Page 9 of The Wandering Season

I was certain I wouldn’t sleep that night after the vision . . . daydream . . . hallucination . . . whatever it was. But apparently my jet lag was more powerful than the bewilderment I felt at the events of the previous evening. As I readied myself for the day, I debated whether I’d tell Niall about Aoife and her predicament. It sounded insane, but I only had a week in Ireland, after all. Even if he thought I was nuts, no real harm could come of it. And the urge to share what I’d seen with someone was overwhelming.

Niall was a particularly promising candidate because he knew the castle, he knew the country, and he might have some insight as to what I saw. I rehearsed gentle ways of working the topic into conversation as I washed my face and applied some of the skincare samples Avery had included in my suitcase. I mused over the right wording to make myself sound nonchalant as I applied a light dusting of makeup from the small assortment of high-end travel-size cosmetics she’d also included. If I was going insane, at least my darling sister had called in the right favors so I wouldn’t look like a harried, crazy woman.

That was comforting, I supposed.

I found Niall happily ensconced in the kitchen, brewing coffee with the efficient movements of a barista, and sought the right line from the options I’d hashed over in my head.

“So what are the chances this place is haunted?”

It was . . . not one of the lines I’d rehearsed, and I certainly didn’t sound nonchalant. But what it lacked in subtlety, it made up for in directness.

He threw his head back in a laugh that showed his full mouth of straight teeth. “This place is over seven hundred years old. If there weren’t a few ghosts hanging about, it would be a sore disappointment, wouldn’t it? Did something fall over in the middle of the night? A door slam unexpectedly?”

“It was a little more vivid than that.”

And, as calmly as I could manage, I relayed the scene with Mairéad and Aoife, and later Aoife and her father.

“You saw Riordan MacWilliam? He was the last of his clan. We Callahans had been in their employ for generations, and the stewardship passed to us after Riordan died.”

My muscles slackened a bit as I realized he wasn’t about to scoff at me and think I was going dotty. “So what I saw was real?”

“Well, it depends on how you define ‘real,’ but the way you describe it, they sound like real people whose history was tied to this castle. They were the last of the old guard to live at Blackthorn. They knew just how nice to play it with the Anglo-Irish, and it helped curry favor and relief during the Famine.”

I pondered a moment. “Riordan had sons with Mairéad. How could he be the last of his clan?”

“They died as young men before they started families, according to what my father and his father told me. By the time it happened, Mairéad was no longer of an age to give him more children. The grief of it was too much for Riordan to bear.”

“But what about Aoife? Did she have to marry Declan?”

“Nah. The lore is that she disappeared after a row with her father. Some say she died in the cold on the shores, and they can hear her wails on bitter-cold nights. Others say she hightailed it to America along with everyone else fleeing from the Famine. It’s likely enough she could have disappeared in the crowd. She had trinkets to pawn and coin of her own.”

“So you’re an expert on local history as well as a castle keeper? That would sure stand out on a résumé.”

“Oh, the former comes with the latter. More than half our guests are keen to know a bit of the history of the place when they visit. If they weren’t, they’d find a chain hotel with a Jacuzzi tub.”

“Good point. I hope Aoife did get away. I don’t know who these people are, but Declan Tierney sounded like the worst sort of man. He would have been an awful husband to her.”

Niall nodded. “There isn’t much dispute on that. County legend has it that he had three wives and none of them lived to a happy, old age. He was a brute, just as Aoife described.”

I found myself, inexplicably, envisioning a red-haired woman bundled in wool on the deck of a ship, her eyes fixed forever westward, away from the father and stepmother who would have so happily condemned her to an awful fate.

“She must have gone to Boston. I know it in my bones. She wouldn’t have let them cow her.”

“I think you’re probably right, Miss Stratton. You saw yourself that her mother was said to be descended from the great Gráinne Ní Mháille, and that wasn’t stock that bowed easily to expectations and duty. She would have had a sense of loyalty to herself as well as her family. And the more she felt betrayed by them, the more tenuous those bonds would have been.”

“I wish I were better versed on my Irish history,”

I confessed. “I feel like I could know that name.”

“You’d more likely have heard the English version of her name: Grace O’Malley. She was a chieftain, a pirate, and one hell of a woman. Probably the greatest figure ever to come out of County Mayo.”

My eyes widened. “She sounds incredible.”

Niall handed me a perfectly brewed cup of coffee. I melted as the caffeine made its way through my bloodstream and reached my soul.

“She was that. But too rebellious to be allowed to live on in the history books until recently. She divorced her husband and stole his castle at Rockfleet until they reconciled. She laid siege on her own son when he was being a traitorous git. Apparently she and the first Elizabeth over in England made quite an impression on each other when they met. Alas, Grace wasn’t the sort of woman the Catholic Church, or the English, would have been keen to celebrate.”

“Not likely,”

I said. “I have to believe Aoife was cut from the same cloth and found a way out of Ireland.”

“I’ve not given it much thought. Perhaps less than I should, but I would suspect you’re right. And I wouldn’t be shocked if you aren’t from that same bolt of fabric yourself.”

I looked up from my plate. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t think Aoife would have come to you without a reason. I think you have to figure out what it is on your own, but there was a reason for it.”

“So you don’t think I’m crazy?”

My voice sounded small, even to me, and I rolled my eyes at how meek I sounded.

“No. Maybe if we were in a fifteen-year-old flat in Dublin, I’d look askance at you, but old, storied buildings like these don’t follow the rules of the modern world, do they? I’m not a superstitious man. Skeptical even, but in my years here, I’ve had to become comfortable with things that logic can’t explain. There are times I’d sleep better if I could come up with a rational explanation, but such is the cost of a life at Blackthorn.”

“I can’t tell if that’s philosophy or poetry.”

The more of the omelet I ate and the longer I spent in Niall’s reassuring presence, the more I felt grounded in the here and now, which was a relief.

“As with most things worth thinking about in life, it’s a bit of both. But I wouldn’t worry too much about what you saw. Buildings like these, they retain a bit of their pasts, the way bricks take the chill in winter. Echoes. There’s too much history here for the place to let it go altogether.”

He dished up his own breakfast and looked just as contented with it as I felt.

Echo. I liked the term. It seemed the best descriptor for it. Not a dream, but not reality either. A sort of imitation of something that once had been.

His words made perfect sense. In some part of the more romantic reaches of my brain it did make sense. What mattered most, inexplicably, was that Niall didn’t think I was nuts. Part of me wanted to take him in a hug for the simple act of not mocking me. Hot tears pricked at my eyes, and I forced myself to think of something—anything—else.

“I suppose you know where the chickens roost that gave the eggs and met the farmer who grew the chives, and so on.”

I pointed to my plate.

“Aye, that.”

His brogue thickened a bit. “The chickens are roosted in our own barn, I grew the chives myself, and the bacon is from a farm about three miles from here. I selected the pig myself.”

“And the cheese?”

“From the market, I confess. I do love a good aged Gruyère, and I’ve convinced the local shopkeep to order in some good stuff. I enjoy Irish cheddar as much as the rest of my countrymen, but it’s just a wee bit greasy in an omelet. Not everything has to come from the neighborhood, but I believe most of it should.”

I raised my mug of strong black coffee and clinked it against his. “I’ll drink to that. I think there’s something special about making a cobbler from Palisade peaches and premium imported spices. Cinnamon from Sri Lanka still in stick form and whole nutmeg from Indonesia you have to grate into the mixing bowl so that they’re perfectly fresh. It’s truly incredible.”

“No question. And now you have me craving a pudding first thing in the morning, you temptress. But we’ll see to that. Are you up for another outing a bit later?”

“So where are you taking me?”

“Patience, my American friend. Haven’t I earned your trust by now?”

Mischief glinted in his voice rather than his eyes.

I paused to consider the question.

It was just yesterday we’d met ...

but I couldn’t deny that I did trust him.

I couldn’t be sure if that was me intuiting that he was a decent human, an instinct honed by generations of my foremothers’ insights that had kept them alive over the millennia, at least long enough to procreate ...

or if it was just epic naivete.

But regardless, I couldn’t shake the feeling that, fundamentally, Niall was a top-shelf guy.

I mean, the great Julia Child herself said, “People who love to eat are always the best people”—and by extension, I think she’d include those who love to cook. And that was Niall. He was one of the few people I’d met who wouldn’t think my caring about where my chocolate was sourced from was some sort of PC affectation.

Niall understood how I felt about food—we understood each other—in a way I wasn’t used to.

Mom was the closest I’d ever come to that sort of a connection.

She wasn’t as avid about learning all the intricacies of it as I was, but she was willing to pay for quality ingredients for her shop.

She also knew that ofttimes the familiar brands and suppliers were not always the last word in value, freshness, or flavor.

It was something we could chat about and bond over.

Dad? Well, he knew that whatever magic Mom and I were working up in the kitchen wasn’t to be argued with.

He footed the grocery bill without a word of complaint and never questioned if it was really worth the time and expense of buying produce from the farmers’ market instead of the big box store.

Jonathan had been another matter.

In the beginning he viewed my foodie proclivities with a sort of “benevolent bemusement.”

Of course there was probably a correlation between good health and carefully selected ingredients, he would allow, but maybe not worth the serious time commitment I devoted to the pursuit.

Later, that bemusement turned to something more like contempt.

It could have been my guilty conscience trying to justify my rejection, but I couldn’t say it was all hindsight goggles.

There was the huffing when I took too long at a market stall.

Annoyance when I protested against canned or frozen vegetables when better fresh ones were to be had.

Frustration when I refused to save money buying hyperpigmented ground beef from the sketchy meat section at the big box store.

For someone whose tastes were so bourgeois, it baffled me that he found my food habits irksome.

And it niggled, deep in my soul, that he only found them annoying because it was me.

I hadn’t wanted to consider that for a long time. I repressed it. Dismissed it as familiarity breeding contempt or some such thing, and that we just needed a weekend apart. I rationalized that it was natural. The longer a relationship went on, the harder it became to ignore the little peeves that seemed insignificant in the bloom of early love. But my relationship with food? It wasn’t a small foible like forgetting to rinse the sink or leaving piles of books around the house. It was my career. My passion. One of my core values.

I shook my head back to the present. “Of course I do. You’ve had plenty of opportunity to murder me and you haven’t yet. So either you’re safe or just playing a long game. Seems a waste of time to me.”

He let out a full-bellied laugh. “I’m a patient man, Veronica, and there isn’t all that much to do here in winter.”

“I’ll take my chances anyway . . . Your omelets are worth the risk.”