished for you.”
Linn put her hands on Karen’s shoulders and searched the other woman’s face.
“Karen,” she whispered, “you wouldn’t lie to me about this? I know you want to help me. You wouldn’t make this up out of some misguided good intention to end my current unhappiness? Because if I went back to Con and found out later that Kevin really was my father, I don’t know how we could bear it.”
Karen closed her eyes and moved her head slowly from side to side. “No, Linn. I do want to help, but I would never take it upon myself to twist fate like that. My decision concerned breaking your mother’s trust and betraying her confidence, and that’s all. I believe in my heart that she would agree I made the right choice.”
Linn threw her arms around Karen and hugged her until the older woman was squealing. “God bless you for telling me. Of course you made the right choice. You were never a better friend to my mother than you are today.”
Karen embraced her tightly and then sat back. “All right, enough of this mush. I think you have a plane to catch.”
Linn didn’t know what to do first. She stood, sat down and then stood again. “Oh, I’m so happy,” she breathed. “You’ll never know what you’ve done for me.”
“I think I have a rough idea,” Karen said, standing up herself. “I’m dying for a cup of coffee.”
“Help yourself,” Linn said, pulling off her robe and heading for the shower. “On the way to the airport, will you drop me at the college so I can explain that I need some time off?”
“Why don’t I just open a limousine service?” Karen asked from the kitchen, reaching for the canister of coffee.
“Would you call Aer Lingus and book me on the next flight to Shannon?” Linn yelled from the bathroom. “I’ll take anything they have.”
“Is the number in your directory?” Karen called.
She was talking to empty air. She heard the hiss of
running water through the door to the hall. Linn was already in the shower, doubtless trying to wash and dress at the same time.
Karen sighed, replacing the metal tin on the counter. She went back into the living room and dialed New York information.
By the time Linn emerged dripping, pulling on clothes over her still wet body, she was booked on a flight to Shannon.
* * * *
Linn peered down through the gauzy curtain of clouds at the green landscape visible beneath the wing of the plane. She was back—back where she most longed to be. The pilot circled lower, coming in for a landing, and she could pick out the runways and the clapboard outbuildings of the airport. “Cead mille failte,” the sign in the lobby read. A hundred thousand welcomes. Linn felt every one of them. She was coming home.
As the air hostess made her final announcements to the passengers, Linn unfolded Bridie’s latest letter and read it again. It was light and chatty, skirting the most salient issue, and said that Con was doing “tolerably well, considering.”
Linn had no idea what that meant. He could be drinking himself to death or trying to get himself killed in Ulster, and she doubted Bridie would tell her about it. She wouldn’t want to deliver any more bad news to Linn, who’d had enough of it.
When she landed, she called both the gatehouse and the main hall and got no answer at either. She tried Bridie’s house and got Terry.
“Terry, this is Aislinn Pierce. May I speak to your mother?”
“She’s at my sister’s in Donegal, miss. She’ll be back later this day. You sound awful close; where are you?”
“I’m at the airport.”
“In Eire?”
“Yes, Terry. I’m back.”
“Does that mean you’ve worked it out?”
“As soon as I find Con, everything will be fine. Do you know where he is? His number doesn’t answer.”
There was a pause. “I don’t know where he’s gone, miss. He’s been away some days now. I know Ma’s been worried about him.” Terry hesitated. “He’s been in a bad way since you left him—drinking, picking fights, you know the sort of thing.”
Yes, indeed. She knew the sort of thing. She voiced her greatest fear. “Terry, do you think he’s gone north? It might be like him to make himself a target.”
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