Now You See Her Page 0,61

was already almost giddy with anticipation, her knees all but knocking together with suppressed joy. It was important to steady her nerves, to stay as calm as she could. The last thing she wanted to do was come face-to-face with her daughter, only to pass out.

“Really?” Liam’s green eyes sparkled. “You want the guided tour?”

“Knock yourself out.”

“Okay. But it’ll cost you.”

Marcy smiled as Liam cleared his throat and pushed back his shoulders.

“Youghal is the county’s major coastal town and leading beach resort,” he began. “Basically, it’s a fishing and market village whose main claim to fame is that Sir Walter Raleigh was once its mayor, way back in 1588. Supposedly he planted Ireland’s first potatoes here, as well as introducing tobacco to the locals.” They turned a corner. “We are now entering the city center,” Liam continued in his most sonorous voice. “Like many coastal villages, Youghal residents are quite fond of brightly colored houses, like the ones you’ll see lining the quaint, narrow streets leading down to the water.” He directed her around a line of compact cars that were parked along the sidewalk. “Straight ahead of you is the famous clock tower, which was built in 1777 as a jail to imprison renegade Catholics. It was routinely used as a torture chamber and was long regarded as a symbol of terror and tyranny.”

Marcy stared at the beautiful, gray stone, five-story structure with well-stocked flower boxes adorning its eight small windows. A high arch allowed cars to pass right through the clock tower’s center.

“Not so scary anymore, is it?” Liam said.

“It’s very beautiful.”

“Yes, I guess it is. This way,” he said, leading her past a series of shops and sandwich bars painted a host of garish colors—green trim on blue stucco; orange shutters in the middle of canary-yellow walls; bright, butterscotch-colored door panels and turquoise columns surrounding tomato-red front doors. “See that sign?” He pointed to a sign in the shape of an arrow that said SHOPPING in large bold letters. Directly beneath it was the Irish word “Siopadóireacht.”

“What’s that?” Marcy asked.

“I believe you would call that a return to our roots,” he told her, explaining that while most people in Ireland still preferred to speak English, there had been an enthusiastic revival of the Irish language in recent years.

Marcy thought of the time she and Peter had taken their kids on a short holiday to Quebec City, where French was the predominant language and all storefronts and street signs were written solely in French. Her son, Darren, had taken it all in stride. Devon, however, was indignant. “Aren’t we in Canada anymore?” she’d demanded impatiently, struggling to understand where she was. “What happened to English?” Marcy wondered how her daughter was managing here in this small coastal village, where ancient Gaelic was enjoying a hardy comeback.

They veered off the main street, immediately finding themselves on a street so narrow they could barely walk side by side. Still, cars somehow managed to squeeze by them at impressive speeds. “Watch yourself,” Liam said, cautioning her, on more than one occasion.

“Are we almost there?”

“Almost.”

Tiny row houses lined the cobblestone street, each a different vibrant hue. Most were one-story homes containing a single upstairs bedroom above the front door. “Charming” was probably the word most often used to describe them, Marcy thought. Still, Devon had grown up in a spacious house in Hogg’s Hollow, a decidedly upscale residential area of Toronto. Her bedroom alone was probably the same square footage as most of these homes. Even then, she was always complaining about not having enough room, enough space, enough privacy. Could she really be content in such confined quarters?

One narrow, ancient street twisted effortlessly into the next. Occasionally someone opened a window to yell something across the street at a neighbor. Bicycles frequently whizzed by, ducking between cars both moving and parked right up against the houses. “Careful,” Liam warned again.

“Which way?” Marcy asked when they stopped for traffic at a busy intersection.

“Down this street.” Liam pointed to his right.

“Amazing how much traffic there is.”

“You don’t have traffic in Toronto?”

“Oh, we have plenty of traffic. Just that the streets are wider.”

“And paved with gold?” Liam asked playfully.

“Yes, absolutely. All Toronto streets are paved with gold.”

“I think I’d like to see that,” Liam stated. “Would you be my tour guide when I come to Toronto?”

When, Marcy noted. Not if.

“Okay, here we are,” he was saying in the next breath, stopping in front of a pale blue, two-story house at the corner.

“This is it?”

“No.