Grabbing the bigger suitcase beside Emma without asking, she retreated into the house and flipped on another light as she went, revealing a cozy living room with a small armchair and love seat opposite an old fireplace. “I’m your property manager. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was only waiting here to give you the keys.”
“I thought someone named Edmond McKay had my keys.”
“Edmond’s my brother. He’s got a baby on the way, and his wife is in that uncomfortable stage of the pregnancy, so I told him I’d stay and wait for you.”
The completely reasonable answer made every other thought she’d had over the last five minutes seem downright silly. “I’m sorry I kept you out so late.”
“No worries.” Brogan waved her off amicably as she set the suitcase down next to an old oak table, then with a slight flush in her cheeks added, “Sorry I screamed like a small girl who’s spotted Prince Harry.”
Emma smiled for the first time in who knew how long. “I wasn’t going to mention it, but I suppose I should apologize for screaming, too. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be in my house.”
“Which you weren’t sure actually was your house, but you walked into anyway,” Brogan teased gently.
“You remembered that part, too?” Embarrassment flooded her senses again, heating her core.
“Actually, that reminds me, I’m supposed to have you sign some papers affirming this is your house now, and you are who you say you are. Then I’ll get out of your way,” Brogan said, sweeping those green eyes over Emma’s face, and added, “I bet you’re exhausted from the trip.”
She pressed her lips together at the polite excuse for the bags she knew underlined her eyes and the sallow state of her complexion. She was exhausted from much more than the travel, and as the adrenaline faded, the weight of those emotions settled across her shoulders again.
“Of course.” She scanned the sheets of paper on the table as she picked up a pen. “Where do I sign?”
Brogan pointed to the first one. “Here, to state you found the place in good enough shape to accept. If you want to walk through the other rooms first, you can.”
She didn’t. From what she’d seen of the entryway, living room, and dining area, she didn’t expect any more surprises tonight.
As she signed on the line, Brogan continued. “The second one says I met you with the keys and they are now your sole responsibility.”
Glancing at the two identical key rings in the center of the table, she quickly autographed that form as well.
“And lastly, this form is for me, saying I made a reasonable attempt to confirm your identity, which I guess technically I haven’t.” Brogan ran her hand through her mop of wavy red hair again and grimaced a little. “Edmond’s a bit of a stickler for following rules.”
The comment suggested she didn’t share that particular trait with her brother but wanted to honor his wishes anyway, which made Emma’s heart constrict. “Let me find my passport.”
She rummaged through her purse, then unzipped the front pouch of her carry-on suitcase, pulling out several manila folders, one of which held her travel documents. She dumped all three onto the table.
“Oh, where did I put the passport?” she muttered to herself. She’d had it when she’d come through customs in Dublin. “I thought I’d need it to get from Ireland to England, but I didn’t have to go through customs in Newcastle.”
Brogan stood quietly as Emma spoke more to herself than to anyone else.
“I would not have left my passport somewhere,” she said more emphatically. “I would not have been that oblivious.” The last word stuck in her throat, making it harder to breathe. The pain returned in a flash, and she placed a hand flat on the table to keep from doubling over. What did she know about what she would or wouldn’t miss? She’d been oblivious about so much more. What reason did she really have to think she couldn’t misplace a travel document?
“Miss Volant?” Brogan asked softly.
“I’m fine,” she said, her head still angled toward the papers in hand so the tears in her eyes wouldn’t show.
“Maybe you put it in a pocket or something.”
She patted the back of her khakis, knowing the pockets weren’t deep enough, but she couldn’t stand still, not with the panic revving her pulse again. What if she’d lost her passport? She’d be stuck here. But she lived here. But without the passport, could she be deported? Her breath came short and quick. “What did I do?”
“Hey,” Brogan said, her voice soothing and her accent thicker, “were you wearing something else earlier?”
The last thirty-two hours flashed through her mind in a blur. “My coat.”
She looked up to see the concern etched across Brogan’s furrowed brow.
“I put the passport in the inside pocket of my coat, and then put the coat in my big suitcase before I left the airport because I didn’t want to lug it with me.”
“There you go.” Brogan’s voice carried a modicum of the relief Emma felt.
“I can get it. Let me open the big suitcase.” She dropped to her knees and tipped the mammoth piece of luggage onto its back.
“You know what? I think I’m actually good.”
Emma stared up at her in disbelief.
“You’re clearly Emma Volant. Like, I’m ninety percent sure I’ve seen your picture on a book or in a paper or something.”
She didn’t know if the statement was meant to be flattering, but it didn’t quite get there.
“And you’ve obviously had a wicked-long day.”
What had given the woman that idea? Her disheveled appearance, the glass-shattering scream on sight, or maybe the way she was thrashing through her luggage and talking to herself? The panic that consumed her gave way to embarrassment once again, and all she could manage was, “But you need to see my ID for your brother.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“No,” Emma said, “you shouldn’t get in trouble because I’m a mess.”
“You’re not a mess.” Brogan held out a hand to help her up. “You’re lovely.”
Her embarrassment butted up against whatever shred of her pride remained intact, and she shook her head. She wasn’t helpless, or at least she didn’t want to be anymore. Not here in her new place for her new start. She didn’t want her first encounter in Amberwick to involve some unsuspecting local having to literally pick her up off the ground.
Apparently sensing her conflict, Brogan dropped her hand and looked helplessly around before latching onto one of the many documents Emma had dumped out of her manila folders. “Here, there’s something with your name right on the top. Looks official enough to me.”
Emma pushed herself to standing and picked up the stack of papers fastened together with a thick black clip. Sure enough, her name was right there on the top, right over Amalie’s. The juxtaposition was the final shot in the war that had raged within her much longer than today. She couldn’t hold herself together any longer. Her shoulders began to shake with silent sobs.
“What? What is it?” Brogan asked.
She shook her head and sniffled but couldn’t speak yet.
Brogan stepped forward as though she might pull her close, then clasped her hands together nervously and stepped back again. “I am really sorry, again, and I don’t know what that is, but—”
“My divorce papers,” she finally squeaked out, though the words were punctuated with a little hiccup.
“Pardon me?”
She took a shuddering breath. “These are my divorce papers, so yes, they are official.”
Brogan chewed her lips for a second before saying, “So, I think I’m done here then.”
Emma nodded and turned back to the papers in her hand. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Brogan edge toward the door, pausing only briefly to ask, “Is there anything else you need?”
She shook her head, not even looking up when Brogan said, “Okay then, well, have a good night.”
As the door clicked shut beh
ind her, Emma knew that would not happen. New house, new town, new country, and yet this would be one more in the same string of very bad nights.
Chapter Two
“Aunt Brogan!” She heard the call, but she couldn’t see the speaker over the edge of the bar she stood behind, so she knew which one of the kids it must be.
“What can I get for you, Padrig?”
“Crisps please, the mustard kind.”
She leaned over the bar to see the top of his red head. “And will Uncle Charlie be paying for those?”
“Come on, Brogan,” her youngest brother called from a few tables over. “I got all four of ’em till seven, and you know Ciara’s not going to pay me enough for my own drinks, much less the kids’.”
She couldn’t argue with his premise, but she didn’t see how that was her problem. Other than the fact that Padrig looked up at her with his little freckled nose and gap-tooth smile. “All right then, one for you. Then tell Eoin and your sisters they can each pick one, too. But that’s all for Friday Club, so make it last until you get home with your mum.”
The boy nodded seriously as he held out his little hands for the yellow bag, then turned toward the table where his siblings sat and shouted, “Eoin, Aoife, Reg, come and get your crisps ’cause it’s all ya get till tea time.”
Three other little redheads popped up and sprinted toward the bar, as people in their path grabbed hold of their pint glasses to keep them from getting jostled in the stampede.
“Geeze, Brogan, the least you can do is warn a chap before you summon the hounds,” Tom grumbled.
“Now you hush.” His wife, Diane, swatted his arm. “You were just complaining no young people are raising families in this town anymore. Don’t go fussing at those who do.”
“But he’s not wrong,” said another man, as he shed his wool coat and hung it on a hook near the door. “I just got back from Bamburgh, and the streets are full of people pushing prams. Our streets are deserted this time of year.”
“It’s because they’re having the festival at the castle this weekend, Will,” Diane said. We don’t have a castle here, only a beach.”
“And thank the good Lord for that,” Tom huffed. “We want families, not more tourists.”
“Right, ’cause tourists haven’t got any relations,” Charlie jabbed, as he sipped his ale.
Brogan handed Will the ale he hadn’t even ordered yet.
“I know what you mean, Tom. I’m not sure there’s a whole five full-time residents left within a mile of Bamburgh Castle. It’s all holiday homes now.”
“There you go.” Tom nodded at the affirmation. “Towns are either dying out and falling apart, or getting overrun with city folks trying to escape to the country for their weekends.”
“That’s the truth of it,” Esther said as she wandered in from the loo and took the seat opposite her sister. “No offence to you and yours, Brogan and Charlie, but if not for the McKay clan breeding like rabbits, there wouldn’t be a single full-time resident under the age of fifty in this village.”
Brogan took no offense at the statement. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. She simply shrugged and set about wiping out a few of the glasses gathering dust behind the bar, but Charlie cut back in. “That’s not true.”
Will clasped a hand on his shoulder and nodded toward the kids, who were now wrestling over the last bag of bacon rasher crisps. “Maybe not rabbits, but you have to admit your clan reproduces at a rate that outstrips the rest of us.”
Charlie rolled his green eyes. “I meant there’s another full-time resident under fifty now. The new writer got in a couple nights ago.”
“Emma Volant?” Diane and Esther squealed in unison.
“That’s the one.”
Brogan’s chest tightened, and she focused on the glass in her hand as if attempting to polish it enough to check her own reflection.
“I didn’t think she was here yet,” Diane said. “I’ve asked around. No one’s seen her or heard a peep from her place.”
“And the whole town has been watching the cottage with binoculars,” Tom added.
“She’s there all right. Edmond told me they transferred the keys earlier this week.” Charlie turned to Brogan. “He said you did it.”
Brogan glanced behind her in some vain hope he might be addressing someone else. Then she closed her eyes for a second, but the only thing she saw behind her own lids was a vision of Emma on her knees, her shoulders shaking with shallow breaths, her eyes red-rimmed as she looked up helplessly. In an attempt to flush the memory from her mind, she focused on the people opposite the bar and managed to mumble, “Yeah, I saw her.”
Everyone in the large corner booth stared at her with a mix of open mouths and raised eyebrows, as if waiting for something she couldn’t or wouldn’t give them. Despite only one short interaction with the woman, something protective stirred in her, and she set her jaw against the instinct to fill the silence.
“Aye?” Diane finally did an exaggerated imitation of her low Geordie accent. “Out with it. What’s she like?”
Sad was the first word that came to mind. Even before the woman had begun to cry, Brogan had seen something almost heart-wrenchingly sad in her blue eyes. Emma’s panic had felt closer to that of a drowning woman than someone who’d simply misplaced her passport. The frail set of her shoulders, and the way she’d nearly folded over the divorce papers had made Brogan want to cradle her in her arms and hold her tightly, but she couldn’t hardly say so to folks drinking in the Raven on a Friday night. Doing so would feel like a betrayal of Emma, and it would likely earn her a solid round of ribbing, too. “She seems nice.”
Both women frowned at the completely nondescript descriptor, but Tom’s smile turned conspiratorial. “How nice?”
“Yeah.” Charlie grinned. “Nice can mean a lot of things coming from you. Seems like that’s how you described the Spanish tourist who took out Tom’s holiday let last summer, and then I woke up to find her making coffee in our kitchen the next morning.”
Everyone laughed, and even Brogan smiled at the diversion Maite had provided, both then and now.
“So, is she nice, or is she nice?” Tom asked.
She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t deny Emma Volant would turn many heads around town. She was tall, and despite the sunken eyes that indicated she might have recently lost weight, her frame suggested she’d always been a bit willowy. Her long, amber hair and blue eyes capped off a classic combination. She didn’t have the movie star polish many people associated with beautiful Americans, but she’d reminded Brogan a bit of a ballet dancer— strong, serious, graceful. She supposed she could have safely said the last part, but instead she went with a more mundane explanation. “She got in late. We were both tired. Honestly, we just signed our papers and went our separate ways.”
“Mum says she’s famous,” Reg cut in from the kids’ table. “She has, like, five of her books, and they are huge. She must be smart to write so much.”
Brogan hadn’t been aware Reg was listening, but she wasn’t surprised. Of all her nieces and nephews, Reggie was the most likely to pay attention to the subtleties of what was going on around her. The girl wore jeans and a jumper Brogan suspected had been handed down from her older cousin James. Her red hair was cut in an unruly bob, but as usual Reg preferred to keep it under a cap. Brogan remembered feeling the same way at ten years old, always in between the boys and the girls, the kids and the adults, the insiders and the outsiders. Was that why Reg had tuned into the others’ talk of women? Did she sense the vague pull starting to stir, or was she merely inquisitive? Either way, Brogan would have to be more careful about stories like the one Charlie had just shared. She tried to redirect the conversation to more appropriate topics. “Ms. Volant probably is pretty smart. She also seemed to have kind of a sense of humor, even though she was tired.”
“And she’s young, too, right?” Charlie asked.
“I’d say mid-thirties,” Brogan said, then internally
added that she might have looked younger if she hadn’t been so downtrodden. “Certainly young enough to qualify as an under-fifty resident.”
“And she’s rich,” Tom added, raising his glass in some sort of salute. “Obscenely rich if she can buy a sea-view cottage without even seeing the place. Who does that?”
“Edmond said she’s never even been in town. She chose it because her grandmother lived here as a child.”
“I don’t remember any Volants, and I’ve lived here my whole life,” Will said with a frown.
“Lucky you, you’re not as old as the woman’s grandmother,” Diane shot back.
“Could be a married name,” Esther offered.
“I don’t think she’s married anymore,” Diane said, causing Brogan to see the divorce papers in her mind once more, another detail she didn’t feel comfortable sharing.
“Maybe it’s a mother’s name. Or maybe a pen name,” Esther said.
“We’ll have to ask when we see her out and about.”
“If she ever goes out and about,” Tom said.
“She’s got to leave the house at some point,” Diane said matter-of-factly. “She bought a house here for a reason. She has to have some sort of connection to the place. Who knows? Maybe having someone like her will bring other authors to the area.”
“Wouldn’t that be lovely?” Esther’s voice had grown higher with excitement. “If we can get her involved with some of the local charities or the church, she would bring a lot of attention.”
Brogan went back to scrubbing dirty glasses and trying not to picture Emma clutching her chest in the doorway to her new cottage.
“Artists and authors, now that’s an idea I can get behind,” Tom said, his usual grumble fading. “Artists would be nice. They’re quiet. They’re stable, respectable. They would bring some life to the town without all the transient qualities of tourists.”
Brogan smiled down at the glass in her hand, wondering how many artists or authors Tom had even met in his life.
“Someone might even open a gallery or a little bookstore. Maybe we could have readings or salons.” Esther added on to the fantasy.
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