Haunting Beauty (3 page)

It occurred to him that a surprise visit first thing in the morning might not be the best plan of action. He knew she was home, would be leaving for work within the hour. But he was a stranger and she might not open her door to him. Americans were funny about such things, he recalled, especially in a big city like Phoenix, Arizona. A part of him hoped she wouldn’t let him in. Maybe she’d send him packing right back to Ireland without listening to a word of his tale. But that would require a kind of luck Sean Ballagh had never had.

He patted his pocket where he’d put the tiny jewelry box his grandmother had slipped in his hand before he’d left Ballyfionúir. She’d told him to give it to the girl when he found her. “This she’ll not be able to deny,” she’d said with a knowing look. The light object felt disproportionately heavy.

He took a deep breath, feeling his doubts fighting to surface. It wasn’t wrong, what his grandmother wanted him to do. But it wasn’t right either.

“You’re a bloody tosser, is what you are,” he muttered to himself, but like the morning shadows, a sense of inevitability surrounded him. He would play his part, a messenger bringing glad tidings—but in truth, his coming was nothing to rejoice over.

Danni Jones lived in a cozy cottage, which seemed somehow out of place in this arid desert location. A tiny patch of grass nestled up to an uneven brick walkway leading to her door. Lining the space beneath the front windows were halved kegs overflowing with wild splashes of orange, blue, pink, and yellow. Bright red hummingbird feeders dangled from the white awning, high up and out of reach of the enormous yellow cat watching him from the doorstep.

When he approached, the cat hissed and ran, disappearing in a hedge around the corner. A steel door with an intricate cutout of flowers and birds covered the entrance. Security doors, he’d heard them called, though such a thing was as alien as drought where he came from. The ornate pattern left wide and spacious openings through to the screen while creating a solid shield between doorstep and entry.

With reluctance he didn’t want to feel, he rang the bell. As it echoed in the house, he heard a dog yapping furiously, and seconds later, a brown snout poked between the blinds and bared teeth at him. Several feet higher, another slat tilted up, letting him know someone else was looking, too. The slat closed again and a moment later, the dog’s snout withdrew.

The door didn’t open, but Sean sensed she was standing on the other side. After a moment, he tried calling out. “Miss Jones? My name is Sean Ballagh. I bring word from Cathán MacGrath of Ballyfionúir. Ireland.”

The lie felt chalky on his tongue, but he followed it with what he hoped was a sincere smile, in case she could see him. From inside the house, he heard a faint shuffling and then silence. He waited uncomfortably, feeling like the Cheshire cat with his phony grin pasted on his face. He let it fade and then disappear altogether.

Just when he thought she would ignore him completely, he heard her say, “You must have the wrong person. I’ve never heard of Cathán whoever.”

“That’s a shame,” he answered, lowering his voice so she’d have to strain to hear, hoping to coax the door open yet. “He’s your father.”

Long minutes seemed to crawl by, and then he heard the click of the dead bolt sliding back. In spite of himself, he felt triumphant. The door opened and he glimpsed a shadowy figure standing on the other side of the heavily meshed screening.

“What did you say?” she asked.

He stepped forward, trying to make out her features, but the dog launched itself against the door with a loud bang that made Sean jump back. He stared at the little beast in horror as it growled and snarled aggressively. She reached down and grabbed the monster by the collar and hauled it away. He glimpsed a pale face, long golden brown hair, and a baby blue sweater before she disappeared back in the shadowy entryway of her home.

It was enough. She was the woman he’d been looking for. As if there’d ever been a doubt.

“I said it was a shame you don’t know the name of your own father.”

An imperceptible pause and then, “I don’t have a father. I don’t have any family.”

“Ah, but you’re wrong.”

He opened the manila envelope he’d brought with him and took out the snapshot. He stared at it for a moment before pressing it against the screening. The dog growled again, but the lure pulled the woman closer.

The sun shifted a little higher, catching her in a beam that penetrated the screen and illuminated a delicate face with large gray eyes. Sean stared at her, stunned by the feeling that cut through him. She was familiar—not just because he’d known her when they’d been children living in Ireland. It was more than that. The sight of her lovely face, those soulful eyes, roused an awareness that went deeper than mere familiarity. It was harsh and yet intimate, and it confounded him completely.

In one arm she held the vicious little canine, the other hung at her side, fingers clenching and unclenching nervously. She cast him a guarded glance and caught him staring, mouth open. He forced himself to shut it.

There was something perplexing in her expression—as if she’d had the same bewildering sense of recognition as he. As if she knew who he was and what he really wanted. As if she knew
him
. The realization unsettled Sean long after she’d turned her attention to the photograph he held.

She stared at the picture as if entranced then brought her fingers up to touch it through the screen. “Where did you get this?” she murmured.

“It was taken in Ballyfionúir, Ireland, where you’re from. Where I live.” He waited a half beat before saying softly, “’Tis your family.”

She made a low sound and pressed her palm over the image in a gesture that at once caressed and denied. He swallowed back his conscience and asked, “Would it be possible to speak with you, Danni Jones? Without the door between us, perhaps?”

He felt her eyes boring into him through the screen and warring desires pounded in his head. There was something fragile about her that he hadn’t expected. Something defenseless, despite the stiff back and level gaze. He didn’t want to deceive her, and he certainly didn’t want to draw her into the hell that was about to become her life.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Sean Ballagh, as I said. I’m sent from Ireland to find you. For your family.”

“Do you have ID?”

He nodded, fumbled out his passport, and placed it where he’d held the photograph against the door. The passport picture was old and grainy, and she studied it for a long time, her eyes moving back and forth as she compared his staid mug shot to his real being. Again, the recognition flickered in her eyes as she looked at him. She’d been only five and he barely a teenager when they’d last seen one another. It was unlikely she’d remember him at all, let alone place the gangly boy he’d been as the man he’d become, yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that she had.

“You’re very young in this picture,” she said with a frown. “How old is it?”

“Old,” he answered. “I need to get a new one taken.”

At last she gave a nod, then the lock
snicked
back and she opened the door. The dog squirmed in her arms like a wild boar but Danni managed to keep hold of it.

“Bean, no,” she scolded.

Close up, Sean was able to determine that
Bean
couldn’t be all dog. Somewhere in its lineage there most definitely had been a badger. The writhing, snarling animal had a long nose, pointed ears, and no tail. There were terrier genes in there somewhere and possibly Rottweiler, too, baffling though that idea was.

“She’s very protective of me,” Danni said, putting her fingers around its muzzle to silence the mutant dog. “I rescued her when she was a puppy and I’m the only family she has. She doesn’t like people very much as a rule.”

“Grand,” he said, putting on the smile again.

Having made the decision to open the door, she now stepped back and bid him enter. Sean forced himself forward and into her home.

He followed her through a sunny sitting room with a wall of bookshelves, a comfortable-looking sofa and chair, and a small television tucked in the corner. She went through an arched opening and stopped in a bright, tiled kitchen. She paused, looking momentarily unsure before regaining her composure and indicating the table and chairs.

“Have a seat. Would you like some tea?”

He nodded, still eyeing the beast in her arms. She set Bean down with a stern command and went about putting water on to boil. The dog perched at her feet, moving every time she did and then resettling, all the while keeping Sean under surveillance. Had Sean meant Danni physical harm, the dog’s hostile stare would have made him reconsider. Finished, Danni took the seat opposite him and reached for the photograph.

Sean studied her face as she stared at the picture, tracing the outline of first her mother’s image, then her father’s with a slender, trembling finger. What did she remember?

“I can’t believe this is my family,” she murmured.

She spoke with a hesitancy that made him think she expected him to snatch the photo away and laugh.

“It is, I swear it.”

He pointed to the little girl standing in front of her mother. “That’s you,” he said. “And that’s your brother beside you.”

Her gray eyes shimmered with a strange mixture of emotions. Hope and hurt, anger and joy. A grief that seemed to anchor all other feelings around it.

“My brother,” she said, her voice thick. She shook her head. “All these years . . .”

“We’ve been looking for you for a long time.” He cleared his throat and glanced at the picture. “Your family name is MacGrath,” he told her. “You were born in Ireland. Ballyfionúir to be exact.”

“Bally ...”

“Bally-
fyun
-oor. It’s on the Isle of Fennore, just south of Ireland main.”

He pulled another item from the envelope he’d brought and set it down in front of her. This was a copy of a birth announcement from a newspaper. It named two babies: a girl, Dáirinn Edel and a boy, Rory Finnegan. They’d been born to Cathán and Fiona MacGrath on October 1, 1984.

“The girl’s name is pronounced
Dawr-
in. And yes, it’s your name,” Sean said when she didn’t ask.

“I can’t believe this,” she murmured again.

“And yet it is the truth.”

That brought her eyes up and round, filled with anguish and confusion. He’d imagined a hundred reactions that his visit might elicit. They’d ranged from skepticism to elation. But he’d not anticipated this raw pain he saw now. It filled him with shame.

“Mr. Ballagh—”

“Call me Sean. We’re family, of sorts.”

Those eyes grew larger and took on a look of dismay. “We’re family? You’re not my brother, are you?”

“No,” he said quickly, finding the idea just as abhorrent as she seemed to. He didn’t stop to analyze why. “Nothing like that. Distant relations. Too distant to trace.”

“Good.” And then, realizing what she’d said, she blushed a furious red.

Sean watched the rising color stain her slender throat, her smooth cheeks, the fragile shell of her ear. She looked very small in her big blue sweater, vulnerable. Inside him, something deeply male and protective awoke and responded. He hadn’t expected that either. But he was very glad not to be her brother.

She lifted the picture and looked at it again. “This doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If this is my family, why have I been alone for the past twenty years? Where have they been?”

“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that.”

She made a sound like a laugh, but there was no humor. “Sorry to disappoint you. All I know is one day my mother dropped me off at preschool and she never picked me up again.
No one
ever came forward to claim me. No father. No brother missing me.
No one
.”

“Your mother dropped you off ?” he repeated, unable to contain the sharp edge of incredulity. “Where?”

“Cactus Wren Preschool,” she said. “I do remember that.”

“I mean, here? In the States?”

She nodded, a frown puckering the silky skin between her eyes. “Why?”

“Why?” Sean tacitly repeated her question as the answer he both feared and desperately wanted to believe threatened to bubble to the surface. Because that meant Danni’s mother had left Ireland. And to have done that, she would’ve had to be alive.

He cleared his throat and said gently, “Your mother vanished with you and your brother twenty years ago. What happened to her and the children all these years has been the great mystery and tragedy of our town. Until recently, we thought you were dead. All of you.”

She stared at him, trying to see through his words. He stared back without flinching. This, at least, was the truth. But beneath the open face he presented, a raging host of conflicting emotions churned in frenzy.

One day my mother dropped me off at preschool and she never picked me up again.

Here, in the U.S. Not even in Ireland.

“No one knows what happened to us?” she asked.

“There were rumors, of course. There always are, aren’t there? People talk, especially in Ballyfionúir. And there’s always something to say about the MacGrath family.”

“Why?”

“Well, I could tell you stories about your people and mine, but tales are best saved for another time, I think. We’ve history, though, the MacGraths and Ballaghs, and where there’s a past there’s an account to be questioned. Sure and there are those who’d say the slate will never be clean for either family.”

“Are you one of those who would say that?”

“Me? It’s a messenger I am. Nothing more.”

The look she gave him bordered on incredulous. She was smart enough to know he was more than a just a messenger.

“I still don’t understand how my mother and two kids could just up and disappear without anyone seeing her or knowing where she went. How could she manage it?”

“There was talk that she had help, talk about the lover she might have been keeping. Talk that she killed herself and her kids. And still more that she’d been killed by someone else. All of you, actually. They think you’re sleeping at the bottom of the sea even now. Is that what you’re after?”