by Tracey Ward
“You doing okay?” Jenna asked.
I looked around the room like I was looking for answers. Weird thing was, I found them.
“Yeah,” I said with a slow grin. “Yeah, I think I’m doing okay. I might even be doing great.”
“So we’re not bailing? I don’t have to sneak out this second story window and disappear into the night back to Dublin?”
“No. We’re good.”
“Thank God,” she moaned happily, falling back on the bed with a thud. She kicked off her shoes and stretched her legs out to the end of the mattress. “I am too tired, it’s too rainy, and this bed is too comfy for that mess.”
I went to the window to look down into the garden on the side of the house. I could see the broken section of fence Owen had told us about. Inside there were neat rows of vegetables and flowers being buffeted by the rain and wind. Dancing happily, drunk off the drink.
“They’re nice,” I commented offhand.
Jenna hummed in sleepy accord.
“I don’t look anything like them.”
“They’re still your family, Kellen.”
“I know.”
“Don’t get weird.”
I chuckled, turning to look down at her. She smiled back at me from the bed, her hair a dark pool of black ink shining around her face. It was wavy and wet, like she’d just come out of the shower.
“Don’t get weird?” I asked.
“You know how you get.”
“I do.”
“So don’t do that.”
“I’ll try.”
She reached out and grabbed the edge of the blanket, pulling it over herself until she was wrapped up in the quilt like a big burrito. She fluffed a pillow under her head and sighed, “That’s all anybody can do.”
I watched her eyes fall shut, her mouth slip into a sleeping pout. Her breathing evened out into a steady rhythm that mixed with the thrum of the rain and made me sway on me feet with fatigue. I needed to go to sleep. I needed to be fresh in the morning when I met the rest of my family so I wouldn’t be ‘weird’. I needed to pee, I needed to change clothes, I needed to Houdini some of that blanket out from under her body, but for now, just for a minute, I needed to see her. To see her sleep soundly, peaceful and beautiful. Solid as the earth under my feet and gentle as the sun on my skin.
Snoring like a frat boy blacked out at the end of a bender.
Chapter Eighteen
Jenna
They get up early in Ireland. Like dawn early. Maybe not in Dublin, maybe not everywhere, but in the quaint village of Dunleer Cross just north of the Pale and west of the Irish Sea, they sure as shit do.
Kellen and I found out quickly that his family kept chickens. And a rooster. The second that guy started going on about the dawn the whole house was up and bustling. We could hear Sean and Sorcha moving in the bathroom next door then down the stairs, over the groaning floor boards of the old house. We stirred slowly, getting our bearings the way you did on your first day in an unfamiliar place. You soothed your mind after that initial WTF panic and promised it that no, you were not sold into sex slavery in the night. You came here willingly. You were safe. Calm the hell down.
“I hope they have coffee,” Kellen grumbled, stretching out next to me.
“Tea,” I told him. “They drink tea here.”
“Shit.”
“It’s probably strong tea.”
“Meaning it’s weak coffee.”
“You could drink nothing.”
He turned his head to smile at me, his unshaven face scruffy and dark. “You mean I could shut up and quit bitching about it?”
“Your choice.”
He grunted as he rolled over and collapsed his body on top of mine, crushing the wind out of me. Crashing every inch of himself against me in a way that woke me up like water to the face.
“I’ll be good,” he said deeply, his mouth against my neck. “No complaining. No being weird.”
I leaned my head back, letting him have more of me. “How will I recognize you?”
“You’ll know me.” He lifted up on his arms and took hold of my hands, raising them over my head. Elongating me. Stretching me out farther underneath him as he lowered his weight onto my hips, grinding slowly. “You always know me.”
My mouth fell open as my breath caught in my throat. “Kellen.”
“I’m gonna be good, Jenna. I promised I’d be good.”
“This is good,” I whispered. “This is really good.”
“You make me this way. Only you.”
I hiccupped on a moan as he pulled at my thigh, lifting it high against his hip. “Good thing you put a ring on it.”
He pushed my underwear aside and was inside me before I could blink. All thought left my brain. All understanding of where I was and how quiet I should be. Of the people in the house and the rain that had dried up outside. Of the sun shining warm on the world, begging us to come out and play. None of it made sense, none of it mattered. All I knew was the feel on him heavy on top of me and heady inside of me, spiraling me out as he wound me up.
“I should have done it years ago,” he grunted against my ear. “The minute I loved you I should have told you. I should have waited for you because I wanted you. Always you. Only you.” His hand gripped at my hair the way he did when he was getting close but his breathing was slow and measured. Unhurried. “All my life I’ve only ever loved you.”
I was wordless, boneless, mindless. I pressed my mouth to his shoulder, his cheek, his hand as it traced my face and ran down my neck to my chest, his palm covering my body, his warmth giving me shivers. I fell apart around him as he went supernova inside of me and I wondered in the back of my breathless mind how long he was with me. How much of those words were Kellen on the surface where he loved me.
The way he looked down at me afterward, his dark eyes black but fixed on my face, I felt a dull ache of hope that it was all of them.
All of him.
***
By noon we were surrounded.
Sorcha and Sean were in the house of course, along with Donal and Bridgette, the oldest of the siblings and the only girl. Donal was taller than the rest, round in the middle and hairless on his head while his chin flourished with a bushy gray beard. Bridgette was short like her brothers and rail thin with flaxen hair that made her look more like Sorcha’s sister than anything else, but I suspected her blond hair was bottle bought.
Callum would be so disappointed.
Bridgette and Donal brought their two grandchildren Nina and Garrick in tow. Seven and ten years old, both dark haired and bright eyed. Their dad was in the Defense Forces serving in the Army branch of the Irish military. He was a linguist, a job that put him on deployment often and his children in the care of their grandparents every time.
Kellen and I stood in the corner of the living room with Sorcha watching the kids play outside in the backyard. There was a swing there by the garden, still wet and dripping from the rain, but the kids didn’t care. They raced each other, their feet pushed toward the sky, their heads falling back in laughter that nearly sent them to the ground underneath them. Higher and higher they flew, laughing louder each time. Shrieking with delight and fear as they hurried back toward the ground only to fly up even higher on the return.
“Their ma is gone, no one knows where,” Sorcha told Kellen and I quietly. “And there’s no need to speak of her. None in the family do.”
I smiled at the kids and their rosy cheeks painted by the cold January air. “They seem happy.”
Sorcha smiled in agreement. “They are. Brandon is a fine father. A proud soldier. He’s got a girl lives in Dublin, works for a bank, makes visits out every weekend. Brings sweets and kisses for the babes. Loves ‘em as though they were her own.”
“That’s nice.”
“It is. Children need stability. They need family and comfort. Without it Lord knows what could become of ‘em. Thieves and vandals. Lost souls without a home to call their…” Sorcha p
aused, remembering the company she was keeping. She smiled weakly at Kellen, immediately apologetic. “Well, it helps to be loved. It certainly helps.”
I watched Kellen with my stomach in my shoes, my blood cool water coursing through my veins.
I was surprised and proud when he smiled graciously at her. “I’m happy they have it.”
Sorcha sagged with relief, her smile gaining strength. She patted me on the back before excusing herself to the kitchen, probably looking for oil to help remove her foot from her mouth.
“That was nice of you,” I whispered.
“I said I’d be good, didn’t I?”
“You did, but I think I underestimated just how good.”
“Best behavior.”
“Thank God, because I think your grandma just walked in.”
Kellen froze, his eyes fixed on the front door.
Owen came in first followed by an elderly woman with an arched back and skin that hung pale like bleached dough from her bones. Her expression was placid but her eyes were fierce. Cunning, cleanly belying her age. She scanned the room slowly, taking in every face, and even though she didn’t linger on Kellen or me, she undeniably took notice. She was a sharp one and I felt my pulse quicken under her brief scrutiny.
Owen helped her into the room and she was followed closely by a woman much younger but still in her mid-forties with red hair and deep brown eyes set above high cheekbones. Both she and Owen led the dowager to a seat by the fire that burned low but insistent against the winter chill that poured in from outside.
I stepped around the couch to close the door for them but stopped dead when I nearly smacked right into a pair of bright green eyes.
“Oh,” I stuttered, stepping clumsily back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was coming in.”
The guy smiled at me with gleaming white teeth and dimples for days.
“No damage done, love,” he said in a lilting Irish accent. It was more subtle than his family’s. Almost buried.
He shifted the bags on his shoulder, running his hand through his dark, tousled hair, not much different from Kellen’s. In fact he was the first person in the family to resemble Kellen at all but it didn’t take me long to realize it wasn’t his DNA that did it. It was his age and his attitude. It was that smile and the look in his eyes. The wolfish way he carried himself, as though nothing and no one mattered, not until he settled his sights on you. Then you were it. You were all there was in the world. I’m sure it worked wonders in bars. It was the same kind of look Kellen used to get with the girls that hung around the gym. The groupies that draped themselves on the back of his bike like snakes slithering up the base of a tree.
I didn’t care for it.
“Mason,” he said, offering me his hand.
I took it slowly, shook it quickly. “Jenna.”
“Jenna. No one told me there’d be beautiful girls here today, Jenna. I wouldna made such a fuss ‘bout coming round had I known the likes of you’d be here.”
“Shut it, Mason,” Owen barked. He gestured to Kellen standing behind me. “That’s her fella there. Your cousin, Kellen. Maybe you’d best be introducin’ yourself to him and not makin’ eyes at his girl.”
“Fiancé by the look of it,” chimed the keen old bird by the fire, her eyes honed in on the glistening diamond on my finger.
I lifted my left hand and touched the ring absently. All eyes in the room followed my fingers in a moment of silence that I believed carried out into the garden to the children playing. To the rooster that woke my ass up at dawn.
“Is it true, lass?” Bridgette asked me breathily.
I opened my mouth, unsure what to say. Unsure what Kellen would want to tell them, if anything. I didn’t know if he was ready.
“It’s true,” he clarified, his voice ringing out firm and familiar behind me. I felt it when he came to stand at my back the way you feel it when the sun rises. Before you’ve even opened your eyes, your body knows without seeing. “We got engaged yesterday before boarding the plane.”
The room exploded. Voices hollered, women cried out excitedly, Owen and Sean whooped with joy and clapped their hands together. We were swarmed immediately, the two of us inside a mass of hugs and perfume and cloth. Kisses and congratulations, words in Gaelic that I understood only in context and not in meaning. Blessings for us and our house, our children. Our families still in California.
It was a reception unlike anything we were going to get back home. Back there the past haunted the present, complicating it and sullying it. There would be bad blood, bad feelings, bad memories when we broke the news there, but here we were clean. Here we were two people in love, something to be celebrated, and I reveled in the free feeling of joy that gave me.
No one asked me about the dress or the kind of cake I wanted, where I wanted to have the wedding. I was asked to hold up the ring for the room to see then it was forgotten in a shower of questions not about the wedding but about where we’d live. What would our home be like? How many children did we have planned? How far would we live from my mom and dad?
Most of my answers were smiles and shrugs, and when I looked over Sorcha’s head to where Kellen stood with the men I wasn’t surprised to see him shoot me a desperate glance. A theatrical deer in the headlights stare that made me laugh and shrug some more. His face smoothed as he smiled and tipped a dark, frothing beer to me, instantly making me jealous.
Where did he get that? Where did all of the men get them? And most importantly, where the hell was mine?
“Jenna,” Sorcha said softly in my ear, her hand appearing on my elbow. “Grania’s askin’ to see the ring and yer face.”
“Is that what I call her?” I whispered. “Is it Gaelic for grandmother?”
“It’s not. Grania’s her name an’ ya can call her that if ya please, but I ‘spect she’d rather ya called her Mamó. It means grandmother.”
I shook my head quickly as she led me toward the fire. “I can’t pronounce that, Sorcha. I’ll mess it up.
“Ya’ll never know ‘til you try, lass. Here ya go.”
She plopped me down on a stool next to the fire, face to face with the old woman sitting back in a large lounge chair. It looked like the most comfortable piece of furniture in the entire house and I got the impression it was here just for her. Specifically for her visits, meaning this was the head of any house. The head of their clann.
I was sitting down to tea with an Irish Godfather.
I’d never considered impressing Kellen’s family because until very recently he simply had not had any. No brothers, no sisters. No mother, no father worth speaking of. No aunts or uncles, cousins. No one but my own family and they already loved me. I was set for life.
Sitting in front of Grania under her shrewd stare, I suddenly felt the full force of a pressure I had previously been exempt from.
“I’m Jenna,” I told her with a small wave, not sure if I should shake her hand. Not sure if her bones would crumble under my grip. She looked that fragile. That aged.
When I’d imagined Kellen’s grandma I hadn’t pictured her quite so old and I wondered how old his grandpa had been in comparison. I wondered if he hadn’t left the older woman for the other woman. I hadn’t loved the idea of him as a man before, but that thought made me like him even less.
Grania smiled warmly, surprising me with a full set of what looked like her real teeth. “Jenna,” she mused, her voice quiet but strong. “What type o’ name’s that?”
I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. Probably English.”
“It’s lovely.”
“Thank you. Sorcha told me to call you mo-mamo? I know I’m saying it wrong, I’m sorry.”
“What do ya call your grandmother in America?”
“Nana. I used to call her Granny when I was a kid.”
Her smile softened, her eyes becoming affectionate. “Me ma called me Granny when I was a babe. Me da as well. Haven’t been called Grania or Granny in donkey’s years.”
/> I had no idea what that meant, but I took it to mean a long time.
“Would it be alright if I called you Granny while my clumsy American tongue gets used to Gaelic?”
She laughed, a melodic, sweet sound. “Aye, ya can. Ya can call me Granny as long as ya like, a leanbh.”
I smiled, leaning toward her. Pulled in by her warmth that burned brighter than the fire. “What does that mean? A lean-off?”
“Uh LAN-uv,” she pronounced slowly for me. “It means child.”
“I need a notebook to write all these down,” I chuckled helplessly. “I’ve been told I’m bad at learning new languages.”
“Pft,” she scoffed. “Ya spend a year in Ireland an’ ya’ll be grand.”
“I wish I could.”
“We’d be pleased to have ya.” Her eyes drifted over my head to the crowd behind me. I knew without looking that they landed on Kellen. “The both of ya.”
“He’s nervous to meet you.”
“Is he?”
I licked my lips, worried I was overstepping my bounds. Kellen wasn’t big on telling people how he felt, especially strangers. He would never confess to this woman that he was afraid of her. Of her hating him because of who his own grandmother was.
“He is,” I confirmed, my heart fluttering nervously in my chest. “He won’t admit it to himself or to anyone, but I know he has a lot of hopes about this trip. He wants to find his family and with his mom and his grandpa gone, and his dad out of the picture… pretty much all of his eggs are in this basket.”
I wondered if that phrase could cross the cultural barrier that rested between us. If it could traverse the years and miles and millions that separated me from her, but then I realized how egotistical a thought that was. That phrase came from Ireland or England for as much as I knew, and this woman had obviously farmed before. I’d never even played Farmville on my phone.
“He has his eyes,” Granny said wistfully, her eyes still fixed on Kellen. “His face looks nothin’ like Oisin’s, but his eyes are the same. Dark. Mysterious.”
“Secretive.”
She grinned knowingly at me. “Enchantin’, aren’t they?”