As a boy, he’d listened to the tales of Aran islanders rowing over to the mainland to choose a wife to bring back to the island. Eight miles each way, the feat had captured his imagination. The summer he was sixteen, he and Hugh Fitzpatrick had set out in separate boats for Inishboffin. A race against each other. It was the year he’d realized Moruadh was, if not exactly a woman, no longer the girl he always seemed to be rescuing from one childish misadventure or another.
On this day, she’d seen them off from the dock. For some reason, he still remembered the lipstick she wore. A deep, almost plum color. Remembered, too, her black hair flying, the way the thin white material of her dress had wrapped around her legs.
He had won the race, but Moruadh had kissed Hugh.
The woman on the boat called out something, and Niall forced his thoughts back to the present and to the carefully contrived scene before him. It all looked beautiful and quaint even if it wasn’t entirely true. True would have been the cheap white bungalows and tourist trailers that dotted the low green hills, but true wasn’t the order he’d been given. He finished the roll, started loading up his gear. We all want our illusions, he thought. We all believe what we want to believe.
Which led his thoughts back to the American girl. He bent to pick up a lens cover that had fallen in the sand. Pale, golden-brown grains stuck to the plastic case. Grains like freckles. With his finger, he slowly brushed them away. What if he were to march right up the steps of the Pot o’ Gold and introduce himself?
He looked down at the grains still clinging to his fingertips. Annie Ryan would no doubt feel it necessary to warn the girl that the caller was a man who was thought by some to have murdered his wife. Of course, he could point out that no charges had ever been filed. And, of course, he could tell her that he was innocent.
And, of course, the American would believe exactly what she wanted to believe.
Ten minutes later, he sat in the car, a few yards up the road from the Pot o’ Gold, close enough that he could see into the sitting room, but not so close that he’d attract unwanted attention. The lamps were on, amber glass bowls, each frilled at the edges like a baby’s bonnet. Yellow light spilled out over the dark front garden.
He looked at his watch. A quarter to seven. He blew into his hands. Leaned his head back against the seat. Exhaled. Looked at his watch again. God, he felt like a Peeping Tom. Why was he sitting there? Why did this American girl intrigue him more than, say, the Dutch model who had certainly made no secret of her interest? He had no answer and, after a minute or so, he stopped looking for one. Some things weren’t meant to be analyzed.
A car went by, trailing a comet of rock music. Inside the house, he saw a sliver of green, a flash of red hair. Pulse quickening, he reached for the horn, then drew his hand back. If he was after attention, he might as well throw a fistful of pebbles at the glass. Without looking away from the lighted sitting room, he felt for the door catch and sat there, his hand on the cold metal. He pictured his progress to the front door. Through the front gate, up the garden path. Two choices once he got there. The brass knocker, or the bell. The knocker. Rat-a-tat-tat. With any luck, it would be her, not Annie, who came to the door. And then he changed his mind.
KATE STOOD at the sitting-room window and watched the taillights of a car disappear around the corner, a blip in the inky blackness. In California, the night sky always seemed to glow, lit up by millions of lights. Here in Ireland, the dark was absolute, depthless.
Reflected in the window, she could see the family seated around the fireplace. Annie and Patrick in armchairs, Rory and Caitlin hand in hand on the couch just as they’d been the night before. Her eyes drawn to Rory, Kate thought of the weird tension between him and Fitzpatrick. With Elizabeth still not home, her uneasiness about keeping Rory’s secret had increased another notch. Just as she’d decided to talk to him about it, a friend of Elizabeth’s had called from Galway to say she was pretty sure she’d seen Elizabeth at a club the night before. Since everyone had seemed relieved by the news, Kate decided to wait a little longer before she confronted Rory.
“While you’re up on your feet, Katie,” Annie called out, “Draw the curtains for me, will you? Then come and sit back down, I’ve baked something I want you to try.”
“Okay, what have you whipped up tonight that’s going to make me fat?” Kate pulled a footstool up to the fire.
“Fat,” Annie scoffed. “Sure, a good gust of wind would blow you away.” She put a slice of dark fruit-studded bread on Kate’s plate. “Barm brack.”
“That’s a new one on me.” She thought of the various bakery offerings she’d sampled so far. “Is it a traditional recipe?”
“My ma’s and her mother’s before that.” Annie spooned sugar into her tea. “You bake different things into the batter. Rings, coins, buttons. What else, Pat?” she said with a glance at her husband.
“Pieces of wood. Peas. Get one of those and you’ll never have any money.” He winked at his wife. “Must be our problem, Annie. Thimbles, too, my mother would put in there.”
“Ah God, don’t get a thimble,” Annie said with a meaningful look at Kate. “You’ll be a spinster.”
“Oh, Kate’ll never be a spinster.” Caitlin looked up from the magazine she’d been flipping through with a free hand. “I bet you have a date every night, don’t you, Kate?”
Kate grinned. “Like I told your mom, my life’s a mad social whirl.”
“That was me, too,” Caitlin said. “Playing the field, a different one every night.”
“You’re nineteen, Caitlin.” Annie regarded her daughter over the rim of her teacup. “A lot of field playing you had time to do.”
“Ah, you’d be surprised, Mam.” Smiling, Caitlin reached over and put a piece of bread on Rory’s plate. “Of course, that was all before I met you, right, love?”
Kate glanced over at Rory who had hardly said a word all evening. Suddenly, he set his cup and saucer down on the table and left the room. A moment later, the front door slammed.
“He’s worrying about work,” Caitlin said. “That new superintendent they have is a bit of a tyrant. Takes his work very seriously,” she said with a look at Kate. “Married to it, he is.”
Kate nodded, but the lingering uneasiness she’d been trying to dismiss returned in full force. It was Elizabeth and not work that was preoccupying him, she was pretty certain. Maybe there was more to their relationship than he’d acknowledged. Maybe that was why Elizabeth was staying away.
“I played the field a bit myself in my day.” Patrick, apparently unaware that the topic had changed, yawned and stretched. “Quite a catch I was, if I do say so myself.”
Annie raised an eyebrow. “Are you forgetting, Patrick Ryan, that I’ve known you since you were sixteen?”
“Before I was sixteen, I meant.” Patrick winked at Kate. “Quite the catch I was.”
“Catch indeed,” Annie scoffed. “What kind of catch I’ve no idea.” She looked at Kate. “Sure, he’d starve to death before he’d as much as put a pot on the stove.”
Patrick gave a sigh of long suffering. “Right, if you want blame, marry. If you want praise, die. I’ve cooked, Annie, and well you know it. Do you not remember the cake I made for Caitlin’s birthday?”
“I do.” Annie said. “But I’d be doing you a favor if I didn’t. I was scraping burned bits from the cooker for months on end. And what about yourself, Kate?” she asked. “Do you cook?”
“Not a whole lot,” she replied. “Mostly, I eat salads or stick a TV dinner in the microwave.”
“Caitlin’s like that,” Annie said, shaking her head. “It’s the way of young people these days, I suppose. Sure, I’m always trying to teach her how to bake bread, but she’s not interested in the least.”
“Caitlin’s lucky. If you want to give me a lesson while I’m here,” Kate said impulsively, “I’d love it.”
“I’ll do that.” Annie eyed her for a moment. “Are you close with your mother, Katie?”
“She’s dead.” Uncomfortable suddenly under Annie’s watchful gaze, Kate started to stack up the tea things. “We were never close,” she said, mostly to fill in the silence, but also because she suspected that Annie saw her life back in Santa Monica as less than wonderful and felt a little sorry for her. “It happened a long time ago,” she said. “I’m fine. Truly. I’m happy with my life.”
“Your da then…” Annie said, clearly not convinced. “Do you see him much?”
“No.” Kate looked at Annie, who seemed clearly distressed “He has his own life. I have a brother, though, and a nephew.” Whom I haven’t seen in two years, she thought but didn’t add. “Hey, listen, Annie, I’m fine with things this way. It saves a whole lot of money at Christmas. Plus, I can be as messy as I want.”
“Ah, Katie.” Annie shook her head. “It’s a pity you’ll not be here for the fleadh. There’ll be a lot of nice young men coming in from Dublin. Could you not stay another week?”
Kate laughed. “Not even for a nice young man.”
“Do you not have one back in America then, Kate?”
“A nice young man?” Clearly Kate’s single state was of much more concern to Annie than it was to her. “I was going with someone, but he wasn’t really all that nice, so we broke up.”
“And what was it he did that wasn’t so nice?”
“Oh…” Kate shrugged. “Basically, I found out he’d been cheating on me.”
“Ah no, that won’t do.” Annie shook her head. “If you can’t trust them, it’s no good at all.”
“Exactly.” Kate sipped her tea. Trustworthy men—at least those she’d met—were rare. As she bit into the last piece of barm brack, she looked up to see Annie watching her.
“No ring?” Annie said.
Kate shook her head.
“Too bad. Find a ring,” she said with a smile, “and you’ll be married within the year.”
“Yeah?” With a grin, Kate picked up her cup and saucer. “Not that I believe it for a minute, but there was this really cute guy I ran into today.”
SHE WAS ALREADY UNDRESSED, reading on the bed, when she remembered that she’d left one of her notebooks on the table downstairs. In her robe and heavy socks, she padded silently down the carpeted stairway. Everyone had gone to bed and, except for a light in the hallway, the house was in darkness. She found her notebook, started for the stairs then spotted something white on the mat by the front door. Guessing that it was a note that someone had slipped through the letter box, she bent to pick it up. The envelope was addressed, in flowing black script, to:
“The American Girl with Long Red Hair.”
Kate stared at it for a moment before she turned over the envelope and pulled out the card inside. The note read:
They say the two things the Irish do well are drinking and reciting poetry. I’ll bend my elbow on occasion and, although I’d rather do it in person, I don’t mind quoting poetry. So, to borrow from a fellow countryman:
We poets labour all our days
To make a little beauty be
But vanquished by a woman’s gaze
And the unlabouring stars are we.
Just a reminder to stay on the right side. My apologies once again for causing you to part with the road. Perhaps one day I’ll learn your name. Until then, I suppose I must remain,
Yours, The Man on the Cliff.
“LOOK AT YOU,” Annie said the next morning when Kate came down to breakfast. “Have a date, do you?”
“What?” Kate glanced down at herself. Black cords instead of the usual faded jeans. A new yellow sweater bought on impulse, instead of the UCLA sweatshirt she’d pulled on for the last couple of days. Her hair brushed until it fell smoothly down her back. I might just run into him again. “A date indeed,” she said with a grin at Annie. “I’m in Ireland to work.”
She watched as Annie set down a plate of eggs and sausage. Savory smells wafted up to greet her. Pale morning sunshine streamed through the dining-room window, shone on the flower-patterned china. Kate had a sudden impulse to break into song, to say something sappy like, “God, life is good.”
She’d fallen asleep with the note under her pillow. Fallen asleep with a smile on her face. Read it again the moment her eyes opened. Thinking of it now, of the man who had sent it, she smiled down at her food. Couldn’t stop smiling. The Man on the Cliff. Annie was standing there, watching her. Waiting for an explanation.
“That guy I told you about last night,” she said, “he left a note for me. I found it last night after everyone had gone to bed.”
“What did he say then?” Annie’s eyes were bright with interest. “What’s his name?”
“He didn’t say. He just signed it, ‘The Man on the Cliff.’ I met him the first night I got here. I was lost.”
“What does he look like? He’s no doubt someone I know.”
“He’s tall and dark-haired and…” She shook her head. “Basically just gorgeous. And very nice, too, at least he seemed that way. Of course, they all seem that way at first.”
Annie shook her head reprovingly. “Katie. You’ve just never met the right man, that’s all there is to it. We’ll find someone for you though.”
“This guy would be a good start.” She cut one of the sausages into little pieces, speared one with her fork.
A wide smile on her face, Annie pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Kate. “Ah God, I love a little romance. I mean, look at yourself. You’re a different girl this morning.” Her forehead creased. “I wish I knew who it was. It’s not Hughie Fitzpatrick, is it?”
“The reporter?” Kate looked at her over the rim of the teacup. “Not my type, Annie. In addition to smoking like a chimney, he seems very bitter. I was hoping he could help. But he’s got this thing about Maguire murdering Moruadh, and it’s hard to get him to move from that.”
“Well, life hasn’t been easy for him.” Annie buttered a slice of toast. “His mother’s a right shrew who would still have him at home with her if she could and although he went off to university, he’s back now writing about jumble sales and church fetes. That must get him down a bit.”
“I can imagine.”
“And he’s had his heart broken a few too many times,” Annie went on with a glance across the table. “Starting with Moruadh. Sure, that can make you bitter, can’t it?”
Kate was saved from responding when the phone rang and Annie got up to answer it. Annie’s words had made her uncomfortable. Was there a similarity between herself and Hugh Fitzpatrick? Maybe they were both guilty of letting anger and bitterness taint their lives? Something she’d have to think about. Later.
“Hughie’s a nice lad, though,” Annie said, coming to sit down again. “You could do worse. Bit lonely, too, and both of you being writers…oh, wait. It was Liam Donohue, either him or—”
Kate laughed. “You know what? It doesn’t matter who he is. I kind of like it better the way it is now. Kind of magical and mysterious.”
“Suit yourself, love.” Smiling, she reached over to pat Kate’s hand. “We won’t talk about it. You go and enjoy yourself, but I want to hear all about your day when you get back.”
The phone rang, and Annie got up again. Moments later, she was back. “For you.”
As she took the phone, Kate felt her heart speed up. Then she heard the American accent of her editor. Disappointment stabbed, fierce and sharp, and she struggled to focus.
“You called me yesterday, kiddo,” Tom was saying. “I’m just returning your call. I didn’t get a moment all day, so I thought I’d try before I went to bed. What time is it there?”
“Just after seven. I’m eating breakfast.” She took a sip of tea and shook away thoughts of the man on the cliff. “You’d asked me to fill you in on what was happening. I’m finding a lot of support for the idea that the husband killed her. Apparently the reason he wasn’t arrested was he’s got money and influence with the guards.”
“Have you met him?”
�
�Not yet. He lives in some medieval castle. He wasn’t in when I rode up yesterday, but I’m going to try today.” Unless I get waylaid by a gray-eyed man, in which case all bets are off. Over the phone line, she could hear the all-news radio station Tom always listened to. A traffic tie-up on the southbound Golden State Freeway. “I’ve been talking to people. I’m just waiting to see how all the pieces fit together.”
“Sounds good. How’s everything else?”
“Terrific.” Kate smiled to herself. “Lots of great-looking scenery.”
“Well, you seem to be off to a good start. All kinds of mystery and intrigue. I like that.”
“Yeah. Well, I’ll see if I can get him indicted before I leave.” She pictured Tom at his cluttered desk. A pencil stuck in his unruly gray hair, dark eyes glimmering behind rimless frames. “Anything for a good story.”
But later, as she walked along the cliffs to Buncarroch Castle hoping to find Niall Maguire home, early sunshine gave way to clouds and her mood turned similarly gloomy. Wind whipped her hair around her face and pushed her forward like a giant hand in her back.
What if she never saw this mystery man again? The seven days she had left in Ireland were crammed with interviews and people she had to see. Anyway, maybe he’d left Cragg’s Head. Maybe he was off in Dublin. Maybe he was married. That was it. Married with kids, which was why he hadn’t signed his name.
Probably a good thing if she didn’t run into him again. Which undoubtedly meant she would. God, she couldn’t think about him anymore.
But as her fingers touched the note she’d slipped into her pocket, she felt her spirits lift despite herself. Obviously he wanted to see her. Maybe right now, he was driving around Cragg’s Head in his green Land Rover hoping to run into her again. Maybe she should go back and get the car and look for him. Both of them looking for each other like bumper cars at the fair.
Wasn’t there supposed to be something magical about Ireland? All that stuff about fairies and spirits. Maybe if she thought about it hard enough, she could make him appear. Conjure him up. It wouldn’t be a coincidence, it would be a magic trick.
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