Epilogue
EPILOGUE
SIENNA
It feels like the scene at the end of the movie Love Actually .
Kyle and I are waiting at Dublin airport for everyone to arrive from New York City. Emily came over a week ago to spend the summer with us. It turns out that she has an artistic streak that she’d been keeping to herself since she was a child, afraid that her older brothers would laugh at her if she revealed that she wanted to be an artist. She loves animals too. So far, there are seven paintings of cows in my new studio, each one named, each with a personality of their own.
One day, I’ll persuade her to sell them.
Kyle leans over my shoulder and kisses my cheek as he hands me a vanilla latte smothered in cinnamon and sits beside me. His hand cups my belly, and the baby reacts with a few well-placed kicks.
“I stand by what I said before: he’s going to be a footballer.” Kyle winks at Emily who is sitting opposite us in the arrivals lounge.
“ She is going to be a prima ballerina.” I sip my drink and hide behind my cup.
“What do you think, Em?” Kyle watches his sister, who snaps her attention back to the conversation.
She hasn’t been watching the planes preparing for take-off, or studying the flawless blue sky for a glimpse of the family’s private jet coming in to land. I follow the direction of her gaze to two young men sitting near the bar area of the lounge playing a card game. One, dark-haired, blue-eyed, classically handsome, glances over at Emily, catches me watching him, and looks away again.
I wonder who they’re waiting for. Their parents? Friends? Girlfriends?
Everyone here is waiting for someone. We’re waiting for Kyle’s family to fly into Dublin for our wedding next week. It’s been a few months since I’ve seen baby Holly, and although Victoria sends me pictures every day so that I can see how she’s growing, I’m excited to spend some time with her before she forgets who I am.
Since the abduction and the subsequent deaths of Nick and my father, I’ve been spending most of my time in Ireland. Kyle bought a little cottage by the sea for me to stay in while I figure out my next move. It has small, low-ceilinged rooms, a wood-burner, an outside shed filled with freshly cut logs, and a garden filled with wildflowers.
My closest neighbors, in another cottage with pink climbing roses framing the doorway, are Kyle’s security team. He thinks that I don’t know about them. But I haven’t told him that I still look for Seamus every day, expecting him to come marching up the front path and offer to give me a tour of the coastline. His death follows me around, and the guards’ presence is like an invisible comfort blanket.
When the sun shines, the sea sparkles like a million diamonds, and when it’s stormy, the sea turns moody-gray, the sea-monsters come out, and the wind shrieks around the cottage, a warning to stay inside.
I like the stormy days the best.
When everything outside is chaos and carnage, I feel a sense of inner peace that I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced before. The wind, the Irish Sea, and the baby growing inside me keep me company when Kyle is in New York.
He currently divides his time between here and the States, but I sense that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for him to leave whenever he’s needed in the city. His life is right here. He’s connected to Ireland through blood, through his family legacy, and through me while I’m here. He wants to stay. For good. Build a life here with our child, open a new gallery, visit the local pub on a Sunday afternoon for a pint of Guinness, get involved in the close knit community.
I haven’t told him yet that I’m tempted.
I don’t have the same roots. The more I think about it, I’m not even certain that the roots I put down in the city are keeping me alive. But I finally feel like I’m starting to grow again.
I haven’t painted since Nick and my father destroyed my artwork in the New York gallery.
I broke my right arm in two places when I fell over the side of the cliff outside the mansion in Donegal. Fortunately for me, there was a narrow ledge jutting out of the sheer cliff-face. It broke my fall and saved me from certain death on the rocks below, but it broke something inside me at the same time. My arm is healing well. The doctors say that there’ll be no lasting damage, and that with continuing physical therapy, there’s no reason why I can’t get back into the studio.
But my heart isn’t in it.
Not yet.
Kyle built a new studio for me. He thought it was what I needed to help me recover from the ordeal. But each time I pick up a paintbrush, I relive the moment when I discovered that everything I’d ever painted had been trashed.
Maybe I’m being melodramatic, but it feels as if all the tiny pieces of my soul that I mixed into the paint on those canvases were destroyed with them. I’m struggling to pick myself back up. I know I will in time—I’ve always bounced back before—but will I paint again?
Who knows?
Besides, I’m going to be a mom soon; the baby growing inside me consumes my every waking moment, and I’m happy with that.
“It has to be a girl.” Emily’s eyes gleam when she smiles at me, dragging me out of my reverie.
I spend too much time inside my own head lately, but that will change when everyone else arrives and we all move into the Murray family home for the next couple of weeks.
“Look at what she’s already survived.” Emily aims this at Kyle. “Only a female would be strong enough to fall off a cliff and keep hanging on. And besides, this family is still male-heavy. We could do with some more women on our side.”
“She and Holly will be like sisters,” I add, swallowing a mouthful of vanilla latte and furrowing my brow. “Did you add brown sugar to this coffee?”
“Aye.” Kyle tries and fails to suppress a smile. “Not quite sweet enough for you, leoin ?” He whispers his nickname for me; it’s for our ears only.
I smile. “Can you get me some more? Please? My body is craving sugar.”
“You see!” Emily squeals. “Definitely a girl. She’s already building up to the chocolate cravings she’ll never be able to satisfy when she gets older.”
“Girls play football too, you know,” Kyle tosses over his shoulder as he sets off to find some more sachets of demerara sugar.
With Kyle out of the way, Emily’s eyes slide straight back to the two guys playing cards. A faint blush creeps into her cheeks.
“Why don’t you go over there and speak to them?” The baby starts wriggling inside me and I shift in my seat to get more comfortable. “You see, even she agrees with me.” I smile.
Emily’s eyes grow wide. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
For a strong, intelligent young woman with four big brothers looking out for her, she doesn’t have half the confidence when it comes to dating that I had when I was her age.
Or perhaps the four big brothers are the reason why she holds back. I can picture them sitting her down before her sweet-sixteen party and warning her not to speak to any boys, and absolutely not to get close enough to kiss one.
I smile to myself. One day, she’ll rebel, and I can’t wait to see how her brothers handle it when she does.
“Can I?” She seeks out Kyle, realizes that he has his back turned to us, and stands up.
“Sure. Go for it. I’ll cover for you.”
I watch her join the two lads tentatively, shoulders hunched as though trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. If she only knew. Other heads turn as she walks past, and she’s totally oblivious. The good-looking lad half-stands and gestures for Emily to take the seat beside him; once seated, he offers her a soda from the stash on the table. Emily doesn’t even look my way.
She reminds me of Victoria when we were at high school together. Victoria never saw what other people saw when she looked in the mirror; she was always waiting for the next ball to roll down the alley and knock her down. So, she found it easier to set her goals too low. If only sixteen-year-old Victoria could’ve seen where she would end up.
“Where did Emily go?” Kyle has a handful of sachets.
“She’s playing cards with some friends.”
In response, Emily’s laughter reaches us from the other side of the lounge, and I glance across to find her rosy-cheeked, her grin so wide I can see her back teeth.
“Do you know them?”
I place a hand on Kyle’s thigh, luring him away from the potential threat of two young lads playing a card game with his sister. “Leave her be. They’re not doing any harm.”
Kyle plants a kiss on my lips. “You do realize that if this baby is a girl, I’m never letting her out of my sight.”
“You do realize that if you never let her out of your sight, you’ll have a rebellion on your hands when she’s a teenager.”
He chuckles. “Bring it on.”
Through the window, the private jet catches my eye as it touches down on the tarmac. “They’re here.”
He squeezes my hand. “Are you nervous?”
“About us all being together in one house or about marrying you?”
“Both?” He winces, afraid of the answer.
“I’m fucking terrified.” I raise his hand to my lips and kiss his knuckles. “But I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
I hear Victoria squealing almost before she appears through the sliding door to the arrivals lounge. She runs to me, throws her arms around my neck and hugs me tightly, then places both hands on my swollen belly and says, “It’s a girl.”
Caleb is close behind, Holly in his arms.
I don’t think a child has ever resembled her father more. Holly is a mini-Caleb, with wide green eyes and a beautiful smile that lights up her face.
She holds out her arms for me to take her, and my chest swells with love when she rests her head upon my shoulder as if it’s where she belongs.
“She remembers you.” Victoria’s eyes are damp. “Hormones,” she adds, blinking. “You’ve got this all to come.”
The Murray clan’s arrival is like a tornado sweeping through the arrivals lounge.
Emily comes running over when she spots her parents and brothers. Terry pulls her into a bear hug and swings her around, her feet above the floor, while the rest of us hug and kiss and everyone tries to guess the baby’s gender.
“It’s a girl.” Moira links arms with me, and we follow the men out of the airport to the waiting vehicles.
“Mom’s always right.” Cash winks at me from over his shoulder.
He looks older. I notice the first strands of silver in his thick hair, and he seems to have lost the boisterous energy that always followed him around like a wall-climbing shadow. Or maybe he has matured a little since his arrest. The charges were dropped—Kyle worked tirelessly to prove that all the evidence against him had been planted—but it must’ve been a wake-up call, nonetheless.
Bash is still Bash. Calm, laid-back, and eyeing up a blond woman in a halter-neck dress scrolling through her social media apps while she waits for someone to arrive.
“Are you sure you still want to go ahead with having the wedding in a meadow, Sienna?” Moira asks as we step out into the sunshine.
Summers in Ireland are glorious, I’ve realized; another reason why I’m tempted to stay. No pollution. No traffic fumes. No hazy artificial heat like the bubble that surrounds New York City through July and August. Just endless blue sky, green fields, and calm sea.
“I’m sure.” I tilt my face towards the sun’s rays.
I never really thought about the kind of wedding I wanted when I was younger, but it makes perfect sense now that we’re here, like this was the way it was always meant to be. Like everything that ever happened to me, my father, my mom dying too young, the accident; it was all building up to this moment.
It was always going to be Kyle, right from the first moment I met him when he was Kenickie, and I was Wilma.
“What about your dress?” Moira continues. “Aren’t you worried that it will be ruined? What shoes will you wear?”
“I’m getting married barefoot.” I smile at Kyle who is holding open the passenger door to the MPV waiting to take us home. “So is Kyle.”
“You can go barefoot too, Mom,” he says.
“I will,” Emily chimes as she climbs into the back seat of the car ahead of us. “Sienna, I invited Eoghan Byrne to the wedding. I hope you don’t mind.”
Her eyes are bright; I recognize that look. It’s the same gleam that I see in Victoria’s eyes whenever she and Caleb are together. It’s how I feel whenever I’m with Kyle.
“Is that the guy from the airport?” I ask.
“Did I hear the name Eoghan Byrne?” Terry’s expression is serious. “Declan Byrne’s son? The same Declan Byrne who?—”
“Terry.” One word from Moira, and he presses his lips together.
“Dad, relax.” Emily pokes her head back out of the car, “Do you have any idea how many people are called in Byrne in Ireland?”
Kyle comes up behind me and hugs my belly, nuzzling my neck, his warm breath on my cheek. “You’d better get used to this, my love. The Murray men are a protective bunch.”
I kiss the tip of his nose. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
And I mean it.
THE END