Chapter 52
The woman on the phone at the embassy’s office was cheerful but businesslike as Maeve explained her plight.
“We’ll need your driver’s license, and records of your travel arrangements, such as airline ticket and hotel receipts. If you believe your passport was stolen, we’ll need a copy of the police report.”
“It wasn’t stolen. At least, I don’t think it was,” Maeve said slowly. Suddenly, she was thinking about the slashed tires and the near-miss roadkill incident. Could the passport’s disappearance be part of that?
“I’m fairly sure the passport is just missing. If I drive back to Dublin in the morning, can you have the replacement passport ready?”
“Oh no. You’ll need to make an appointment, and I don’t have anything available until … let me see, yes, tomorrow afternoon, say three o’clock.”
“Isn’t there any way to expedite the process? I really need to get back to the States for urgent family business.”
“This is expedited, dear,” the woman explained. “Let me have your contact information, and if an appointment opens up any earlier, I’ll let you know.”
The clerk at the inn was apologetic when she called. “We did look, Ms. Dunagin. I went up and helped the housekeepers lift the mattress entirely off the bed, but we did not find your passport.”
“I see.” Maeve’s shoulders slumped with disappointment. “I can’t get an appointment at the embassy in Dublin until tomorrow, so I’ll need to stay over tonight.”
“Oh dear. I thought you understood when you were here earlier. We are completely booked with the china painting ladies. I do apologize.”
She wanted to weep. “Can you recommend any inns or bed-and-breakfasts nearby that might have a vacancy?”
“I’m afraid not. It’s the sacred music festival starting tonight at the manor house. Very popular event, the festival is. Everyplace around has been booked up for weeks now.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Wait. Ms. Dunagin?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to have to ask you to remove your car from the parking lot, which is strictly reserved for our guests.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. I just had a guest arrive and ask about the overflow parking, so if you could move your vehicle, we’d be grateful.”
Maeve disconnected and put her head down on the table. Her predicament would be funny, if it weren’t so pathetic. She was alone in a strange country, had no passport, not much money, and had literally just been told there was no room at the inn.
The irony was not lost on her. This must have been how her great-grandmother felt when she arrived in New York, more than a hundred years ago.
“Stop it,” she chided herself. She hated when people indulged in self-pity.
She was not an orphaned eighteen-year-old who’d just been uprooted from the life she’d always known, the way Kathleen was.
She was a fully capable adult with a credit card and a cell phone and a somewhat-functioning rental car.
If push came to shove, she could always just drive to Dublin and find a hotel there.
Or she could swallow her resolve and call Liam. It would be so easy to slip back into his life, and yes, possibly into his bed, for another twenty-four hours. Which would solve nothing.
Maeve forced herself to sit up. She eyed the half-eaten shepherd’s pie with distaste.
It had grown cold; the mashed potatoes looked like hardened stucco and the ground lamb and gravy were a gelatinous, unappetizing lump.
But the hard roll on the plate looked fresh.
She buttered it and chewed slowly while she tried to put together a plan of action.
The sky was overcast as she trudged back toward the inn. She could just glimpse the roof of the Tarrymore manor house rising above the deep-green treetops ahead. Again, her mind wandered to Kathleen. Had she glanced backward at the house the night she was driven away from her home and her family?
She heard a vehicle slowing and glanced over to see a pickup truck pulling onto the shoulder of the road.
A chill ran down her spine. Stranger danger?
In Ireland? After a moment of internal debate, she walked over to the open window on the truck’s passenger side.
Esme Rossington sat behind the steering wheel with Sinead on her lap.
“Decide to stay over, did you?” Esme asked.
“My passport has gone missing.”
“That’s a bother.”
“Yes, ma’am. The embassy in Dublin will get me a replacement, but not until Friday afternoon. And in the meantime, there are no rooms available anywhere around here.”
“And your sister?”
“She went ahead and flew home.”
“Get in then.” Esme pointed to the passenger door.
“Excuse me?”
“Get in the truck,” she repeated, louder, as though Maeve were either stupid or hard of hearing.
Maeve shrugged and climbed into the seat. Sinead wagged her tail, hopped over the console, and curled up in her lap.
Esme was dressed in the kind of brown zip-front coveralls worn by painters, and her long silver hair was poking out from beneath a green trucker’s cap.
“I might have a solution to your predicament. As you might know, I’ve dismissed Reggie, which means his living quarters are vacant.”
“Reggie, your handman?”
“Former handyman,” she said firmly. “Until very recently we had an arrangement. I allowed him to fix up a toolshed on my property, and he moved in. It’s not fancy. A bed, a table and chair, and a sink. A propane stove to keep warm. There’s a commode. You could stay there if it suits.”
“That’s very generous of you, but I don’t think…”
“I’ll charge you twenty euros a night, but you’re not to be bringing men in, or playing that loud music you lot listen to.”
Maeve didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
What she did know was that she’d gotten little sleep the night before at the airport hotel, what with Therese’s restless tossing and turning in that bed they’d shared.
And right now it appeared that her only other alternative was sleeping in the rental car—which was even smaller and more cramped than the hotel bed.
“Just for one night,” she replied.
“Where’s your luggage then?”
“In my car in the parking lot at the inn.”
“I’ll take you there, and then you can follow me home,” Esme said.
Esme led the way down a broken brick pathway with Sinead following behind.
For the first time, Maeve noticed a towering pile of junk beside the porte cochere that looked to contain the discards of generations of Rossingtons; rusting pieces of farm equipment, bicycles with no tires, broken bits of furniture, what looked like the back seat of a car, even an ancient wringer washing machine.
She was already having second thoughts about her rash decision to accept Esme’s offer. She should swallow her pride, and her doubts, and call Liam. But she’d come too far to turn back now.
“This is it,” Esme announced, stopping short in front of an edifice that was the missing link between a shack and a shed.
Maeve stared at it, dry-mouthed. The building was fashioned of brick and rotting timbers, with a clay tile roof. There were no windows, just a door that hung crookedly on rusting hinges.
“Go ahead in,” her hostess urged.
Maeve pushed on the door, but it barely budged. She leaned her weight into it and it fell open.
Her first impression was of the smell. It was dark and dank and smelled of mold and dirty socks and hot garbage.
Spiderwebs crisscrossed the walls and the corners of the room.
The brick floor was littered with fallen leaves and bits of debris.
There was a bed of sorts, an army cot with a rough woolen blanket tossed atop it.
A soapstone laundry sink stood next to an unspeakably filthy toilet.
She was astonished that anyone could have lived here, even an alcoholic, ill-tempered person like Reggie, the former handyman.
Esme pointed to the propane camping stove with pride. “That should keep you toasty tonight. There could be a bit of a chill in the air later, when the sun’s gone down.”
A chill? Maeve already found the shed as cold and dank as a tomb, if tombs came furnished with revolting toilets.
She saw a movement out of the corner of her eyes, a blur of something gray with a long tail. Sinead gave a sharp bark and pounced, snapping her jaws around the thing’s head and shaking it, sending droplets of blood into the fetid air.
“Good girl!” Esme exclaimed.
“Jesus! A rat!” Maeve shrieked, backing out of the shed.
“I can’t. I won’t…” She grabbed the handle of her wheeled suitcase and ran as fast and as far away from Esme and her shed as she could.
She made it to the rental and heaved her suitcase into the trunk. After that, she didn’t stop to think. Miraculously, she remembered the way.
His Jeep was parked out front. She knocked, he answered, and she fell, sobbing, into his arms.