The Last Bride in Ballymuir

by Dorien Kelly

  He slipped Vi’s mug from her slack fingers, then took it to the sink. “We’ll do fine by the two of them, I promise,” he said. “And don’t be in any hurry to ring up Mam and try to change her mind. We’ll keep them here for as long as we can.”

  Vi came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “You’re a man to love, Michael Kilbride. Truly a man to love.” She hugged him, then began puttering about the small kitchen.

  He ducked his head and stared intently into the sink. The bubbles from the washing-up liquid seemed more shimmery, and he was having trouble finding his voice.

  “Well, then ...” He stopped to rid his throat of an embarrassing tightness. “I’ll keep the boys busy today. I want some time with Kylie tonight, and I can see that the only way I’ll be having it is to knock those two off their feet.”

  Vi chuckled. “If that’s your goal, I’d suggest a hard shove behind their knees. You’re no match for seventeen-year-olds.”

  A challenge, if ever he’d heard one. “We’ll see who’s left standing at the end of the day, and who’s down for the count.”

  “I’m putting my money on the wild reds,” she announced with a shake of her own blazing hair. “Double or nothing, of course.”

  They’d scarcely made it into the car—a nasty tight fit—when Michael was wondering whether his sister wasn’t on the winning side of the wager. The twins were hungry again, and this with breakfast just down their gullets.

  “We’ll have a stop and pick up a bite or two,” he said as he pulled up in front of Spillane’s Market. Knowing the grocer’s greeting would be none too warm, he went on the offensive. “Stay by me,” he ordered the boys.

  “Morning, Spillane,” Michael offered as they came into the store. Mr. Spillane’s face had already eroded into a geography of anxious crags and chasms. “These are my brothers, Pat and Dan. To be making things easy on you, I promise we’ll keep in a tight pack while we’re here. No point in having you panic in three directions at once, now is there?”

  Spillane stammered something that could be taken either as agreement or outright shock at the thought of having three male Kilbrides to contend with.

  Michael gave the twins—who were busy staring at Spillane—a push forward. “Find what you’re wanting.”

  As he trailed behind them, he said over his shoulder to Spillane, who tailed him, “Pat and Danny, here, will be staying with Vi for a while, and the way they eat, I expect you’ll be seeing a lot of them.

  “I’m asking one thing of you, though I expect you don’t feel that you owe me much of anything. Judge the boys on who they are, and don’t let your opinion of me fall into the mix.” He stopped and turned to face the man. “Do it for Vi. She has strong feelings about family, Spillane, and I don’t want to see her hurt. I don’t think you do, either.”

  The tips of Spillane’s ears grew pink. He shuffled his feet and aligned a box of pasta that had been nudged from its militarily straight row.

  “Vi’s a fine woman,” he said, then went to stand by the register.

  Michael knew that was as close to a concession as he’d be getting. And it was more than he’d expected, too.

  “Vi would thank you, Spillane,” he said. He didn’t add his own genuine gratitude because he knew it carried no weight with the grocer. A fact for which he now knew some small regret.

  After Michael had paid for the twins’ haul, and Spillane had packaged it down to the last packet of vinegar-flavored potato crisps, Spillane said, “Have a grand one, boys.” He met Michael’s eyes for the first time in months. “And you too, Kilbride,” he added in a voice not quite warm, but better than ice.

  Feeling humbled, yet somehow elated, too, Michael nodded, then herded the twins back into the car.

  “What the fu—” one of the twins began.

  Michael cut him off. “I’ll be charging for that particular word ... say, fifty pence for each use. It shouldn’t be slipping from your mouth like rain from the sky. Not at all the way a Kilbride should act. So unless you’re looking to be working for free, I’d suggest you come up with a new word of choice.”

  The twin in the seat next to him swung around in absolute rage. “Screw that! You can’t charge us!”

  Michael raised one brow. “I can’t? Now, how would you plan to be stopping me, Pat?”

  “I’m Dan, dammit to hell and back. If you can’t even keep our names straight, how the f—” His throat worked convulsively, oversized Adam’s apple bobbing with the effort of swallowing the forbidden word. “How do you plan to keep track of who to charge?”

  “I’ll just charge you both.”

  Michael grinned into the faces of twin fits of apoplectic rage. “You each owe me two punts fifty so far. Keep ‘em coming, boys, and I’m off to retirement before I ever have to work.”

  And hours later, he marveled how the elimination of one small word reduced conflict. He gave orders, and if the boys objected, it was done through guttural grunts and moans. Over the course of the day, Michael had learned that for all his mouth, Danny was a hard worker, and that Pat—a boy after his own heart—had a way of trying to negotiate himself out of the tough tasks.

  Both possessed the Kilbride sense of justice in full measure, too. When Michael slammed his thumb with a hammer and voiced his displeasure, the twins had demanded fifty pence knocked off each of their accounts. He had, of course, agreed.

  By the time the sun touched the horizon, the barn was as clean as the day it had been built, and the three of them were head-to-toe grime. Michael pulled out a length of hose and attached it to a spigot outside the barn. After peeling off his shirt and throwing it aside, he stuck his head under a stream of icy-cold water. He howled as it hit him, enjoying the shock.

  The boys laughed as he shook his head, sending water flying.

  “Your turn,” he announced at the exact moment that he trained the hose on them. What had been meant as a quick clean-up immediately degraded into mud throwing with war whoops and bellows loud enough to bring legendary CuChulainn back from his hero’s sleep.

  Hard work and hard play—Michael wished like hell someone had shown him at age seventeen that both could be fun.

  Kylie sat in her car, not quite certain she wanted to get out. She had stopped at Breege’s hoping to find Michael and his strong shoulder to rest her head on. Not bloody likely, given the state of that shoulder.

  The sight of Michael and two mud-spattered strangers laughing and grappling about had her mind traveling on odd tangents. She felt almost naughty watching them. Her mouth curved into a smile. For the first time today, she was blessedly free of worry. And it pleased her that she liked feeling naughty.

  Even more than that, she liked looking at Michael with no shirt on, especially when he was coated with mud. As though he sensed her thoughts, he suddenly looked up, one stranger’s head still locked into the lee between his elbow and body. Michael smiled, teeth white in all that dark. He released his captive and headed toward the car.

  Still smiling herself, Kylie stepped out. The two men—quite young men, Kylie saw now—back-pedaled toward the barn.

  “I didn’t hear you pull up,” he said.

  “Small wonder. I heard you.” She encompassed the strangers in her look. “Even over my car.”

  Michael laughed. “That loud, eh?” He glanced over his shoulder before saying, “I have somebody— make that two bodies—I want you to meet. Pat! Danny!” he called without looking away from her. “Come here.”

  They approached cautiously and stood one to either side of him. It was obvious they’d rather be back rolling in the mud than meeting her.

  “Kylie, I want you to meet my brothers.” He looked at one, then the other, and frowned. Muttering something under his breath, Michael ran his hand over the face of the person to his left, then wiped the resulting palmful of muck on his leg.

  “Better,” he said. “This is Danny, and that dangerous-lookin’ fellow on the other side of me is Pat. They’ve come for a littl
e visit.

  “Boys, this is Miss Kylie O’Shea, and I’d suggest you be very nice to her. Kylie’s a teacher, and though you’re a bit older than her usual students, I’m sure she’d be happy to put together a lesson or two during your ... ah ... holiday from school.”

  “A teacher?” the boy named Pat said. “Can you believe it, Danny?”

  “Jesus, if Mrs. McGilray looked anything like her, we’d never have locked the f—” Pat leaned across Michael and smacked Danny on the side of the head. Danny winced, shook it off, then finished, “—the chickens in the loo with her.”

  Between the mud and the mystifying talk of chickens, Kylie didn’t know how to respond. Not that anything the boys had said had been directed at her, anyway. She looked to Michael for help, but he was too busy laughing.

  “Chickens in the loo?” he finally sputtered. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I don’t suppose that we were thinking at all.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” Kylie cut in, seeing that the evening was about to devolve into a discussion of whether male adolescents ever thought. She held out a hand and bit back a smile when they glanced down at their own muddy paws, then at their brother. He nodded firmly.

  Two gritty handshakes later, they scurried off to the hose and began cleaning up. Michael took the hand his brothers had already dirtied, brushed off the grit, and then drew it to his mouth. He kissed her palm; it was all she could do not to wrap her free hand beneath his jaw and bring his mouth to hers. But some remaining desire for cleanliness and knowledge of their audience stopped her. The boys—their hair as red as Vi’s, she now saw—watched warily.

  “I’ve missed you,” Michael said. “A night and day apart and so much has happened.”

  She smiled. “So I see.”

  He looked at his brothers and pure pleasure shone even from under the streaks of mud painting his face. “I can’t say I was thrilled to find ‘em sleeping in my bed last night, but they’re all right, those two.”

  His expression grew more serious, and he held tighter to her hand. “This will change things for us, not that events have been any too normal to begin with. It looks like they’ll be about for a while. Their… ah, our…mam doesn’t want them back.”

  “Over the chickens?”

  He gave a weary shrug. “And probably a couple of other things, too. Not that it’s any excuse.”

  “No. None at all.” A mixture of frustration and outrage—both as an educator and from some spark of maternal emotion—began to simmer. “So your mother thinks she can just parcel children off when they make a spot of trouble? You think she would have learned by now where that can lead.” Kylie shut her mouth and squeezed her eyes tightly shut when she realized what had just slipped out.

  Tentatively, she opened them to find Michael looking at her with an amused sparkle lighting his expression. “Amazing. Now you’re going to apologize for speaking the truth, aren’t you?”

  She wished for a bit of that mud to disguise the color she felt burning on her cheeks. “I’ll apologize for the way I said it, how’s that?”

  “You said it from the heart, and it’s the kindest heart I’ve ever known. Truth is truth, love. And seeing the boys, being able to spend some time with them, maybe—just maybe—I’ll be able to undo a bit of the damage their mam has inflicted. I don’t want to see them half a lifetime from now struggling to learn what I’ve had to.” He paused to take her other hand, too. “Until my mother changes her mind, or my father notices the twins are missing, I guess my days—and nights—have grown a little fuller. Do you mind?”

  Now mindless of the mud, the boys, anything but the love she felt for this man, she went up on tiptoe and kissed him. “I don’t mind any more than you did when I moved Breege into my house.”

  His smile was crooked. “I was just smart enough to keep my complaints to myself.”

  “Well, I have no complaints at all. They seem like fine boys.” She choked back a laugh as she glanced at the sizable “boys” in question.

  “Fine they are, and they’re also hungry. They eat like young wolfhounds—swallowing rabbits whole.” At her laugh, he added, “God’s truth, I swear. And I think I’ll get them on home, fill their bellies, then come have a visit with you this evening. If you don’t mind having a visitor, that is.”

  Kylie tilted her head and took in the details that made her heart beat faster—the sensuous curve to his smile, the way he held himself as though he’d take on and flatten any evil the world threw his way. “I don’t think you fall under the category of visitor anymore, do you?”

  “Not a visitor and not quite a resident,” he said with a teasing tone. “I should be thinking of picking up an injury or two, then maybe you’d find room for me under your roof.”

  Kylie fought to hide her instinctive flinch. Michael looked at her carefully, as though observing things invisible to the naked eye. Not for the first time, she wondered whether he didn’t have a share of his sister’s second sight.

  “Struck a nerve, have I?”

  She tried to smile, but failed miserably. “Just more birds coming home to roost, and the nest already full up.”

  He was silent a moment, then said, “Your da, is it?”

  All she could manage was a tiny nod of her head. Anything more and she would either rage and roll in the mud or break down and weep. And whichever happened, it wasn’t the sort of impression she wanted to make on Pat and Danny Kilbride.

  Michael sighed. “I’m sorry, love, but we’ll work our way through it. I promise.”

  Kylie smiled, this time for real. She loved being part of a “we,” with all the unity and strength that the word implied. It was still more wish than reality, but it was all she had.

  “We’ll be fine, the both of us,” she said. “And the rest of those wild Kilbrides, too.”

  He hugged her and laughed at her shocked cry as his mud became hers. He rubbed his face into the sensitive crook where neck met shoulder, and growled, “Wild, Kilbrides are we? You haven’t seen the half of it.”

  Kylie laughed, too. Pat and Danny merely watched, one commenting to the other, “Not half f—, uh bad, for a teacher.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  If it isn’t better, may it not be worse.

  ─Irish Proverb

  Vi Kilbride scrutinized the down-at-the-heels interior of Ballymuir’s Village Hall. “A bit of paint, a few banners, and we’ll be set—in a minimalist sort of way.”

  Trailing in Vi’s wake, Kylie grimaced. Even with paint and banners, there was a certain ill-used air to the place she needed to address before it was ready for her students’ show, which was just a matter of days away. She tapped her index finger against her lower lip as she considered the possibilities.

  “I suppose you have the materials for banners at your studio. And the village council might be willing to pay Pat and Danny to do a little paint-up. Assuming Michael can spare them, that is.” He’d kept them running dawn to dusk for the week they’d been in town.

  Just then, sharp heels drummed across the dusty wood. Kylie turned to see Evie Nolan closing in on them.

  “So is it true?” Evie gave a little wiggle to settle her sausage-tight top.

  “Is what true?”

  “Your da, of course. I heard at the pub that he was coming back to town today. Didn’t you go get him?” She looked around as if he might be lurking in a corner.

  “I work. I’ve got no time to be driving all the way to County Laois.”

  “Then he’s taking the bus? Do you think he’ll be in tonight? It’s nearly eight already.”

  Kylie knew neither when nor how her father was arriving and had been struggling mightily not to care. He had called more than once in the past several days, and each time she had avoided him, using Breege as an unwilling shield. All because she couldn’t bring herself to speak five blunt words: I don’t want you here.

  She spent the anger she felt toward herself on Evie. “Why the sudden inter
est in my da’s arrival? Been sending love notes off to prison?”

  “Just wantin’ to know whether it’s time to lock up my pocketbook.”

  Defending Johnny O’Shea to Evie, who’d been a petty thief for as long as Kylie could recall, bordered on the absurd. “Lock up your pocketbook? You wouldn’t want to do that until you were through stealing from your da’s till, now would you, Evie?”

  Evie’s plum-painted lips snapped shut. Her low growl was quickly lost in the chime of Vi’s laughter.

  “Kylie me girl, I’m liking you more every day,” Vi said, accenting the words with a pat on the back that had the air escaping from Kylie’s lungs with a whoosh.

  As Kylie recovered, it occurred to her that she was liking herself more every day, too. Feeling plenty strong to face down Evie, she pinned the girl with a glare.

  “Are you here to help with the art show? Because if you are, you’re not dressed for it. And if you’re not, leave us to our work. You could always go wheedle gossip back at the pub. Tongues are looser after a pint or two.”

  “As are some women, from what I’ve seen,” Vi said. At Evie’s rude response, she cautioned, “Be careful what you say. Life has a nasty way of coming back and biting you in the bum.”

  Evie stalked away. Halfway to the door, she teetered on the slope of her ridiculously high heels, then fell off. Arms flailing, curses spouting, she righted herself.

  Vi smiled brightly. “Bloody things’ll kill you if you’re not careful.”

  Kylie suspected Evie’s fall had more to do with Vi’s uncanny abilities than bad shoes. The slamming door signaled Evie’s departure.

  Vi gave a wry shake of her head. “That one will never grow up.” She ran her finger along the back of a worn bench, then said, “So your da’s due back. Must be a bit of a shock even though you knew the day was coming.”

  “It’ll be more of a shock for my da when he learns that Breege is living in my house, and her peacock in my shed.”

  The noise of Michael’s power tools had sent Martin scurrying for a more placid location. Suddenly, Kylie wondered if she hadn’t invited Breege into her house to attain exactly the same thing.