The Long Walk

by Jill Cox

  “That would be tragic,” I grinned. “Did you have something particular in mind?”

  Jack looked up at the inside of his umbrella for a moment. “Well, nothing too obvious. A quick smile, maybe that thing you do with your eyelashes if you can manage it.”

  “What thing I do with my eyelashes?”

  “Don’t play coy. You know. By the way,” he stepped closer, eyes fixed on mine. “Our New Year’s Eve party is fancy dress.”

  “What, like, ball gowns and tuxes?”

  “Oh. Sorry, I forget that’s not an American saying. It means costumes. Do you have one?”

  “Not really. I mean, I have a pair of fairy wings that Kieran made me wear on Halloween – er, Samhain. Would that work?”

  Jack ran a finger along his bottom lip. “Perfect. Could you bring them along?”

  “Sure.” I slipped out of Jack’s coat and handed it back to him. “Any other requests?”

  “No. Just a question: how do you feel about scallywag pirates and cupcakes?”

  “What, you mean together?”

  “Of course. Unlikely pairings are the best kind.” Jack bent forward and kissed my cheek, lingering just long enough that my nerve endings and I both knew this was no common courtesy. “See you tomorrow, Tink.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Adam and Maeve lived on the outskirts of Galway, and the ninety-minute drive north in the dark reduced me to a jittery wallflower. Jack’s spiky black hair was a bit unkempt, and his face appeared somehow manlier than I remembered. Like, uncommonly manly.

  Just after he pulled the vintage Mini into Maeve’s driveway, he dug into his coat pocket and produced a black eyeliner pencil. “Do you know how to use this?”

  “Why? Do I look tired or something? Do my eyes need definition?”

  “No, mine do,” Jack said, as though it was the most obvious explanation. “All the way ‘round each eye, please. The thicker the line, the better.”

  Jack bumped the overhead light on with the butt of his hand and leaned toward me. Thanks to the starkness of the dome light, I finally realized the secret to his manliness: a couple of days’ worth of stubble.

  Hello, gorgeous.

  I struggled to keep the pencil steady as I lined Jack’s right eye first, then his left. When I finished, he glanced quickly in the mirror. “Not bad,” he observed. “But could you widen the line a bit and maybe smudge it like this?”

  Taking the pencil from my hand, Jack rubbed under his eye with the pencil lid. Then he pointed to his handiwork with the pride of a child who had just stayed inside the lines in his coloring book for the very first time. And even though this whole scenario was well beyond anything I might have imagined for tonight, I was oddly into it. So I worked methodically to make the lines darker and wider. Soon, Jack was channeling his inner rock-star-freak-show hottie.

  “Yes, that’s more like it,” he grinned into the mirror. “Now help me with the rest of my costume before the girls notice we’re here.”

  Jack reached into the back seat several times, producing a new item with each go: an unkempt wig made with long, brown hair; a bandana; and a small bag full of plastic rings. As he positioned the wig and bandana, I finally caught on.

  “Ah,” I said, helping him with the rings. “Hey there, Captain Jack Sparrow.”

  Jack winked, reaching to grab my fairy wings from the back seat. Five seconds later, he was standing on my side of the car, extending a hand to me while taking his very deepest, most Jack Sparrow-esque bow as he helped me into the wings. “Welcome to Maeve’s, Tinkerbell.”

  Jack had just taken my hand again when Siobhan and Sydney tumbled out from the front door. “To the dungeons with ye!” They screamed in unison, circling their uncle like banshees.

  “Sailors, please,” Jack sighed, placing a hand on each of their heads. “Show some respect! We have a fairy princess in our midst.”

  “Hello, Meredith,” they said in unison, grinning.

  “Oi! This isn’t Meredith,” Jack tutted, rolling his eyes. “Come on, mates. This is Tinkerbell. I found her in the Neverland and captured her. Now the Pan will have no choice but to give back my booty.”

  “I think you’ve mixed up your Disney movies, Jack.” Emma had appeared just behind the girls looking all sorts of sparkly.

  “Wow,” I said, feeling shabby in the top, jeans, and boots that were definitely more pirate than fairy. “Are you going to a party?”

  “She’s going to a soirée,” Jack corrected, rolling his eyes. “Honestly, Emma, is it really worth two hundred quid just so this Declan bloke can see you dressed up? Shouldn’t he like you just as well in a sweater and jeans? Michael certainly does.”

  “Stop trying to fix me up with your literary agent, Jack.” Emma’s eyes trailed from her brother to me, and the smile she gave me was so warm it freed every wallflower butterfly I’d been collecting since Doolin. “That’s the car service pulling up the lane right now,” she said to Jack. “I ordered the pizzas two hours ago because Siobhan and Sydney like their pizza cold.”

  “I know that, Auntie Emma. Don’t fret. I listen to Mummy Maeve just as well as you do.”

  “You’ve got all the emergency numbers? And the number for the Skylight Lounge?”

  Jack snorted. “I’m twenty-five years old, Emma Kelly. I think I can hold down the fort here for one night. Plus, we have our very own Tinkerbell this year. We’ll be grand. Trust me.”

  “I do.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, then kissed the girls. “I’ll be home in a few hours,” she said, straightening Siobhan’s bandana. “Have fun. And be nice to Tinkerbell, please.”

  Before I knew it, the fancy black car swept Emma away. Jack watched her leaving for a moment, the scowl on his face reminding me so much of Ian that I couldn’t help but wonder about this Declan fellow. Maybe Emma’s date wasn’t such a great guy after all.

  “Right.” Jack pulled a wide pink satin ribbon from his pocket. “Where were we?”

  “Taking Tinkerbell to the dungeons,” Sydney shouted, readjusting her oversized hat.

  “Oh, yes. Of course.” Jack tied my hands so loosely in front of me that with one flick of my opposable thumbs, the binding would be on the ground before anyone said doubloon. But I played along. After all, I’d never rung in the New Year with a handsome pirate and two adorable deckhands.

  The girls skipped in a circle around us, shouting over one another.

  “Hey ho, hey ho!”

  “Hooray, we’ve captured Tinkerbell!”

  “The Pan will pay us in gold!”

  “Now we won’t die of scurvy!”

  Jack slid a hand around my waist and nudged me toward the house. “Well said, mates. A doubloon a day keeps the scurvy away. Only losers settle for that citrus fruit nonsense.”

  For the next hour, I invoked my right to parlay from inside a twinkle-light bedazzled cardboard box “ship” called the Black Pearl while Siobhan, Sydney, and Uncle Jack ran a gauntlet of air sword battles, dart wars, and even a spelling match for the right to protect Tinkerbell. When, at long last, the twins grew bored and let Jack win, he untied me and straightened my wings.

  “And now, sailors,” he gloated, “I’ll march the lovely Tinkerbell to the galley, where we shall make cupcakes in all the colors of the Caribbean Sea. You may join us if you’d like. But Tinkerbell is mine now, and ye shall not steal her back.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” Siobhan’s blue eyes twinkled roguishly. “We’ll join you. Just as soon as you kiss the fairy lady.”

  Jack’s fingers slackened in mine. “I’m sorry, mate – did I hear you correctly? Stealing a kiss from a prisoner seems rather uncivilized.”

  “Not when it’s tradition,” Sydney smirked, pointing above our head where mistletoe hung from the playroom door.

  Jack’s face went red. “How did you two…?”

  “We didn’t,” Siobhan giggled. “Aunt Emma left it there for you.”

  “Siobhan! We promised not to tell!” Sydney chided
.

  As Jack’s expression shifted from mortification to confusion, my mind whirred back two Christmases. The last time I’d stood under the mistletoe with a guy – the night of my twenty-first birthday, when Marie-France had staged our group photo with Pete and me at the very center of the screen – I hadn’t noticed until it was too late. This time I wouldn’t let my chance disappear.

  “Go ahead, sir,” I said coyly. “It’s bad luck to ignore tradition. You wouldn’t want to tempt Fate on the last night of the year, would you?”

  Jack’s eyes flickered back and forth between mine for a moment. Then he bent forward, pecked me chastely on the forehead before he backed away, almost in recoil.

  “Oi!” Sydney groaned. “What kind of a pirate are you?”

  “The polite kind. Now come on, you lot. To the galley.”

  Drooping their shoulders, the girls zoomed around me on either side through the doorway. When the patter of tiny footsteps on the hardwood floor had all but disappeared, Jack made to follow them. But I cleared my throat and stepped in his path.

  “Not so fast, Captain,” I said, clasping my hands behind my back. “That kiss didn’t count.”

  Jack’s cheeks went cherry red. “You know I didn’t set this up, right? Emma likes to ruin my life. Especially when a girl’s involved.”

  “Jack Kelly,” I sighed. “You are standing in the one doorway in Galway with an oversized fairy beneath it. That same fairy happens to be trapped under some mistletoe. Do you always spit Fate in the eye like this?”

  A smile tugged at one side of Jack’s face, and as he closed the gap between us, he placed his hands on my cheeks. “Is this about the eyeliner? Because if so, I’ve been reading you wrong all week.”

  But before I could answer, Jack tilted my face toward his and kissed me – timidly at first, and then with such zeal that my fairy wings might never pop into their proper shape again.

  Last New Year’s Eve, I was curled up in my bed in Lincoln City wishing time would stop forever. One year later, I was in suburban Galway, hanging out with a charming Irishman and his tiny nieces who loved cardboard pirate ships, blanket forts, and spelling wars.

  For the first time in a really long time, there was nowhere else I’d rather be.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The next morning, Jack made the twins a feast of doubloon-sized pancakes and scurvy-preventing orange juice in the ‘galley.’ Once Emma the Party Queen rolled out of bed, Jack and I drove into Galway city center. The streets were empty, save for the telltale signs of midnight revelry still littering the sidewalks. Maybe it was the snow flurrying gently past my window, but in all the years I’d driven into Galway, it had never looked as beautiful as it did that day.

  Okay, yes. It might’ve had something to do with Jack’s hand resting on my knee.

  A half-hour later, Jack and I were sitting in the Cloak and Dagger Pub on Quay Street. Across the booth from us sat Michael Brady, Jack’s literary agent. He seemed a stern sort of fellow: very professional, very task-oriented, especially for a holiday. But despite his dress-shirt-and-slacks formality and his disappearing hairline, I could see in his deep-set green eyes that Michael had once been quite the heartbreaker.

  But Michael wasn’t simply Jack’s agent. The two of them were as chummy as childhood pals, right down to the complementary senses of humor. By the time the bill arrived, my stomach muscles ached from two hours of nonstop laughter.

  “Meredith,” Michael said as he handed the waitress his credit card, “I’m afraid Jack and I have lured you here under false pretenses. You see, earlier this week, Jack overnighted me a copy of your manuscript, and when he mentioned yesterday that you’d be with him in Galway this weekend, I asked if I could drive over to meet you today.”

  I nearly choked. “But I haven’t even started working on the revisions you gave me,” I said to Jack. “Why would you send him an unfinished draft?”

  “Don’t be angry, okay? I had to distract Michael with your gorgeous story for a few days so he’d stop bugging me every few hours to check my progress.”

  “But…”

  “Don’t worry, Meredith.” Michael’s expression softened. “Your manuscript has great bones. So if you’re up for it, I’d like the chance to represent you.”

  Every molecule of air escaped my lungs. “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely,” he smiled. “And in case it makes a difference to you, my co-agent Isabelle in our New York office handles North American rights, which I think we’d need for this book, considering you’re an American.”

  “An Irish-American,” Jack corrected. “Meredith was born in Doolin, mate.”

  “Nevertheless, she writes with an American voice, and I think her story works best for a North American audience. Don’t you?”

  “Whatever you say.” Jack joined his hands together as if in prayer and bent his head toward them. “Just work your magic like you always do.”

  “But Michael,” I interrupted. “I’ve never done this before. Are you sure you want to take a chance on me?”

  “I understand your concern,” he said, rapping his fingers absentmindedly on the table. “You do need to tighten up your story quite a bit. And yes, before you say it, most manuscripts do spend months in the slush pile when an author is looking for an agent. In fact, this is the first time I’ve offered representation in this manner. But you, my dear, have a secret weapon in Jack. He’s quite the brilliant editor. Especially when he’s keen to avoid his own projects.”

  “Oh, Michael. You have so little faith in me.” Jack reached for the messenger bag sitting on the floor between us and pulled out a not-so-thin manila envelope. “Since you kept your end of our bargain, I figured I should keep mine.”

  Jack pushed the envelope across the table. Michael unfastened the brads and slid out a stack of pages two inches thick. Then he lifted his eyes back to Jack. “Word count so far?”

  “Thirty-four thousand, nine hundred and fifty-three. Even you have to admit that’s not too shabby for one week, especially since it was the week between two holidays.”

  Michael began to laugh from the bottom of his belly. At first, I thought he was about to mock Jack again. But then his eyes actually welled up. And by the look on Jack’s face, I wondered if his own eyes might do the same.

  “Thirty-five thousand words?” My words came out like a whisper. “But when did you… that’s like six or seven thousand words a day!”

  “Who needs sleep?” Jack shrugged. “That’s why they invented coffee.”

  Michael flipped through Jack’s work, shaking his head every few pages. “For six months, Meredith, your friend Jack here has dodged every one of my phone calls. Fifty-seven calls, to be exact. I’ve kept track.”

  Jack pushed out a low whistle. “No wonder Emma refuses to have dinner with you, mate. Hyperbole is such a turn-off.”

  “Fifty-seven calls,” Michael repeated, handing me his phone with the call log pulled up to show me the proof. “So imagine my surprise last Wednesday morning when Jack texted me with an offer I couldn’t refuse: if I would read your manuscript, he would deliver thirty thousand words plus a synopsis in person by lunchtime today.”

  Jack grabbed Michael’s phone out of my fingers and handed it back across the table. “Don’t crow too much, old friend. I was careful not to promise you thirty thousand good words.”

  Michael and Jack exchanged a knowing look, and despite the silence between them, I could tell by the big brotherly pride on Michael’s face that the package in his hand held the beginning of something special.

  Shifting his gaze back to me, Michael smiled. “Ignore Jack, Meredith. I am forever in your debt. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who inspires thirty thousand words must be stardust personified.”

  “Thirty-five thousand words,” Jack corrected, squeezing my hand. “She’s stardust indeed.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Ireland is surely the only place in the world where the first day of February is also considered th
e first day of spring. You could celebrate Imbolc – an ancient festival of hearth and home – by lighting candles to represent warmth and the imminent return of the sun. Or you could spring clean your house.

  If you were a Sullivan, you did the latter.

  While Jack drove to Dublin to hand old-school Michael printed copies of both of our revised manuscripts, my parents and I cleaned the Juniper House from top to bottom – our family’s February 1st tradition since long before Ian or I had come along. And even though it was twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit all day, the scent of lemon put a spring in my step, and for the first time since the New Year, I believed we would see the sun again.

  Someday.

  When I walked into my apartment that night after dinner, my laptop screen lit up with an incoming call from a tiny dark-bobbed hipster, her sunshiny blond roommate, and the curly-haired former empress of Dan Thomas’ heart.

  “Look who it is,” I beamed as I clicked open the video screen. “The three of you have good timing. I’ve been out all day.”

  “Good to see your face, Mer,” Anne grinned. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Yeah, where have you been?” Harper’s usual bob had grown out to her shoulders, and it swooshed as she shook her head. “Ten weeks is a long time to go radio silent, even for you.”

  “Ten?” I winced. “Oh, man. Sorry. I didn’t realize it had been that long.”

  “Well, it has,” Kelly scowled, though I could see a smile dancing in her eyes. “Last time we talked to you was Thanksgiving Day. Anne and I were ready to forgive you, but Detective Harper Anderson noticed how many times over the last few weeks some Irish guy has commented on your posts. Jack Kelly’s the name. Twenty-five years old. Born in Doolin, lives in Galway. Ever heard of him?”

  In the tiny square at the bottom of my screen, I watched my face go bright red. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “You sure?” Harper shot me a dubious look, then turned her phone screen toward her laptop’s camera. “Because Jack Kelly from Doolin says he’s missing this redheaded lass today – Hashtag Tinkerbell.”