Celtic Sister (29 page)

“Don’t we all agree?” Sam muttered.

“
First they wanted me to have an abortion. Then they were going to force me to give her up for adoption. Now they’ll probably demand custody. That would be ironic but so very possible with these people. They don’t like to lose. I pray every night that you find my booklet and figure out the clues. But in the meantime, we’re happy. I’m having a good life here. These wonderful Irish families – the Egans and the Murphys – have taken such good care of us. I don’t know where we’d be without them. Come see us soon. God bless you. Love, Emma.
”

Sam smiled weakly. “I like that. It means she moved on and lived her life.” His words were pleasant, but his eyes conveyed a deep sadness, almost as if he felt betrayed.

Amy withheld the impulse to say
she could have called at some point.
The more she thought about it, the more Amy realized that if Samantha was only fourteen, she might still be in danger. Emma was smart.

“She stayed safe, Sam.” Amy touched his hand and tried to get him to look her in the eyes. “Since the Richardsons didn’t win with the abortion or the adoption strategy, they’d go for custody next. Anything to flex their power muscle. She’s right. These people hate losing.”

Sam nodded. “You’re right. You’re both right. I need to stop replaying the
what ifs
in my head. We’re here now. We should go see her.” He got up and started stuffing items into his suitcase.

“But we’ll have to explain to her that Brent knows we came to Ireland—”

“He won’t tell anyone. He doesn’t want his parents to know.”

“But if he changes his mind—”

“Then we’ll drag those people through a nightmare they should have endured fifteen years ago. I’m not afraid of them. And when we’re done with this trip, I’m going to make sure Emma is not afraid of them either. She can come home—”

“She’s married.”

“She can come home and visit then.” He zipped up his suitcase triumphantly. “Let my parents meet their granddaughter. No one should have to hide for their entire lives.”

Amy put her hands on her hips, suddenly empowered. “I agree. I don’t want to be afraid of them anymore either.”

“Then don’t be. Let’s go.”

You didn’t lose a baby,
Amy thought. All the images assaulted her once again. But as she tossed the last couple of items in her suitcase and zipped it up, she realized that suffering as she had been and drinking herself to death were just more ways the Richardsons exercised their control over her life. Amy almost ran to the sink and dumped out the final bottle of whiskey, but she couldn’t quite muster the courage. Still, she didn’t need to cower and hide. She could go home and confront Brent, flex her own muscle. Use the things she knew would give her power over him – his fear that his parents might learn about their visit to Ireland for one thing – and perhaps the family’s desire to remain disassociated with the old story about the disappearance of Emma Foster.

It was time for something to change. Perhaps the Richardsons didn’t always
have to win.

Chapter Thirty

As it turned out, Amy hadn’t quite mastered Mrs. Egan’s detailed directions.

“We’ve driven down four county roads by now. Still no red house.”

“Triangular patch of grass!” Amy shouted as they approached an intersection. “Maybe we missed the red house.”

“Seriously? We’re going to continue on because we see a triangular patch of grass?”

“Why not? I haven’t seen a triangular patch of grass in the past hour. Take a left. See if we pass three farms.”

“There are farms in every direction. Of course we’ll pass three farms.”

Amy looked at her notes. “Perfect. Then we’ll take another left when we do.”

Sam grumbled but continued on.

After passing three farms and taking a left, they did, indeed, emerge on a road that approached the coast. Sam’s mood seemed to lighten when they reached a stopping place near a rocky cliff.

“Let me renew my spirit by listening to the ocean. Then we can keep driving.” He parked the car and got out.

Amy scrambled out after him, clutching the map and looking back and forth from the coastline to the features on the paper. After a moment, she sat down on a short wall by the road.

“Come here, Sam.”

He sat down next to her. “Figured it out?”

Amy pointed at the water. “If this is Dunworley Bay, we should be close.”

Sam studied the road ahead and then looked back from where they came. “Could be it.”

“Hey, Sam, according to the map, there should be a promontory fort around here somewhere.” She examined the shape of the coastline. “Like right here.” She furrowed her brow.

“You’re sitting on it,” a husky, elderly man’s voice said with a hint of amusement.

Sam and Amy both looked up with a start. A man with long eyebrows and shocks of white hair approached them from the coast. He must have just climbed up the rocks from the beach. Amy wondered how steep it was but refrained from asking the man in case it might sound rude to question his ability to make a difficult climb.

Sam stood up and touched the wall upon which they had been resting. Amy looked down. The shock of seeing the man waned as the meaning of his words sank in.
You’re sitting on it.

Covered in a variety of yellow, orange, and white lichens, the wall stretched out no more than thirty feet, but it was slightly curved with its concave side facing the rocky cliff.

Amy ran to the edge of the cliff which dropped straight down to the beach. To her right, a set of stairs led to the parking strip.
That’s how he got here.
She smiled.

When she turned around, she noticed something mind-boggling. Not the wall itself, but the pattern of the road around it. Just behind the wall, the road curved. In front of the wall, a worn path indicated that over the centuries, rather than tearing down the final remnants of the archaic structure, citizens had made a point to go around it. Amy walked to the edge of the wall.

“Look at this, Sam.” She pointed at the road which circumvented the short structure. “There is such a reverence for history here. The wall is sort of in the way, but over the decades, going back to horse travel, I assume, people just drove around it.”

The elderly man touched the wall. “Something to be cherished, one’s history. Who would destroy it?”

Sam shrugged. “Someone planning to build a subdivision.”

Amy socked him on the arm.

“What?” he said. “It’s true.”

“You’re right.” She turned to the man. “Thank you. I mean, thank your people for their respect for these snippets of the past.”

He nodded.

Sam got down to business. “We’re looking for the O’Briens. Aiden and… Emma O’Brien… Do you know them?”

“Aye. They’d be up there in the Keely Cottage.” The man gestured vaguely to the south.

Amy looked down the road. “Are we almost there?”

He nodded. “Just past the pub. Next left.”

Sam’s eye’s brightened. “That one?”

“Down the drive, second house on the left.”

Sam hugged Amy spontaneously. She hugged him back. When she pulled away, she noticed tears in his eyes. He attempted to dry them subtly.

“Thanks, man.” Sam took Amy’s hand. “Let’s leave the car here. It’s walkable.”

She grabbed her purse, and they took off in the direction of the cottage.

The driveway was a good four hundred feet. Amy felt like a reluctant dog on a leash, being yanked as Sam rushed up the hill. When they turned the bend, they saw three houses, two to the left and one to the right. A teenage girl with a lovely Irish lilt scolded a goat. She seemed more amused than cross.

“What did I tell you about Liam’s rucksack, Maeve?” She pulled a backpack away from the goat and hung it from a post just out of the creature’s reach. Almost. Maeve, a brown-and-white goat with large ears, made a move to nibble on the end of one of the straps. The girl burst out laughing. “Oh, come on with ya. Liam ought to know better than to be leaving it about, hadn’t he?” She rubbed the goat on its nubby head.

At that moment, the girl became aware of Sam and Amy, and she turned, jumping slightly at the sight of them. She swiped a strand of tangled dark hair out of her brown eyes.

“Sorry,” Sam said. “We didn’t mean to startle you.”

The girl smiled, her rosy cheeks spread into a joyful grin. “Are you Americans?”

“Yes.”

“Me ma is an American. So I guess that makes a total of three Americans I know as of this moment.” She strutted toward them confidently and held out a hand. “Name’s Samantha. Sam Murphy.”

Sam hesitated, so Amy grabbed the girl’s hand first. At that moment, Amy recognized Brent’s brown eyes. She tried not to flinch at the realization. But as she shook the good-natured girl’s hand, Amy noticed something remarkable. The eyes that she had often looked upon with trepidation appeared gentle and welcoming on this pretty young girl’s face.

“Hi. I’m Amy Martin.”

Sam seemed to be coming around to the realization that this delightful girl was actually his niece, Irish lilt and all. The child, having grown up and been educated with children in Cork County, would naturally sound more like her peers.

“Uh… the goat,” Sam said, stuttering.

Maeve had grabbed Liam’s backpack by one strap and was running across the yard.

“Oh, you would yeah? You pest,” Samantha shouted. “Just a second,” she said to Sam and Amy before she raced after the mischievous animal.

Ten minutes later, Maeve had been corralled and locked into a small pen, Liam’s backpack only slightly worse for wear.

“So sorry,” Samantha said when she returned. “You here about the bailer?”

“The bailer?”

“I guess you wouldn’t be now, would you? Come all the way from America to fix Grandpa Fergus’s bailer. Like eh…” She put on a mock businesslike face. “What can I do for you?”

Sam smiled. “Uh… I’m looking for Emma.”

“Me ma.”

“I suppose so, yes. Sorry, my name is Sam.” He finally found his manners.

“A Sam to a Sam,” the girl teased. “You can call me Sammy, so we don’t get confused.” She turned and took a step toward her house. “Come on in and have some apple cake. Ma should be around shortly. She went to the market.”

They passed through a door that opened into a bright yellow kitchen with Formica countertops. A long table covered with a floral tablecloth occupied most of the room. Amy noticed a Saint Brigid’s cross above the door through which they had entered. Sam sat at the end of the table directly facing the entryway. Amy sat on his right. From her vantage point, Amy could see the entryway in addition to a small sitting room filled with cozy chairs and a dark china cabinet.

Sammy placed a piece of pie and a small fork in front of each of them. “Here y’are.” She sat next to Sam and took a bite of her own slice. “So what brings you here? To see me ma?”

Amy glanced at the girl’s face. Relaxed and confident, she didn’t seem to have any concern about her mysterious American visitors. Amy wondered how much, if anything, Samantha knew about her biological history. If Samantha were her own daughter, would Amy fill her mind with stories about the Richardsons?

The ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner of the sitting room filled a void left by Sam’s inability to give the girl a meaningful answer. While Amy was struggling to come up with an explanation that would satisfy Samantha’s curiosity without disclosing their actual identity, Samantha put down her fork and stared at Sam. Amy’s heart pounded. She felt it wasn’t her place to spring the
he’s your uncle
bombshell on Samantha.
Does the girl even know she has an uncle?

All three participants in the dance of silence turned their heads at the sound of the doorknob jiggling.

“Ma,” Samantha cried.

“I see Maeve got hold of Liam’s rucksack again,” a pleasant voice said as the door swung open. A woman entered. Cloth grocery bags hung from her arms, and she juggled a two-foot plant that obscured her face.

“Boy’s got a serious crush on you, Sammy,” the woman continued as she waddled toward the table. “Only reason he does it. He’s not stupid.” She set the plant on the table, pulled the grocery bags off her arms, and placed them on the table near the plant. Samantha sprang into action and caught an apple before it rolled onto the floor.

While the newcomer arranged her bags on the table, Amy got a clear view of the woman’s face. She was unmistakably Emma Foster. Strands of auburn hair pulled astray by her struggle with the plant and the appearance of subtle lines around her eyes did not deter from her beauty. In fact, there was a timeless quality in her flushed face, a radiance. If pressed to describe it, Amy would have said that growing up on a farm in this lovely green country had invigorated every pore of Emma’s being. She was stunning in a way that flowed far below the surface, the trauma of her youth long buried beneath the pebbles at Saint Patrick’s Well.

Emma noticed her visitors for the first time. She smiled and nodded at Amy as if strangers eating apple cake in her kitchen was a daily occurrence. In the meantime, Sam had stood and taken a step in Emma’s direction. He paused as she acknowledged his presence.

Emma’s lips parted, but she hesitated before she spoke. Her brows furrowed in curiosity as her brain pieced together the familiar features standing before her. In an instant, a diverse array of emotions crossed her face at once – ranging from pure joy to trepidation – as if years of unprocessed feelings rushed to the surface waiting to be acknowledged and cataloged.

“Sam?” she whispered.

Samantha frowned for the first time since Amy met her. The onslaught of strange expressions on her mother’s face obviously alarmed her.

“Ma? Is everything okay?”

Emma ran into Sam’s arms. She hugged him and swayed as if to some unheard music.

“Oh, my Sam. You found us.”

Sam was unable to speak. He shook, silently releasing the tears.

“God bless you, Sam. I knew you could do it.”

“Well, I—”

“Ma?”

Emma became aware of her daughter. Alarmed and insecure, the girl seemed the polar opposite of who she had been when Amy first met her. Emma led Sam toward her daughter and put their hands together.