Chapter 4
The bus was practically empty at this early hour – just Molly, an elderly man dozing in the back corner and a young woman with headphones who stared intently at her phone.
Molly claimed a window seat a couple of rows down, setting her laptop case carefully on the seat beside her. The driver, an older guy with salt-and-pepper stubble, eyed her luggage with good-natured suspicion before hefting it into the storage compartment beneath.
‘American?’ he asked, the question more statement than inquiry. When she nodded, he smiled. ‘Visiting the ’oul sod, I suppose.’
But when Molly mentioned that she was headed to Golden Valley and he told her she’d been facing the best part of two hours’ journey further, her mood deflated afresh.
That long?
The bus seats were narrower than she expected, upholstered in a scratchy blue fabric patterned with what might have been shamrocks or maybe just abstract squiggles – it was hard to tell in the dim interior lighting.
She shifted, trying to find a comfortable position for her travel-weary body. Her neck still ached from her awkward airplane sleep, and her lower back protested after hours of sitting in cramped quarters.
The engine rumbled to life, vibrating through the floorboards and up into her bones. As they pulled away from the airport, she pressed her forehead against the cool window glass, watching the airport service roads give way to a bigger highway.
Dawn was breaking now, the sky transitioning from charcoal to gray, revealing glimpses of the landscape beyond.
Molly’s eyelids felt weighted, but she fought against sleep.
She didn’t want to miss this – her first real view of Ireland, the homeland her grandmother had described in such vivid detail that Molly sometimes felt she’d already visited.
‘You’ll know it when you see it,’ Aoife had said once, describing the particular green of Irish fields after rain. ‘Like God took all the emeralds he could and crushed them into dust to paint the land.’
The memory made Molly smile despite her exhaustion. Her grandmother had never been one for understatement.
After about an hour, the highway narrowed, becoming a two-lane road that twisted between hedgerows so tall and dense they formed green walls on either side.
Molly’s breathing gradually slowed to match the rhythm of the passing scenery. Her shoulders, which had been hunched nearly to her ears since the airport check-in in JFK, began to lower incrementally.
She hadn’t truly realized how tightly she’d been holding herself until the tension started to unwind.
Then the bus hit a pothole, jolting her forward.
Her hands instinctively went to her laptop case, steadying it on the seat beside her.
Her fingers lingered on the zipper, confirming it was securely closed, protecting what lay within.
Occasionally the bus would round a corner and the landscape would open suddenly – fields stretching to the horizon, patchworked in various shades of green and gold beneath the gradually lightening sky.
‘First time to Ireland?’
Molly turned to find the bus driver watching her in the rearview mirror, his eyes crinkling at the corners with what might have been amusement, or simple curiosity.
‘Yes,’ she replied, straightening in her seat. ‘My grandmother was from Tipperary.’
He nodded as if this explained everything. And it did.
‘Tipp people can be stubborn as the day is long, but sound out to be fair.’
Molly couldn’t help but smile. Stubborn was certainly a word that applied to her grandmother.
The sky continued to brighten further, clouds breaking apart to reveal patches of pale blue.
Rain had fallen the night before – the road glistened with puddles that reflected the emerging sunlight and drops sparkled on the hedgerows.
Molly found herself leaning closer to the window, taking in details.
The hedgerows were a universe unto themselves.
Not just green, but a hundred variations of it – dark ivy intertwined with lighter hawthorn, golden lichen crusting the occasional stone wall that interrupted the living barrier.
And there, nestled among the green, were clusters of blackberries – a deep purple-black that gleamed in the morning light.
‘We used to pick those wild when I was a young fella,’ the driver commented, noticing her gaze. ‘Make jam that puts shop-bought shite to shame.’
Molly nodded, remembering her grandmother’s preserves, made from berries they’d picked in Prospect Park – a poor substitute for Golden Valley’s crop, Aoife had claimed, but better than nothing.
‘My grandmother made jam too,’ she told him, the words emerging without conscious thought. ‘She said Irish blackberries tasted of sunshine and secrets.’
The driver laughed, a rich sound that filled the small bus. ‘Your granny obviously had a way with words.’
The road curved again, and suddenly they were passing through open countryside.
Fields of barley stretched on one side, the grain golden …
almost amber in the strengthening morning light.
The stalks rippled in the breeze like waves, moving across the surface in hypnotic patterns.
On the other side, a scattering of sheep dotted a hillside, their white forms stark against the green grass like miniature clouds.
Molly shifted her laptop case onto her lap, cradling it there as the bus navigated another rough patch of road. The familiar weight was comforting, a tether to her purpose here amid the unexpected beauty that threatened to distract her.
They passed a small farm where a man in a flat cap waved at the bus, a young border collie circling his ankles with barely contained energy. The driver returned the wave with a friendly honk and Molly glimpsed a smile beneath the cap before they rounded another bend.
The road wound higher now, offering glimpses of the wider landscape through gaps in the hedgerows, which began to appear more frequently, sectioning the land into irregular parcels that were far more organic than the precise grids of US farmland.
Some were mere suggestions – tumbled stone half-reclaimed by moss and wild grass.
‘Nearly there,’ the driver announced. ‘Golden Valley’s just over this rise.’
Molly straightened in her seat, suddenly alert despite her fatigue.
This was it – the place her grandmother had spoken of with such longing, such precise detail that Molly now worried whether Aoife’s memories had been polished into something brighter than reality could possibly match.
Then the bus crested a hill, and her breath caught in her throat at her first glimpse of the Golden Vale.
Lough Corrin spread below, just as her grandmother had described, like a mirror laid on the landscape, its surface a shifting palette of slate-blue and silver where the emerging sun caught ripples.
The lake curved gracefully between undulating hills that almost seemed to breathe, their green slopes dotted with sheep.
At the near end, nestled against the water’s edge, lay Golden Valley village itself – a cluster of buildings with slate roofs, smoke rising from chimneys in the morning air.
Surrounding the township on three sides was woodland – different to the dense, impenetrable forests of wilderness, and something far older.
Native trees, their massive trunks testifying to centuries of slow, steady expansion, their branches spreading to create dappled shadows across the ground beneath.
Even from this distance, Molly could see that the leaves were beginning to turn, hints of gold and copper among the green.
‘Oh my …’ she whispered, the words escaping without her permission.
The driver chuckled. ‘Told ya.’ There was pride in his voice, as if he personally owned the countryside they were about to traverse.
Molly couldn’t tear her eyes away. This was it – exactly as Aoife had described, down to the particular way the light caught the water, the specific curve of the shoreline where the lake embraced the village.
She blinked hard, surprised to find her eyes damp again.
She’d been so focused on the physical journey, on the logistics of flights and buses, that she hadn’t prepared herself for the emotional impact of seeing the place her grandmother had loved so fiercely.
The bus began its descent toward the village, winding down a narrow road that offered changing perspectives of the lake and woods with each curve.
No wonder Aoife had never seemed quite at home in Brooklyn, despite building a full life there with Eddie and Molly’s late mom.
No wonder her stories always returned to this place, these hills, this particular quality of light that seemed to gild everything it touched.
The road straightened as they approached the village outskirts.
Modest contemporary houses and smaller thatched holiday-cottages appeared, set back from the road behind low walls or fences, their gardens still vibrant with late-summer blooms, despite the cooling weather.
A dog barked, the sound carrying clearly in the morning air.
Through gaps between buildings, Molly caught various glimpses of the lake, now closer, its surface textured with tiny ripples from the growing breeze.
Something about the quality of the light changed then and she glanced up to see clouds gathering from the west – deep gray harbingers of rain.
As if on cue, the first drops appeared on the window glass, small translucent pearls that caught the light before streaming downward in irregular paths.
‘And here’s your Irish welcome …’ the driver announced cheerfully.
Molly watched as the raindrops multiplied, quickly blurring the landscape she’d been admiring.
The perfection of the moment fractured slightly, reality intruding on what had begun to feel like a dream.
Yet there was beauty in this too – the way the rain softened edges, the fresh scent that seeped in through the bus’s ventilation system, earthy and green and alive.