by K. A. Tucker
1. Have a torrid affair with a foreigner. Country: TBD.
A torrid affair may be a little dramatic. It’s definitely a few steps up from the common vacation hookup, another one of those things that I’ve secretly envied others for being able to do. Ever since my college roommate, Deirdre Carlino, came back from her backpacking trip with stories about this hot weeklong fling with a guy from France, I’ve wondered if I’d have the guts to do something like that. Shed my “Sheriff’s daughter” cloak of integrity and common sense, and simply not care. Push aside all the real instances of unplanned pregnancies and STD cases that I’ve seen while working in the hospital and just embrace the experience.
A torrid affair could certainly help with the pang in my heart every time Aaron creeps into my thoughts.
Most of the items on this list are landmark-related and touristy: float through the grottos, Capri, Italy; tour vineyards on a bicycle, Bordeaux, France; sleep on a beach, Phuket, Thailand. That last one is a definite no. That’s how you wake up mugged.
A few are just practical: Take a picture of a Laundromat. Country: All. With only one suitcase, I already have four snapshots for my collection.
Some of the items already have tidy little marks beside them. Take a train through the Canadian Rockies. Check. Dress like a Bond Girl and play a round of poker at a casino. Check. I groan with mortification at that memory, though in hindsight it’s kind of funny. A young single woman in a flirty black dress and stiletto heels at a poker table in a Montreal casino . . . I guess I can see why the man who approached and offered me two thousand dollars for the night might mistake me for an escort. He was quite polite about the request, though, and extremely apologetic when my jaw dropped and he realized his terrible mistake. Of course I had to Google what the going rate is for paid escorts. Apparently, two thousand is considered high-end. At least I can claim that much out of the experience. Not that my dad—the man I begged for poker lessons before I left—would be too impressed with that story.
I scan the rest of the list for Ireland-specific lines.
9. Kiss the Blarney Stone: Cork, Ireland.
I’ll be able to check that off soon. The keys to Simon’s black VW Golf sit in a dish by the front door, at my disposal. I think it’ll take me a few more days to work up the courage to drive it, though. I’m not sure I trust myself to stay on the wrong side of the road. And the roundabouts? They scare the hell out of me. I like my old dirt roads and quiet highways through the mountains.
Until then, there are a couple things I have listed for Dublin that I could mark off. That I could have already marked off, if my days here hadn’t been derailed.
On impulse, I grab my pen and fill a new line with my own handwriting, almost as neat as Alex’s.
42. Barely avoid mutilation and/or death by pipe bomb: Dublin, Ireland.
“Check,” I murmur. Shaking my head at myself, I fold the paper back up and tuck it back into my wallet.
Falling into the bed, I stare at the thick crown molding that edges the walls and think about Alex. Most people could not bounce back from what she went through, amnesia or not. She can’t even look in a mirror without the constant reminder of it in the form of a long, thin scar from temple to jaw. But she’s not hiding in a room somewhere. She’s living her life, grateful to have survived.
With a heavy sigh, I drag myself off the bed and wander over to the dresser to pick out a shirt that will cover the evidence.
I didn’t come to Ireland to sit in this house, nice as it may be.
It’s time to move on.
From my seat on the second-level balcony of this Asian tea shop, I feel like a queen, peering down over Grafton Street, a pedestrian-only street, jammed with tourists at eleven on a Friday morning.
Do they know that a bomb went off just a few blocks away from here? Because none of them seem worried. I sigh, closing my eyes and lifting my face to soak in the sun that promises another abnormally hot day for a country with a normally cool climate. I hope it can somehow restore my sense of adventure, too.
A part of me—the traumatized young woman who yelped at the sound of a car backfiring on her way here—wants to call my father back and tell him everything, let his concern wash over me in soothing words meant to comfort. Maybe have him or my mom book a flight to Dublin just so I can be wrapped within their arms by tomorrow.
But I can’t do that.
I have no one to talk to, no one to take care of me. No one who even knows.
Except for the police, who aren’t going to offer me hugs.
And the man who saved my life, who I can’t find.
“Your Darjeeling tea, miss.” The waiter winks at me as he sets it down next to a plump scone, his accent enchanting, yet odd. Not light, like my mystery man’s. Not like Detective Garda Leprechaun Duffy’s. Definitely not like the accent of the taxi driver; he had to repeat everything three times to me and I still couldn’t quite understand him.
A hint of Irish mingles with something else, making it entirely foreign. “If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from?”
“Sicily, originally. I moved to Dublin when I was fifteen.”
“So, the two accents have combined? I didn’t even know that could happen.”
He chuckles. “Spend a few more days here and you’ll hear many different accents in Dublin, especially in the bar industry.” He throws me another wink and moves on to tend to another table, another tourist. I pick at my light lunch, turning my attention back to the street below. As commercial as this area is—retailer after retailer lined up and waiting to make money off an abundance of tourists—the old buildings that house these stores, the cobbled walkways that lead up to them, the street buskers who entertain outside, all blend together to energize and charm the atmosphere.
I lean over the rail to admire the flower stand to my left. Tiered rows of buckets burst with blooms in indigo and gold and crimson. It’s tempting to buy a bunch of sunflowers and bring them back to add a splash of color to a lovely but somewhat sterile home. It’s something my mom has done for as long as I can remember. Maybe I will, later.
To my right, a small crowd has formed around three men who are covered from head to toe in a thick matte charcoal paint and sitting statue-still. So still that I wouldn’t believe them to be people, had I not read about this somewhere already. Farther down, the first strings of a guitar carry over the low buzz—a one-man band entertaining passersby, his hat awaiting a tip to keep him coming back.
I could forget about the Guinness tour and the old library at Trinity College that I’ve mentally committed myself to today, and simply sit here drinking tea and people-watching all afternoon. I just may, too, because up here in my perch, I’m not thinking about being blown up by another pipe bomb.
My waiter seats a young couple at the table next to me. The simple gold bands on their fingers tell me they’re married. She mumbles something to him and I recognize it as French. Parisian French, I’m quite sure. My time in Montreal taught me the difference, the Québécois dialect harsh by comparison.
The guy leans back in his chair, rubbing his chest slowly as he peers down on Grafton Street, just as I had a moment ago. The movement pulls my eyes to the logo on his clover-green T-shirt. It’s a family crest of sorts.
The stag at the top makes my jaw drop open.
Could it be?
No. That’s just too coincidental. There are probably dozens of family crests with stags on them. The Irish are all about pride for their heritage.
“Excuse moi.”
His sharp tone is what drags my gaze to his face. He’s staring at me with an annoyed, arched brow. From what I’ve read, the stereotype that the French don’t love Americans isn’t so much a stereotype as fact, and for whatever reason, he’s assumed I’m American. By now his young wife has turned around too, and her glare has teeth.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.” This is exactly how I don’t want to strike up a conversation up with complete strangers. “Your s
hirt . . . Did you buy it here, in Ireland?” He glances down at it, a frown on his face, like he’s trying to figure out why I’d care. “My boyfriend asked me to bring him a souvenir and he’d love something like that,” I lie quickly.
Their expressions finally shift to something more friendly. “I won it. Last week, at this famous Irish pub,” the guy admits with pride. “I bet the bartender that I could finish my beer before he could. He gave it to me right off his back. But I don’t know if they sell them. It’s their uniform.”
My mind begins spinning frantically. Uniform? Does he mean a staff shirt? What are the chances . . .
“What’s the bar called?”
He stretches the bottom out and I notice a name scrawled across the banner. “Delaney’s?” he reads, as if in question. “Not far from here. But . . .” He smirks, his gaze scanning my face, my shirt, my bangles, dangling with sparkly charms. “I’m not so sure it is a place for you.”
“Thank you.” I dismiss his warning easily. If I have the chance to find this guy so I can thank him, then it’s the perfect place for me.
FIVE
RIVER
“She keeps turning me down.” Rowen tosses the bar rag over his shoulder, freeing his hands to lift the rack of dirty glasses going to the back for washing. “I don’t know why.”
“She must smell your desperation.” A swift kick to the back of my knee has me cringing but laughing.
“Me? You’re one to talk. I haven’t seen a bird walk out of your room in months.”
“You know damn well why.” Since our brother was released. Six years locked up with a bunch of bastards meant Aengus has been humping anything he can fool into coming home with him. Plus, there’s no way I want anyone I spend the night with to have the misfortune of running into him on their way to use the one toilet in our house. Aengus has no shame when it comes to ogling birds.
Growing up, Aengus and I were the ones attached at the hip, even though Rowen and I are only eleven months apart. I’d like to think that I was the buffer between the two of them, keeping Aengus from recruiting the youngest and most naïve Delaney boy to follow in his footsteps.
Fortunately, Rowen figured out that Aengus is a fuck-up all on his own.
“Hopefully we’ll have the house sold soon. We can get a nice apartment in the IFSC and be done with him.” When our nanny left the house to us, she said that we should live in it until we all went our separate ways. I think she meant marrying good Irish Catholic girls and fathering children.
He sighs. “I wish things were like the good ol’ days.”
I know the good ol’ days he’s referring to. The period was short. A summer, really. Aengus was twenty-two, I was eighteen, and Rowen seventeen—legally not allowed to pour pints, but he did a good job of hiding it. The three of us basically ran this place, giving Da a long-deserved break. Sure, Aengus had been helping Da for years already, but that had more troubles than merits. Aengus had a knack for weeding out the good servers from the bad with nothing more than a five-minute interview. His brute strength and affinity for manual labor meant Da rarely had to do anything besides pour pints and chat up customers. But a lot of what we do here involves keeping a smile on customers’ faces and making them want to come back. Aengus was never good at that part. And he’s as useless as tits on a bull when it comes to taking care of the books. He could hand out a paycheck, but figuring out how much we owed someone? Odds are half the staff would get paid too much and the other half would get ripped off.
None of that mattered, though, the day the cops slapped handcuffs on him. Da told him that as long as he was involved with any of these dissident groups, he didn’t have a job here. In our father’s eyes, having the likes of those madmen associated with Delaney’s was like spitting on his family’s graves.
I think Rowen was under the impression that Aengus would be reformed and slinging pints behind the pub with us again when they released him. But I’m the one who visited him the most while he was away, and while I had my own hopes, I knew better. Aengus has been out of the Delaney’s picture for so long, I forget what it’s even like to have him here.
Rowen’s arm muscles strain as he disappears through the narrow solid door and into the back with the dirty glasses, only to reappear a moment later with another rack, this one steaming hot, fresh from the dishwasher.
“Have you seen Da lately?” I ask.
“He was supposed to come in yesterday but his leg was acting up again. Ma rang here, asking where you were.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“That you were bucking some bird all night and she broke your cock.”
There’s no way he said that to Marion Delaney. The pint-sized woman would have appeared on our doorstep to drag me out by my ear and knock Rowen good across the cheek.
Before I can come up with a proper retort, a chirpy waitress—Selma, from Spain, who Aengus never would have hired—steps up to the computer by the bar, tray tucked under her arm. “Three Guinness and two Smithwick’s please,” she announces as she punches the order in, batting her eyelashes for Rowen. She used to do that to me, but I’ve given her so much flack about getting the pints of Guinness to customers as soon as they hit the counter that she avoids me now.
“Sure thing, love.” Rowen grins. He waits until she moves on to another table of customers before muttering under his breath, “And she sure is . . .”
“And that’s why Greta keeps telling you to fuck off.” I grab a glass and start pouring. “I’ll go see Ma and Da tomorrow morning, if you’re good with opening. Unless you want to go instead?” While our da can’t tend bar and lift things anymore on account of his bad leg, he still takes care of all the books.
“No bleeding way. Ma’s still on my back about messing things up with Irene.” Rowen’s focus roves the bar as he pours the rich stout with the expertise of a man who’s been doing it since he was fourteen, long before the law said he could. That’s the thing about a pub like Delaney’s.
We run our shit the way we want to run it.
For the most part, anyway. Delaney’s has been a landmark in Dublin for far too long to take too much grief from anyone. Sure, we’re not the oldest. A place down near the Jameson Distillery that’s been pouring pints since 1198 has us beat. But almost two hundred years on this quiet street buys us a good amount of freedom.
The building’s old. Some would say dingy. The exterior is stone and under a mason’s watchful eye. The narrow windows covered by black iron gates cut most daylight out. The inside stinks of hops and smoke still lingers in the red-velvet cushions of the bench seats, six years after smoking was banned from all of Ireland’s establishments.
But the charm is in the history, and this place has plenty of that. We use whiskey barrels for some tables, while others are made from the wood of run-down buildings in the countryside left abandoned during the Great Famine. The stools are worn but stable, and anyone who knows to look would see the names of infamous republican rebels and politicians carved into the underside, all patrons of Delaney’s in their time.
Bronze statues of Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera stand proud. The walls are covered in framed plaques with stories of the many nationalists who fought for a free Ireland, including my father, my grandfather, and ancestors dating back many Delaney generations.
It’s a pub rich in Irish heritage and familiarity, and I’ve always found comfort here.
I’m halfway through pouring the second pint of Smithwick’s when the tap starts spurting air. “Shite. Can you flip a keg for me?”
Rowen’s eyes flicker to my back. The wounds are starting to heal, but they still throb when I strain them too much. “Right. Finish this off for me.”
I take over on the Guinness tap, keeping the glass at a nice 45-degree angle, and Rowen disappears into the back. My eyes wander. At least half the tables are full at any given time here. Mostly with locals, but when tourists get a clue and realize that the city’s best watering hole is actually not in Temple Ba
r, we welcome them with open arms. It’s near the end of a workday on a Friday, and I know we’re about to get slammed with the after-work crowd.
“Testing . . . Testing . . .” A voice sounds over the stereo system, followed by a hard thumb tap. “It seems me instruments aren’t working well today. Nothing a good, strong pint can’t rectify. Right, River?”
I catch Collin’s weathered smirk and throw him a thumbs-up. He’s been playing his guitar and singing Irish lyrics at Delaney’s since I could barely climb on the bar stools to watch, taking half his payment in beer. He won’t start until he has a full pint sitting next to him.
I turn back to my task, prepared to grant him that wish as soon as I’m done with this other order. Nervous green eyes stare back at me from the other side of the tap.
The moment they capture me, the moment I see that face, I know it’s her.
Fuck.
She found me.
How the hell did she find me?
“Your T-shirt,” she says as if reading my mind, nodding to the fresh Delaney’s shirt I slipped on this morning. The other one was shredded. She clears her throat and adds, in a nervous, soft voice, “I saw someone wearing it and I remembered the stag. I figured I’d come by.”
We occasionally give our staff shirts away to customers. Usually it involves a bet that they can’t drink their pints faster than us. Of course we lose intentionally, giving them more reason to wear the shirt in public. It’s free advertising. I can’t believe something as stupid as a T-shirt led her here. She was completely out of it and yet she noticed that?
Questions are spinning inside my head as I stare at that stunning face, panic rising in my gut. How long are you in Dublin? Were you hurt? Why the hell would you track me down?
What did you tell the gardai?
My eyes instinctively dart to the door. No uniforms from what I can see.
“Um . . .” She frowns, her attention dipping to the tap. I finally notice the Guinness spilling over the rim and pouring into the trough below.
It’s the exact time that Rowen shows up to slam the tap off and stares at me, gob-smacked. “Wise up, River!”