The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  In the village, men worked in shirtsleeves, and arms turned ruddy in the sun. Trevor watched the skeleton of his building take shape, the beams and block that were the solid bones of his dream.

  As the work progressed, the audience grew. Old Mr. Riley stopped by the site every day at ten until you could set your watch by him. He brought along a folding chair and sat with his cap shielding his eyes and a thermos of tea for company. There he would sit and watch, sit and nap until, sharply at one, he would stand up, fold his chair, and toddle off to his great-granddaughter’s for his midday meal.

  As often as not, one of his cronies would join him, and they would chat about the construction while playing at checkers or gin rummy.

  Trevor began to think of him as the job mascot.

  Children came by now and again and sat in a half circle by Riley’s chair. Their big eyes would track the sway of a steel beam as it was lifted into place.

  This event was sometimes followed by a round of appreciative applause.

  “Mr. Riley’s great-great-grandchildren and some friends,” Brenna told Trevor when he expressed some concern about them being near the site. “They won’t go wandering closer than his chair.”

  “Great- great -grandchildren? Then he must be as old as he looks.”

  “One hundred and two last winter. The Rileys are long-lived, though his father died at the tender age of ninety-six, God rest him.”

  “Amazing. How many of those double greats does he have?”

  “Oh, well, let me think. Fifteen. No, sixteen, as there was a new one last winter, if memory serves. Not all of them live in the area.”

  “Sixteen? Good God!”

  “Well, now, he had eight children, six still living. And between them I believe they made him near to thirty grandchildren, and I don’t have count on how many children they made. So there you have it. You’ve two of his great-grandsons on your crew, and the husband of one of his granddaughters as well.”

  “How could I avoid it?”

  “Every Sunday after Mass, he goes to visit his wife’s grave, she that was Lizzie Riley. Fifty years they were married. He takes with him that same old ratty chair there and sits by her for two hours so he can tell her all the village gossip and family news.”

  “How long has she been gone?”

  “Oh, twenty years, give or take.”

  Seventy years, give or take, devoted to one woman. It was flabbergasting and, Trevor thought, heartening. For some, it worked.

  “He’s a darling man, is Mr. Riley,” Brenna added. “Hey, there, Declan Fitzgerald, have a care there with that board before you bash someone in the face with it.”

  With a shake of her head, Brenna strode over to heft the far end of the board herself.

  Trevor nearly followed. It had been his intention to spend most of his afternoon lifting, hauling, hammering. The sound of air guns and compressors whooshing and rumbling along with the constant rattle of the cement mixer had the young audience enthralled. Beside them in his chair, Riley sipped tea. Going with impulse, Trevor walked over to him.

  “What do you think?”

  Riley watched Brenna place her board. “I’m thinking you build strong and hire well. Mick O’Toole and his pretty Brenna, they know what they’re about.” Riley shifted his faded eyes to Trevor’s face. “And so, I think, do you, young Magee.”

  “If the weather holds, we’ll be under roof ahead of schedule.”

  Riley’s weathered face creased into smiles. It was like watching thin white paper stretch over rock. “You’ll be there when you get there, lad. That’s the way of things. You’ve the look of your great-uncle.”

  As he’d been told so once, hesitantly, by his grandmother, Trevor considered, then crouched down so Riley wouldn’t have to crane his neck.

  It’s just that you look so like John, Trevor, his brother who died young. It makes it hard for your grandfather to . . . It makes it hard for him.

  “Do I?”

  “Oh, aye. Johnnie Magee, I knew him, and your grandfather as well. A fine-looking young lad was Johnnie, with his gray eyes and slow smile. Built like a whip, as you are yourself.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Oh, quiet, he was, and deep. Full of thoughts and feelings, and most of them for Maude Fitzgerald. He wanted her, and little else.”

  “And what he got was war.”

  “Aye, that’s the way it was. Many young men fell in 1916, on those fields of France. And here as well, in our own little war for Ireland’s independence. Elsewhere, for that matter, at any time you can pick. Men go to battle, and women wait and weep.”

  He laid a bony hand on the head of one of the children who sat at his side. “The Irish know it comes ’round again. And so do the old. I’m both old and Irish.”

  “You said you knew my grandfather.”

  “I did.” Riley sat back with his tea, crossed his thin legs at the ankles. “Dennis, now, he was a brawnier type than his brother, and more apt to look a mile down the road instead of where he was standing. A discontented sort was Dennis Magee, if you don’t mind me saying. Ardmore wasn’t the place for him, and he shook off the sand of it as soon as he was able. Did he, I wonder, find what he was looking for there, and contentment with it?”

  “I don’t know,” Trevor answered frankly. “I wouldn’t say he was a particularly happy man.”

  “I’m sorry for that, for it’s often hard for those around the unhappy to be happy themselves. His bride, as I recall, was a quiet-mannered lass. She was Mary Clooney, whose family farmed in Old Parish, and one of a family of ten, if my memory can be trusted.”

  “It seems sharp enough to me.”

  Riley cackled. “Oh, the brain’s stayed with me well enough. Just takes the body a mite longer to get up and running these days.” The boy wanted to know what had been and where he’d come from, Riley decided. And why shouldn’t he? “I’ll tell you, the babe, the boy who grew to be your father, was a handsome one. Many’s the time I saw him toddling along the roads holding his ma’s hand.”

  “And his father’s?”

  “Well, perhaps not so often, but now and again. Dennis was after making a living and putting by for his journey to America. I hope they had a good life there.”

  “They did. My grandfather wanted to build, and that’s what he did.”

  “Then that was enough for him. I remember your father, the younger Dennis, coming back here when he was old enough to have grown a few whiskers.” Riley paused to pour himself more tea from his thermos. “He seemed to’ve grown fine, had a pleasing way about him, and set some of the local lasses fluttering.” He winked.“As you’ve done yourself. Still, he didn’t choose, at that time, to leave anything behind him here but the memory. You’ve chosen different.”

  Riley gestured toward the construction with his cup. “Building something here’s what you’re about, isn’t it?”

  “It seems to be, at the moment.”

  “Well, Johnnie, he wanted nothing more than a cottage and his girl, but the war took him. His mother died not five years after, heartbroken. It’s a hard thing, don’t you think, for a man to live always in the shadow of a dead brother?”

  Trevor glanced up again, met the faded and shrewd eyes. Clever old man, he thought, and supposed if you lived past the century mark, you had to be clever. “I imagine it is, even if you go three thousand miles to escape it.”

  “That’s the truth. Better by far to stand and build your own.” He nodded, this time with a kind of approval. “Well, as I said, you’ve the look of him, long-dead John Magee, in the bones of your face and around the eyes. Once they landed on Maude Fitzgerald, she was his heart. Do you believe in romance and ever after, young Magee?”

  Trevor glanced away, up toward Darcy’s window, then back again. “For some.”

  “You have to believe in it to get it.” Riley winked and passed his cup to Trevor. “What’s built isn’t always of wood and stone, and still it lasts.” Reaching out, he once again laid
one of his gnarled hands on the head of the child nearest his chair. “Ever after.”

  “Some of us do better with wood and stone,” Trevor commented, then absently drank the tea. He lost his breath, his vision blurred. “Jesus,” he managed as the heavy lacing of whiskey scored his throat.

  Riley laughed so hard he fell to wheezing, and his wrinkled face went pink with humor. “There now, lad, what’s a cup of tea without a shot of the Irish in it, I’d like to know? Never say they’ve diluted your blood so over there in Amerikay you can’t handle your own.”

  “I don’t usually handle it at eleven in the morning.”

  “What’s the clock got to do with a bloody thing?”

  The man, Trevor thought, seemed old as Moses and had been steadily sipping the spiked tea for an hour. Compelled to save face, Trevor downed the rest of the cup and was rewarded by a wide, rubbery grin.

  “You’re all right, young Magee. You’re all right. Since you are, I’ll tell you this. That lovely lass inside Gallagher’s won’t settle for less in a man than hot blood, a strong backbone, and a clever brain. I’m considering you have all three.”

  Trevor handed Riley back his cup. “I’m just here to build a theater.”

  “If that’s the truth, then I’ll say this as well: It goes that youth is wasted on the young, but I’m of a mind that the young waste youth.” He poured another cup of tea. “And I’ll just have to marry her meself.” Amusement danced in his eyes as he sipped. “Step lively, boyo, for I’ve a world of experience with the female of the species.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Trevor got to his feet. “What did John Magee do before he went to war?”

  “For a living, you’re meaning.” If Riley thought it was odd that Trevor wouldn’t know he didn’t say so. “He was for the sea. His heart belonged to it, and to Maude, and to nothing else.”

  Trevor nodded. “Thanks for the tea,” he said and went back to join his crew.

  He skipped lunch. There were too many calls to make, faxes expected, to take time for an hour in the pub and his afternoon dose of Darcy. He hoped she looked for him, wondered a little. If he understood her as he thought he did, she would expect him to come in, to have to come And it would annoy her when he didn’t.

  Good, Trevor mused as he let himself into the cottage. He wanted to keep her a little off-balance. That careless confidence of hers was a formidable weapon. Her arrogance played right along with it. And damned if he didn’t find them both attractive.

  Amused at himself, he went directly up to his office and spent thirty minutes immersed in business. It was one of his skills, this ability to tune out every other thought and zero in on the deal of the moment. With Riley’s memories fresh in his own mind, and Darcy dancing at the edges of it, he needed that skill now more than ever.

  Once current projects were handled, faxes zipped off, E-mail answered and sent, he gave his thoughts to a future project he was formulating.

  Time, he thought, to lay the groundwork. Picking up the phone, he called Gallagher’s. He was pleased that Aidan answered. Trevor made it a point to go straight to the head of a company. Or in this case, a family.

  “It’s Trev.”

  “Well, now, I thought I’d see you sitting at one of my tables by this time of day.”

  Aidan raised his voice over the lunchtime clatter, and Trevor imagined him pulling pints one-handed while he talked. In the background he heard Darcy’s laugh.

  “I had some business to do. I’d like to have a meeting with you and your family, when it’s convenient for you.”

  “A meeting? About the theater?”

  “Partly. Do you have an hour to spare, maybe between shifts?”

  “Oh, I imagine we can accommodate you. Today?”

  “Sooner the better.”

  “Fine. Come on by the house then. We tend to hold our family meetings ’round the kitchen table.”

  “I appreciate it. Would you ask Brenna to come by?”

  “I will, yes.” Taking her off the job, Aidan thought, but made no comment. “I’ll see you a bit later, then.”

  Around the kitchen table. Trevor recalled several of his own family meetings in the same venue. Before his first day of school, when he was going off to baseball camp, about to take his driver’s test, and so on. All of his rites of passage, and his sister’s, had been discussed there. Serious punishments, serious praise had warranted the kitchen table.

  Odd, he remembered now, when he had broken his engagement, he’d told his parents as they sat in the kitchen. That’s where he’d told them of his plans for the Ardmore theater, and his intention of coming to Ireland.

  And, he realized as he calculated the time in New York, that was where his parents most likely were at this moment. He picked up the phone again and called home.

  “Good morning, Magee residence.”

  “Hello, Rhonda, it’s Trev.”

  “Mister Trevor.” The Magee housekeeper had never called him anything else, even when she’d threatened to swat him. “How are you enjoying Ireland?”

  “Very much. Did you get my postcard?”

  “I did. You know how much I love to get them. I was telling Cook just yesterday that Mister Trevor never forgets how I like postcards for my album. Is it as green as that, really?”

  “Greener. You should come over, Rhonda.”

  “Oh, now you know I’m not getting on an airplane unless somebody holds a gun to my head. Your folks are having breakfast. They’re going to be thrilled to hear from you. Just hold on a minute. You take care of yourself, Mister Trevor, and come back soon.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  He waited, enjoying the picture of the rail-thin black woman in her ruthlessly starched apron hurrying over the rich white marble floor, past the art, the antiques, the flowers, to the back of the elegant brownstone. She wouldn’t use the intercom to announce his call. Such family dealings could only be delivered in person.

  The kitchen would smell of coffee, fresh bread, and the violets his mother was most fond of. His father would have the paper open to the financial section. His mother would be reading the editorials and getting worked up about the state of the world and narrow minds.

  There would be none of that uneasy quiet, that underthe-polish tension that had lived in his grandparents’ home. Somehow his father had escaped that, just as his own father had escaped Ardmore. But the younger Dennis had indeed stood and built his own.

  “Trev! Baby, how are you?”

  “I’m good. Nearly as good as you sound. I thought I’d catch you and Dad at breakfast.”

  “Creatures of habit. But this is an even lovelier way to start the day. Tell me what you see.”

  It was an old request, an old habit. Automatically he rose to go to the window. “The cottage has a front garden. An amazing one for such a small place. Whoever designed it knew just what they wanted. It’s like a . . . a witch’s garden. One of the good witches who helps maidens break evil spells. The flowers tumble together, color, shape, and scent. Beyond it are hedges of wild fuchsia, deep red on green and taller than I am. The road they line is narrow as a ditch and full of ruts. Your teeth rattle if you go over thirty. Then the hills slope down, impossibly green, toward the village. There are rooftops and white cottages and tidy streets. The church steeple, and well off is a round tower I have to visit. It’s all edged by the sea. It’s sunny today, so the light flashes off the blue. It’s really very beautiful.”

  “Yes, it is. You sound happy.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You haven’t been, not really, for too long. Now I’ll let you talk to your father, who’s rolling his eyes at me, as I imagine you have business to discuss.”

  “Mom.” There was so much, so much that his morning conversation with an old man and his horde of progeny had set to swirling inside him. He said what he felt the most. “I miss you.”

  “Oh. Oh, now look what you’ve done.” She sniffled. “You can just talk to your father while I
cry a little.”

  “Well, you got her mind off the editorial on handguns.” Dennis Magee’s voice boomed over the wire. “How’s the job going?”

  “On schedule, on budget.”

  “Good to hear. Going to keep it there?”

  “Close to there, anyway. You, Mom, Doro, and her family better keep a week next summer open. The Magees should all be here for the first show.”

  “Back to Ardmore. I have to say, I never figured on it. From the reports, it hasn’t changed much.”

  “It’s not meant to. I’ll send you a written update on the project, but that’s not why I called. Dad, did you ever visit Faerie Hill Cottage?”

  There was a pause, a sigh. “Yes. I had some curiosity about the woman who’d been engaged to my uncle. Maybe because my father so rarely spoke of him.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “That John Magee died a hero before he ever had the chance to live.”

  “And Grandfather resented that.”

  “That’s a hard way to put it, Trev.”

  “He was a hard man.”

  “What he felt about his brother, his family, he kept to himself. I never tried to get through. What was the point? I knew I would never get through to him about what he felt about anything, much less what he’d left behind in Ireland.”

  “Sorry.” He could hear it, that weariness, that vague tone of frustration in his father’s voice. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “No, that’s foolish. It would be on your mind. You’re there. I think—looking back, I think he was determined to be an American, to raise me as an American. Here is where he wanted to make his mark. In New York he could be his own man. He was his own man.”

  A cold, hard man who paid more attention to his ledgers than his family. But Trevor saw no point in saying so when his father knew that better than anyone.

  “What did you find, for yourself, when you came back here?” he asked instead.

  “Charm, some sentiment, more of a link than I’d expected.”

  “Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly it.”

  “I meant to go back, but something else always seemed to come up. And truth is, I’m a city boy. A week in the country and I’m itchy. You and your mother never minded roughing it, but the Hamptons is about as rural as I can manage and stay sane. Don’t snicker, Carolyn,” Dennis said mildly. “It’s rude.”