be good all the time.'
'So you're always telling me. Maybe I'll find some handsome Irish rogue and have a reckless love affair.'
'It wouldn't hurt you any. Put flowers on Cousin Maude's grave for me, will you, darling? And tell her I'll come see her when I'm able.'
'I will. I love you, Gran.'
Jude didn't know where the time went. She'd meant to do something productive, had really intended to go out to play with the flowers for a few minutes. To pick just a handful to put in the tall blue bottle she'd found in the living room. Of course she'd picked too many and needed another bottle. There didn't seem to be an actual vase in the house. Then it had been such fun sitting on the stoop arranging them and wishing she knew their names that she'd whiled away most of the afternoon.
It had been a mistake to carry the smaller squat green bottle up to her office to put on the table with her computer. But she'd only meant to lie down for a minute or two. She'd slept for two solid hours on top of the little bed in her office, and woke up groggy and appalled.
She'd lost her discipline. She was lazy. She'd done nothing but sleep or piddle for more than thirty hours now.
And she was hungry again.
At this rate, she decided as she foraged for something quick in the kitchen, she'd be fat, slow, and stupid in a week.
She would go out, drive down to the village. She'd find a bookstore, the bank, the post office. She'd find out where the cemetery was so that she could visit Old Maude's grave for her grandmother. Which is what she should have done that morning. But this way it would be done and she could spend the next day going through the tapes and letters her grandmother had given her to see if there was a paper in them.
She changed first, choosing trim slacks, a turtleneck, and a blazer that made her feel much more alert and professional than the thick sweater and jeans she'd worn all day.
She attacked her hair-'attack' was the only term she could use to describe what she had to do to tame it into a thick, bound tail when all it wanted to do was frizz up and spring out everywhere at once.
She was cautious with makeup. She'd never been handy with it, but the results seemed sufficient for a casual tour of the village. A glance in the mirror told her she didn't look like a day-old corpse or a hooker, both of which could and had happened on occasion.
Taking a deep breath, she headed out to attempt another session with the leased car and the Irish roads. She was behind the wheel, reaching for the ignition when she realized she'd forgotten the keys.
'Ginkgo,' she muttered as she climbed back out. 'You're going to start taking ginkgo.'
After a frustrated search, she found the keys on the kitchen table. This time she remembered to turn a light on, as it might be dark before she returned, and to lock the front door. When she couldn't remember if she'd locked the back one, she cursed herself and strode around the cottage to deal with it.
The sun was drifting down in the west and through its light a thin drizzle was falling when she finally put the car in reverse and backed slowly out into the road.
It was a shorter drive than she remembered, and a much more scenic one without rain lashing at the windshield. The hedgerows were budded with wild fuchsia in drops red as blood. There were brambles with tiny white flowers that she would learn were blackthorn and freesia hazed and yellow with spring.
As the road turned she saw the tumbled walls of the cathedral on the hill and the spear of the tower lording over the seaside village.
No one walked there.
Eight hundred years they had stood. That, Jude thought, was a wonder of its own. Wars, feast and famine, through blood and death and birth, the power remained. To worship and to defend. She wondered if her grandmother was right, and if so, what one would feel standing in their shadow on soil that had felt the weight of the pious and the profane.
What an odd thought, she decided, and shook it off as she drove into the village that would be hers for the next six months.
CHAPTER Three
Inside Gallagher's pub the light was dim and the fire lively. That's how the customers preferred it on a damp evening in early spring. Gallagher's had been serving, and pleasing, its customers for more than a hundred and fifty years, in that same spot, by providing good lager or stout, a reasonable glass of whiskey that wasn't watered, and a comfortable place to enjoy that pint or glass.
Now when Shamus Gallagher opened his public house in the Year of Our Lord 1842, with his good wife, Meg, beside him, the whiskey might have come cheaper. But a man has to earn his pence and his pound, however hospitable he may be. So the price of the whiskey came dearer than once it had, but it was served with no less a hope of being enjoyed.
When Shamus opened the pub, he'd sunk his life's hopes and his life's savings into it. There had been more thin times than thick, and once a gale wind had whipped over the sea and lifted the roof clean off and carried it to Dungarvan.
Or so some liked to say when they'd enjoyed more than a glass or two of the Irish.
Still, the pub had stood, with its roots dug into the sand and rock of Ardmore, and Shamus's first son had moved into his father's place behind the old chestnut bar, then his son after him, and so forth.
Generations of Gallaghers had served generations of others and had prospered well enough to add to the business so more could come in out of the damp night after a hard day's work and enjoy a pint or two. There was food as well as drink, appealing to body as well as soul. And most nights there was music too, to appease the heart.
Ardmore was a fishing village and so depended on the bounty of the sea, and lived with its capriciousness. As it was picturesque and boasted some fine beaches, it depended on the tourists as well. And lived with their capriciousness.
Gallagher's was one of its focal points. In good times and bad, when the fish ran fast and thick or when the storms boiled in and battered the bay so none dared venture out to cast nets, its doors were open.
Smoke and fumes of whiskey, steam from stews and the sweat of men had seeped deep into the dark wood, so the place forever carried the smell of living. Benches and chairs were covered in deep red with blackened brass studs to hold the fabric in place.
The ceilings were open, the rafters exposed, and many was the Saturday night when the music was loud enough that those rafters shook. The floor was scarred from the boots of men, the scrape of chair and stool, and the occasional careless spark from fire or cigarette. But it was clean, and four times a year, needed or not, it was polished glossy as a company parlor.
The bar itself was the pride of the establishment, a rich, dark chestnut bar that old Shamus himself had made from a tree folks liked to say had been lightning-struck on Midsummer's Eve. In that way it carried a bit of magic, and those who sat there felt the better for it.
Behind the bar, the long mirrored wall was lined with bottles for your pleasure. And all were clean and shiny as new pennies. The Gallaghers ran a lively pub, but a tidy one as well. Spills were mopped, dust was chased, and never was a drink served in a dirty glass.
The fire was of peat because it charmed the tourists, and the tourists often made the difference between getting by and getting on. They came thick in the summer and early fall to enjoy the beaches, sparser in winter and at the dawn of spring. But they came nonetheless, and most would stop in at Gallagher's to lift a glass, hear a tune, or sample one of the pub's spiced meat pies.
Regulars trickled in soon after the evening meal, as much for conversation or gossip as for a pint of Guinness. Some would come for dinner as well, but usually on a special occasion if it was a family. Or if it was a single man, because he was tired of his own cooking, or wanted a bit of a flirt with Darcy Gallagher, who was usually willing to oblige.
She could work the bar or the tables and the kitchen as well. But the kitchen was where she least liked to be,
