by Luanne Rice
“You’re right,” Dar said.
Without even consulting each other, they crossed the wide field toward the ruined abbey and entered the Abbeystrowry Cemetery. The sisters walked into the churchyard. They spotted a sign leaning against a stone wall:
Famine Committee Skibbereen
Area for Memorial Slabs
For deceased relatives
And friends
Contact Committee
028-21704 or 028-21466
“What does that mean?” Rory asked Dar.
Dar shrugged, reading the next sign, directing the way to the Skibbereen Heritage Center.
“Love, what it means,” said an old woman dressed in black with a black lace shawl covering her head, “is that the dead are buried here in mass graves. There were so many who died, the cemetery couldn’t keep up. They just poured limestone over the poor bodies and just kept shoveling them in.”
“So how would you find a family member’s grave?”
“You can’t,” she said. “If you have reason to believe you lost someone in the famine, you can call the committee, and they’ll give you permission to set your own stone or marker.”
“Thank you,” Dar said, shocked. The sisters wandered around, noticing how many of the stones marked people named McCarthy. They found a Michael, who had died in 1847, the granite slab left by his “loving great-grandchildren.” The carving was old, its edges softened by time and weather; there was no way of knowing when the stone had been left.
Clouds scudded in from the sea. The first raindrops started to fall, and Dar and Rory hurried to their car, back at the bookshop. They found a note on the windshield.
My mother called and said if she can be of any help locating your father, please contact her when she returns. Sorry to say, God alone knows when that will be. Jimmy.
“Wonder when she’ll return,” Rory said, climbing into the car just as the rain became a downpour. “Jimmy seems to think she and her sweet young lover are tearing up the countryside with their trailer.”
“Let’s call Delia once we find a hotel,” Dar said. “And tell her what’s going on. Maybe she’ll know more than we do about Dad’s parish.”
“Right,” Rory said. “She is the religious one.”
“Amen,” Dar said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Delia nearly collapsed when she answered the phone. She’d jumped every time it rang, waiting for Pete, not even expecting to hear from Dar and Rory so soon. In fact, holding the receiver, she let herself flop backwards onto her bed. Her sisters were on extension cords in their hotel room overlooking Kinsale Harbor.
“Kinsale is beautiful” Dar said. “And full of fancy restaurants. Much different than what I’d expected.”
“It’s the gourmet capital of Ireland,” Delia said.
“How do you know?” Rory asked.
“I read cookbooks and watch cooking shows, and of course any time they mention Ireland . . .”
“How’s Pete?” Dar asked. “Did he make it home okay?”
Delia closed her eyes as tight as she could. She couldn’t bear to tell her sisters. She heard Jim yelling from downstairs.
“Who’s calling at this hour?” he asked.
“It’s Dar and Rory,” Delia yelled back, covering the receiver.
“Delia? Is everything okay?” Dar asked.
Delia had been holding it inside for so long—days and days now. She’d put on a brave face for Jim, to avoid making it worse for both of them. She pulled her pillow over her face and bit hard, to avoid screaming.
She forced herself to control her voice, couldn’t quite answer the question. “How are things going on your end? Any clues yet?”
“Actually, we need Dad’s parish. And his middle name. And the names of his parents. And . . .” Rory said.
“His parish was Cobh, the diocese was Cloyne, and his family went to mass at St. Colman’s Cathedral,” Delia said. “His parents were James and Margaret Mahoney McCarthy, and he was baptized by the archbishop as Michael Francis McCarthy.”
“How do you know all that?” Rory asked.
“I found his missal,” Delia said. “When I was little. And Mom let me keep it after he left. All the information was written in the inside cover, in such a delicate, loving hand; it had to be his mother’s.” Oh, here it came, charging through her, the love of a mother, the sorrow of being left, of losing the one you love. Her eyes flooded and, since she was lying on her back, the tears ran into her ears.
“Delia?” Dar asked again, her voice incredibly gentle.
Delia held a bed pillow and rocked back and forth. She clamped it to her belly, pressing as hard as she could just to keep herself together.
“Pete,” Delia began, hardly able to get the words out. “Didn’t come home.”
“Oh, Delia,” Dar said.
“Honey,” Rory said, “I’m so sorry. But isn’t it possible he’s still on his way? He just hasn’t gotten there yet?”
“Jim doesn’t think so. He says Pete just wanted the money we sent him. It was all a trick to get us to pay for his truck. Only Jim thinks . . . he thinks Pete wanted the money for drugs!”
“Would he do that?” Rory asked.
“Rory!” Delia said.
“No, I mean, of course not drugs. But maybe for something else?”
“He called us from Denver, and we haven’t heard since. He could have crashed, something terrible might have happened to him, and how would we know?”
“He’s on his way home,” Rory said. “Worrying won’t help. Just get on a plane and come over.”
“Delia, you don’t have to,” Dar said. “If you need to stay there and wait . . .”
“I don’t know what to do,” Delia said. “He doesn’t answer his phone—we just get a message that the service is off. He must not have had the money to pay his bill. Jim and I are fighting all the time. Instead of pulling together, he accuses me of being too soft on Pete, and I tell him he’s treating Pete like a criminal before we know the whole story.”
“Have you called the Denver police?” Dar asked.
“Yes, and there’s nothing. I called the garage where he said he was having his truck fixed, and he didn’t use the money for that. They had no idea of who he was! Nearly a week’s gone by, and no word.”
“Maybe because of his phone,” Dar said.
“You think so?”
“Yes.”
“I want to believe that,” Delia said. “Maybe I should go meet you. It’s awful here right now.
“He’ll find a way to call my cell if he wants to—or yours, Dar. With you gone, I’ve been getting calls from Morgan Ludlow, asking me every kind of question. How deep is our well, was it dug or drilled, how far from the septic field, had we ever considered putting a swimming pool between the main house and the Hideaway . . .”
“Does that mean they’re going to keep—”
“No,” Delia said. “Tearing everything down. She just wanted to know if we’d ever hired someone to draw up swimming pool plans they could get in the bargain.”
“Come over,” Dar said, wiping Morgan Ludlow and the Littles from her mind. “We’ll pick you up at the Cork airport the morning after tomorrow.”
“Jim won’t want me to go. The money—”
“I’m paying,” Dar said. “The ticket will be in your name. Just type in ‘Delia Monaghan’ on Aer Lingus’s site, and that’s that. Just give your passport info.”
“The only reason I even have a passport was that cut-rate cruise we took to the Caribbean three years ago. Can I ask you a favor?” Delia asked, standing up, looking at her full, tear-streaked face in the mirror.
“Anything.”
“Will you stay in Kinsale? I don’t want to miss it. My first chance at a culinary capital of the world. Not counting New York.”
“We’ll find the best restaurant in town for you,” Dar said.
Dar had taken notes on what Delia had said about their father’s parish. But reading a genealog
y book she’d bought at the book barn, she realized that there was a difference between a Catholic parish and a civil parish. Cobh was a seaport in the civil parishes of both Clonmel and Templerobin. Which was most important in terms of finding someone in Ireland?
She buried herself in research to avoid thinking about Pete, Delia, and the house buyers. Rory went out to explore Kinsale, while Dar sat at the desk in their large room overlooking the harbor. She stared at the yachts, all of them so much bigger than her father’s Irish Darling. But then she found herself pulling on a sweater, heading down to the waterfront.
She walked up and down the docks. Part of her thought she would recognize that beautiful white sloop, and see her father—older and weathered—sitting on deck. He had told her so often they’d sail to Kinsale together. What if he’d made it here from West Kerry, left his boat in a slip, gone to Cobh in search of what he’d come for?
An evening breeze picked up, and the boats began to rock gently. The air was cooling off; she felt glad she’d brought her sweater. If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe she was walking among the boats at Edgartown or Vineyard Haven. The sea breeze felt and smelled exactly the same. When she opened her eyes, she caught a glimpse of a boat several docks away: white, about twenty-eight feet long, with the same distinctive gleaming brightwork as the Irish Darling’s mast, boom, and rails.
She hurried in that direction, but the sun had shifted, slipped behind town buildings, and the boat she’d been looking for had disappeared into the falling dusk. Her eyes stung; she hadn’t slept since the plane, and jet lag was really upon her. Evening clouds began to gather; they seemed dark and dangerous, or was it just her mood? She took one last look up and down the dock, but suddenly the sloops all looked alike. So she walked back to the hotel.
Meeting Rory in the lobby, they strolled through the narrow, winding streets, in search of the restaurant Rory had found. It was called Toledo, and specialized in seafood and Spanish cuisine. The front was stucco, with black shutters and window boxes of red geraniums. The host showed them into a dining room lit by candlelight, and they sat at a table by the window in straightbacked red velvet chairs. Rory ordered a Spanish sherry, and they decided to split paella.
“Maybe our ancestors started out here,” Rory said, reading from the guidebook. “They called it the Siege of Kinsale, in the 1590s. It was a bloody, horrible battle, part of the Nine Years’ War. But four thousand Spanish troops came ashore here to join with the Irish and fight Lord Mountjoy and the British. They held England off as long as they could. Irish and Spanish fell in love and had children, the so-called Black Irish.”
“Us,” Dar said.
“Exactly.”
Dar looked out the window at the town. It twinkled with streetlamps and house lights, flower gardens everywhere.
Then the paella came in a copper pot, and they began to spoon out yellow rice, tiny clams, chorizo, and Dublin Bay prawns. It smelled delicious, like something she and her sisters would want to re-create this coming summer at the Vineyard. Don’t think back and don’t think forward, Dar told herself. Just be right here with Rory and eat the good food.
When Dar woke up the next morning, cool dawn light was just starting to come through the windows. She glanced across the room at her sister fast asleep. She felt a pang of love.
She, Rory, and Delia had had their own rooms growing up in Noank, decorated in different colors, but with the same layout: twin beds, bookcase, and desk. They’d often sleep in each other’s rooms, in the other twin bed. They’d talk and laugh until they fell asleep—mainly they’d just wanted to be together.
Dar dressed in jeans and a sweater and silently let herself out of the room. She bypassed the hotel’s breakfast room and walked straight outside. Deep blue morning clouds were stacked up on the horizon, but already they were starting to disperse, revealing a bright blue sky. There were pots of coral pink flowers along the path to the docks, and she watched emerald hummingbirds dart in and out.
She found a low rock just off the path and tried to meditate. The harbor spread before her, smooth as glass, glistening with early sunlight. A large, beautiful ketch left the dock, its engine barely audible, its hull scratching a white wake in the blue water. She found herself stirred up, and although she remained seated for twenty minutes, thoughts of what she’d seen last night raced through her mind.
Getting up, she walked straight to the docks; they were shaped in a U, with four finger piers extending out from each of the main arms. Last night darkness had obscured the boats, but today she felt determined to find the twenty-eight-footer with the shining wooden brightwork.
Water lapped under the sturdy wooden dock, splashing against the pilings. She loved the sound as she walked along, gazing at each boat, scanning the piers for a varnished wooden mast.
Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned around. A tall man came toward her, dressed in a blue uniform and carrying a lunch bag and thermos. He had weathered cheeks and white hair, yet he didn’t seem old.
“Good morning to you,” he said.
“Good morning,” Dar replied, letting him pass. She’d already assumed he was the dockmaster as she watched him walk to the end of the dock and unlock the small shingled building beside the gas pumps. Giving him a few minutes to settle in, she walked out and glanced into the open door. He sat at a desk, going over some paperwork.
“Excuse me,” she said.
“Hello again,” he said, putting down his pen.
“I was just wondering,” she said, “about a boat I saw here last night.”
“Which one would she be?”
“I don’t know,” Dar said. “But she was a wooden sloop, twenty-eight feet, white hull, with beautiful woodwork.”
He narrowed his eyes as if trying to bring such a sailboat to mind, then checked his roster for boats at his pier. Then he climbed off his stool and stood at the door beside Dar. “Nothing like that sounds familiar,” he said. “And I don’t have her down in my ledger. Can you show me where you saw her?”
“That’s just it,” Dar said. “I barely glimpsed her just before dark and haven’t seen her since.”
“Maybe she’s a ghost ship,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
“No, really,” she said, half smiling, but feeling chilled. “Do you keep a description for every boat that docks here?”
“I do, and I have nothing like you’re describing. That’s why I say she might be a ghost ship.”
Dar stared at him. “A real ghost ship?”
“Well. Believe what you want, but we honor a vessel whose captain and crew were lost at sea by welcoming her spirits. We’ve had many ghosts of the Spanish Armada pass through this harbor. Those ships would be much larger, however. And the Lusitania sank off Kinsale Head in 1915. We’re haunted by that liner and many of her passengers.”
Dar took it in. She thought of her father’s call, of how the Irish Darling had carried him across the Atlantic, made landfall safely. But had he sailed safely around the peninsulas to Cork?
“You don’t believe in such things? Ghosts or fairies?” he asked. “They can be tricky. Just because you don’t believe doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
“I trust what you’re saying,” she said. She knew Dulse would.
“Does the boat you saw mean something to you?” he asked.
“It reminds me of the one my father built,” she said. “He sailed solo across the Atlantic and made it safely to Kerry. I know he loved Kinsale, though, and believe he would have tried to make it here afterwards.”
“Solo,” the dock master said. “On a wooden twenty-eight-footer? A boat that size would be just right for inshore sailing, but small for fighting those ocean waves. Your father must have been dauntless. You don’t hear stories like that very often.”
“Have you ever heard one?” she asked, her neck prickling.
He nodded. “A long time ago. I was twenty-two at the time, and everyone in Cork and West Cork was talking about it.”
“Do you remember the name of the sailor, or of the boat?”
“McCarthy, I believe,” he said. “That’s why all Cork was so entranced and proud. He was one of our own.”
“That was my father,” she said, her heart racing. “The boat was the Irish Darling.”
“Named for someone he loved,” the dockmaster said.
Dar nodded. “So you see,” she said, “my father’s boat couldn’t be a ghost ship. He made it here safely. Do you know where he is now?”
“I never heard anything beyond the story of his crossing. I seem to remember he sailed into Cobh and took a job at the seaport there. People talked for a while, but in Ireland, so many true tales fall into legend. It was many years ago. My mind could be playing tricks on me, and I could be wrong. How long ago would it have been?”
“Twenty-eight years ago,” Dar said.
“Ah,” the dockmaster said. “Plenty of time for the account to become local lore.”
A glistening fifty-foot white fiberglass fishing boat pulled up to the gas dock, and the dockmaster gave Dar a look of regret. “I’m sorry we can’t continue this conversation. I’m honored to meet you—McCarthy’s daughter, imagine that. I’ll be telling everyone, you can be sure.”
“Thank you for talking with me,” she said.
“It’s my pleasure, and I wish you luck,” he said as he walked toward the pumps. “Perhaps the spirit sloop appeared just for you, to inspire you. Keep your eyes open—you might see it again.”
“I will,” she said as he took the fishing boat captain’s credit card and began pumping gas.
She began to walk, and then to run, down the dock. She had to get Rory up, and they needed to go to Cobh right away.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rory held on to her seat as her sister drove like a madwoman. They’d barely had time for tea and a scone before Dar insisted they check out and hit the road. Rory’s protestations that Delia would be crushed if she didn’t get to experience the culinary wonders of Kinsale were met by a promise they would return once they found their father in Cobh.
