Page 44

FORTY-TWO

The banner was stretched across the entire length of the bar. There was a sparkly silver-and-green shamrock on one end, the flag of Ireland on the other, and in the center, in big bold Celtic lettering, it read:

The Party of 9/10ths of the Century:

Happy 90th Birthday, Mike

It was Saturday, the tenth of June, and McCormick’s was celebrating Grandpa Mike’s Big Nine-Oh. The food was on the house—mountains of sandwiches and salads, platters of fruit and cheese, and baskets of sweets were laid out on the groaning board like a grand old Irish picnic. Drinks were at 1930s prices, and just in case you didn’t have exact change, there were bowls of nickels on the bar.

Gifts were encouraged. Grandpa posted a list two weeks earlier—clothes (men’s or women’s, any size), toys (new or in good condition), and cash (crisp or crinkled)—all of which would go to St. Cecilia’s. In bright red at the bottom of the list he’d scrawled, If you bring anything for Mike you’ll be thrown out on your arse . The whole town was invited, and by late afternoon the place was packed to the gills, and the gift table was piled to the rafters.

At 6:00 p.m., Misty showed up, all smiles. We had reconnected when my kids were born, and at this point, we were part of the fabric of each other’s lives. But with both of us working crazy hours and living sixty miles apart, too much of our daily contact was by phone, text, or email. That was about to change.

“I have awesome news,” she said, as soon as we found a semiquiet booth in the back.

“You finally stopped overusing the word awesome ,” I said. “Oh no, wait. That can’t be it.”

“There are two other words I also haven’t stopped using,” she said. “One is a verb; the other is a pronoun. You want to hear them?”

“I’ll pass. Just tell me the awesome news.”

“I just got a call from my broker. They accepted my offer. I’m moving into the house on Old Carriage Road.”

“Oh my God,” I said, leaning across the table and squeezing her hand. “That actually is awesome.”

When the hospital started interviewing interior design firms for the trauma center, Misty was in charge of her company’s pitch. They got the win, and Misty, knowing she’d be project managing the job for the next year and a half, decided to keep her apartment in New York and buy a second home in Heartstone.

“And now that I’m about to become a taxpayer in your fair city,” she said, “I’ve got question for you, Madam Mayor. Why did your chief of police call me?”

“The chief called you?”

“Don’t play dumb, Maggie. He called and asked if I’d had contact with Minna Schultz recently. I told him I’d been house hunting in Heartstone over Memorial Day weekend. My broker and I were coming out of a place on Cromwell Road just as Minna was heading in. She saw me and ran for the hills. He asked if I’d heard from her since then, and I said no. What’s going on?”

“She committed suicide.”

“I know. But why did he call me ?”

“I have no idea. It was a suspicious death. The cops were investigating. They called a lot of people.”

“Suspicious, like maybe someone murdered her?”

I shrugged.

“Did he think I killed her?”

“Of course not.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“Absolutely.”

“It’s amazing how you can have no idea what he wanted, and then in the very next breath you absolutely know for a fact what he didn’t want.”

“Isn’t it great? It’s one of the superpowers you develop as a politician.”

“So what you’re saying is you know, but you can’t tell me,” she said.

“Yes. And even if I could tell you, you wouldn’t want to know.”

“Excuse me, ladies,” Alex said, sliding into the booth next to me. “I have a small problem to discuss with you. I just heard that Misty bought a house in town.”

“Why is that a problem?” I said. “All you have to do is lift your finger, and your project manager will come running.”

“It’s great for the hospital,” Alex said. “But I barely have any time with my wife as it is. With Misty in town, she’s going to occupy a big chunk of the little time I get with you.”

“I see your point,” I said. “You should have married someone less popular.”

The brass bell behind the bar clanged, and my father stood in the middle of the room, one hand on Grandpa Mike’s arm, a microphone in the other. Everyone settled down, and Alex and I worked our way through the throng to get closer to the guest of honor.

“Thank you all for coming,” Dad said. “Is this the finest old coot ever to get behind the stick?”

Cheers from the crowd.

“Pop, what year did you leave County Donegal?”

Grandpa leaned into the microphone. “1950. Right after the war. I was all of seventeen.”

“And tell us all what you miss most about the good old days in Ireland.”

Grandpa smiled. “Rosie Banaghan. I can still picture her. Porcelain skin, silver combs in her red hair, smelled like mountain heather.”

“And she was your boyhood sweetheart?”

“Heck, no. She was me teacher at St. Mura’s, and I was head over arse in love with her. Sadly, I was ten, and she was twenty-four. But now,” he said, playing to the crowd, “I’m ninety, she’d be a hundred and four... there’d be a lot less tongue waggin’.”

The packed house exploded with joy.

“Truth be told,” the old man said, his brogue getting thicker as he worked the room, “there’d be a lot less of anything waggin’.”

It took close to a minute before my dad could get control of the revelers. “Settle down, folks,” he said into the mic. “You’re only encouraging him.”

Dad put his arm around Grandpa Mike’s shoulder, and the throng quieted. “Pop, I know you said you didn’t want a gift, and it might have worked on these guys, but since when has your family ever paid attention to you? After ninety trips around the sun, we had to get you a little something.”

He waved at Lizzie, who was behind the bar. The lights dimmed, and all the TV monitors came alive.

The sweet sound of a tin whistle filled the air, and a single word blossomed onto the screens: Donegal . A few beats later, a second image faded up below it: 1933 .

The film began with archival shots of the old sod. Some in black and white, some in sepia, a few in the washed-out colors of the era.

People awwwed and sighed and muttered undecipherable tributes under their breath. Not everyone in the bar was Irish, but every one of them—the Cappadonnas, the Speros, the leather-jacketed bikers—was either grinning or holding a hand to their mouths to keep from crying.

Grandpa Mike just stood there mesmerized, his son’s arm still around his shoulder.

And then the music burst into the rollicking sound of the Pogues singing “Whiskey in the Jar.” The screen erupted with the words Donegal 2023 and suddenly everything was in vibrant color.

For the next ninety seconds the video transported us all to the place Michael Francis McCormick would always call home.

People started clapping, dancing, and singing along, as Grandpa shouted out the names of every church, road, and castle that flashed across the screen. And then a wide shot. A drone camera flew across the bog, swooped over emerald-green pastures hugged by ancient stone walls, and finally settled on a white stucco building with the name Biddy’s O’Barnes proudly emblazoned across its face.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Grandpa yelled. “It’s Biddy’s! Best pint in Donegal.”

At least a hundred locals stood outside the pub, and as the camera zeroed in on the mass of smiling faces, they all raised their mugs and sang out, “Happy Birthday, Michael!”

The Pogues hit their last “whack fall the daddy-o; there’s whiskey in the jar,” and the video came to a colossal close.

Everyone rose to their feet, and joyful pandemonium swept the room.

“ They seemed to like it, Pop,” my father said. “But what did you think?”

Grandpa Mike leaned into the microphone. “Blew me away, son. Made me wish I was there.”

“Well, in that case, I’ve got good news and bad news,” my dad said.

“I’ll take the good news.”

“You are going there, and all those folks you saw at Biddy’s O’Barnes are waiting to toast you. You’re leaving tomorrow,” my father said, handing him an Aer Lingus flight envelope.

The old man was stunned.

“Are you ready for the bad news?” my father asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m going with you.”

Grandpa Mike, wiping away tears, hugged my father, and all hell broke loose.

The trip had been a well-kept secret. Only Lizzie, Alex, and I knew, along with Chef Tommy and Dotty Briggs, who would run the place while my father and grandfather spent ten days on the windswept shores of County Donegal.

And there was one more surprise waiting for him. Lizzie was flying to London for a medical conference tomorrow. But when the mayor of the county designated Wednesday, June 14, as Michael McCormick Appreciation Day, Lizzie decided to fly to Ireland to join him. My father had asked me to be there too, but my life was too hectic for me to leave Heartstone.

I stood there, Alex, Katie, and Kevin at my side, my own eyes tearing up, my heart filled with joy for what I had, but aching for my mother, and I thought how blessed I was.

Thirty-six hours later, it would all turn to shit, and my sister, my father, and my grandfather—three pillars of strength who had been there for me my entire life—would be three thousand miles away when I needed them most.