I’m getting a nose whistle.”
“Maybe you should form a band.” Bernie smiled. They were forever teasing each other about the good and the bad. Bernadette Anne Cullen and Aileen Mary Flanagan had been friends for forty-four years. They couldn’t believe how quickly the decades had gone by, the loves and disappointments and fights and marriages and deaths they had witnessed. And there they were, sitting at that collapsible table with the stiff little legs that could be snapped up or down—an exact replica of the one at which they’d sold lemon ices on the road during the summers when they were girls—together, after all that time. Nothing could keep them apart for long. They were like family, Aileen said, without the excess baggage.
“Ha. Ha. Should we go, then? Everyone else is throwing in the towel.” Aileen tossed a dish towel, its edge embroidered with lace, into the basket at her feet for emphasis.
Someone let out a whoop down the road that died quickly, not enough voices or enthusiasm to sustain it. When Bernie was a girl, there had been coracle races in the bay and hurling matches in the fields and dancing all night long. Now, the few young people in town hung around the bar. They were the glowering sort of teenagers indigenous to many a sleepy village, seemingly angry about everything. Aileen’s daughter Rosheen, too. Sixteen-year-old Rosheen had recently announced that she was changing her name to Jane, muttering something about Gaelic shite. She’d gotten another tattoo and pierced her nose and was at that very moment smoking cigarettes with her friends nearby. She and Aileen tried to ignore each other.
“Bernie? Did you hear what I said?” Aileen asked.
“Just a little longer.” Bernie was in no hurry to return to the empty cottage. She and John never had children. She only had Fergus, the brown Lab, resting now at her feet, for company. Fergus, who’d been young once, his fur lustrous and thick, who ran through the lanes and over the hills, chasing rabbits and robins and foxes. Fergus, dear boy, aging too.
“Why? Are you expecting a visiting dignitary?” Aileen asked.
“You never know who might come down the road.”
“Nothing interesting has come down that road since Cromwell’s soldiers attacked in the 1600s. And they nearly killed everyone.”
Bernie was about to admit defeat when she saw a young woman cresting the hill. “There,” she said. “What did I tell you? A tourist.”
Aileen squinted in the direction Bernie indicated. “It’s a miracle—though she might have had the decency to bring a friend along. Who travels alone? Do you think she’s a criminal?”
“You can’t be serious. She hardly seems the type.” The girl looked like a sprite, with great dark eyes and pale skin and a tangle of long hair down her back, steam rising from her shoulders like mist.
“They never do.”
“You watch too many crime shows.”
“What else is there to do around here in the evenings except play cards and make lace?” Aileen said. “Don’t get your hopes up. She’s not going to stop here. Why should she? There’s nothing of interest. No clubs, no posh shops, no gourmet restaurants, no Internet cafés. She’ll move on. Everyone does.”
“No, no, no….” Bernie imitated Aileen’s grating voice. “Let’s say yes to everything, just this once. This will be the week of yes. Let’s try it and see what happens.”
“I said yes to Rourke, and look where that got me.” Aileen snorted, adding, “I told you. She’s going.”
The girl glanced back in the direction she’d come. Second thoughts, perhaps? Understandable. They had them every day, or at least Aileen seemed to.
The visitor turned toward them again, and Bernie exclaimed. “Ha. See? She’s staying, of course she will.”
“Only because there’s nowhere else to go at this hour.”
Bernie nodded with satisfaction. “Here she comes. Don’t scare her away.”
Chapter 4
The American Girl
Along the main street, if you could call it that, tents sprouted like white-capped mushrooms. There was a bar, naturally, and a hodgepodge of squat buildings, none higher than a single story, that braced each other up for a block or two before the boulder-and heather-strewn fields took over, tumbling down to the sea, a single cottage here and there among the barrens. Some structures had been given a fresh coat of whitewash in honor of the occasion, the smell of lime lingering, and doors had been brightened with an application of red, blue, or green lacquer, the peeling, faded parts painted over. In the distance, atop a gentle rise, stood the parish church, spire