Chapter 61
“Hey,” Liam said, hurrying after her as she speed-walked to the parking lot. “Wait up.”
She slowed and turned to face him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “You’ve been really kind. Too kind. I just need some time, and some space to process all of this.”
“Oh-kayyy,” he said slowly. “You’ve been through a lot in the past twenty-four hours. Will you call me, then, and let me know what you decide? I care about you, Maeve, and I’ll do whatever I can to make this easier for you.”
Maeve leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”
She left the rental car in the Willow Tree’s parking lot and set off walking at a brisk pace.
Sinead seemed deliriously happy to be along for the outing, and matched her energetic stride, trotting along beside Maeve, pausing to sniff shrubbery or to bark at the occasional menacing-looking rabbit flushed out of the tall grass.
Tarrymore’s business district was small and compact, and within fifteen minutes, Maeve was walking along a road that led into the countryside.
She inhaled air that smelled of clover and fresh-mown fields.
Half a mile down the road she saw a small stone church building with a steeple topped with a cross.
Drawing closer, she saw a bronze plaque.
St. Bonaventure Catholic Church. Est. 1842.
Behind the church in a sloping field, she saw rows of marble headstones.
Why did the name of this church sound familiar, she wondered.
Of course, the cemetery back in Savannah where her parents and paternal grandparents were buried was Bonaventure too.
Then she remembered, the genealogist she and Therese had consulted in Cobh told them that Kathleen’s family, including her mother, baby sisters, and the man she considered her father, John Connor, had been buried in the churchyard at St. Bonaventure.
She walked up to the church and tried the heavy wooden door.
It was padlocked, and from the amount of cobwebs and drifts of dust and weeds accumulated around the doorframe, she concluded that St. Bonaventure was no longer an active church.
There were arched openings on either side of the door where stained-glass windows had probably once stood, but these were boarded up.
“Let’s take a walk among the dead, shall we, Sinead?”
The dog didn’t object, so she made her way around to the graveyard.
Weed-choked gravel paths wound among the rows of modest marble headstones, their carvings worn smooth over the years.
Rosebushes were planted alongside some of the burial plots, and shattered pale-pink blossoms were strewn on the grass.
Granite outcroppings poked through the earth at irregular intervals.
Maeve’s heartbeat slowed and the turmoil in her mind seemed to clear as she wandered aimlessly down the rows of headstones, stooping to read the names of the departed: the Ryans, the Meehans, the Baughmans, the Murphys, and the O’Sheas.
She was stooped down, brushing fallen leaves from a headstone, when Sinead gave a low-pitched growl. Looking up, she saw a slender doe and her two fawns, delicately grazing at a clump of wildflowers fifty yards away.
Maeve held her breath as she watched the three animals, not wanting to spook them. Sinead, however, let out another warning growl, and before Maeve could stop her, went running after the deer, leash dragging behind. Fortunately, the deer easily bounded away to safety into a nearby grove of trees.
When Maeve caught up to Sinead, she was furiously sniffing at the spot where the deer had just been. She bent over to pick up the leash and noticed an arched headstone with the name CONNOR carved into the marble.
She dropped to her knees and brushed away decades’ worth of lichen, moss, and leaves to read the rest of the inscription:
JOHN, brIDGET, EILEEN AND PATSY CONNOR, TOGETHER IN LIFE, FOREVER IN CHRIST. OCTOBER 7, 1925.
Something inside her seemed to break. A whole family, Kathleen’s whole family, her mother, father, and two little sisters, everyone except her brother Tommy, had died in the fire that had destroyed their farmhouse. Maeve hugged her knees tightly to her chest and lowered her head and cried.
Cried for a family she’d never known, cried for Kathleen and her unfathomable loss.
For the first time, she cried for her own loss, for her father, so many years ago, and for her mother, the seemingly indefatigable Mary Helen.
At some point, Sinead, sensing her distress, whimpered and pawed at Maeve’s legs until she took the dog into her arms and held her close to her chest.
“Poor little girl,” she whispered in the dog’s silky ears. “I know. You miss your Esme.” She looked up at the sky, cornflower blue with a scattering of clouds, and suddenly knew what her decision would be. “Don’t worry, little one. I’ve got you now.”
She called Therese on her way back to the village.
“Maeve? What’s wrong?” Therese didn’t bother with a greeting.
Maeve took a deep breath. “I’m not sure where to start. Where are you? Are you sitting down?”
“I’m in the kitchen, cleaning out Mary Helen’s spice cabinet. I just found three jars of mace. Who even knew that was a spice? I also threw out a can of ground nutmeg that expired the year I was born.”
“Don’t throw that out, honey, it’s still good.” Maeve’s impression of their frugal mother was perfect, and they both laughed.
“But seriously,” Maeve said. “I’ve got some crazy news for you. Remember the first night you ran into Esme at the Willow Tree?”
“Yeahhh. So?”
“You must have made a hell of an impression on the old girl, because shortly after you chatted her up at the Willow Tree, she called her lawyer and get this, wrote us into her will.”
“What’d she leave us? A bottle of gin and a carton of smokes?”
“Everything, Therese. Esme left us everything. Well, technically, she left it to Sinead, with us as Sinead’s guardians, or whatever you call it.”
“What the fuck?” Therese screeched. “Did you get hold of some gummies? You cannot be serious.”
“I am as serious as a heart attack. I just met up with a man named Billy McCracken, who is the executor of the estate. He said Esme had been worried about what would happen to Sinead after she died, because she had no living relatives except for Geoffrey, the brother she hated. After you showed up at the Willow Tree and started asking questions about Lady Geraldine, she asked McCracken if he could verify our claim about Lord Rossington fathering Kathleen. He, McCracken, said rumors about Kathleen had been floating around the family for years.”
“Wow. Just wow. What does all this mean? Because Esme told me that she sold her portrait because she needed the money.”
“Yeah, that part is confusing to me too. He said it’s too early to have a good estimate of what the estate is worth, but right now, we stand to inherit the gardener’s cottage and the inn.”
“She owned the inn? I didn’t know that.”
“Her father originally left it to her brother Geoffrey, but she bought him out a couple years later. So now it comes to us, or rather to Sinead.”
“How’s Geoffrey going to feel about all this? Is he still hanging around in Tarrymore?”
“Apparently so. Billy McCracken, Esme’s solicitor, said he’d already dropped by his office. How cold is that? Your sister’s body isn’t even in the grave and you’re already checking in to see what you inherit. Billy told us he took great pleasure in telling Geoffrey he wasn’t getting diddly-squat.”
“Okay. Now explain to me how a dog becomes an heiress?”
“All Esme’s assets are in a trust for the dog. You and I are her guardians, just like if she was a child, and after Sinead is gone, everything comes to us.”
There was a long silence at the other end of the line.
“Therese? You still there?”
“Yeah. I’m just thinking since we’re heiresses now, maybe we can afford to go ahead and throw out everything in Mama’s spice cabinet. What the hell—it’s only money, right?”
“There is a catch,” Maeve said. “And it’s a big one. One or both of us has to live here, in Tarrymore, in the gardener’s cottage, to take care of Sinead.”
“That’s crazy,” Therese said slowly.
“Esme had it written into the will,” Maeve said. “It’s nonnegotiable. So, what do you think?”
“You really want to know what I think?”
“Of course. This affects both of us.”
“Okay. I think you should be the one to stay and live there. And not just because of Liam, but maybe partially because of that. Maeve, except for college, you’ve lived in Savannah your whole life. You took care of Mama, you followed all the rules…”
“Okay.”
“Hello? Did you just agree with me? What is even happening here?”
Maeve wasn’t sure she could put into words what she was feeling. But she owed it to Therese to try.
“Moving here, changing everything about my life, is insane. Trying to figure out a relationship with a man I’ve known for less than two weeks is terrifying.
But I just left the graveyard where all the Connors are buried.
I stumbled across it by accident. I sat there and I thought about the courage it must have taken for Kathleen to get on that boat and make a new life for herself, to make something out of nothing.
I thought about all the gutsy, ballsy women in our family who’ve picked up the pieces and kept going.
And I decided it’s finally time, past time, for me to gamble on myself. ”
“Then you’ll do it? You’ll stay?”
“There’s a lot to figure out. Like, where am I gonna live?
I’m staying in the owner’s suite at the inn tonight, but that’s just for the short term.
The money piece of it is something we’ll have to figure out, but Billy said we’ll be able to draw money from the estate, although he doesn’t know exactly how much there is.
God knows what it’ll cost to fix up that money pit. ”
“Well, you know I’ll be coming over to help out with all that stuff,” Therese said. “I can’t wait to see the rest of the cottage. Talk about the ultimate fixer-upper! And after we sell our portrait, there should be money to pay for repairs.”
“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves,” Maeve reminded her. “You’re gonna need money too, to fix up Mama’s house, assuming we get the mortgage mess straightened out.”
She’d been walking so fast and was so absorbed in her conversation with her sister, she looked up to realize she was back in the parking lot at the Willow Tree. She’d need to go inside and get some water for Sinead before heading over to the inn.
“You’re being so calm and rational about this,” Therese said.
“Aren’t you crazy excited? We’re heiresses!
You’re going to live in a castle. With the world’s cutest little dog.
And I almost forgot—I was just telling Scotty I think I’m ready to settle down and paint the house and have a cookout and get a dog. And now we actually have a dog!”
“To be more precise, the dog has us. The ‘castle’ and the inn technically are in a trust for her. And as Mac pointed out, there’s a lot of paperwork yet to come.
The biggie is my passport. I think I’m only allowed to stay in Ireland for ninety days, because I’m a US citizen.
I’ll have to talk to the folks at the embassy. Hopefully Monday.”
“About that passport,” Therese said slowly. “There’s something I need to tell you. But first you have to promise not to be mad at me.”
“Therese? What did you do?”
“Promise you won’t scream?”
“No. I won’t promise that.”
“Okay, forget it. Bye. Talk soon.”
“Jeanne Therese Dunagin. What. Did. You. Do?”
“It was for your own good. And look how great it worked out. You should thank me.”
“Tell me.”
“I had the inn’s night manager put it in the hotel safe. Whoops—gotta go now. Frannie is coming over to show me how to make Mama’s pot roast. Byeeee!”