Page 122 of Road Trip
Maeve forced herself to sit up. She eyed the half-eaten shepherd’s pie with distaste. It had grown cold; the mashed potatoes looked like hardened stucco and the ground lamb and gravy were a gelatinous, unappetizing lump. But the hard roll on the plate looked fresh. She buttered it and chewed slowly while she tried to put together a plan of action.
The sky wasovercast as she trudged back toward the inn. She could just glimpse the roof of the Tarrymore manor house rising above the deep-green treetops ahead. Again, her mind wandered to Kathleen. Had she glanced backward at the house the night she was driven away from her home and her family?
She heard a vehicle slowing and glanced over to see a pickup truck pulling onto the shoulder of the road. A chill ran down her spine. Stranger danger? In Ireland? After a moment of internal debate, she walked over to the open window on the truck’s passenger side. Esme Rossington sat behind the steering wheel with Sinead on her lap.
“Decide to stay over, did you?” Esme asked.
“My passport has gone missing.”
“That’s a bother.”
“Yes, ma’am. The embassy in Dublin will get me a replacement, but not until Friday afternoon. And in the meantime, there are no rooms available anywhere around here.”
“And your sister?”
“She went ahead and flew home.”
“Get in then.” Esme pointed to the passenger door.
“Excuse me?”
“Get in the truck,” she repeated, louder, as though Maeve were either stupid or hard of hearing.
Maeve shrugged and climbed into the seat. Sinead wagged her tail, hopped over the console, and curled up in her lap.
Esme was dressed in the kind of brown zip-front coveralls worn by painters, and her long silver hair was poking out from beneath a green trucker’s cap.
“I might have a solution to your predicament. As you might know, I’ve dismissed Reggie, which means his living quarters are vacant.”
“Reggie, your handman?”
“Former handyman,” she said firmly. “Until very recently we had an arrangement. I allowed him to fix up a toolshed on my property, and he moved in. It’s not fancy. A bed, a table and chair, and a sink. A propane stove to keep warm. There’s a commode. You could stay there if it suits.”
“That’s very generous of you, but I don’t think…”
“I’ll charge you twenty euros a night, but you’re not to be bringing men in, or playing that loud music you lot listen to.”
Maeve didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. What she did know was that she’d gotten little sleep the night before at the airport hotel, what with Therese’s restless tossing and turning in that bed they’d shared. And right now it appeared that her only other alternative was sleeping in the rental car—which was even smaller and more cramped than the hotel bed.
“Just for one night,” she replied.
“Where’s your luggage then?”
“In my car in the parking lot at the inn.”
“I’ll take you there, and then you can follow me home,” Esme said.
Esme led theway down a broken brick pathway with Sinead following behind.
For the first time, Maeve noticed a towering pile of junk beside the porte cochere that looked to contain the discards of generations of Rossingtons; rusting pieces of farm equipment, bicycles with no tires, broken bits of furniture, what looked like the back seat of a car, even an ancient wringer washing machine.
She was already having second thoughts about her rash decision to accept Esme’s offer. She should swallow her pride, and her doubts, and call Liam. But she’d come too far to turn back now.
“This is it,”Esme announced, stopping short in front of an edifice that was the missing link between a shack and a shed.
Maeve stared at it, dry-mouthed. The building was fashioned of brick and rotting timbers, with a clay tile roof. There were no windows, just a door that hung crookedly on rusting hinges.
“Go ahead in,” her hostess urged.
