Facing her was my plan, and not a pleasant one. She scared the crap out of me and worse, she had the power to end me.
“Yeah, back for more. I guess you could say that.” I huffed at his comment. “It all feels very unfinished.” I tipped my head at Padraic. “Like the O’Malleys just disappeared from their homeland and no one knows what happened to all of them… particularly Brigid. Where could she be now?”
I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug, searching for warmth, wondering where all the local O’Malleys had gone.
“Ach, lassie, ’tis all but legend now, fadin’ into the mist of time.” Padraic moved down the bar, wiping in a rhythm of decades of similar strokes. “The O’Malleys dispersed. Lost their land through the ancient Brehon Law and moved on. Shame ’tis.” His voice faded as he went farther down the bar. “’Twill always be their land, though.”
I turned to Paul and raised my eyebrows in question. “What’s Brehon Law?”
He nodded, as if in agreement with Padraic, absorbing what he said.
“It’s ancient Celtic ruling, from medieval times. Governed the people through laws that were actually quite modern for their time.” He looked down the bar toward Padraic. “He must be referring to its property laws, which basically granted ownership of ‘property in question’ for a fixed amount of time. Generations, really.”
“Fixed amount of time?” My eyebrows scrunched, narrowing my eyes.
“Basically giving the original owners time to prove their rights to the land. Once the deadline hit, though, Brehon Law would grant the land to the current holders, if the original landholders couldn’t prove their claim, that is.”
My eyes widened. “That’s a bit harsh. Isn’t it?”
“It’s actually quite fair. Particularly since the deadlines are generally set for hundreds of years.” He flipped his hair away from his face. His windblown look sent tingles into my belly and warmed me.
It was much more than legend though, as Padraic called it, with a flick of his rag. Paul and I knew there was more to it. I had her ring. And in my pocket, the leather satchel held promises beyond imagination—an ancient tomb key.
My grandfather kept the medieval key back in Boston, hidden safe in his garden with St. Brendan the Navigator as its protector. The iconic statue in the backyard held the secret within its stony base, behind a camouflaged mysterious little hatch, for countless years. And now the key was back here in Ireland, right in my pocket.
My smile quivered as my throat tightened. I missed him. Every day. I missed Gram and my mother too. The hollow emptiness of grief carved out my heart each day. Feeling alone and lost, my love for them had nowhere to go. It festered in me, trapped. My journey back here, to Ireland, was the best way for me to stay connected to them in some way.
And Gráinne Ní Mháille, Grace O’Malley, she was my family too. And my hunter. My sixteenth great-grandmother. She’d been terrorizing me my entire life, and even worse, I knew she had something to do with my mother’s untimely death. I was sure Mom’s “heart condition” had a direct link to Grace’s tortured soul and broken heart. It made sense. I reached for my own heart to be sure it held its steady beat.
I ran my hands through my hair, pondering the enormity of the task in front of me. I was determined to break the cycle that plagued the O’Malley women and get my life back and would let nothing stop me.
Paul reached under the bar and took my hand, reminding me of the other reason I’d returned to Ireland. He ran his fingers through mine, sending chills all the way to the ends of my hair. He bent his head to look into my face.
“Maeve, this isn’t going to be as easy as we thought,” he said with gentle raised eyebrows.
My response to his touch distracted me from his words as I focused only on his mouth. He’d turned my world upside down in every imaginable way. And I just wanted to devour him every minute.
I blinked into his wide pupils and reached for his windblown hair, attempting to control it a bit, then flashed back to the ominous figure in the cemetery.
“Who the hell was that anyway? Or what was that?” My hands slapped down on my lap.
My teeth clenched in annoyed distraction.
I wanted to find Grace’s sword. I wanted to see if the tomb key was a match to the ancient mound in the cemetery. Its capstone read G R A, 1500-something. Even if it was a match, though, I had no idea what I would do next. It’s not like opening a burial crypt like a grave robber was something I could actually do.
My head tipped and I stared into space for a minute.
No. No way.
I pushed on my temples and looked straight into Paul’s eyes.
“I want to go back to the cemetery. We have to.” My eyes begged his.
He shook his head and rubbed his scruffy chin.
“I don’t know. It’s dangerous.” He pressed his lips together. “I know it’s important to you, but I’m not going to put you in harm’s way again. We need a better plan.” He glanced down the bar. “We need to be prepared for anything, everything.”
Paul cracked his knuckles in thought. He looked back into my eyes and hesitated.
My eyebrows shot up.
“We need Brigid,” I said.
A chill shuddered through my body.
My lost cousin Brigid was the missing link. She was the only person on this planet who had the same visions as me, the same violent assaults that interrupted our lives and made us freaks. Brigid could have answers.
I nodded my head at Paul as our next moves fell into place through our connected eyes.
“Padraic. Two pints.”
Paul bought more conversation time with Padraic as the stout took its own sweet time settling in the glasses before being topped off.
“So, Padraic,” Paul continued, “the laundries… which one would they send the girls to from around here?”
Padraic’s back stiffened.
The laundries were an unspoken topic, one of disgrace. If they weren’t discussed, then maybe they never existed.
The shadow of shame that washed over Padraic’s face was a national reaction to the matter.
Paul had done his graduate studies on Irish history and the Magdalene Laundries were a vague part of it, always shrouded in mystery, but enough for him to be able to enlighten me. I remembered his stories of the laundries, all disbanded now—institutions for “fallen women” where young girls were sent if they became unwed mothers or if they showed promiscuity or any signs of mental illness. Ireland’s religious laws were rigid and these “physical and mental” conditions were considered unholy. The nuns would come and the girls would never be heard from again.
My pint sloshed in the glass as my shaking hands struggled to remain steady, making it worse, but my visceral response to the idea of the laundries couldn’t be controlled. My lips pressed together in loud silence.
“Ya should’na be askin’ about the laundries. They’re gone now.” Padraic eyeballed Paul like a criminal.
Paul adjusted himself on his stool and cleared his throat.
“Understood. But you remember, Padraic, Maeve’s cousin was sent to one.” He gestured his head toward me. “Brigid. We aim to find ’er.”
“Right. Right. I know, lassie.” Padraic’s head hung and he nodded to me. “God bless ’er soul.”
“She’s my only family, Padraic. I need to find her. To tell her she’s not alone. That she’s not crazy.”
My heart tore at the thought of Brigid spending all those years thinking she was insane or possessed from the visions. She must be somewhere around fifty by now—tormented her entire life without any explanation. The intense visions started with her at eighteen, same as me. And then she was gone. Taken away.
“I’m sorry. You’re a fine pair with good hearts. But it’s a dead end fer ya.”
Padraic stopped his serving and wiping and looked straight at me, as if it were my final hour.
My heart skipped a beat as his sympathetic gaze shot fear into me, like he knew so
mething.
“How so?” Paul grew impatient.
“She was sent to the House of Tears, I reckon.” His eyes avoided ours. “St. Mary’s. In Tuam. ’Twas where all them girls from around here was sent.”
Paul jolted back as if he’d been punched.
“St. Mary’s? The Tuam babies?” Paul gasped.
Padraic nodded.
“I’ve been studying the excavation. Christ.” Paul shook his head and looked down into his pint glass, into oblivion.
“What?” My voice pierced the air.
Had they forgotten I was even here?
Padraic moved away from us to attend to other patrons, who seemed all set to me.
“I know where St. Mary’s is. They might know about Brigid.” Paul’s lips turned up in a fake half-smile, but his worried eyes gave him away.
“House of Tears? What is that place?” I asked in a revolting tone, pulling away from him.
It sounded to me like a made-up horror movie script. My imagination spun evil scene after evil scene as sickness soured my mouth.
“The laundries,” Paul admitted with flat affect.
Chapter Two
Forbidden
Dodging big, wet rain drops, Paul and I ran for my blue door. His arm sheltered me as I crouched from the drops, forever trying to stay dry in the wettest part of Ireland, the west.
“How’ya Miss O’Malley. Master McGratt.” Mr. Flaherty, my landlord, nodded at us from his shelter of the overhang from his paint shop sign. His heavy brogue made it nearly impossible to understand him.
He’d welcomed me back after my grandparents passed away and rented me my flat again. 122 Bohermore. But he still always looked at me through sideways, squinted eyes, as if he were trying to figure me out, or worse, like he saw something in me no one else could see.
His gaze followed us as we pushed through the blue door into my alleyway, leading to the entry to my flat, and then he headed back into his paint shop flapping his rag into the air.
Paul and I raced up the stairs and into the kitchen, slipping on the shiny black and white tile, all the way to the sink to shake off and drip dry. Paul pressed against me as he shook his hands through my hair, pushing wet bits off my face. The pressure of his body on mine sent my mind spiraling.
He had been my college professor, when I first came to Ireland last September. Untouchable. Forbidden. But now, here in my kitchen, he was just Paul. Well, not just.
He leaned in and ran his lips across my jawline, inhaling deeply.
“You smell like the rain.” He pulled back and gazed into my eyes.
Tempted to fall into the warm depths of his stare, I dropped my eyes to the floor instead—thinking about Brigid and how to find her.
Paul reached for a tea towel and dried the ends of my hair with it.
“What are you thinking about? I can see the wheels turning.” He gave a gentle smile.
“Sorry. I can’t help it.” I took his hand and squeezed it. “I need to start at the library.” My mind raced ahead of me. “To look up St. Mary’s and the laundries. To find out what happened to the women who were sent there.”
I tipped my head at Paul as his eyes stared out the window, distracted.
“What?” I asked.
“Sorry. No, I agree.” He shook his head. “I just couldn’t help thinking about your landlord, there. He’s an odd character.” He smirked. “I’m not sure Ol’ Mr. Flaherty likes me much. He’s a bit protective of you, I’d say.”
“Of course he likes you,” I replied as my brows scrunched in question.
“Nah. He looks at me funny. Like he can see right through me or somethin’.” He shot an exaggerated shiver through his shoulders. “Ya haven’t told him about us, have you? Ya know, our whole history thing?”
I shook my head fast.
“No. Never. He’d think I was crazy.” I wrapped my arms around his ribs. “But you’re right. It’s not just you. He looks at me funny too, like he’s spooked. Like he knows something.”
If Mr. Flaherty had any idea of what we’d been through together, he’d probably evict me like I was a possessed witch.
I squeezed Paul closer to me, thinking of the time we had to spend apart while I was back in Boston. So much had happened and then I had to leave so abruptly, like we were torn apart. It felt good to be with him again.
“I’m so glad to be back here with you,” I whispered in his ear. Just the thought of him patched my heavy heart. “You make me feel like I’m home.”
He smoothed my hair back.
“When you left me, I thought m’ heart had been ripped out.” He stroked my cheek, remembering our painful goodbye. We’d hardly had a moment to even think about it since I’d returned. “But now, it’s like I can breathe again.”
His head fell as he held his cheek against mine, moving his hand around the back of my neck.
“You knew I’d come back,” I whispered. “You set me up with that book. Left me no choice.” I smirked and pushed him away.
He came right back to me like a magnet.
“I’m sorry. That was the only way I knew how to tell you. On your own time, your own pace.” He smirked at his effective ploy. “My mind was blown too. Sure, ‘destined to be together’ seemed a little heavy for parting words.” He huffed. “Plus, I wasn’t sure if it could hurt us in some way.”
I thought of the book he gave me as I boarded my flight home last winter. It was of his family heritage and held incredible information of his lineage—direct connections to Grace. To me.
“How could it hurt us?” My eyebrows shot up.
Paul stepped back and ran his hand through his hair. His shirt rode up enough to expose the skin over the waist of his pants. My eyes lingered there.
“I don’t know. It didn’t end well for them, you know, Grace and Hugh.” He grimaced. “So finding out I was a descendant of Hugh DeLacy kind of scared the crap out of me. I mean, you’re connected to her. I’m connected to him. And the dreams….”
He burst his fingers at his head, as if it were exploding.
“Right. The dreams don’t end well for you typically.” I curled my lip in disgust, thinking of how he had similar dreams to my visions, only he died in his. Every time.
“That’s an understatement.”
“Well, I kinda see it as a sign that we were meant to be together.” I smiled and glanced at him sideways as I pulled him closer to me. “It takes the guesswork out of it, right?”
I breathed in his fresh-air, woodsy scent and laced my fingers in the belt loops of his pants.
He had a powerful way of making my festering grief have someplace safe to go. Someplace happier and whole. Providing relief from the pain. And I trusted him for that.
His arms wrapped around me, arching my back, and I lifted my face to his. He dropped his head down, burying it in my shoulder, and whispered in my ear.
“I just don’t know what I would do if something ever happened to ya. I couldn’t bear it.” He inhaled, breathing in my hair and my face. “Never leave me again, Maeve. I can’t be apart from you ever again. Promise me.”
His words softened my muscles as tingling desire coursed through me.
His smoldering eyes moved from mine, down the lines of my body and back to my mouth. His breath quickened as he pulled my body against his.
“Maeve. What are you doing to me?”
He brushed my hair from my face as he gazed into my eyes. He moved his mouth closer to mine and his breath tickled my lips. He pulled my hips against his and kissed me. His soft lips searched mine, pressing them open, kissing me deeper. His hunger excited me and I kissed him back with a passion that left me panting.
His hands ran down my back and up along my ribs, brushing the sides of my breasts. My breath sucked in as I ran my hands over his strong shoulders and down his arms. His toned muscles sent craving through me. His arm held my back as his other hand ran down the middle of my chest. My back arched in response to his touch.
His han
d rested in the center of my chest bone and he kissed me again.
Buzz! Buzz!
I jumped as my heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t shake the scandalous jitters that lingered from when he was my teacher, always fearing being caught together.
“Dammit! Who is that?” I barked at the old-fashioned buzz of the doorbell.
“Jazus. What I could do to you…,” he whispered and shook his head at me and then at the buzzer. “You have me completely bewitched, Maeve O’Malley.”
He tucked the bottom on his clean oxford into the waist of his pants.
Oh my god.
I licked my lips, dreaming of more time with him.
With obvious reluctance, Paul released me and the warmth of his body left me, replaced with a chill of emptiness. I craved his closeness instantly.
I thumped down each stair with a heavy step and moved through the alley-like corridor toward my blue door. The buzz from the doorbell continued in the back of my mind, incessantly buzzing. I pulled on the swollen door until it gave way.
“Don’t you ever answer your texts? What the hell!” Michelle blasted at me.
She pushed past me into the narrow breezeway.
She’d stayed in Galway all this time, ever since we first arrived together on the same flight last September, and had actually decided to stay indefinitely. Her boyfriend Declan had something to do with that decision, for sure.
“What?” I checked my empty pockets for my phone. “What texts?”
“You promised a girl’s night out when you got back from Claremorris. Soooooo, ready?” She tapped her foot and checked the time on her phone. The frizz of her windblown hair left zero evidence of her preppy, perfectly straightened bob when we first met. She’d left the designer labels and personal primping far behind.
My thoughts jumped to Paul, waiting in my kitchen, and I ached to be with him. My head fell back as I flashed to the lost moments.
Inish Clare Page 2
