Death's Excellent Vacation - By Charlaine Harris & Toni L. P. Kelner Page 0,130

and slightly daunting group. Over the generations, they had made the local post office their own, and it was rare that anyone over five and a half feet tall was given a job there.

Pat rebelled inwardly at this extreme clannishness, but his secret desire was not to escape to a more varied culture. What he dreamed of most, with all his heart, was to return to the old country, not the Ireland of industry and high tech, but the land it had once been. Patrick O’Reilly really lived in a world of Celtic glory, of valiant battles and ancient adventures. He saw himself as the heir to Cu Chulainn and Niall of the Silver Hand. He was the navigator for St. Brendan, sailing beyond the edge of the horizon. He was one of the Wild Geese, following his king into exile. He was Michael Collins and Charles Parnell and Eamon de Valera, fighting tyranny.

He was anyone but himself. Anywhere but the post office, watching stamps fly by from places he’d never see.

Since he paid little for his room and board, Pat had spent years squirreling away his paychecks until he had enough to finally make the trip to Ireland in style. But now that there was a tidy sum in his account, he still felt uncomfortable taking anything out, even for the trip of a lifetime. The whole family was like that, not exactly miserly, but reluctant to spend on anything but the necessaries. Pat thought he’d escaped the trait until the time came to make a withdrawal. The only thing any O’Reilly ever spent money on was shoes. Not one of them would dream of appearing in knockoffs. The finest leather and the best construction were essential. Most of the family spent more on shoes than food.

Perhaps he delayed the trip simply because he’d never gone anywhere without at least a few other O’Reillys. He’d tried to suggest to his parents that they make a family pilgrimage back to Ireland, but they always laughed and asked why he’d want to do that, when America had been so good to them all.

“We were driven out of Ireland,” his mother, Eileen, reminded him. “No one wanted us there. We were starving and forced to work for nothing.”

“That we were,” his father, Michael, nodded sagely over his briar pipe. “Here we’ve made our own Ireland, one that no one can invade. I wouldn’t go back there for all the gold in the world.”

Eileen gave him a sharp glance of warning that Pat didn’t notice.

“But you’ve never been there, either of you,” he whined. “Nor have your parents or anyone in the family. I just want to see the auld sod. I want to find my roots!”

“Don’t be a muggins!” His dad cuffed him gently. “You don’t need to look for your roots. The trees are all around you.”

Pat didn’t ask again, but he never stopped dreaming.

ONE day in spring, Pat came home from a late shift, eager for the porter stew his mother usually left for him to warm up. Instead of a solitary dinner and a beer, he found the house full to the rafters with cousins, uncles, aunts, and other assorted O’Reilly attachments. No one said a word, a miracle akin to the Second Coming. There was only one reason Pat could imagine for such solemnity.

“Who died?” he asked.

His mother stood slowly. In her hands she gripped a large, bright green envelope, edged with gold. Pat noticed right away that it hadn’t gone through the post. There was no stamp, only a pristine blob of sealing wax. It didn’t look like a death notice. The gold seemed to shimmer like the Cuyahoga River in flames.

Still no one spoke. This unnerved Patrick most. Normally a family gathering would have put a henhouse to shame, with all the squawks, shouts, bursts of laughter, wails of infants, and, of course, the firmly stated opinions that eventually would lead to blows.

“Mom?” he asked warily.

At last she broke the silence. “It’s come,” she quavered, clutching the envelope to her chest. “We haven’t been asked in fifty years, not since my granddad’s time. I thought they’d forgotten all about us.”

She searched in her pocket for a tissue, too overwhelmed to continue. Her sister, Teresa, took over.

“It’s the invitation to the summer gathering,” she told Patrick. “Only a thousand are so honored to be asked, and it happens only once every ten years.”

“Imagine that,” Pat’s father murmured. “Out of all those millions of O’Reillys. And, when you