Page 146 of Road Trip
“Can I ask you something?” he said, after he’d dressed.
She propped herself up on an elbow, facing him. “Is it something serious?”
“It is. Today, after Billy Mac told you about the inheritance thing, you seemed conflicted. Angry, even. And then you walked away. We were both sure you were going to come back and tell him to bugger off. That was only a few hours ago. What happened to change your mind? And don’t try telling me it was your irresistible attraction to me, or the dog.”
“I’m not sure I can explain it,” Maeve admitted. “I really had no intention of letting Esme Rossington, or anyone for that matter, have the final say in how I live my life. I went rage walking through the village, and a little ways out into the countryside I found myself standing in front of the church where my great-grandmother’s family were all buried.”
“St. Bonaventure.” He nodded. “My mum and dad are there too.”
“The genealogist we consulted in Cobh told us Kathleen’s family was buried there, but I’d forgotten it until today. So there I was, idly wandering through the gravestones. Everything was overgrown. I had no hope I would find the Connors. But then Sinead took off running after some deer, who bolted into the woods. And she came back to the spot where they’d been grazing, and she was sniffing around at something. I bent down to take a closer look and there it was—a marble marker, the headstone for Kathleen’s mother and father and baby sisters—all of them killed in a house fire not long before Kathleen left for America.”
“And you had a revelation.”
“Don’t laugh. I really did.”
“My love, it’s the Irish in you. Embrace it.”
“I sat there on the ground. It was so peaceful, my mind finally got quiet. I tuned out all the noise, and I thought about the generations of women in my family; smart, capable, strong-minded women who’d lost so much, but who’d carried on and made a life for themselves. I decided it was time for me to stop treading water, stop accepting the status quo and relying on the sure bet. Do you know the poet Mary Oliver?”
He shook his head.
“There’s a line from her best-known poem and she asks, ‘So what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.’ That’s always spoken to me, but today, in that beautiful graveyard, silent except for the buzz of bees on the clover and a wren singing from a rosebush, I asked myself that question, and it came to me that it’s not too late.”
“Of course it’s not too late,” Liam said.
“No, I meant it’s not too late to let go of a life that’s not working and instead, try for one that might be wild. And precious, and amazing. And terrifying. I think I owe that to Kathleen. And Mary Helen. But mostly, I owe it to myself.”
Maeve sat up and swung her legs off the bed. She wrapped the sheet around herself and walked Liam to the door of the suite. “Those are the reasons I’m staying. And you, and Sinead? You’re what Southerners call a sercy.”
“Which is what?”
“An unexpected gift.” She gave him a lingering kiss and felt his lips beneath hers curve into a smile.
CHAPTER 63
“Ma’am? It’s Shawn. You’ve a gentleman down here in the lobby asking to see you.”
“Me? I’m not expecting anyone. What’s his name?”
“He won’t give me his name. An older fellow. Driving a Rolls-Royce, he is. Just said to tell you it’s a family friend.”
“Tell him I’ll be down in a minute,” Maeve said. It was Monday morning.
She spotted her visitor as soon as she entered the lobby, which was mostly empty. He was, as Shawn Davis had said, an older man. Bald, with a neatly trimmed silver mustache. He was leaning on the back of an armchair, finishing a pint of beer from the lobby lounge.
“Hello,” she said as she approached. She held out her hand. “I’m Maeve Dunagin. And you are…”
He didn’t take her hand, instead keeping his own inserted in the pocket of his jacket.
“Geoffrey Rossington. I thought I should meet the so-called cousin who managed to worm her way into my sister’s affections—and her estate.”
Maeve was taken aback by his blunt approach. Now that she was closer, she saw that he bore a startling resemblance to Esme. He had that freakishly high Rossington forehead. He had blue eyes anda chiseled chin. He’d been handsome once. But now his nose and face had the broken veins of a hard drinker and his complexion was yellow-hued and a mass of wrinkles.
Rossington was dressed the part of an aristocrat gone to seed. His Harris Tweed sport coat was frayed at the cuffs and his dress shirt was wrinkled. He wore brown corduroy pants that sagged on his body and the cinched belt revealed that he’d lost weight.
“Look,” Maeve said, “Therese, my sister, and I had nothing to do with your sister’s decision to name us in her will. I was as surprised as you when Billy McCracken gave me the news.”
“I doubt that,” he said calmly. “You should know that I’ve hired a solicitor to fight this so-called will of hers. My sister did not have the mental capacity to make such a huge decision. Leaving an estate to a dog? It’s insane. She clearly had diminished faculties.”
