Chapter 9 Amelia
AMELIA
Declan barely leaves his study.
The house is in mourning. Orla appears to have shrunk since receiving the news that her grandson had died. She sits in her rocking chair in the conservatory overlooking the garden, a bag of knitting at her feet that doesn’t get touched.
I carry on doing what I’m paid to do. I cook and clean and run errands. I make sure that they have food and drink, even if I can’t force them to touch it.
And I say goodnight to Declan every evening, waiting for the day when he’ll take my hand and come to bed with me. I want to hug him. I want to watch him sleep. I want to tell him that I can’t make it better, but I can be there to hold his hand.
It’s all I have to offer. Whenever he’s ready.
Declan’s youngest son Eoghan is grieving too, but he throws himself into handling the practical arrangements for his brother’s funeral. With my help.
I need to keep busy, and although this is the last thing that I expected to be doing when I accepted this job, it helps take my mind off everything else that has happened since I arrived.
Eoghan looks nothing like his father. Occasionally, when I catch a glimpse of his profile while we’re preparing the formal living room for the wake, I think I see some resemblance, a hint of a smile, the way he runs his fingers through his hair. But then he looks at me, and it’s gone.
“Amelia, would you read through this for me please?” He looks up from what he’s doing at the kitchen table while I’m preparing dinner.
I wipe my hands on a dish towel. “Sure, what is it?”
He hands me the Order of Service for the funeral, his eyes lingering on the image of his brother on the front cover.
“I’ve written a poem.” He sucks in a deep breath and releases it shakily. “I need you to tell me if it’s too…”
“Gushy?” I finish for him.
He smiles. Understandably, he hasn’t done a whole lot of that since he came home. I can see where he gets his good looks from, although he doesn’t have his father’s charisma.
Yet. I’m sure that he will in time.
“Gushy.” He nods. “Ruairi wouldn’t want that.”
I feel like an intruder peering through a window that should be out of bounds when I take the booklet from him.
“It’s on the last page,” he says.
But I’m staring at the image on the front cover.
Ruairi Byrne.
01.12.1991 – 24.10.2025.
Only the guy in the picture isn’t Ruairi Byrne. I mean, he must be Declan’s son, but I knew him as Ryan Connor. The guy I met in the nightclub. The guy I went back to the Wraith with three days before I traveled to Ireland to start my new job.
“This is Ruairi?”
My brain must be in shock. I wouldn’t normally be this insensitive, but I’m still trying to match the picture to the guy I hooked up with. In New York.
“I know we’re nothing alike.” Eoghan is staring at the booklet in my hand. “Ruairi is more like Pa. Was more like Pa.”
He averts his eyes, and I hate myself for doing this, but I have to ask.
“Was he in New York when he…?”
“Aye, he was there on business.”
It’s all sliding into place now. Ryan said that he was there on business when I met him. At least, he thought he was. “Long story, Amelia.” I can still hear his voice now. Declan said that he would have sent the private jet to collect me, but it was on standby for his son.
Ruairi Byrne is Ryan Connor.
The concierge in the Wraith addressed him as Mr. Connor; he was using an alias for whatever reason, and now he’s dead.
Eoghan is waiting for me to read his poem, and I can barely even see the words in front of me.
“It’s perfect, Eoghan.”
I shove the Order of Service into his hands. Go back to the counter and prepare dinner as if this were a regular day in the life of Amelia York, and not the day that I discovered I hooked up with Declan and his son in the space of a week.
While dinner is cooking in the Aga, I go back to my room and stare out of the window without seeing anything. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to lie to Declan, but how do I tell him that I hooked up with his son three days before I left New York?
I forgot to mention that I had sex with your son—your dead son—before I came to Ireland. Oops.
I can imagine exactly how that’s going down. No. That’s a lie. I have zero idea how that’s going down because normal people don’t have sex with a guy immediately before embarking on an affair with his dad.
I could pretend it never happened, I guess. Declan will never find out. Unless he questions the concierge in the Wraith. Or Carol.
Fuck. Carol knows all about Ryan. Ruairi. If she ever found out the truth…
I can’t let her come here. She’ll ask questions. She’ll see the resemblance between Ryan/Ruairi and Declan, because now that I’ve seen his photograph, I realize why I thought Declan was so familiar. It’s so fucking obvious I must’ve been wearing blinkers this whole time.
My phone vibrates, and I check the screen to find an incoming call from Carol.
Perfect timing.
If I don’t answer, she’ll keep trying until I pick up because I’ve been avoiding her since Ruairi’s death. On the other hand, if I speak to her, I can sow the seeds for her not coming to visit any time soon.
I hit the green button. Smile. “Hey…”
“Hey, baby girl. You’ve been quiet. What’s going on?”
I swear my heart is riding a corkscrew roller coaster. “Where do I start?” I give a small smile to my reflection in the window.
“Try the beginning?”
Fuck no.
“Things haven’t been great here. Declan’s eldest son died last week.”
“Shit. I’m so sorry, Mia. Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. But Declan and the family… It’s horrible, Carol. I feel so helpless.”
“Hey, I know it’s sad, but you’re only the housekeeper, Mia. I know you must feel bad, but just stay strong, okay, baby girl?”
“Okay.”
I chew my lip, wishing that I could come clean, offload the problem onto my best friend’s shoulders and wait for her to tell me how to handle it without hurting anyone.
Which isn’t going to happen. It’s basically impossible to tell Declan the truth without hurting him, and myself, in the process.
Because there’s no way that he’s going to hear me out, shrug, and say that it’s no biggie.
You hooked up with my son—hey, I’ve heard worse.
“You could always come home,” Carol says while I’m imagining stabbing Declan in the back while his heart is already breaking.
“I can’t.”
“Why not? I’m sure they would understand under the circumstances.”
I can’t tell her that boarding a plane at Dublin Airport and leaving Declan behind isn’t an option.
That even the thought of it is like ripping my chest open and stabbing myself in the heart.
I don’t know how this happened so quickly.
I’ve barely known Declan for a couple of weeks, and I always thought that love at first sight was a fictional trope.
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, you know.
Never Amelia York and Declan Byrne in the Irish countryside. It doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
“Amelia?”
I don’t like it when Carol uses my full name.
“I want to stay. I’m not ready to leave yet.”
“Is this because of your father?” Her tone is pure disapproval.
“Not exactly.”
“Either it is or it isn’t.”
“It isn’t.” I’m not doing a great job of convincing her, but if I mention Declan, she’ll want to know more, and I don’t trust myself not to spill the beans once I start talking.
“What does your mom think about what’s going on?”
Um, I’ve deliberately avoided calling her.
“She thinks that I should stay. The Byrnes need me right now; it would be insensitive to quit while they’re grieving for Ry-Ruairi.”
I haven’t lied to Carol since high school. I gave my cell phone number to Hunter Davidson, the jock that Carol had been drooling over since eighth grade. That lie was a bad choice. This is different; I have good reasons for lying to her this time. I’m doing it for Declan.
“Mia,” her voice has softened a little. “Sometimes I get sick of hearing myself say this, but you don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with. You know that, right?”
I can’t help smiling. “How could I ever forget?”
I end the call feeling even more unsettled than I did before.
My thoughts can’t seem to find a happy medium, one that will result in no one getting hurt.
Part of me believes that Declan will be devastated if he knew about me and Ruairi.
But there’s a tiny part of me, the part that sobs over ‘You jump, I jump’ every time, that thinks Declan might be happy to know that I met his son in New York…
Minus the messy, knee-trembling details obviously.
But will he put two and two together and come up with the right answer? What if he somehow gets access to the security footage from the Wraith? I don’t know how that would be possible but he’s a wealthy man, and wealthy people have connections in all the right places.
So, that night, in bed, I decide to let the universe choose for me. If the opportunity to tell him the truth arises then I’ll go with it. And if it doesn’t… Then I’ll just learn to live with the guilt.
On the day of the funeral, I wake up feeling nauseous. My eyes feel heavy, and I’m lethargic before I even get out of bed.
I tell myself that, after today, things might get a little easier. I’ve never attended a funeral, but my mom always says that the wake is a celebration of life, a time to relive happy times, to smile, and to say goodbye with joy in your heart.
I hope she’s right.
Declan is standing outside on the porch when I go downstairs. He’s wearing a black suit and tie, a white shirt, and shiny black shoes that I can see my reflection in.