So all four of us crossed the room and ranged ourselves before the O’Connor widows. Mike took center stage. “What happened twenty-seven years ago? Between Dad and the two of you.”
Kate’s cup rattled against the saucer as she plunked it down. Maggie spoke sharply. “None of your business.”
Lauren looked mulish. “We’re curious. And everyone here loves to gossip, so if we buy enough pints, someone’s going to talk. But we’d rather you did.”
The women exchanged a glance, and then Kate sighed in defeat. Maggie scowled. “It was all bound to come out sooner or later. Come on, then. We’ll go back to my place.”
Chapter Nineteen
First, Maggie had to make tea for all of us. She poured for herself last, and then we settled around the low wooden table, warm mugs between our hands as the rain started to patter down. “We grew up together. Patrick and Brian and me.” She nodded at Paul. “I had a baby sister, you know, but she was ten years younger and quiet, so we never paid her any attention.
“Brian was the daring one. We’d go swimming at night or tell our parents we were on school trips and sneak out to parties. Stupid things. Patrick was a little older, and stubborn as hell. Came with us but would worry the whole time.”
She paused and turned her mug before sipping from it. “And I was...young. Not purposefully cruel, but I flirted with Patrick when I knew my heart went to Brian. Stole kisses from both. Still, I didn’t expect Patrick to be so shocked when Brian proposed and I said yes.”
Beside me, Mike shifted. Slowly, I lay my hand on his and our fingers entwined. Maggie pushed out a breath and continued. “We were going to live at the farm when he came back from university. But Brian—he was so rash. He wanted a united Ireland. He wanted to go off and fight.”
Mike jerked. “Mom—”
Kate pressed her lips together and looked down.
Maggie continued. “We tried to talk him out of it. I begged. Patrick forbade it. And yet Brian said, ‘I have got to do this. I love you, but this is bigger than us.’” She glanced at Kate and then pushed her shoulders back defensively. “It’s true.”
“So?” Lauren’s face was tight.
“So he left. Made some very unsavory friends. And when he came home, they came with him. All these angry young men. And then one night the farmhouse burned down, and there was insurance money, and where did it go? To the nationalists.”
Mike’s hand tightened on mine. “You’re not saying he did it on purpose.”
Maggie met his gaze straight on. “Brian wouldn’t. Those friends of his—I don’t know. It didn’t look good.”
“But why did he leave?”
She shook her head. “He owed money. He should have used the home insurance to pay off the bank, but it disappeared the same way the loans had. He thought he could make more in America. But if he did we never saw it. I think he mostly just wanted to wash his hands of it all.” She took a stoic sip. “And I did take up with Patrick while he was gone. I would have gotten over it, but Brian never asked me to.”
Mike focused on his mother. “Did you know all of this?”
“I learned.”
Lauren kept shaking her head. “So he just married you so he could stay? No. Dad wouldn’t do that.”
“I loved your father very much. And he loved me. It just took time.”
“And that was it?” Paul burst out, gaze locked on his aunt. “You never talked to him again? It was just—over?”
Maggie looked out the window. “Sometimes things are just over.”
Mike leaned forward, his hands pressed together between his knees. “But I remember that conversation, about there being trouble at Kilkarten. That was why I thought there was something buried. You were shocked. You cried. You didn’t know he’d married you for a green card until then? That was ten years into your marriage.”
“I know.”
Mike looked shaken. I squeezed his hand. It wasn’t easy, finding out something you believed so strongly in hadn’t really existed. “He should have told you earlier.”
Kate exhaled. “It’s all in the past.”
To her, maybe. But looking at Mike’s face, I could tell it wasn’t in the past for him.
We barely spoke until we’d closed the door to his room. He sat down on his side of the bed and fell backward. I lay down from my side, so that our heads touched each other. “It’s weird. Learning something about someone, when you thought you already knew everything.”
“Maybe it’s impossible to ever really know anyone.”
“But he was dead. He wasn’t supposed to change.” He reached his hand up, and I met it with my own. Our fingers tangled, his warm and strong. “I can’t imagine him loving anyone other than my mom. It feels wrong.”
I turned my head and smiled. “Because he had a life before her?”
He turned with a slight smile. He was upside down, his eyes turned the wrong way. “Okay, I’m being unfair. But I wish my mother had told me.”
“I guess she didn’t think it was any of your business. The nerve.”
He growled and then kissed me. Our lips met, upside down, almost unfamiliar, and then we were laughing and spinning and climbing on top of each other, seeking comfort and warmth and happiness.
On Friday it rained so hard there was no point going into the field. Drizzles were fine; deluges were not. Outside, the wind roared, like the inside of a seashell. I curled up against Mike’s chest and glared out our window. “Great. Now what?”
“I vote we stay in bed all day.”
“Vetoed. Too many people will know we’re having sex, and that’s embarrassing. Like my advisor. And your mother.”
He started to grin when I mentioned Jeremy, and then the smile flatlined. “Okay. Maybe not ideal.”
“I guess we can play more board games.”
“No. You cheat.”
Valid point. Two nights ago we’d been playing Stratego, and when it became obvious I was going to lose, I started moving the immobile bomb pieces.
Well, it made the game more interesting.
Someone pounded on the door. “Mike! Mike!” The knob rattled. “Open up!”
He groaned and rolled out of bed. “Go away, Anna.”
“Open! Now!”
He pulled the door open. “What?”
Anna threw herself on the loveseat, caught sight of me, and barely managed to restrain her eyes from rolling. “You have to drive me over to pub. The adults have been interrogating me for two hours about my college plans.”
Mike crossed his arms. “The pub where you’ve been underage drinking.”
She turned her eyes on me. “Natalie!”
I jumped up and headed for the shower. “Oh, hey. I am not part of this conversation.”
“Tell him it’s legal here!”
“Shirker,” Mike muttered as I closed the bathroom door.
When I came out, an agreement had been reached. It turned out no one wanted to stay indoors, so we all headed out to the pub. It was already packed, but Mike and I managed to squeeze in at the end of a table next to the O’Brien family and their four children. Five-year-old Kelly kept sticking her elbow in my side and stealing peeks at me, but other than that it was a pretty good fit.
As Mike spoke, Kelly stopped watching me and started watching him. Her little brother got jam all over Mike’s arm, which he absentmindedly cleaned off.
And then, in the middle of our happy, light-hearted conversation, he looked up with this half smile, like he’d forgotten it on his face. “I’m going back home in three weeks.”
“For another weekend?”
“No. For good. I have training camp on the twenty-sixth.”
I shook my head, oddly numb. Of course he had training camp. He was a New York Leopard. “Are you excited?”