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This country claims to be neutral. It’s not neutrality—it’s cowardice because no one wanted to take a stand and get involved. The ones who have will be persecuted for it, mark my words.”
“Life will try to take things from you, to see how strong you are,” my grandmother liked to say. “Don’t let it. Find what you want, take it with two hands, and don’t let go.”
The main street in Kislee was as quaint as a film, complete with small pubs, grocery stores, and storefronts. Towering hills surrounded the small village, and I even saw pictures of people riding in horse-drawn carts. It was rustic and just the type of place I’d love to visit.
The men had been kind, just like so many of the people Harding had befriended during her short time in town. It felt as if she knew everyone, perhaps because she spent so much time out wandering or because she was unconcerned with our social hierarchy. She had ties everywhere. I was proud to have introduced such a sunny being into the fabric of our town.
“This time with you has served as a balm to my soul. I have never met someone so willing to let me be myself. There’s no judgment from you. I felt it in Dublin, and I’ve felt it here. I think of you as a sister, Evie. The sister I never had.”
“There have been times I’ve taken shortcuts, and if I could do it all again, I wouldn’t. I’d be me, without apology. Do what will bring you joy, but don’t rush. It takes time to know everything that you are and all that you can do. I can already see that you will do a lot. I see that about you.”
My parents’ motorcar bounced over the cobblestones, and I rubbed my palms on the skirt of my dress, wishing I didn’t feel so nervous to see my family. I shouldn’t have felt nervous. They were my parents. Yet I barely knew them, not even as well as I knew my tutor, and certainly not as well as I knew Harding.
“Fear is the greatest weapon people use to get you to do what they want. It can be a powerful thing.”
Now that we were looking right at each other, I noticed his eyes were captivating, a greenish gray with full lashes and heavy dark eyebrows. He also had the perfect amount of dark stubble on his cheeks and a rugged way about him that made me want to go back to the part where I could smell his cologne. He gave me a slight smile, and I flushed, worried he knew what I’d been thinking.
It hit me that he had the perfect combination of good looks and self-effacing charm, not to mention that accent. He probably enchanted a new tourist every week. Perhaps a little distance would be wise.
“Sleep on it, then,” he said in that charming lilt. “Your worries will always be there, waiting for you in the morning. Better to greet them with a clear head.”
“There were all these people who needed her, and, in the process, she forgot I needed her, too. We’ve worked through it,” she said, quickly. “I feel bad even telling you. It’s just that, to have her tell me that she didn’t want me in Ireland . . . it brought back some old, unwelcome feelings.”
The past few hours had been too much. My heart ached for my mother, my grandmother, and all the pain of the past.
“Evie, my parents were terrible people. Traitors to this country, loyalists.
Pious and pure, yet willing to let their neighbor starve in the name of the crown. I did not have a choice in who raised me. I do have a choice in who raises my child.” Her voice was firm. “This is my child, regardless of the circumstance.”
“Life goes faster than you’d expect. Keep making a point to do the things that make you happy,
The word that kept coming to mind with him was “respectful,” and I realized that I’d be much more interested in dating if the men I met acted a bit more like him.
I tried to piece together my thoughts. “I’ve always felt that, with a grandmother, there’s a line you don’t cross, you know? A level of respect that should be maintained, so I never asked questions beyond what felt appropriate. But my mother should have, because that’s her mother. With your mother, it’s fair game to ask those questions.”
“Because your mother is your mother. She’s been there from the beginning, and she’ll be there at the end.”
Grady squinted in the sun and reached in his shirt pocket for a pair of sunglasses. They were aviators, mirrored, and he looked so attractive in them that I forgot all about the sheep. Instead, I kept sneaking looks at him, wishing the ride would never end.
My grandmother wasn’t there, and for a second, it felt a little intimate having Grady standing next to my bed. His eyes met mine, and I had a feeling he was thinking the same thing.
“Thank you,” I said. “You’re very good at your job.” “Oh, I don’t think of it as a job. I think of it as a joy.”
Tia and I had started the business because we were passionate about science and discovering new things, but this year, her father had really pushed us to focus on bringing the product to market. I looked forward to getting past all that and spending more time in the lab.
“Time heals. That’s what we’re told. Forgiveness heals.”
“I was so sure time would give me perspective, but the hurt is still there. The anger.” “The love?” I dared to ask, and she closed her eyes tight. “Yes,” she said, softly. “There is most certainly the love.”
“Grandma,” I said, and she looked at me. “Thank you for bringing me here to do this with you. For letting me in.”
He wanted to walk with me. Did I want to walk with Sullivan? It scared me to take that next step, especially given the way I’d felt about him that day he’d brought Alby gifts. We’d been friends for so long, but I didn’t know that I was ready to make promises that I might not keep.
Sullivan and I spent nearly an hour walking through the lavender fields, catching butterflies and telling stories. Finally, we sat next to the field under a tree, and he handed me a piece of peppermint.
He burst out laughing. The next thing I knew, he’d cupped my chin in his hand and was giving me the sweetest kiss I’d ever had. Fire, whiskey, and fresh air seemed to cut through me, and I pulled him in close, running my hands over the hard lines of his upper body. We lingered together, foreheads touching.
My parents—my mother in particular—seemed to suffer alongside my grief. She joined me on long walks, spent time sewing next to me, and listened as I pounded my devastation into the piano.
“No, it got lost somewhere along the way. Sullivan made it, you know. He was good at woodwork. He wouldn’t come with me, not without being married. The trunk felt a bit like having him by my side. It would have been wise to bring him, but not fair. It ended us.”
She looked down at her hands. “I was chasing a dream that belonged to someone else. With time, I found my own dreams and grew to accept the ones I’d left behind. There’s little that our family knows about my time here because I ran away from my life. I know you’re curious and your mother is, too, but it’s something I spent years trying to forget. It was hard on me.”
“Not at home,” my grandmother said. “There was nowhere to go. Guests visited for weeks at a time, and Aisling became the place to be. It was quite lively.” She traced her finger over her mother’s face. “I kept out of the way.”
“She’s beautiful,” I said, and she nodded. “My mother was very smart.” Her voice was full of admiration. “My father, he was always at the center of everything. I do wish he’d deferred to my mother more, but that was not the way it was back then. I think I made a decision when I was young that I did not want to marry someone like him, which is how I ended up with a wonderful man like your grandfather.” “I feel like you showed me what to look for,”
My grandmother looked up at me. The pain in her eyes was so raw that it cut me to the quick. I considered all the secrets that we kept close, to keep our hearts from shattering.
When I turned to look at Alby, the love I felt for him was brighter than the moon.
Whenever I had the time or the energy, I wrote him letters, like Fedelma had suggested, but I didn’t write them in anticipation of being apart; I wrote them so that when he was older, I could hand them to him myself.
Elegant as ever, she perched on the windowsill, her ankles crossed. I took notice of her shoes, a fashionable pair of heels in a color Harding would have adored, and her necklace, made of gold, with a heart-shaped locket.
“Is that how you saw it?” I asked. “That having a child was giving your life away?”
It wouldn’t be hard for me to leave. Certainly not to leave my parents. I still had moments when I thought of that time in the motorcar, when I begged them to go find Harding before we left, and they’d refused. I had no power here, no voice. The money Harding had hidden would give me the resources to leave it all behind.
Out in the hallway, I sank to the ground and buried my head in my hands. Tears rushed out, and I tried to cry as silently as possible. My grandmother’s heartbreak was so painful. On top of that, I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother.
It had probably been the best hour of my life. I couldn’t stop thinking about that moment where we’d folded into each other in the rain. The warmth and safety I’d felt in his arms.
I read to her, and she considered the pictures. The book was a work of art, with vibrant, detailed drawings of animals and vivid fancies that would have captured my imagination all hours of the day.
“Orchestrate things. Fix things. That’s what science is all about for me, and I love it—figuring out how to do something, gathering evidence to support my theory, and finding a way to make it work. I’ve gotten really good at making things go how I want them to.”
“But if I learned anything from my divorce, it’s that it’s important to feel your feelings. Move through them, even if it’s hard. Then you can let them go.”
Life is full of sorrow. It doesn’t do us a bit of good to run from it.”
“It’s easy to believe there’s no such thing as heartbreak in a place as beautiful as this.”
He was as beautiful as the landscape, and I could have listened to him until the sun went down. I was absolutely fascinated with him, and that was a problem, but for once, it was one I didn’t feel the need to solve.
The simplicity of his heart made mine swell, then ache, as I considered how complicated it had all become.
“I wondered what it would have been like if she’d stayed. If we would have had a family together. I’ve found peace with it, but I’m not afraid to tell you that she was the love of my life.”
