Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (59 page)

“D’ye know, as mad as ye are woman,” he replied “I think I just might.”

Father Terence McGinty, opening the doors to his church for Lauds, (which would be attended only by old half-mad Mag Ruffey in her bare feet and heavily shawled head, but nevertheless, being a servant of God, he would give the service and intone the prayers) saw for the first time in twenty odd years, smoke rising from the Riordan cottage. He crossed himself reflexively and muttered, “Strange bit of business that,” before sighting Mag Ruffey huffing down the hill, feet blue with chilblains, hands already fingering her rosary in anticipation. Mad as a bloody hatter this one and she’d have to be attended to, gently and patiently, as he had done for ten years now. He made a mental note to discuss the advantages of footwear with her and looked longingly over at the blue-gray smoke spiraling lazily out onto the morning breeze. It would have to wait, he thought impatiently and smiling greeted Mag with his expected morning salutation, “Ah, it’ll be a terrible old beast of a mornin’ then won’t it Miss Ruffey?”

An hour later and some small distance farther up the lane, Margaret MacBride rose from her bed and, out of long and painful habit, glanced out the north window of her kitchen. This morning though, she did not glance away as she normally would. Instead, she set the kettle down with a thump, spilling water in a small pool across the floor. She didn’t notice it (and wouldn’t until she stepped in it much later in the day) but instead gazed transfixed at the long thin column of smoke that unfurled in a long curling ribbon against a fiercely blue sky.

“Jaysus, Mary, Joseph an’ the little green men,’ she said loudly to the china goose above her sink, “whatever can it mean?”

By noon Father Terence, unable to bear his own nosiness any longer, fairly hustled Mag Ruffey out the door of the tiny church kitchen, shoving a thermos of hot cocoa and a sack of sandwiches into her arms and swinging the door shut with such alacrity behind her that Mag muttered, “Strange doin’s ‘bout here this mornin,” and stared at the inoffensive white door suspiciously for some moments before setting off for home.

Father Terry meanwhile, uttering a rather unholy prayer that no needy parishioner would come along and detain him, flew through his humble abode, out the front door and down the lane with a speed that belied his seventy years. He made himself halt some yards away from the little drive that led up to the Riordan cottage and compose himself. He took a deep breath and seeing that smoke still rose steadily from the chimney, folded his hands into the recesses of his old wool cardigan and realized to his horror that he hadn’t changed out of his rather ratty  soutane.

“Can I help ye, Father,” said a distinctly polite yet quite unfriendly voice from the vicinity of the overhanging yew hedge directly in front of him. Then a figure stepped out into the roadway and Father Terence McGinty—who prided himself on the one hundred sit-ups he did each morning and night, and the yoga he had practiced without fail for the last four decades of his life, taught to him by a wizened old Indian on a Tibetan hilltop as many decades ago—thought his heart had taken an attack. A ribald limerick flitted through his head instead of the prayers he’d thought would come at this moment. It was through a haze that he felt strong hands grab him and seat him gently on the grass.

“Are ye alright then, man?” the apparition in front of him asked.

He nodded, not trusting himself to look again at the too familiar features.

“It’s just that, well,” he smiled weakly, “’tis nothin’ lad.”

“I imagine it’s just that I look a wee bit too much like my grandda’,” the boy said with some amusement.

“Aye, ye could say that,” Father Terry agreed responding to the smile.

“Father Terry?” the boy asked, but the question was only slight, the answer already quite certain in the boy’s mind.

“Casey?”

“Aye.”

“How—how—” he stuttered weakly.

“I’d know ye if I’d run into ye on the streets of Calcutta, my daddy’s descriptions were that strong. An’ I’ve my own memories.”

“An’ yer daddy?” he asked hoping the boy did not hear the hope that trembled in his words.

“Six years gone now,” Casey said, eyes gentle.

“I didn’t know,” he felt a spectacular old fool, collapsed in the lane and receiving such news as this. But then there was never a great deal of dignity to be found in grief. Brian, his Brian, gone.

Terry took a long, shaky breath, willing his heart to slow, taking from memory the picture of a child, a dark-eyed boy full of bumps and bruises, rushing from one scrape to the next. There were no traces now in the face above him of the mischievous, burr-ridden child, who’d galloped pell-mell into everything. It was Brendan with minor alterations. There was the same ruthlessness in the face despite the charming smile and the same brute strength, reined in barely by force of intelligence and a will of iron.

“Aye, ye’ll have given me the helluva shock,” Terry said putting a trembling hand up to his face and searching for a calming breath.

“Will ye come in an’ have a cup of tea with us?”

“Us?” Terry asked accepting the lift up off the ground the boy offered.

“Aye, us,” was Casey’s unenlightening reply.

Terry usually visited the Riordan cottage twice a year, in the spring to open the windows and air it out and at the onset of winter to batten down the hatches. He never lingered, afraid always that if he so much as sat down for a moment the memories would swamp him. It was a comfort to be in it now though, with a fire crackling merrily in the hearth, tea on the boil and Brian’s son moving within it with grace and expediency. He was so like Brendan that Terry had to squelch the desire to sit him down and catch him up on the last thirty years. Much as he had to squelch the desire to ask for a whiskey in place of the tea that steeped in a little blue and white teapot in front of him. He needed the courage it provided, false or not, before he could ask what had happened to Brian.

Casey, in a way that was typical of the Riordans, saved him the trouble.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get hold of ye when Daddy died but I was feelin’ so badly for myself that I didn’t spare a thought for anyone else. An’ then I went to prison an’ I just couldn’t write. But Pat found this some time ago goin’ through Daddy’s things an’ I brought it down for ye.” He slid a crumpled bag across the table.

Terry opened it and withdrew a letter, still sealed, yellowing a bit with age and a small carving of a boat, the gray-hulled curragh they used to spend many quiet hours in. So Brian had remembered and had tried in this small way to apologize. “I think,” he said, not quite able yet to meet Casey’s eyes, “I’ll read it later.”

“It was quick an’ he likely never knew what hit him,” Casey said, pouring out the tea.

“Pardon me?” Father Terry said.

“Daddy’s death, it was a bomb.”

“That transparent, am I?” Terry gave a half-hearted smile that did not make the journey to his eyes.

“No,” Casey replied quietly, “it’s only I knew ye’d be wonderin’.”

“Thank you,” Terry said just as the door swung open and amidst the skirl of cold air stepped a girl. Us, eh? He smiled broadly; the Riordans had the damnedest luck with women.

“Pamela, this’ll be Father Terence McGinty, he was my Grandda’s best friend an’ an honorary member of the Riordan family, what there is left of it,” he smiled ruefully and the girl stepped forward, rain beading in tiny crystals in her hair, face flushed with the cold and damp.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said, dropping a bouquet of pine boughs, pungent and sharp with rain, onto the floor by the peat shod. Product of the seedlings Brendan had brought back from the States forty years ago, now grown to adulthood and outlasting Brendan by many years.

“’Tis my pleasure surely,” Terry said and extended his hand. She returned his grip firmly, meeting his eyes squarely. He blushed under such a frank gaze; here was him seventy years and then some, still knocked sideways by a girl’s beauty. There was some nonsense, he supposed, that a man never outgrew.

“I was thinkin’ perhaps, darlin’,” Casey began with a careful glance at Terry, “that we could ask Father Terry to marry us?”

There was no mistaking the surprise in her face. “Now you mean?”

“Not this exact instant but in the next few days if possible.” He turned to Terry, “Would it be possible?”

“If ye have a license, I suppose I don’t see why not. ‘Tis a bit unorthodox but then yer family isn’t exactly notorious for stickin’ to tradition. A few days to tell yer relations an’ anyone else ye might want to witness the nuptials—”

“There isn’t anyone,” the girl said quietly, meeting Casey’s eyes in a look of pained understanding then smiling softly, almost shyly, “there’s just the two of us.

The windows in Terry’s house were not lit and Peg, knowing this could mean only one thing, hesitated to go in. Though they had supper together every Tuesday night, she knew tonight was different. It was the wind that finally goaded her to the door; it came off the sea in great sheaves, tearing the breath from her lungs. At her age, it was no longer romantic to get soaked and catch your death, as generally it was too literal to do so.

Terry didn’t answer her knock, so she let herself in, took off her wet things and stepped into the kitchen. It was silent as the grave and twice as dark. She cursed mildly as her good foot hit the corner of a coatstand and tipped it over with a great roaring crash.

“Turn a light on before ye bring the roof down on us both,” came a dry voice from the midst of the darkness.

“Bloody old fool, sittin’ in the dark,” she grumbled, waving her hand to and fro above the sink in a vain attempt to locate the pull for the light.

“Little higher,” said Terry’s voice seeming to move up and down in the darkness.

“Well if ye can see it, ye damned old scarecrow, then turn it on yerself.”

The light came on a moment later and Peg expected to find Terry giving her the odd stare he always did when she failed to accomplish simple things. Instead, he just looked old and very tired.

“Well I hardly need ask, do I? Ye’ve been down to the cottage then?”

“Aye, I’ve been down,” he replied and sat down heavily on a chair.

“Well then, who was it?” she asked her throat suddenly tight and dry.

“Wasn’t the ghost of himself come back to haunt us, though I must admit it did seem so for a minute.”

“Did it?” She sat as heavily as he had, wanting to scream at him to hurry and say what he had to tell and on the other hand wishing she still had the legs to fly out the door and into the wind.

Terry stroked the old, satiny top of the table under his hand, the long-boned fingers swooping in perfect rhythm, back and forth, back and forth. It was oddly soothing and yet Peg, having known this man all but ten years of his life, knew that it was not comfort he was deriving from it.

“What is it, Terry?”

He closed his eyes so she could not read the strange irises as she’d become so accustomed to during their long chats.

“Brian’s dead,” he said finally, “I never even guessed, all those summers that passed an’ still I was waitin’ for him te come an’ gaze at the stars with me, te fish on fine days an’ te tell me that his boys had long ago left this country. We’d of had a fine time of it over that then wouldn’t we of?”