The Parting Glass

Peggy took her mug and held it up high. “I’ll drink to that.”

“What will you drink to?” Niccolo came into the room, looking sleepy-eyed but completely well.

“Your health.” Peggy held out her mug, and Megan filled it.

“Then I’m going to drink to a safe trip today for you and Kieran.” Niccolo crossed the room and gave Megan a bear hug before he got a mug for himself.

Peggy felt right at home. The room was lovely. Simple bird’s-eye maple cabinets, white tile countertops and backsplash, capped off with rich dark red wallpaper Megan had put up last month. Niccolo’s oil paintings of Tuscan villages harmonized with Megan’s quirky farm animal canisters. Her sister had upholstered the kitchen table chairs with remnants of old quilts. Niccolo had crafted the table from a black walnut tree that had been cut down to make room for a neighbor’s addition.

“You’re sure you want to go today?” Megan asked her. “I mean, the airline will let you change your ticket, won’t they?”

“Do you need me here?” Peggy said. “Be honest.”

Megan looked torn, but in the end she shook her head. “There’s nothing you can do. We’ve got inspectors coming, insurance adjusters, and later there’ll be contractors. It’s going to be a zoo, but at least it will give me something to do so I don’t have to think about what happened.”

“It’s another piece of luck that Aunt Dee already had our suitcases,” Peggy said. “And I guess there won’t be any hurry on cleaning out what’s left in the apartment….”

“We won’t be renting it out for a while, that’s for sure.”

“A delay would be hard to explain to Irene. She’s made special arrangements to have me picked up at Shannon.”

“I wish we knew this woman. I wish somebody in the family had met her.”

“She is family,” Peggy said. She had expected this last-ditch effort on Megan’s part to get her to reconsider, and she settled in for it.

“But what do we know about her? Her grandfather was the brother of our great-great grandfather. That’s not much of a tie. And until she found us on the Internet, we didn’t even know there were relatives on that side of the family. We were supposed to be the last of the line.”

“Well, we will be soon enough.” There was little that Peggy knew about Irene Tierney, but she did know that the old woman wasn’t well. She was eighty-one, had never been married and had no family in the small village of Shanmullin or in all of Ireland. She lived in the thatched cottage that had once been the home of Terence Tierney, the sisters’ great-great grandfather, and sadly, her life was drawing to a close, most of it lived without knowledge of their existence.

“And I don’t really understand what she wanted with us in the first place,” Megan said. “Information about her father, who we never even knew existed? I don’t know what we can tell her.”

Peggy thought Irene’s story was intriguing. In her first contact Irene had written that her mother and father had brought her to Cleveland as a small child. There had been no future for the family in Ireland, and there had been some hope there might be relatives remaining in Cleveland. They’d found none, as it turned out, and after Irene’s father died just a few years later, her mother had taken her young daughter back to Ireland to eke out a living on the Tierney land. Not until four months ago, when Irene, surfing the Internet, had come across mention of Terence Tierney in a newspaper article about the Whiskey Island Saloon, did she realize the Tierney family had indeed lived on in Ohio.

“She wants to find out how her father died here,” Peggy said. “That’s natural. You of all people should be able to understand that. When Rooney was missing all those years, we wanted to know what had happened to him.”

“I just don’t understand why her own mother didn’t tell her. Or how she thinks we’re going to find out anything.”

Peggy didn’t know herself. She had done a little research at City Hall for Irene but hadn’t found anything. She hoped her sisters would continue while she was in Ireland.

“It just seems like so much to take on,” Megan said. “Kieran, caring for an old woman you don’t know…”

Peggy didn’t repeat what she’d told Megan so many times before, but it hung unspoken between them. She was determined to help her son, and that meant hours of work with Kieran every day. Irene needed a companion, but not constant care. Going to Ireland was the only way Peggy could afford not to work at a full-time job. Irene was giving her free room and board, and with Phil’s monthly check, Peggy could manage their other expenses if she lived simply. And what other way was there in rural Ireland? The arrangement was ideal, a surprising and wonderful gift.

“She’s excited about having Kieran there.” Peggy got to her feet. “She’s never had a child in the house. She needs help, she needs family. It’s an opportunity I can’t afford to ignore. I’ve talked to her enough to know we’ll get along. Trust me a little, okay?”

Megan set her coffee mug on the counter and embraced Peggy. “I love you. You know that’s what this is about, right?”

Peggy hugged her back. She saw Niccolo watching them. She was glad her older sister was in such capable hands. Megan didn’t realize how much she needed someone to lean on occasionally. “You’ll take care of her?” she asked him.

“If she’ll let me.”

Peggy squeezed Megan hard, then stepped away. “Make sure you do,” she counseled her sister. “And stop worrying about me. I’m going to be just fine. Kieran and I are going to be just fine.”

They weren’t fine, nor had Peggy really expected them to be. Kieran did not take well to changes. He didn’t take well to strangers, to noise, to being shuffled from one place to another, to being tearfully hugged by family or to seeing his mother choke back tears as she said goodbye.

As it turned out—and as Peggy had feared—he didn’t take well to airplanes, either. By the time their first flight landed in Boston, a hundred pairs of eyes were trained disapprovingly on her. What kind of mother was Peggy that she couldn’t comfort her own child? And why didn’t that beautiful baby quiet down when she took him in her arms? Why did he fight to get away from her?

She understood the censure she read on the faces of her fellow passengers. She understood the mixture of concern for that angelic-faced little boy as well as the irritation that the devil inside him was ruining their flight. She’d been prepared, but of course, she hadn’t really been. Nobody could be.

They had a long wait in Boston, another strike against the trip in Kieran’s baby mind. She finally got him to sleep in his stroller, and she paced the length of the airport, over and over, until she was worn out, but anything was better than hearing her son scream. When she finally had to wheel him to security and he awoke to find himself somewhere new, the screaming began again.

He would not be consoled, and she carried him on board that way, listening to the murmured reassurances of the flight attendants and their well-meaning suggestions, and knowing that none of the suggestions would help. She managed to give him the antihistamine and decongestant her pediatrician had prescribed for the journey, both to help with pressure in his ears and to help him relax, but Kieran was oblivious. The flight was full, and there was no elbow room.

She explained Kieran’s problems as best she could to the friendliest of the flight attendants, and miraculously the young woman was able to find passengers willing to trade seats in order to give Peggy and Kieran a little more space. They moved to the back, where they had a row of three seats to themselves and where Kieran’s screams were less audible. The extra seat comforted him a little, and two hours into the flight he stopped sobbing and took his favorite blanket. He picked at the fibers, unraveling it bit by bit, but since he was quiet, Peggy didn’t care.

She fed him, she talked to him, she sang softly to him—something she usually tried not to do in public, since she couldn’t carry a tune. When he slept fitfully, she slept, too. But by the time the plane landed at Shannon Airport, she felt as if she’d traveled to the ends of the earth. Kieran’s little cheeks were splotchy and his eyes red from exhaustion and panic. An overseas flight was hard for any young child, but what was this like for her tiny son, who perceived the world as a frightening place and the actions of those who loved him as a morass of signals his brain couldn’t process?

They waited for the others to disembark, a ritual that went faster than usual. In her distress, she wondered if the haste was due to Kieran and the frantic need of those on board to get away from him. She understood only too well, since, in her exhaustion, part of her wished for the same. When it was their turn, she gathered her carry-on and started toward the front.

Shannon Airport was well laid out and reasonably quiet. After they cleared customs, she looked around for Finn O’Malley, Irene’s physician, who had promised he would drive Peggy and Kieran to the village of Shanmullin in County Mayo. Having a doctor take a full day out of his busy schedule had seemed odd enough, but Irene’s warning had been odder.

“You won’t get much out of Finn,” she’d said in their last telephone conversation. “He’s a quiet man, and he runs deep. But don’t let him frighten you, Peggy. A man who’s easy to know is a man with little enough inside him.”

At the moment she would gladly have settled for easy. She couldn’t imagine stumbling through a conversation with anyone right now, much less a difficult man. She wondered if Dr. O’Malley had been Irene’s physician for many years, if he was semi-retired and able to make this trip without considering his patient load. Irene had given her very few details. Dark hair, tweed jacket, punctual.

She looked around, hoping to spot somebody who matched that description. Kieran chose that moment to fall apart. The airport was one more new environment. He was exhausted, confused and inconsolable. He wiggled to get down, and when Peggy set him on his feet, he threw himself to the uncarpeted floor and began to wail, kick and pound his fists.

Kieran in full tantrum mode was frightening to behold. The disintegration of any two-year-old affected the people around him. But Kieran’s tantrums were so uncontrolled, so horrifyingly wrenching, Peggy had learned that onlookers could seldom walk away. They hovered nearby, watching and waiting to be certain that something would be done.

Unfortunately, Peggy had learned there was nothing to do except remain calm and in control. She stayed near him, making certain he didn’t hurt himself, but other than that, there was little more. Holding him made things worse. He couldn’t hear her or sense her in any way when he was this upset. What tentative ties Kieran felt to her or the world dissolved in a tidal wave of emotion.

“You’re going to simply let him bash his brains out?”

Peggy glanced at the stranger who had joined her, then back at her son. The man was older than she was, but still young. His hair was coal black, and in one quick look she registered austere features and censuring eyes. “I’m sorry he’s disturbing you. This will end.” She didn’t add “soon.” That was too much to hope for.

The stranger didn’t depart. She could hardly blame him. Well-meaning people always gave advice, as if doing so would absolve them of guilt if the child harmed himself.

“This is Kieran Donaghue, isn’t it? And you’re Peggy Donaghue?”

She glanced at him again. “Dr. O’Malley?”

“Finn. Just Finn. And you’ve brought this screaming child to live with Irene?”

Tears sprang to Peggy’s eyes. She had been in a high state of anxiety for forty-eight hours, and despite outward confidence, she’d had doubts all along that she was doing what was best for her son. Now this man, with his frigid black eyes, stiff spine and disapproving expression, reached deep inside all her fears.

“He’s been in a plane for hours. He’s exhausted, frustrated, distraught. He’s not like this all the time.”

“But often enough, I’d guess.”

She stood a little straighter, although she didn’t know where the energy came from. “I’ve explained Kieran’s problems to Irene. She knows them all. She still wanted us.”

“She’s a gullible old woman, lonely, though she’ll never admit it, and dying. Not the best combination to make decisions, is it?”

Kieran was still flailing, and a crowd was gathering, but the strength of his tantrum was waning. Kieran, too, was exhausted from the trip and didn’t have the energy to sustain a fit of this magnitude.

Peggy faced Finn. He was tall, nearly six feet, she supposed, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. She’d expected new tweed and found old herringbone, buttoned over faded jeans and a navy-blue T-shirt.

“She’ll be glad to have me,” she said, “and glad to have Kieran. I’m not a nurse, but I’ve had medical training, and I like her. I know that already. And I know she’s lonely. Now she won’t be anymore.”

“Sometimes loneliness is better than the alternative.”

“And sometimes staying out of matters that don’t concern you is better than poking your nose where it doesn’t belong!”

Something sparked in his eyes. “I can assure you that’s not a problem of mine.”

Anger died. “I know she’s a good friend. She’s told me. And you’re worried. But you don’t need to be. If this doesn’t work, I’ll leave. You can count on it. I just think it’s worth a try. Can you be so sure it’s not?”

His gaze flicked to Kieran, still kicking, still miserable. “Irene says he’s autistic?”

Peggy hated the word. It reduced her son to a label, to a condition, a disorder. He was Kieran, her only child, Phil’s son, Megan and Casey’s nephew. He was Irish on her side and Slovak on Phil’s. His father was a talented young architect, and someday his mother was going to be a doctor. He was intelligent, although she knew unlocking that part of him would be difficult. He was a beautiful little boy and would undoubtedly be a handsome man.

He was Kieran.

“He is who he is,” she said. “And when this year is over, we’ll know him better and all his potential.”

He appeared unconvinced. “These are your bags?”

“Yes, but I have to wait for him to calm down. This is the only way I can make sure he does. I can’t interfere.”

“I’ll take them out to my car. I can do it alone. I’ll wait for you outside.” Without another word he hooked the larger suitcases together, leaving her with the carry-on, and walked away.

The trip to Shanmullin was going to take hours. Peggy hoped they would all survive.

Finn O’Malley had resented making the trip to Shannon Airport. He had tried repeatedly to talk Irene out of this daft scheme to bring a stranger from the United States to care for her, but Irene was as stubborn as any Irishwoman. In her youth she’d had red hair, too, lighter than Peggy Donaghue’s, but thick and straight like the young woman’s. He wasn’t given to stereotypes, but the myth of the stubborn redhead had some appeal. In her long lifetime Irene had resolutely refused to marry, refused to move into town as she aged, refused to hire a companion, refused to go to hospital when poor health necessitated it.

And she had refused, although her very life had depended on it, to accept the fact that Finn had given up practicing medicine. She had refused a new physician until Finn had been obliged to treat her or watch her die unaided.

Stubborn.

Now this young cousin of hers seemed to prove that Irene’s contrary nature was going to be carried on in the distant family bloodlines.

“You’re certain you’re related to her?” he asked, as they finally neared the village.

Beside him Peggy opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were unfocused and heavy-lidded from lack of sleep, but even so, he had been surprised to find such a beautiful woman waiting at the gate. “I’m sorry?”

He hadn’t talked to her on the trip thus far. Thankfully the child had quieted almost from the moment they pulled out of the car park. Banging one’s head against the floor would do that, Finn supposed. The boy had worn himself out, and the mother had fallen asleep nearly as quickly and slept for more than three hours.

“I said, you’re certain Irene is really your cousin? It all seems tenuous to me.”

“Something tells me that anything short of DNA analysis will leave you wondering.” She said it with a faint smile to soften her words. She yawned and stretched, and the seat belt tightened across her breasts at the movement. Unfortunately, he was not oblivious.

“Protecting her seems to be my job, whether I choose it or not,” he said, looking straight at the road ahead.

“Why is that? What’s your relationship to her, other than physician?”

“She was my grandmother’s best friend.”

“And you’re carrying on the tradition. I like that.”

“She gives me no choice.”

“I can see she wouldn’t. Once we began discussing this arrangement, she gave me little choice, either. She’s a tyrant, isn’t she?”

He couldn’t fault the way she said it. With admiration and affection. And besides, it was altogether true.

“Has Irene explained how we’re related?” she said.

“She’s been circumspect.”

“Here’s a history lesson. Back in the nineteenth century there were four Tierney brothers living in the house Irene occupies now. Two of them died. A third, Terence, emigrated to Cleveland, where another brother had gone and died before him. Terence is my ancestor. The fourth, Lorcan, traveled to England and disappeared. Everyone thought he died there.”

Finn wasn’t sure why he had asked. The details were too complicated and intimate, but now that she’d begun, he couldn’t tell her so. “But if he had died there, I suppose you wouldn’t be on your way to Shanmullin now. Irene wouldn’t be alive.”

“That’s right. Lorcan was her ancestor. Lorcan was jailed in Liverpool. I don’t know for what. By the time he made it back to Shanmullin, his family was gone. All of his brothers were dead by then, and his parents had gone to Cleveland years before to live their few remaining years with Terence’s widow, who had remarried a man named Rowan Donaghue. Lorcan was poor and illiterate and didn’t know how to get in touch with them or even if they were still alive. The village priest was dead, as well, and by then a good portion of Shanmullin had emigrated, too.”

“Your name is Donaghue, not Tierney.”

“Lena, Terence Tierney’s wife, had a son by Terence, born after his death. When she married Rowan Donaghue, Rowan adopted little Terry, and they changed his name to Donaghue. They went on to have many more children, but Terry’s my ancestor. So technically, my sisters and I are Donaghues by adoption, not that it matters. We all have the same great-great grandmother.”

“And Irene’s grandfather stayed on in Ireland and worked the land?”

“Irene says that Lorcan was in his forties by the time he came back to Ireland, tired and bitter. He married a local woman, had one son, Liam, and died years after.”

“Liam is Irene’s father.”

“That’s right.”

Finn knew the rest. In the early 1920s Liam and his wife Brenna had abandoned Ireland for the United States, hoping to start a new life. Irene had been only a small child at the time and remembered little about those years. “I suppose all this somehow explains why Irene’s family didn’t find any Tierneys in Cleveland.”

“Exactly. Lena married a Donaghue and changed her son’s name. That was many years before Liam arrived in Cleveland, and apparently he never talked to the few people who might have remembered, including Lena herself, who was an old woman by then. Irene just happened to find out about us on the Internet. The Cleveland Plain Dealer did an article about the history of the saloon my family owns, and Terence Tierney’s name was mentioned because Lena was the founder and he was her first husband.”

“Odd that Irene would still be looking for relatives, don’t you think?”

She combed her hair back with her fingers, a lovely, feminine gesture he hadn’t been privy to in a long time. “Not really. She never married, and she has no children. We all want to feel connected, don’t we? She’s not well. I think the idea of wanting some part of you going on into the years is natural.”

He froze, fingers gripping the steering wheel. At one time he’d understood that need himself.

Peggy looked over her shoulder at her sleeping son. “Kieran’s my bid for immortality, I guess. Do you have children, Finn?”

He could not bring himself to answer casually, and that angered him. The question was simple enough. The answer was impossible.

“You’ll meet my daughter Bridie,” he said at last. “She visits Irene when she can.” He had expected more questions, but she was surprisingly perceptive and didn’t ask them.

Just in case, he changed the subject. “We’re nearing the village. Sneeze and we’ll have passed it before you open your eyes again.”

“It’s all so beautiful.” Peggy’s gaze was riveted outside the window.

“Yes, you Americans always seem to think so.”

“And you don’t?”

“There’s been hardship here, the likes of which you probably can’t imagine. It’s only now coming back to life. Not always with the old families. With new people and holiday cottages, and people working from their homes. You see leprechauns and fairy hills, and I see people who work too hard and earn too little.”

“Yet you stay? There must be a draw.”

They passed through the main street of the village, lined with colorfully painted buildings nestled shoulder to shoulder. Mountains hung like stage props behind them, and the ocean sparkled in the distance. A brook ran through the center of a tiny town square. As villages went, it was picturesque and tidy. He imagined she was enthralled.

They were out in the country again before he answered. “I stay because I stay,” he said.

The last kilometers were silent. He pulled into the gravel lane lined with a spotty hedgerow that ran to Irene’s cottage. He risked one glance at Peggy Donaghue. She was leaning forward, and even though her son stirred behind her, she didn’t turn. “Oh, look at this. This is where my sisters and I came from, Finn. And it’s so glorious. How could Terence Tierney ever have left?”

“I’d suppose he was starving.” He pulled up near the house and turned off the motor. “Irene will be out to greet you, count on it.”

Peggy opened her door and took a step toward the thatch-roofed cottage. He was almost sorry it was so charming, with its whitewashed stones and paned windows. Finn watched as Irene opened the traditional half door, a door she’d painted brilliant blue and let no one dissuade her. He stayed in the car as the two women eyed each other. Then he shook his head as Peggy covered the distance between them at a sprint and fell into Irene’s withered arms.

chapter 7

The Tierney Cottage had been remodeled in Irene’s lifetime. Her mother, Brenna, had remarried several years after their return to Ireland, and Irene’s stepfather had been a man of some wealth. He had purchased the land that the Tierneys had worked for centuries as tenant farmers, and more beyond it. Together he and Brenna added bedrooms and a kitchen with an inviting fireplace. And when the cottage became Irene’s after their death, she added electricity, gas heat, fresh plaster and imagination.

Peggy lay in bed a week after her arrival and stared up at the beamed ceiling in the room she shared with Kieran. Not a cobweb hung there; not an inch of the ceiling was stained or peeling. The cottage was pristine. Irene might have refused a live-in companion until Peggy’s arrival, but she hadn’t refused household help. The day she’d realized she could no longer keep the house spotless, she hired a neighbor to come and clean each morning and lay the turf fire. In good weather Nora Parker bicycled over bumpy roads, cheerful and ready, after the exercise, to put the place to rights. She made breakfast, too, and even though it was only just seven, Peggy could already hear her bustling around the tiny kitchen.