I barely managed a wave of scorn. “Like I’d want you to. No, I will sleep on the streets! I will wander the knolls of Central Park, beneath the stony stone-eyed poets—”
“And pickpockets? Or murderers?” He stretched one hand behind my back and lifted me up. Then we were moving, and then we were in a taxi.
The city blurred past in a streak of lights and colors. I think he tried to take my purse at one point but I yanked it back and buried it under me because only thieves took purses. The cab turned and here came Lincoln Center, bright and open, banners falling down the side of high white walls. People walked about in the carefully chic and cultured uniform of New York. We sped through the restaurants of Hell’s Kitchen, then that knot of congestion from Times Square to Penn Station. Out here on Tenth Ave, everything looked more industrial and rundown, and you got hints of the Javits center off to the right, the giant convention center that looked toward Jersey. Horses clomped along beside us, pulling their elaborate carts as they headed home for the night. I fell asleep watching a feather bob above a Clydesdale’s head.
I woke when the cab drew to a stop. When I opened my eyes, Mike’s face blurred above me, his hair shining even in the dim light. “You have pretty hair.” I reached up and ran my fingers through a curl. “Like fire.”
He blinked. “Thanks.”
My eyes closed again. “My mother has beautiful hair. She’s beautiful. Like a doll. I was always a bad doll.”
He didn’t answer, and so I peeled open a lid to see him. He frowned at me, a deep furrow etched along his brow.
My gaze dropped and I realized he was ransacking my purse. “What are you doing?”
The furrow vanished as he laughed. He held up his hands. “Relax. I was just finding your license so I could give the driver your address.”
“Oh. Right.” I leaned forward and told the driver myself.
Mike handed my purse back and put his hand on his door. “Well, then. See you.”
I caught his free hand and he stilled. “Have you ever been to Ireland?”
“No.”
“Me neither.” I sighed. “And I know it’s not magic.” I turned my head so I could see into his warm brown eyes. “I’m not crazy. Not Ireland or Ecuador or Greece. But I can pretend they are, see? At least for the weeks leading up and the first weeks there and then I can always go somewhere else, and who’s to know it wasn’t magic...”
Empathy flickered in his eyes. “I think you should go home now. He disentangled from my grip. “Goodnight, Natalie.”
And he was gone.
Two weeks later, I descended into Shannon International Airport in the pale morning light. I relaxed as soon as we left the plane, as soon as the flood of Americans dispersed and the accents started to be tinged with what was, stateside, referred to as an Irish brogue. I was finally in Ireland.
Linguistically—the fourth branch of American anthropology, as delineated by Franz Boas who Had Opinions —Ireland was all torn up. There was no one Irish English accent, no “brogue” stretching from one end of the island to the other. In Ulster, they spoke similarly to the Scots, while suburban Dublin could sound almost American, and Dublin working class was non-rhotic, dropping their “r” just like in Boston. And the accent of County Cork, where we were heading, was supposed to be unusually musical.
In any case,
I grabbed my bag and coffee and a bus south. The driver loaded my luggage into storage and smiled broadly. “Looking for your roots?”
I didn’t mind playing tourist when I
The driver didn’t pause in throwing my luggage into the storage. “That so?”
“I guess.”
The ride to Dundoran was long and meandering but I didn’t mind, since the landscape absorbed my attention. Ireland was
I loved llamas more, but you couldn’t have everything.
The bus carried me into Cork which, much like my home, was both a city and a province. Ten thousand years ago, glaciers covered Ireland and much of northwestern Europe. When they retreated, they deposited rich soils all over Cork, making the land perfect for farming. Forests of elm and birch, hazel and alder, used to blanket the ridges and valleys of the land, but that had been cleared and replaced by bogs and peatland. Three large rivers wound through the country, forming fens and marshes. Ragged bays and peninsulas created the wild coastline: Beara, Sheep’s Head, Mizen’s Head.
I took another bus from Cork to the coastal village of Dundoran. The inn was located in the Dundoran civil parish, a mile and a half from the village and ten miles from the farm Kilkarten, well positioned for hill walking tourists and sprawling views of fields and sea. A peaked olive green roof rose over warm sandstone walls. Tall dormer alcoves curved out on either side of the main door, topped by stone balconies and more rounded windows. Baskets of flowers spilled out around the entrance, pink daises and white carnations and red tulips. Tall bright bushes backed the house, while pines cast shade over the parking lot.
The inn was the only one in the vicinity, since Dundoran wasn’t precisely a tourist location. If I’d been hiring out-of-town workers for the season, I might have tried to find a house to rent and set it up dormitory style, or set up camp near the land we were digging. But considering I’d planned to hire locals, they could have driven or taken the bus themselves, and the rates here were reasonable enough that I’d booked rooms for Jeremy and me, along with the two Irish archaeologists we’d planned to work with.
Now it was no longer relevant. I’d do what research I could, but after I’d walked over the public land and looked at the local records, I might go to Dublin and finish out the summer near Jeremy, though he’d also talked about coming down here to look at the land and local records, depending on whether I thought it worthwhile.
Inside the inn, warm sunlight slid across wooden floorboards. Across the room, a woman smiled at me from behind the counter. She reminded me of a sparrow—small and gray and fast. “Hello there, dear. You must be Natalie.”
I smiled back and rolled my suitcase over until I stood right before her. “That’s me. Are you Eileen?”
“That’s me. We’re all so excited about the dig.”
“Oh.” Taken aback, I struggled for words. “Um, well, uh, it might be delayed.”
She tilted her head. “Why?”
“There’s some problems with—the land. Land rights. It’s a thing.”
If she noticed my incompetence at speaking, she had too much kindness to raise a brow. “But Patrick agreed to it.”
I bobbed my head. “That’s true. But now that he’s passed, there are some—complications.”
“Hmm.” Eileen sounded like a bird whirling. “I’m sure that can be cleared right up by talking to the new O’Connors. They’re staying here, you know.”
Oh, how I knew. “Is that so?”
Wait. They? “Are there multiple O’Connors?”
Eileen smiled as she handed my key card over. “Oh, yes. Mrs. O’Connor and her three children.” She leaned
