Page 7 of The Apple Cider Orchard

‘My grandmother was from there,’ Molly found herself saying. ‘County Tipperary.’

‘Ah, lovely part of the country. What brings you over? Looking for your ancestors, I suppose.’

Molly hesitated. ‘A promise,’ she said, uncertain where that had come from.

The woman nodded, as if this explained everything. She introduced herself – Nora or Noreen, Molly couldn’t quite catch it over the noise of the engines – then mercifully lapsed into silence as the plane taxied toward the runway.

Take-off pressed Molly back into her seat, the force a physical manifestation of momentum she couldn’t control. Below, New York receded, buildings shrinking to miniatures, then toys, then nothing as they pushed through cloud cover into the blue-white emptiness above.

Her eyelids grew heavy as the travel chaos ebbed. The steady hum of the engines wrapped around her like white noise. Her neck settled awkwardly against the window, but she was too tired to care.

Sleep claimed her in fragments – five minutes here, ten there, never deep enough to truly rest. A patch of turbulence jolted her awake just as she’d finally sunk into something resembling real sleep. The plane dipped and swayed, passengers gasping as their stomachs floated momentarily. The seatbelt sign pinged on.

‘Just a bit of a tumble,’ the captain’s voice announced in a comforting Irish lilt. ‘Should be through it in no time.’

Molly’s neck screamed in protest as she straightened. Her right hand had instinctively moved to her laptop case, tucked securely under the seat in front of her.

The turbulence smoothed out eventually, but sleep remained elusive. Molly watched a movie without absorbing it, picked at the rubbery airline meal and paced the narrow aisle to stretch her cramping legs. Her body ached with fatigue, but her mind buzzed with alertness.

When the captain eventually announced their initial descent into Shannon, the windows showed nothing but darkness.

It was the early hours of the morning in Ireland, of course, still a while before dawn would reveal the landscape below. Molly felt a pang of disappointment – she’d imagined her first glimpse of her grandmother’s homeland would be those famous forty shades of green, not this impenetrable blackness.

Shannon Airport at 5.30 a.m. was a peculiar limbo – half-asleep yet fully operational, albeit sparsely populated with bleary-eyed travelers and airport staff moving with the deliberate slowness of the pre-dawn hours. Molly followed signs to passport control, joined a short queue and was processed with surprising efficiency by an officer whose brogue was so thick she had to ask him to repeat himself twice.

‘Business?’ he asked, eyeing her more formal attire as he stamped her passport.

‘Personal actually,’ she replied, and he gave her a surprised glance.

The baggage claim area was empty, passengers from her flight circling the carousel like planets around an absent sun. Molly waited, checking her watch, then checking it again as the minutes stretched until the bags appeared. One by one, other passengers claimed their luggage and departed, until she stood alone beside the slowly rotating belt.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, approaching the service counter where a young man was tapping at a computer. ‘I’m still waiting for my suitcase from the JFK flight.’

He glanced up, nodded and checked his watch. ‘Sometimes stragglers come through on the next one if the lads stopped for their morning cuppa in-between. Give it a few more minutes.’

Molly’s eyes widened at this, but sure enough, some fifteen minutes later, her suitcase surfaced – it had evidently been a casualty of the inexplicable tea break.

‘Told ya,’ the baggage handler said, with a relaxed smile that suggested this was a common occurrence.

Her luggage finally secured, Molly made her way to the transportation desk, where a cheerful woman with dark hair greeted her, smiling when she told her where she was headed. ‘Golden Valley? Lovely spot.’

Molly nodded, pushing the small talk aside for now. ‘What’s the fastest way?’

‘Taxi would be quickest, but it’ll cost you a fortune, to be honest – a hundred and fifty euro or thereabouts.’

Molly winced. Between airline tickets, excess baggage palaver and overpriced airport food, the hits just kept on coming. ‘Any other options? Besides a rental car.’ She had already decided she wasn’t going to risk that, since she’d never driven on the left side of the road in the darkness, nor indeed anywhere other than within the US. Heck, as it was, she barely drove in New York.

‘Yeah, the bus goes down that way. A longer spin, but only twenty euro.’

Molly hesitated, weighing time against money, her natural inclination to efficiency battling with the more practical voice in her head. Aoife would have taken the bus without question, would have chatted with fellow passengers and arrived at her destination with three new friends and an invitation to dinner.

‘That’ll work,’ she replied decisively.

With timing, instructions and a ticket in hand, Molly found a café and ordered a tea this time – warm, rich and strong, and infinitely better than the tepid varieties back home. She claimed a small table by the window while waiting for the bus departure time, watching as the first hint of dawn lightened the sky outside.

Despite the discomforts of the journey, despite her exhaustion, the sticky stain and rebellious luggage, a sense of rightness settled over her. She was actually here, in Ireland. About to fulfill a promise a long time in the making.

Whatever came next, she had finally taken the first step. Then, suddenly overcome by the significance of it all, to say nothing of the grief burden she’d been successfully holding back all year, tears finally brewed in Molly’s eyes.