Jude pasted a smile on her face and dragged herself toward the garden gate like a woman negotiating a walk down death row. As she rattled her brain for the proper greeting, the woman yanked open the rear door of the car, chattering away to Jude and to the second woman, who stepped out of the passenger side. And, it seemed, to the world in general.
'I'm Kathy Duffy from down to the village, and this is Betsy Clooney, my niece on my sister's side. Patty Mary, my sister, works at the food shop today or she'd've come to pay her respects as well. But I said to Betsy this morning, why if she could get her neighbor to mind the baby while the two older were in school, we'd just come on up to Faerie Hill Cottage and say good day to Old Maude's cousin from America.'
She said most of this with her rather impressive bottom, currently covered by the eye-popping garden of red poppies rioting over her dress, facing Jude as she wiggled into the back of the car. She wiggled out again, face slightly flushed, with a covered cake dish and a beaming smile.
'You look a bit like your grandmother,' Kathy went on, 'as I remember her from when I was a girl. I hope she's well.'
'Yes, very. Thank you. Ah, so nice of you to come by.' She opened the gate. 'Please come in.'
'I hope we gave you time enough to settle.' Betsy walked around the car, and Jude remembered her from the pub the night before. The woman with her family at one of the low tables. Somehow even that vague connection helped.
'I mentioned to Aunt Kathy that I saw you at the pub last night, at Gallagher's? And we thought you might be ready for a bit of a welcome.'
'You were with your family. Your children were so well behaved.'
'Oh, well.' Betsy rolled eyes of clear glass green. 'No need to disabuse you of such a notion so soon. You've none of your own, then?''
'No, I'm not married. I'll make some tea if you'd like,' she began as they stepped inside the front door.
'That would be lovely.' Kathy started down the hall, obviously comfortable in the cottage, 'We'll have a nice visit in the kitchen.'
To Jude's surprise, they did. She spent a pleasant hour with two women who had warm ways and easy laughs. It was simple enough to judge that Kathy Duffy was a chatterbox, and not a little opinionated, but she did it all with great good humor.
Before the hour was over, Jude's head swam with the names and relations of the people of Ardmore, the feuds and the families, the weddings and the wakes. If there was something Katherine Anne Duffy didn't know about any soul who lived in the area during the last century, well, it wasn't worth mentioning.
'It's a pity you never met Old Maude,' Kathy commented. 'For she was a fine woman.'
'My grandmother was very fond of her.'. 'More like sisters than cousins they were, despite the age difference.' Kathy nodded. 'Your granny, she lived here as a girl after she lost her parents. My own mother was friends with the pair of them, and both she and Maude missed your granny when she married and moved to America.'
'And Maude stayed here.' Jude glanced around the kitchen. 'Alone.'
'That's the way it was meant. She had a sweetheart, and they planned to marry.'
'Oh? What happened?'
'His name was John Magee. My mother says he was a handsome lad who loved the sea. He went for a soldier during the Great War and lost his life in the fields of France.'
'It's sad,' Betsy put in, 'but romantic too. Maude never loved another, and she often spoke of him when we came to visit, though he'd been dead nearly three-quarters of a century.'
'For some,' Kathy said with a sigh, 'there's only one. None comes before and none after. But Old Maude, she lived happy here, with her memories and her flowers.'
'It's a contented house,' Jude said, then immediately felt foolish. But Kathy Duffy only smiled and nodded again.
'It is, yes. And those of us who knew her are happy one of her own is living here now. It's good you're getting around the village, meeting people and acquainting yourself with some of your kin.'
'Kin?'
'You're kin to the Fitzgeralds, and there are plenty of them in and around Old Parish. My friend Deidre, who's in Boston now, was a Fitzgerald before she married Patrick Gallagher. You were at their place last night.''
'Oh, yes.' Aidan's face immediately swam into Jude's mind. The slow smile, the wildly blue eyes. 'We're cousins of some sort.'
'Seems to me your granny was first cousin to Deidre's great-aunt Sarah. Or maybe it was her great-granny and they were second cousins. Well, hardly matters. Now the oldest Gallagher lad'-Kathy paused long enough to nibble on one of her cakes-'you had your eye on him at one time, didn't you, Betsy?'
'I might have glanced his way a time or two, when I was a lass of sixteen.' Betsy's eyes laughed over her cup. 'And he might've glanced back as well. Then he went off on his rambles, and there was my Tom. When Aidan Gallagher came back- well, I might have glanced again, but only in appreciation for God's creation.'
'He was a wild one as a lad, and there's a look about him that says he could be again.' Kathy sighed. 'I've al ways had a soft spot for a wild heart in a man. Have you no sweetheart in the States, then, Jude?'
'No.' She thought briefly of William. Had she ever considered her husband her sweetheart? 'No one special.'
'If they're not special, what would the point be?'
No point at all, Jude thought later when she showed her guests to the door. She couldn't claim he'd been her great love, as John Magee had been to Maude. They hadn't been special to each other, she and William.
They should have been. And for a time, he'd been the focus of her life. She'd loved him, or had believed she loved him. Damn it, she'd wanted to love him and had given him her best.
But it hadn't been good enough. It was mortifying knowing that. Knowing how easily, how thoughtlessly he'd broken still fresh vows and dismissed her from his life.
But neither, she could admit, would she have grieved for him for seventy years if he'd died in some heroic or tragic fashion. The fact was, if William had died in some freak accident, she could have been the stalwart widow instead of the discarded wife.
And how horrible it was to realize she'd have preferred it that way.
What had hurt more? she wondered now. The loss of him or the loss of her pride? Whichever was true, she wouldn't allow such a thing to happen again. She wouldn't simply fall in line-into marriage, then out again, because it was asked of her.
This time around, she would concentrate on herself, and being on her own.
Not that she had anything against marriage, she thought as she loitered outside. Her parents had a solid marriage, were devoted to each other. It might not have had that cinematic, wildly passionate scope some imagined for them selves, but their relationship was a fine testament to a partnership that worked.
Perhaps she'd pretended she would have something near to that with William, a quiet and dignified marriage, but it hadn't hit the mark. And the fault was hers.
There was nothing special about her. She was more than a little ashamed to admit that she'd simply become a habit to him, part of his routine.
Meet William for dinner Wednesday night at seven at one of three favored restaurants. On Saturday, meet for a play or a film, followed by a late supper, followed by tasteful sex. If both parties are agreeable, extend evening to a healthy eight hours' sleep, followed by brunch and a discussion of the Sunday paper.
That had been the pattern of their courtship, and marriage had simply slipped into the scheme of it.
And it had been so easy, really, to end the pattern altogether.
But God, God, she wished she'd done the ending. That she'd had the guts or the flair for it. A torrid affair in a cheap motel. Moonlighting as a stripper. Running away to join a motorcycle gang.
As she tried to imagine herself slithering into leather and hopping on the back of a motorcycle behind some burly, tattooed biker named Zero, she laughed.
'Well, now, sure that's a fair sight for a man on an April afternoon.' Aidan stood at the break in the hedgerows, hands comfortably in his pockets, grinning at her. 'A laughing woman with flowers at her feet. Now some might think, being where we are, that they'd stumbled across a faerie come out to charm the blossoms to blooming.'
He strolled toward the gate as he spoke, paused there. And she was certain she'd never seen a more romantic picture in her life than Aidan Gallagher with his thick, rich hair ruffled by the breeze, his eyes a clear, wild blue,
