A Stolen Heart

by Beverley Hollowed

  “This is Lily,” she proudly announced as they all cooed over their beautiful little granddaughter.

  “She looks just like... um... she is beautiful,” Gerry said taking the baby seat from her.

  “It’s ok Dad,” she said with a smile. “You can say his name.”

  “I’m sorry sweetheart,” he replied.

  “We should get to the car,” Helen said. “Louise, Connor and Andrew will be at the house and I think Jack said he would try to get over to the house later.”

  “I can’t wait to see little Andrew!” Emma said excitedly as they drove to the Kelly family home in Bray. “I can’t believe I’m finally going to get to see my first nephew. He must be six months old now.”

  “He is seven months,” Gerry said looking in the rear view mirror. “He is such a happy little fella.”

  ”I can’t wait to see him,” she repeated and smiled to herself.

  She spent the rest of the journey staring out of the window. She couldn’t believe how much had changed since she had been home the last time. There were so many new factories and buildings everywhere. There were some of the old places she remembered too, but she couldn’t believe how many things had changed in such a short time.

  When they pulled into her parent’s driveway, Emma noticed it was just the way she remembered it. They lived in a four bedroom detached house in a little cul-de-sac in Bray just across the road from the sea. There was a porch and a big bay window on the front of the house and a small pathway that divided the grass in two with a row of flowers and heather running either side of the path. As it was still only January, the flowers were yet to bloom but the heathers were a mixture of several different shades of purple and looked beautiful in the early afternoon sun.

  There was also a driveway that ran up the side of the house to a garage with two big yellow doors. Doors which her mother hated and had moaned about since Emma was a child but still her father refused to paint them. He said that she could do the house whatever way she wanted but the garage was his and the yellow door represented his stamp on the house and he will never change them. Emma laughed when she saw the yellow doors. She was happy some things really hadn’t changed.

  Suddenly the front door opened and Louise came bounding out of the house and down the path to Emma. Without saying a word she threw her arms around Emma and hugged her tightly.

  Louise was the complete opposite of Emma. While Emma was short and curvy with chocolate coloured hair and dark brown almond shaped eyes. Louise was tall and slim, with natural blonde hair and the same bright blue eyes as her mother.

  In fact it was always the family joke about Emma having brown eyes because both her parents, Louise and Jack had blue eyes. Though Jack had the same dark hair as Emma, they used to joke that Emma was secretly the milkman’s. It was a joke that Gerry never found funny.

  “I am so, so sorry,” she finally managed to say.

  “I know sweetie,” Emma reply. “I know.”

  “Well let’s get inside,” Helen said putting her arms around her two girls. “We don’t want to give old Mrs. Brenann something to gossip about.”

  Emma instinctively gazed over at the little white bungalow across the road from her mother’s house. She saw the curtains twitch and a shadow move behind it. Emma laughed, something’s really did never change.

  “Hello Mrs. Brenann,” Louise shouted and waved at the house. This time the shadow moved quickly away from the window.

  “Louise Kelly,” Helen scolded her daughter.

  “She’s a nosey old cow,” Louise shrugged as she and Emma dissolved into fits of laughter.

  Emma felt happy for the first time in months. It was so good to be home.

  They all moved inside the house and got to say hello properly. Emma got to meet her little nephew for the very first time. Louise and the rest of the family got to meet the newest addition, Lily, who was now almost 4 weeks old. She was born on January 1st. Two weeks before she was due to arrive. When Emma came home from hospital she booked her flights straight away. She suddenly wanted to be home.

  Mia had fallen asleep on the drive from the airport. Her Grandad lifted her in from the car and laid her on the sofa in the sitting room to let her have a nap.

  Helen put on the kettle and made everyone a cup of tea. Finally, they had a proper chance to catch up.

  “So tell me honestly,” Helen asked her eldest daughter. “How have you really been?”

  “I’m fine Mam!” Emma insisted.

  “You know if I could have been with you, you know, when he...” Louise struggled to say without bursting into tears. She was holding baby Lily and tried to focus on her instead of looking at Emma “I really wanted to.”

  “Lou, I know,” Emma replied with a smile. “If you could have been there, you would have, but you were eight months pregnant.”

  “I know but you are my big sis,” Louise said this time she couldn’t hold the tears back.

  “Lou, its fine!” Emma reached out and took her hand. “I’m fine.”

  She had lied. The truth was she was struggling. She was finding it hard to cope with two kids and everything else. Jeff, Alycia and Jenna had been so great, but she still felt so alone. She missed Jonathan so much. And she felt so lost. That’s why she came home. She needed to be where she felt she belonged; to try and find herself again.

  She felt tired after her long journey, so when Jack rang later to say he wouldn’t be able to make it over until the next day she decided she would call it an early night.

  Her Mam said she would bring Mia in with her for just tonight in case the baby woke during the night and woke her up. She needed her sleep after her big journey.

  When she climbed into bed, even though she was exhausted, she couldn’t fall asleep. She lay in the bed she had slept in as a child. She looked around the room in the twilight and so many memories from her past came flooding back.

  She remembered all the times her friends had stayed over and they had stayed awake most of the night talking about boys or music or the latest film. All the times when she was woken by a younger Louise after a bad dream, looking to climb in next to her. She remembered all the times she would sneak home well past her curfew and try to get into bed without waking her parents. Or all the times she had cried over some boy who had broken her heart and her Mam would sit beside her on her bed and tell her there were plenty more fish in the sea and that she was too good for them anyway.

  Then she remembered the last time she had slept in that bed. It was the night before her wedding. She should have been so happy and excited that night but was she wasn’t.

  In fact that night she had cried herself to sleep. She had tossed and turned all night.

  The truth was she didn’t even know if she was going to go through with the wedding. And the only one who knew how she felt was her brother Jack.

  She was secretly glad he couldn’t make it over to see her that night. She was dreading seeing him after all this time. They hadn’t spoken much to each other since the morning of her wedding.

  They had a huge argument that morning. He told her, he thought she was making a big mistake going through with the wedding. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Jonathan. He did. But he believed that she didn’t truly love him. And he was right.

  She was really in love with someone else but he didn’t love her back. She was going to run away with him, the night before the wedding. But when she got there he never turned up. Instead all she got was a note to say she should go ahead with her wedding and forget about him.

  She was heartbroken. She went home and snuck back into her parent’s house. She was met in the kitchen by Jack. She broke down and told him where she had been and he told her that she couldn’t go through with the wedding.

  She promised him that she would tell Jonathan the truth the next morning but when she woke up she decided she couldn’t do that to him. She could not hurt Jonathan like that.

  See, even though she was in love with someone else, she sti
ll loved Jonathan and she knew he really and truly loved her. So she went ahead with the wedding despite Jack’s pleas with her not to go through with it.

  A few days later she and Jonathan went on the honeymoon and then back to New York and she hasn’t seen Jack and had barely talked to him since.

  She lay there that night and she wondered how her life would have turned out if she hadn’t married Jonathan. She did love him, truly she did. And she missed him so much, sometimes she could barely breathe. He had become her best friend. But if she was honest she was never in love with him.

  She tried to push these thoughts out of her head but for the first time in a long time she thought of him. She thought of Zach Adams.

  Sometimes she wondered, since the accident, was she being punished for what she did back then. Had God taken Jonathan away from her because he should have never been hers to begin with? Because, if she were honest, she was never truly his.

  Chapter 4

  ~Five years earlier~

  She had been back home in Ireland for about a week. She hadn’t stopped running around doing wedding stuff and she was exhausted already.

  She was also very angry with Jonathan that day. She had talk to him the night before and he had told her, he wasn’t arriving over the following week as agreed.

  There was a problem with a contract he was working on and he would have to stay to sort it out. He would now be arriving two days before the wedding instead.

  Emma was really angry with him. He had apologized again and again. But she was fuming.

  That day she had to go for a fitting for her dress and had asked Louise and her best friend since childhood and one of her bridesmaids, Grace Nolan, to come with her.

  Emma stood for an hour on a stool while the dress maker pinned her dress here and there so it would fit perfect for her big day.

  “You know it wouldn’t kill you to crack a smile,” Grace said as she sat on a sofa in the bridal shop sipping champagne with Louise. “You have a face like a slapped bottom.”

  “I don’t feel like...Ouch...” Emma yelped as she was stabbed with a straight pin for the hundredth time.

  “I’m so sorry,” the lady in the shop said once again. Grace and Louise burst into fits of laughter.

  Emma shot them a dirty look.

  “Oh come on Emma,” Louise said trying not to laugh. “You need to chill out, you’re getting married, you should be happy.”

  “Well I would be happy if my husband-to-be got his arse here when he promised,” she snapped back. “I can’t believe...Ouch...”

  “Sorry” the lady said once again, who was fast becoming more and more nervous.

  “Emma!” Grace exclaimed suddenly like she had a great idea. “What you need is a good night out. O Grady’s are having a karaoke night tonight.”

  “I don’t think so,” Emma replied wincing once again from a pin prick.

  “Come on,” Louise said. “You used to go every Friday when you lived here, everybody used to say how great you were but I was always too young to go with you,”

  “I don’t think so...OUCH...”Emma screamed and turned to the dress maker. “If you stick one more of those pins in me, I am going to stick them up your arse.”

  Grace and Louise burst into fits of laughter.

  “And you two can sod off too,” she snapped turning to them. The two looked at each other and burst into hysterical laughter.

  The lady said she had done enough to start working on. She told her to come back the following week for another fitting.

  The three girls stopped at a pub down the street for some lunch. Emma had calmed down a little and even managed to see the funny side of her terrible fitting.

  “That poor woman,” Emma said as she sipped her white wine. “I must have made her feel so nervous. At least I hope that’s why she kept sticking me otherwise I am dreading next week.”

  The three girl burst out laughing.

  After much convincing Emma agreed to go to O’Grady’s with the two girls that night. They arrived in the pub at about eight thirty and it was already pretty busy. They found a booth near the stage and ordered a round of drinks, then another and another. They had even managed to convince Emma to put her name up to sing.

  “Did you guys check out the new barman?” Louise said when she returned from the bar with another round. “He is damn hot.”

  “Really?” Grace asked straining her neck to see.

  “Could either of your look more desperate?” Emma said as she cleared the empty glasses onto a tray and passed them to a waitress.

  “Can you relax for five minutes?” Grace sighed giving her a disapproving look.

  Before Emma could respond the host of the karaoke call her name. A loud cheer erupted around the pub. Emma felt a sick knot in her stomach.

  “Oh shit!” Emma exclaimed with a look of dread. “I think I am going to be sick”.

  “Will you just get up,” Grace laughed and began to push Emma from the booth.

  Emma knocked back her drink and took a deep breath. Before she got up from the table and made her way to the stage.

  Taking the mic in her hand she waited for the music to start. She scanned the crowd all sitting there waiting for her to begin. Finally the music from Norah Jones, “Don’t know why” began to play as she brought the mic to her mouth and began to sing.

  Before she knew it her song was over and the whole pub erupted in cheers and claps once again.

  She made her way back to her seat and quickly picked up her drink.

  “Wow!” was all Louise could say. “Where did that voice come from?”

  “Didn’t you know your big sis was a superstar?” Grace said draping her arm across Emma’s back. Then she turned to Emma. “Felt good, didn’t it?”

  “I forgot how much fun it was!” she admitted, unable to wipe the stupid grin from her face. “Jonathan doesn’t like karaoke”.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Grace said out loud without thinking.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Emma asked shocked by what her friend had just said. “I thought you liked Jonathan.”

  “What, I do… I do,” Grace said with a nervous giggle. “I really do, but…”

  “But…” Emma repeated.

  “But he is a little stiff,” she replied. Louise chuckled at what Grace had said.

  “He is not!” Emma protested, a little hurt by what her friend had said.

  Before Grace could say anything else the waitress arrived with a round of drinks.

  “Ok ladies, the guy behind the bar sent them over,” the waitress explained then turning to Emma added. “He said to tell you that you were really good and he is your biggest fan.”

  The waitress turned and continued on with her work.

  “Oh my God!” Louise squealed excitedly. “The hot barman is checking you out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Emma protested and rolled her eyes. “He is just being nice.”

  “Oh my god, you are such a freak!” Grace laughed loud and of course Louise joined in. “You are way too naive.”

  Emma tried to get a look of the guy her friends thought was so hot but the bar was too crowded and she couldn’t get a clear view. Emma had to admit she was flattered but she wasn’t interested in any one except Jonathan.

  An hour and another round later, Emma knew that she had drank too much. She felt the room was spinning and she had the horrible feeling she was going to be sick.

  “I need some air!” she announced as she stood up abruptly from the table she was a little unsteady on her feet.

  “I’ll come with you,” Grace said standing too.

  “No, I’ll be fine,” Emma quickly replied. “Stay with Lou, she is pissed and that guy has been given her the eye all night and I don’t like the look of him.” Emma shot the guy, who was sitting at the next table with a group of his friends, a very dirty look before she headed for the door.

  Emma pushed her way through the crowd and finally made her way to
the door. The air outside was cool and refreshing. She walked over to a picnic table that was outside and sat down. Her head was spinning. She knew she had drunk way too much.

  She sat for a few minutes taking a few deep breaths.

  “Are you ok?” a voice with an American accent asked? For a moment Emma felt confused. She couldn’t remember where she was. She wasn’t in New York, she was home in Ireland, wasn’t she?

  She turned to see a very handsome guy standing in front of her. He had tight, dirty blonde hair with grey eyes and the perfect, all be it slightly crooked smile. He stood about six foot two and smelled divine. He was dressed in dark denim jeans and a crisp white shirt. He was perfect.

  “I’m fine thanks,” she replied. “Just needed some air.”

  He nodded and shoved his hands into his pocket. He stood for a couple of moments staring out into the night, struggling for something to say.

  “You’re a really good singer,” he said after a few minutes.

  “Thank you,” she replied with a smile. Again there was another awkward silence.

  “I hope you didn’t think I was being too forward buying you and your friends a drink?” He asked looking at her nervously. “I never did anything like that before. I just thought you were really good.”

  “OH MY GOD, You’re the hot barmaid!” She blurted out as she realized who he was. As soon as the words were out she wanted to die with embarrassment. She could felt her cheek burning.

  “Thank you” he replied with a laugh, surprised by what she said. “I guess I am.”

  Emma was mortified.

  “But my friends usually call me Zach,” he said with a grin, holding out his hand. “Zach Adams.”

  “Emma Kelly,” she replied shaking his hand. He sat down across the table from her.

  “So how is it I haven’t seen you in here before?” he asked.

  “Well I am actually only visiting” she replied. “I live in New York. I am home to get... to... spend time with my family”.

  What the hell was that she thought to herself? Why didn’t I tell him I was getting married?