A Hamilton Family Christmas - Donna Kauffman Page 0,117

the Gallagher clan is we have a lot of cousins.”

She laughed. “On both sides of the pond, yes. So, did another branch of the family take you in?”

“Not exactly, but they did help me find work.” He’d never told his cousins in Dublin why he’d left Cork. Nor did he ask for help until he was old enough for them not to question his being on his own. The various branches of the family were close enough that they probably weren’t all that surprised. “My Dublin cousins also had a restaurant. As did several other branches of my family. For a long time, I’d been trying to get my grandmother to see that if she could talk the other family restaurants into joining forces, they could all improve their individual places.”

“You realized that? You were just a kid.”

He lifted a shoulder. “I watched too much television in the pub growing up, maybe. A lot of news programs along with all the sports. Commerce intrigued me. Rebuilding, reimagining things to make them successful made sense to me. I don’t know why I think like that, but I always have.”

“They say inventors are born, not made. Maybe you’re the same way.”

“Maybe. But my grandmother and other family members wouldn’t listen to me.” It had been far more than merely tuning him out. They’d taunted him about his faery world ideas. His odd appearance, with his light eyes and hair, had engendered any number of faery jokes. He’d simply thought them idiots for not even giving his scheme a shot. “My cousins in Dublin weren’t much more open to the idea.”

“Really? I was thinking that was your first success story.”

“I think of it as my biggest failure, actually. But you can’t change what people don’t want fixed.”

“I asked before, but do you think maybe they feel as I do?”

“In some ways, yes. In most ways, they’re simply too stubborn to hear they might not be doing something the best way possible.”

“That trait runs in your family tree.” She laughed. “I’m shocked.”

He did have the good grace to smile, and, for the first time, soften his view regarding his family’s choices . . . at least a little. “It was while working for my Dublin cousins that I made a few suggestions to another shopkeeper. He thought they sounded like a good idea and put them to use. I didn’t make any money on that deal, but it gave me the confidence to flesh out my ideas. I started taking university courses while working, and that shopkeeper passed my name along, which led to a few small consulting jobs. And”—he shrugged—“it’s hard to explain, but it became a business. Lots of stops and starts and going off in far too many wild directions, but that’s what it took to figure out what would work. I was young, so it didn’t matter if it wasn’t good right from the start. I had the restaurant in Dublin as backup, always had a little cash in my pocket, and, eventually . . . well—”

“You had full pockets,” she finished on a smile.

“Actually, for a very long time, I didn’t. I put everything I made back into the business. Sent the rest to my grandmother.”

“Was she doing okay?”

“She was fine. She had family to take care of her. But it was on me to do that, and I left.”

“But—”

“I didn’t say I regretted leaving. But it was still my place, my responsibility. I sent money, every month, until she passed.”

“That was good of you.”

“I wish I could say I did it for good, but it was part family responsibility, and part me wanting to show all my cousins back home what I’d made of myself. Not the most charitable of motives.”

“I think you wouldn’t be judged too harshly for that.”

In point of fact, he simply didn’t think about it. Not anymore.

“Have you ever gone back?”

“For her funeral,” he said. “To finalize her property.”

“Didn’t the restaurant go to you?”

“No, it rightfully went to my uncle, who’d worked for her for years, and had taken over most of the day-to-day as she’d grown more infirm. It was his family’s source of income, and they all worked there, too. It was the right thing. But she had personal things, and those I took care of.”

One of those personal things had been her diary. He hadn’t read it at the time, not caring to dredge up history that was already well and truly behind him. He wondered what he’d have done with