Nineteen
It was hard for Quinn to believe that he and Con had been in Forestville for almost two weeks. Hard to believe that, within that time, he’d managed to visit a multitude of places, see the Pacific Ocean, nearly developed an affinity for wine, and fall in love all at the same time. But it was time to undo the latter. There was no possible way it was going to work between him and Lilly, and he should have known that from the beginning.
The Motel 6 down the road was a far cry from Russian River House, but it would do just a few more days until the others arrived. While Con had gone off with Dara for a bit, Quinn laid on the uncomfortable, spring bed of his little motel room and stared wide-eyed at the popcorn ceiling that must boast the biggest water stain in California.
His chest felt heavy with regret.
Maybe he shouldn’t have left the bed-and-breakfast in the fashion that he had. Maybe he should have stayed to work it out, done a better job of listening to Lilly, but he knew—just knew—that had he listened to her with a more open heart, he would have stayed, endangering his heart and complicating their lives even further. It was hard—hard as bloody hell—to walk away from those sapphire eyes on the verge of tears. Over the last two weeks, they had anchored themselves into his psyche, to the point that every morning, upon waking up, her eyes were the first thing he’d think about, her smile second, and the way she made him feel a close third.
Now all he could think about was how much she’d hurt him in the kitchen when she’d failed to stand by him. Not a good sign for times to come.
Soon, Lilly would be a superstar, appearing on that pastry chef bloke’s show, kicking ass and taking no prisoners, making a name for herself in Miami and beyond. Soon, she wouldn’t need him for anything, because after all, he had nothing to offer her. It was only a matter of seconds before the richest, most handsome fellows would spot her and come knocking on her door. A woman who looked the way she did, laughed the way she did, and could bake like a champion?
He wouldn’t stand a chance. And why should he?
How could he expect a woman like Lilly to pin her hopes on him when he couldn’t even make up his mind about what he wanted to do next in his life?
So what did he want to do, for fuck’s sake?
Whether or not he was with Lilly, and for now it was best to assume he wouldn’t be, what did he want to do with his life? Right here and right now, what called to him? But also, what could he see himself doing ten years down the road and still be happy? What did he want to do? If he could do anything in the world?
He wanted to run a restaurant.
That was the simple truth. Otherwise, he never would have entertained the idea of taking Mulligan’s Tavern off Paul Brennan’s hands. Granted, he could open a restaurant anywhere. Didn’t have to be here.
But he wanted it to be here.
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t even seen anything else of America. Green Valley just felt right.
The way being with Lilly had felt right? a voice in his mind sneered.
Yes, like that. He wasn’t sure whether that would be enough in the end to make things work between them, but right now, he could begin the process of tending to the other things in his life, and hope that as a result, what to do about him and Lilly would become more clear.
With a renewed sense of purpose and confidence, Quinn sat up. The first thing he was going to do was deal with the obvious anger he’d been feeling toward his mam. She’d always said family was king, but she’d failed to tell her sons they had relatives in America. And yes, ultimately her loyalty was to her husband and children, but to simply give up on the rest of her family after only one apparent attempt to reach out to them (though granted, it had been an attempt that had been devastatingly rejected) made no sense. He hadn’t realized that’s how he felt, not until he’d been railing to Con, but obviously part of him couldn’t understand why his mam had done what she’d done, and maybe the only way he’d ever be able to understand was by facing his mother’s past head on.
He’d start by finally visiting the house she’d grown up in, something he’d hesitated doing in case his grandfather still lived there. But he couldn’t wait any longer. If he happened to see his grandfather today, so be it.
Reaching for the old journal on the nightstand and not finding it there, he realized, in his heated argument with Lilly, that he must have packed it away deep in his suitcase. He’d look for it later. Didn’t need it for reference anyway—he’d already memorized the address after so many times reading it. By now, he could find it with his eyes closed.
Driving several miles out to Forestville Road, the palms of Quinn’s hands began to sweat. What would he find when he reached his destination? All his life, he’d imagined his mother as a child in some faraway, dream-like house, something out of his imagination rather than a real place. Since she’d provided little context, he’d always filled in the blanks, imagining her living in a cottage out in a green meadow somewhere, like the houses in fairytales about little kids who visited witches’ homes and got thrown into ovens. A quaint home made of cobblestone and brick with flowers in the flowerbeds and a smiling mother who baked cookies every night.
What he found when he turned the corner, rumbled down the gravel driveway, and cut the engine at a safe distance from the main gates wasn’t too far off from that description. 739 E. Sunflower Road. A large, two-story yellow house sat there on a sprawling spread of green acreage of vineyards. On the front lawn of the property was a huge oak tree, and hanging from it, a tire swing. There were brightly-colored flowers, but not in flowerbeds, instead lining the house in a neat, clipped row of bushes. It was a thousand times nicer than the house he and his brothers had grown up in.
“So, this is it, Mam?” he whispered in the silence of the rental car.
This was where his mam had grown up.
Same house she’d lived in during secondary school, same home she’d lived in when she graduated and began college, when she dated Ken Parker, same house she came home to after meeting Grant O’Neill. Quinn could just imagine a young Maggie bursting through the door, excitement in her flushed cheeks, running to her room and closing the door quietly to prop open her journal and write about the charming, funny man she had met at Mulligan’s. There was something comforting about putting a face to a question mark, replacing a cardboard cutout brain image with reality.
Mam grew up here. That’s where she learned to walk, ate her meals, slept, and dreamed up all her crazy future ideas. That’s where my life began too, in a way.
Damn, his mam had grown up with some fine threads, fine house, and fine money. She’d left it all behind for a man.
No. That wasn’t right.
She’d done it for…
“Love,” he said. “You did it for love, right, Mam?”
Only the whooshing of trees in the autumn breeze answered him. He closed his eyes and imagined her answering, “Yes. Family is king. But love…love is everything.”
“You didn’t know how to fight for both,” he whispered. “Your family in Dublin and your family here.”
Just like Lilly hadn’t known how to fight for Quinn in that kitchen without irreparably hurting her relationship with her mam. For a few seconds, she’d frozen. And Quinn had crucified her for it.
He’d lashed out at her for faltering, even though Quinn himself had told her love was complicated. They’d wanted to believe their love would magically cure the problems they faced, but love was messier than that when a person loved many. When different types of family were involved.
He let the pain come. For the first time in a month, he did nothing to suppress the wave of tears that rose, peaked, and swelled over. His shoulders shook from the emptiness of loss, felt the gaping hole in his heart, as if someone had punched the breach into his chest then filled it with gallons of grief.
Mam hadn’t told him about this house or her former life to spare him the pain of a place she’d thought he’d never be able to visit. He still didn’t agree with that decision, but he could accept that she wasn’t perfect and had tried her best. Again, just like Lilly had.
Quinn sat there for a long time until he realized it had probably been too long. For all he knew, someone had looked out the window and was even now calling the police after seeing a strange car sitting out front.
Did her family—his family, for that matter—still live there? Or was the house now occupied by strangers? Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, he threw caution to the wind and stepped out of the car, crossing the wide driveway to reach the mailbox. God, he hoped there weren’t any security cameras on him, and if there were and someone found out, he would just come clean and explain what he was doing.
I had to know who lived here. It was the truth and easiest explanation.
Reaching a mailbox made of colorful stained glass depicting bunches of grapes, he opened the little access door, keeping an eye on the front bay windows. There was movement inside the house, judging from the shadows flitting back and forth. Quickly, he reached in and felt mail inside. Thank God.
Pulling out whatever fell under his hand, he sifted through advertisements to find a business envelope addressed to Beatriz Phillips-Tulle. Superb, his aunt lived here, and not the nice one either. Panic gripped his chest, and he suddenly realized how wrong, how very wrong it was to come here. If his mother didn’t mention her pre-Irish life to him and his brothers, there must have been a good reason. He was looking for trouble, and still, he had to know, so he could close the door on that chapter.
Curiosity compelled him forward.
One envelope after another read the same name. Carefully, he placed the envelopes back into the mailbox and closed the door. From inside the house, a dog began barking at the window, his sign to leave, but in case they never made it back, he wanted to show his brothers. Pulling out his phone from his pocket, he opened up the screen and selected the camera app, then he began taking picture after picture of their mam’s old house.
He wished Lilly were here to help him through this moment. She might even know some local trivia about the house, like what color it used to be or whether or not they’d built any additions in the last twenty or so years.
The last photos he took were of the tree swing. If he squinted his eyes hard enough, he could see his mother as a little girl sitting on the swing and kicking higher, higher, into the air. He blinked, and the vision vanished.
There, that should be enough.
Jogging back to his car, he climbed in and turned the engine on, breathing a sigh of relief that nobody had seen him, even with the big black dog barking at the window. Quinn slowly pulled into the driveway, made a three-point turn, and backed out again, aiming to drive right off the property.
But just as he was getting ready to leave, another car rumbled into the long, gravel driveway—a Lexus from the look of the headlamps. If he could just drive out without making eye contact, that’d be great. Nerves flittered through him, as the car pulled up, crunching over the tiny rocks and slowing down right next to his window.
The furrowed, concerned brow of an older woman with similar cheekbones to his mother made him smirk and put his foot down on the gas pedal, but the woman’s window lowered, her hand stuck out, and she asked him to stop.
So he did.
He lowered his window as well and threw on a quick smile. He knew exactly who she was, as well as the elderly man sitting in the passenger seat looking rather spaced-out. The woman with dyed ash blonde hair stepped out of the car, leaving the driver door open and approached his window. “May I help you?” she asked, peering inside.
Her green eyes, the crow’s feet around them, and the blushed cheekbones were shocking to gaze at, like looking at an older version of his mother’s ghost. His aunt, Beatriz—alive and in front of him.
The moment her eyes landed on his, her whole demeanor changed. A shadow of darkness seemed to move over her like an eclipse of a very caught-off-guard sun.
“Hullo,” he said, doing nothing to hide his accent. “Was just stopping by to see this house. Hope you don’t mind.”
Beatriz Phillips curled one set of French-manicured nails around the edge of the window. “You have a lot of chutzpah coming here,” she murmured in a way that made it clear that the old man behind her had not yet caught on to who he was. “You need to leave and don’t return unless you’re invited.”
Something about the way she said it stopped him. So did the way she was looking at him, with a plea in her eyes.
She was suggesting, not so much that he shouldn’t be there period, but that he should wait for an invitation. Which meant…there was a chance that he’d be asked to come by one day. That she believed maybe, just maybe there might be reconciliation. Maybe a relationship could be formed, maybe…they’d eventually speak to him.
Hope.
He nodded, understanding where she was coming from. “I’m very sorry. It’s just that I wanted to see…” Where my mam grew up. He didn’t say it. He only watched her face, waiting for the understanding to take over.
“Yes, I know why you’re here, and it’s distressing to say the least.”
“Distressing for me, I would think,” he ventured to say. “More than anyone. Maggie was my mam, after all.”
“Shh…” She warned, glancing behind her at Old Man Phillips sitting in the passenger seat, staring blankly out at the vineyards. “Don’t…are you looking for trouble?”
“No, mum.”
“Then you best be getting on your way. Wait to be invited, that’s how you do it.” She gave him one last dour look before turning and sliding back into her car, punctuating her glare with a shake of her head.
“Who was that, Bee?” Old Man Phillips asked, his voice matching the one Quinn had heard in an unpleasant phone call just a few weeks ago.
Your grandson, Quinn thought, the words poised on his lips. Whether you like it or not.
But as Beatriz rolled up her window, her chastising look replaced with faux cheer, dismissing the whole encounter as perhaps a run-in with a lost driver just looking for directions, she replied, “Nobody,” and drove past Quinn into her driveway.