Aidan answered. Trevor made it a point to go straight to the head of a company. Or in this case, a family.
'It's Trev.'
'Well, now, I thought I'd see you sitting at one of my tables by this time of day.'
Aidan raised his voice over the lunchtime clatter, and Trevor imagined him pulling pints one-handed while he talked. In the background he heard Darcy's laugh.
'I had some business to do. I'd like to have a meeting with you and your family, when it's convenient for you.'
'A meeting? About the theater?'
'Partly. Do you have an hour to spare, maybe between shifts?'
'Oh, I imagine we can accommodate you. Today?'
'Sooner the better.'
'Fine. Come on by the house then. We tend to hold our family meetings 'round the kitchen table.'
'I appreciate it. Would you ask Brenna to come by?'
'I will, yes.' Taking her off the job, Aidan thought, but made no comment. 'I'll see you a bit later, then.'
Around the kitchen table. Trevor recalled several of his own family meetings in the same venue. Before his first day of school, when he was going off to baseball camp, about to take his driver's test, and so on. All of his rites of passage, and his sister's, had been discussed there. Serious punishments, serious praise had warranted the kitchen table.
Odd, he remembered now, when he had broken his engagement, he'd told his parents as they sat in the kitchen. That's where he'd told them of his plans for the Ardmore theater, and his intention of coming to Ireland.
And, he realized as he calculated the time in New York, that was where his parents most likely were at this moment. He picked up the phone again and called home.
'Good morning, Magee residence.'
'Hello, Rhonda, it's Trev.'
'Mister Trevor.' The Magee housekeeper had never called him anything else, even when she'd threatened to swat him. 'How are you enjoying Ireland?'
'Very much. Did you get my postcard?'
'I did. You know how much I love to get them. I was telling Cook just yesterday that Mister Trevor never forgets how I like postcards for my album. Is it as green as that, really?'
'Greener. You should come over, Rhonda.'
'Oh, now you know I'm not getting on an airplane unless somebody holds a gun to my head. Your folks are having breakfast. They're going to be thrilled to hear from you. Just hold on a minute. You take care of yourself, Mister Trevor, and come back soon.'
'I will. Thanks.'
He waited, enjoying the picture of the rail-thin black woman in her ruthlessly starched apron hurrying over the rich white marble floor, past the art, the antiques, the flowers, to the back of the elegant brownstone. She wouldn't use the intercom to announce his call. Such family dealings could only be delivered in person.
The kitchen would smell of coffee, fresh bread, and the violets his mother was most fond of. His father would have the paper open to the financial section. His mother would be reading the editorials and getting worked up about the state of the world and narrow minds.
There would be none of that uneasy quiet, that under-the-polish tension that had lived in his grandparents' home. Somehow his father had escaped that, just as his own father had escaped Ardmore. But the younger Dennis had indeed stood and built his own.
'Trev! Baby, how are you?'
'I'm good. Nearly as good as you sound. I thought I'd catch you and Dad at breakfast.'
'Creatures of habit. But this is an even lovelier way to start the day. Tell me what you see.'
It was an old request, an old habit. Automatically he rose to go to the window. 'The cottage has a front garden. An amazing one for such a small place. Whoever designed it knew just what they wanted. It's like a- a witch's garden. One of the good witches who helps maidens break evil spells. The flowers tumble together, color, shape, and scent. Beyond it are hedges of wild fuchsia, deep red on green and taller than I am. The road they line is narrow as a ditch and full of ruts. Your teeth rattle if you go over thirty. Then the hills slope down, impossibly green, toward the village. There are rooftops and white cottages and tidy streets. The church steeple, and well off is a round tower I have to visit. It's all edged by the sea. It's sunny today, so the light flashes off the blue. It's really very beautiful.'
'Yes, it is. You sound happy.'
'Why wouldn't I be?'
'You haven't been, not really, for too long. Now I'll let you talk to your father, who's rolling his eyes at me, as I imagine you have business to discuss.'
'Mom.' There was so much, so much that his morning conversation with an old man and his horde of progeny had set to swirling inside him. He said what he felt the most. 'I miss you.'
'Oh. Oh, now look what you've done.' She sniffled. 'You can just talk to your father while I cry a little.'
'Well, you got her mind off the editorial on handguns.' Dennis Magee's voice boomed over the wire. 'How's the job going?'
'On schedule, on budget.'
'Good to hear. Going to keep it there?'
'Close to there, anyway. You, Mom, Doro, and her family better keep a week next summer open. The Magees should all be here for the first show.'
'Back to Ardmore. I have to say, I never figured on it. From the reports, it hasn't changed much.'
'It's not meant to. I'll send you a written update on the project, but that's not why I called. Dad, did you ever visit Faerie Hill Cottage?'
There was a pause, a sigh. 'Yes. I had some curiosity about the woman who'd been engaged to my uncle. Maybe because my father so rarely spoke of him.'
'What did you find out?'
'That John Magee died a hero before he ever had the chance to live.'
'And Grandfather resented that.'
'That's a hard way to put it, Trev.'
'He was a hard man.'
'What he felt about his brother, his family, he kept to himself. I never tried to get through. What was the point? I knew I would never get through to him about what he felt about anything, much less what he'd left behind in Ireland.'
'Sorry.' He could hear it, that weariness, that vague tone of frustration in his father's voice. 'I shouldn't have brought it up.'
'No, that's foolish. It would be on your mind. You're there. I think-looking back, I think he was determined to be an American, to raise me as an American. Here is where he wanted to make his mark. In New York he could be his own man. He was his own man.'
A cold, hard man who paid more attention to his ledgers than his family. But Trevor saw no point in saying so when his father knew that better than anyone.
'What did you find, for yourself, when you came back here?' he asked instead.
'Charm, some sentiment, more of a link than I'd expected.'
'Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it.'
'I meant to go back, but something else always seemed to come up. And truth is, I'm a city boy. A week in the country and I'm itchy. You and your mother never minded roughing it, but the Hamptons is about as rural as I can manage and stay sane. Don't snicker, Carolyn,' Dennis said mildly. 'It's rude.'
Trevor scanned his view again. 'It's a long way from the Hamptons to here.'
'Absolutely. A couple of weeks in that cottage you're renting and I'd be babbling. I don't do quaint for long.'
'But you visited, saw Maude Fitzgerald.'
'Yes. Jesus, must be thirty-five years ago. She didn't seem old to me, but I guess she was well into her
