Page 142 of Road Trip
Maeve’s heartbeat slowed and the turmoil in her mind seemed to clear as she wandered aimlessly down the rows of headstones, stooping to read the names of the departed: the Ryans, the Meehans, the Baughmans, the Murphys, and the O’Sheas.
She was stooped down, brushing fallen leaves from a headstone, when Sinead gave a low-pitched growl. Looking up, she saw a slender doe and her two fawns, delicately grazing at a clump of wildflowers fifty yards away.
Maeve held her breath as she watched the three animals, not wanting to spook them. Sinead, however, let out another warning growl, and before Maeve could stop her, went running after the deer, leash dragging behind. Fortunately, the deer easily bounded away to safety into a nearby grove of trees.
When Maeve caught up to Sinead, she was furiously sniffing at the spot where the deer had just been. She bent over to pick up the leash and noticed an arched headstone with the nameCONNORcarved into the marble.
She dropped to her knees and brushed away decades’ worth of lichen, moss, and leaves to read the rest of the inscription:
JOHN, BRIDGET, EILEEN AND PATSY CONNOR, TOGETHER IN LIFE, FOREVER IN CHRIST. OCTOBER 7, 1925.
Something inside her seemed to break. A whole family, Kathleen’s whole family, her mother, father, and two little sisters, everyone except her brother Tommy, had died in the fire that had destroyed their farmhouse. Maeve hugged her knees tightly to her chest and lowered her head and cried.
Cried for a family she’d never known, cried for Kathleen and her unfathomable loss. For the first time, she cried for her own loss, for her father, so many years ago, and for her mother, the seemingly indefatigable Mary Helen. At some point, Sinead, sensing her distress, whimpered and pawed at Maeve’s legs until she took the dog into her arms and held her close to her chest.
“Poor little girl,” she whispered in the dog’s silky ears. “I know. You miss your Esme.” She looked up at the sky, cornflower blue with a scattering of clouds, and suddenly knew what her decision would be. “Don’t worry, little one. I’ve got you now.”
She called Thereseon her way back to the village.
“Maeve? What’s wrong?” Therese didn’t bother with a greeting.
Maeve took a deep breath. “I’m not sure where to start. Where are you? Are you sitting down?”
“I’m in the kitchen, cleaning out Mary Helen’s spice cabinet. I just found three jars of mace. Who even knew that was a spice? Ialso threw out a can of ground nutmeg that expired the year I was born.”
“Don’t throw that out, honey, it’s still good.” Maeve’s impression of their frugal mother was perfect, and they both laughed.
“But seriously,” Maeve said. “I’ve got some crazy news for you. Remember the first night you ran into Esme at the Willow Tree?”
“Yeahhh. So?”
“You must have made a hell of an impression on the old girl, because shortly after you chatted her up at the Willow Tree, she called her lawyer and get this, wrote us into her will.”
“What’d she leave us? A bottle of gin and a carton of smokes?”
“Everything, Therese. Esme left us everything. Well, technically, she left it to Sinead, with us as Sinead’s guardians, or whatever you call it.”
“What the fuck?” Therese screeched. “Did you get hold of some gummies? You cannot be serious.”
“I am as serious as a heart attack. I just met up with a man named Billy McCracken, who is the executor of the estate. He said Esme had been worried about what would happen to Sinead after she died, because she had no living relatives except for Geoffrey, the brother she hated. After you showed up at the Willow Tree and started asking questions about Lady Geraldine, she asked McCracken if he could verify our claim about Lord Rossington fathering Kathleen. He, McCracken, said rumors about Kathleen had been floating around the family for years.”
“Wow. Just wow. What does all this mean? Because Esme told me that she sold her portrait because she needed the money.”
“Yeah, that part is confusing to me too. He said it’s too early to have a good estimate of what the estate is worth, but right now, we stand to inherit the gardener’s cottage and the inn.”
“She owned the inn? I didn’t know that.”
“Her father originally left it to her brother Geoffrey, but she bought him out a couple years later. So now it comes to us, or rather to Sinead.”
“How’s Geoffrey going to feel about all this? Is he still hanging around in Tarrymore?”
“Apparently so. Billy McCracken, Esme’s solicitor, said he’d already dropped by his office. How cold is that? Your sister’s body isn’t even in the grave and you’re already checking in to see what you inherit. Billy told us he took great pleasure in telling Geoffrey he wasn’t getting diddly-squat.”
“Okay. Now explain to me how a dog becomes an heiress?”
“All Esme’s assets are in a trust for the dog. You and I are her guardians, just like if she was a child, and after Sinead is gone, everything comes to us.”
There was a long silence at the other end of the line.
