Page 5 of The Wandering Season
On the way to Westport
County Mayo, Ireland
The weight of the warrior’s cuff on my wrist pulled at me like one of the many thoughts swirling in the typhoon inside my skull.
As the train from Dublin rumbled toward the ragged western coast of Ireland, I tried to clear my mind of the exchange with the shopkeeper and return to my research for The Kitchen Muse. Unfortunately, there was no market research to be done on a moving train beyond the meager options in the café car, but I could permit myself a few moments to brood and dream of a hot shower and a dram of Irish whiskey while thumbing through the Michelin app and other online food resources to scout out places to try. I was impressed by the number of acclaimed restaurants in the country, which I had to confess was never one I’d associated with great culinary prowess beyond cheese, butter, potatoes, and perhaps seafood on the coast.
Westport was home to just over six thousand inhabitants, so roughly the size of my parents’ beloved Estes Park, and was the third largest city in County Mayo. Stephanie and Avery chose this for my base of operations in Ireland based on the map in the DNA report and the fact that it was, reportedly, a charming small coastal town with sweeping views of the Atlantic. Despite the gloomy skies, it wasn’t the worst idea they’d had.
At midday, after three hours of whirring past green countryside, the train pulled into Westport, which was bustling enough in winter that it must have been teeming in summer. I got only the barest glimpse of the town as we pulled into the station, but the colorful shop fronts must have been designed to defy the bleak gray of midwinter. I hoped the vast quantities of wool Avery had sent would be enough to combat the frigid air. Denver was colder and certainly a lot snowier than the west of Ireland, but the damp air had a way of seeping into the bones, making you feel like you’d never again be properly warm.
Apart from the staff milling about, only one man waited at the train station, sitting with a curtain of newsprint between him and the world. The rest who descended from the train with me appeared to be locals who had gone to Dublin for shopping, amusement, or simply to give themselves a change of scenery to break up the postholiday monotony and headed straight to their own vehicles in the car park.
I wheeled my case to the waiting area, where I planned to inquire after a taxi or rideshare as the bed-and-breakfast appeared to be too far to walk. Why Stephanie and Avery had decided to book a place so far out of the way was beyond me.
“Are you Veronica Stratton?”
The man cast aside his newspaper. His brogue was lyrical but not so thick that I felt like I was trying to parse a foreign language. “I considered making a sign like they do in your American movies, but to own the truth of it, even the thought of it made me feel like an arse.”
I hesitated. Denver wasn’t a big, scary city in the way New York or LA was, but it was urban enough that a person learned to be wary of strangers. But then my more rational side caught up with me. Only one reasonable scenario existed in which this stranger knew my name: He worked at the bed-and-breakfast and had my information from the reservation. It wasn’t a stretch to think Avery had shared my arrival time with him. Heck, if she’d even given him a ballpark estimate of my arrival time, he could have easily guessed which train I’d be on.
“Yes?”
I was annoyed at the hesitance in my voice but tried not to appear flustered. I assessed the man. Tall, dark curly hair under a woolen flat cap, broad shoulders, and gray-blue eyes. Not the freckled red-haired Irish stereotype that I was. He was definitely good-looking, but not intimidatingly so, and thankfully didn’t appear particularly threatening. I gathered myself. “Are you with the bed-and-breakfast?”
“Right you are.”
He doffed his cap. Now that was a gesture out of a movie. “Niall Callahan at your service, Miss Stratton.”
I extended my hand. “Do you always come to pick up guests from the train station?”
He took my suitcase and gestured for me to walk with him. “Oh, that wouldn’t be possible in high season, but in January I was itching for something to do. And I was rather eager to meet the tourist who was either bold or foolish enough to come in winter. Have you any thoughts on which one it is?”
I chortled. “Both and neither. My best friend and my sister schemed this up. They thought it was perfect timing because it was the low season at my work. I don’t think they took the time to think about why winter tends to be the low season in most places.”
I shivered for effect.
He smiled at that, stowing my case in the trunk of a well-used Hyundai SUV that was perhaps even older than my senior citizen of a Toyota. He opened the door and waved me to the seat that should have, from my American perspective, been reserved for the driver. He eased the car onto the street with confident ease, but it took a few seconds for my stomach not to flop at the cars being on the “wrong”
side of the road.
“So a misguided Christmas gift, was it?”
He chuckled. “Bit of a shame, really, as there is no grander place in summer, but it’s a bit dreary for most folks in winter.”
He said “most folks”
almost like an accusation. As if there was something wrong with them.
I angled to examine him better. “But not for you?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I like the warm same as any sane person, but there is something underappreciated about the broody winter sea at sunrise.”
His expression seemed far away, musing on something not meant for me.
“Well, it’s easy enough to wake up in time for it, with sunrise being at nine in the morning and all.”
I didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
He shot me a stern look. “Eight thirty this time of year. No need to exaggerate, missy. We have to pay our penance for the long days of summer sometime, don’t we?”
“That sounds very Catholic.”
It reminded me of my Italian Catholic mother’s old maxims that boiled down to everything in life having a cost or a price of some kind. I never liked the idea of life being commodified like that. Her directives about good works and community-mindedness sat better.
“Well, you’re in the right place for it. It’s ingrained in our DNA. Even nonbelievers can’t scrub it all off in the wash.”
My mood, which had been lightening as Niall drove us out of the town proper and into the rugged countryside, grew weighty again. “That expression is more apt than you realize.”
“What do you mean?”
I paused. I barely knew this man, so he was hardly entitled to an accounting of my unfortunate Christmas debacle, but there seemed precious little to lose by confessing the truth about my trip to someone who I’d never see again when my week was up, so I gave him the bare-bones overview to get him up to speed.
“Visiting the land of your ancestors, then. We get a lot of that. It’s fair to say that for more than a century, the biggest export out of County Mayo was her sons and daughters, so plenty of your countrymen have ties here. Welcome home.”
I smiled at the notion of a country I’d never set foot in somehow being “home.”
“Who knows how long it’s been since any relation of mine ever lived here. But it should be interesting to see.”
“The odds are good that your family left with the Famine. My guess would be they sailed to Boston in the 1840s or ’50s along with a quarter of the population.”
In school I’d only learned vaguely about the Potato Famine and the subsequent wave of Irish immigration to America in the years that followed. I was compelled by the stories of suffering and overcoming adversity, but it was rarely more than a brief sidebar in classes.
“You’re probably right. It’s the most logical conclusion to arrive at with the sparse data I have. All the relatives listed on the ancestry site were third cousins or even more distant, but heaps of them had Irish names like Doyle, Murphy, and O’Malley.”
Pensive, Niall drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “So you haven’t any special places with ancestral ties you want to see while you’re here, I gather?”
I shook my head. “No. I could stumble over the birthplace of my great-grandmother to the ninth degree and never be the wiser.”
“Well, I’ll take it upon myself to ensure you get a good view of our fair country while you’re here. I dub myself your tour guide for as long as you desire my services.”
He placed a hand on his heart as if taking a sacred oath.
“That is really gracious of you, but I don’t want to take you away from your duties. My meddling sister and best friend came up with a multipage color-coded itinerary, and I’m sure I can manage.”
“Nonsense. It’s not unusual for the host at a bed-and-breakfast to be more attentive when the guest load is light. It would be my pleasure. And speaking of which, here is your home away from home for the next week: Blackthorn.”
The breath caught in my throat as we pulled in front of what could only be described as a castle. Not the Disneyfied elegant sort with turrets and blonde princesses with pointed hats who lowered their hair for a gallant prince. No, this castle was an unadorned rectangular tower with skinny windows, a fortress on an unforgiving coastline. To see it felt like stepping back in time, and it was the closest sensation I’d ever had to falling in love.