Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
DECLAN
I'm staring at my phone like a lovesick teenager. Which is unhinged, given that it's the night of my engagement party and my fiancée will be here in five minutes.
Valentina is punctual. I'll give her that.
No one would accuse the woman of being warm. That would be taking things considerably too far. She's beautiful, yeah, in the way expensive things tend to be: correct, deliberate, assembled. Not my type, but then I've never been particularly fussy. I like women.
But I’ve only ever cared about one.
I push the thought away because I’m good at walking past that door without opening it again. I’ve had years of practice.
It doesn't help to think about Bridget right now, but I check my phone anyway.
At precisely 5:55, Valentina arrives. Little black dress, her hair up, objectively beautiful. I've been thinking about that a lot lately—how something can be objectively true and mean absolutely nothing.
I meet her at the door and kiss her cheek. She smells expensive. It’s strangely off-putting.
“Valentina.”
“Declan.” Her smile is perfect and practiced.
She takes in the hallway with the particular stillness of someone cataloging rather than admiring—the old tile running to the hearth, the worn edges of everything, the noise spilling from the back rooms. The McCarthy house is legendary in Ballyhock and not because it's modern.
It's large and well-lived-in, and it smells like something is always baking.
I find it the most comfortable place on earth.
I suspect Valentina doesn’t.
She sneezes, delicately, into a tissue. Once, twice. “Excuse me. I must be allergic to something in the garden.”
I scratch the back of my neck. “Do you… need something for it?”
“I just need to come inside.” She steps past me.
Right. I shut the door before someone hears. The McCarthy family garden is famous in Ballyhock.
Behind me, Bronwyn, Kyla, Aunt Caitlin, and Zoya watch in the particular collective silence of Irish women who have already formed an opinion and are trying to be very polite about it.
Aunt Caitlin breaks first, stepping forward with her arms already open. “I'm so sorry, the flowers are only coming in now with the spring. Please, if there's anything—”
Valentina extends her hand. “It’s fine, thank you.”
Caitlin takes it and recovers without a flicker. I don't think I've ever seen my Aunt Caitlin falter in my life.
“How was your flight?”
“Fine. There was an engine issue—they moved me to another carrier. No first class.” A faint grimace. “It's been some time since I've had to manage that. But I'm looking forward to the evening.” She glances around. “Your home is lovely.”
She says it the way you'd sign a form.
Bronwyn materializes with two cups of tea, hands one to me, takes a sip of her own, then wordlessly swaps them. “Yours has too much sugar,” she tells me. “It's revolting. Here.”
I take hers without comment. This is simply how it works.
Valentina watches the exchange with something that isn't quite disgust—closer to the expression of a woman observing a custom from a country she has no particular interest in visiting. She doesn't smile.
Bronwyn says something that makes Kyla inhale her tea, and I follow it up with something worse. Aunt Caitlin is laughing before I've finished the sentence.
Valentina tilts her head slightly, as if processing the concept of humor from a significant distance.
I think about the time Bridget laughed so hard at something I said that she inhaled her drink and had to be physically patted on the back before she snorted it out her nose. How would Valentina feel about that?
She turns to me, and for a moment, her composure shifts. Not warmth, really, but more like curiosity. “You love them,” she says, as if she’s noting something she didn’t expect, before the composure’s back and she looks away.
Aunt Caitlin saves us all. “We'll leave you two to settle in,” she says, and the women drift toward the kitchen with the tact of people who have seen enough.
Valentina reaches over and adjusts my tie. It's a gesture that might read as intimate if there were any warmth behind it. “It was crooked,” she says, her tone almost uncertain, like she's attempting a language she learned from a book. “There.”
“Thanks.” I give her my best smile. She's going to be my wife. It doesn't have to be strained and awkward, even though it feels like it could never be anything else. “You look nice.” Beautiful or lovely would be taking things too far.
“Mm.” She pats the knot. “Thank you. I wasn't sure what to wear. I've never been the main event at one of these before.”
So maybe she’s uncomfortable and out of place. Maybe I should make her feel at ease.
“Same.”
Main event. Christ.
We move through to the great hall. I place my hand at the small of her back, and she stiffens, just enough that I feel it. We're engaged to be married, and she stiffens at my hand on her back at our own engagement party. I keep my face perfectly neutral because what else am I going to do?
“Uncle Keenan. Da. Tully.” I steer us forward toward my uncles and father. “This is Valentina.”
Uncle Keenan clasps her hand with both of his, the way he does, the handshake of a man who doesn’t perform at authority but lives it.
He’s a bit smaller than he used to be, in the way that age happens so gradually you almost miss it.
His eyes find mine over her shoulder, just for a second, assessing and approving all at once, before he steps back so my father can meet her.
My father is a big man, and she blinks up at him with something close to surprise.
“You are Cormac McCarthy,” she says to Da.
“In the flesh.” He smiles. “Welcome to the family, lass.”
“Not in the family quite yet,” she says in her American accent, pleasantly enough. “But thank you. I've received a very warm welcome.”
My father keeps smiling.
Tully’s hair’s gone completely white, but he still holds himself erect, and even now he could take me in the ring.
“Tully,” I say, giving him a hug and a slap on the back. “Been a while. Valentina, Tully and Keenan, my da.”
Across the room, Seamus has his hand on Zoya’s shoulder possessively. She's laughing at something Cavin said, and Seamus is watching her laugh with the expression of a man who knows exactly how lucky he is. He should. They’re good together, despite fighting all odds to get here.
I look away.
“Come on, I'll make introductions.”
“I hope no one expects me to remember all their names,” Valentina says nervously. “I'd heard the McCarthys were prolific, but this is a bit much.”
A bit much.
I feel the prickle travel down my spine before I can stop it.
A bit much for whom, exactly?
I shrug. “I thought the Italians had a reputation for large families. How many brothers and sisters do you have?” The question lands somewhere between curiosity and challenge.
“Two brothers, both older.”
“Ah.”
Best conversation I’ve had in weeks.
We make our way through the hall into the main reception room, where a string quartet plays in the corner, and long buffet tables line the wall.
The bar is open, well-stocked, and I want none of it.
Colm’s in the corner with a drink he’s barely touched, watching the room the way he always does.
Not exactly surveillance, but inventory. He catches my eye and nods.
“Younger brother? He looks like you.”
“Aye, one of them. Daire’s around here somewhere too. Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, please. Amarone or Barolo?”
“Right.” Never heard of them, but I’ll ask.
“Thank you.” She looks away.
I return a few minutes later with her glass and a sparkling water for myself.
“You don't drink?” she asks.
I shake my head but don't offer anything else.
“An Irishman who doesn’t drink?” she pushes. But before I can answer, I hear a voice behind us.
“Declan, is this your fiancée?”
I turn to find Bianca tucked under Ashland's arm, the way she always is, speaking to one of the cousins while he holds her with half his attention and listens with the other. Their ease is almost uncomfortable to be near.
“Ashland and Bianca are newly engaged,” I say. “And this is Valentina.”
“Newly engaged?” Valentina says. “How newly?”
She congratulates Bianca, takes her hand ceremoniously, then gives her a slow once-over. “Have you been fitted for your dress yet?”
Bianca flushes pink. She's a stunningly beautiful woman, and it's genuinely unclear whether what just happened was a slight or only felt like one. “I have, actually,” she says, recovering. “Something with a medieval influence—Queen Guinevere at the altar.”
“Who?” Valentina asks.
“Guinevere,” Bianca says. “Knights of the Round Table. King Arthur.”
“Ah,” Valentina says. “Very pretty.” Then, turning back, “My mother is having mine made in Valencia. She has very particular tastes.”
“I see,” Bianca says pleasantly, and doesn't say another word about it.
I remind myself that I made my choice. I made it with both eyes open, and I'd make it again. I need to stop standing in my own sitting room, mourning the life I elected not to have.
“Where do you imagine we'll live?” Valentina asks.
She's halfway through her wine, surveying the room with an expression of careful neutrality, as if cataloging things she'll have opinions about later, in private, with someone else.
“After the wedding,” she continues. “Your family seems quite tight-knit.”
“Aye,” I say. “We are.”
“I imagine something in the city,” she says. “An apartment. Somewhere with a bit more”—she searches for the word—“privacy.”
She doesn’t like them. I watch her assess them, and I think, She doesn’t like any of this.
“Our fathers discussed us living in Ireland,” I say. “That was part of the arrangement.”
Her brows lift slightly. “Well, I assumed we'd have some flexibility—a base here, of course, and a place in New York as well. Dual residency. It makes sense, doesn't it?”
It makes sense. I take a slow breath. It makes perfect sense, and I hate it.
“Have you spent much time in America?”
“Aye.”