Running Back (7 page)

I smiled. “We can blame it on jetlag.”

She grunted. “So. Are you a model or something?”

People had asked me that before—mostly because I’d inherited my mother’s height, cheekbones, and famous gray eyes—but I always hated the question. “Definitely not. I’m an archaeologist.”

“Seriously?”

I closed my book and slid over on the bench. “I study Irish history, from about two thousand years ago. I’m interested in the contact between Ireland and Rome, and your family’s farmland might cover an archaeological site that would give more information on that.”

Her jaw dropped open, and she fell onto the bench. “Seriously? Kilkarten? The farm? Are you going to, like, dig it up? That’s awesome.”

Something twinged in my chest, but I ignored it. “I don’t think so. I’m mostly going to be looking at old local records. Sometimes in these rural villages, papers don’t get digitized, so.”

Her brow scrunched up. “Well, why don’t you dig it up? Isn’t that easier?”

“Um.” I glanced back at the inn. So Mike
hadn’t
talked to his family about the excavation. “It’s complicated.” I shook the thoughts from my head and smiled at Anna. “So, how about you? You’re here to...” Oops. I’d just walked into depressing territory. “Because of your uncle?”

She shrugged and scowled. “Yeah, I guess. But seriously, who the fuck goes to Ireland because of some dude they never met?” She cut me a measured look, as though waiting for a reprimand, but I didn’t bite. She could curse her tongue off if she wanted.

“Did you have plans this summer?”

She snorted. “Obviously. I was going to work in Derek’s sister’s tattoo parlor.” She swung her foot impatiently. “But then they made me come here, so he broke up with me.”

I looked at her. “Because you weren’t going to work at his sister’s tattoo parlor.”

She shrugged. Her foot kept swinging. “Well. And I wouldn’t sleep with him.”

Shocking.

“I mean, I was
going
to.” She scowled. “Who wants to be a fucking virgin their senior year of high school?”

Fucking virgin
was my new favorite phrase.

“Now he’s dating Kaitlyn Taylor.”

“On the other hand, Kaitlyn Taylor is stuck back home, and you get to explore all of Ireland.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

I leaned my head back, so I could admire the morning sky, and lowered my voice confidentially. “So my best friend and I came up with a plan before I came here. You want in on it?”

She seemed aware that she was too cool for plans, but still couldn’t resist asking, “What is it?”

“Operation: Irish Boyfriend.”

She threw a startled glance at me. “Wait,
you
want an Irish boyfriend? But what about—” She stopped abruptly.

My mouth twitched. “There’s nothing going on between me and your brother.”

“Why not?” She sounded almost defensive.

I jumped up from the bench. “I’m hungry. Let’s get some breakfast.”

And I headed back inside before Anna could press the issue.

The rest of the O’Connors joined us not much later, and when the three women moved to go to Cork for the day, Mike excused himself. “Natalie and I are going to head into the village.”

Kate agreed with such alacrity I suspected she still hoped Mike would be introducing me as his girlfriend shortly. Anna shot me a pointed look.

I turned to Mike after they’d left. “I feel like your entire family has some sort of agenda.”

“They usually do.” He stood and I followed. “Come on, let’s ask Eileen how to get into Dundoran.”

Chapter Seven

The coastal path from the inn to Dundoran Village
curved along the shoreline. It rose and fell through the hills, but never
touched the sand. Instead, we walked on flattened grass, while a haphazard stone
wall herded us south. Pale green moss frosted the stones, and purple thistles
fringed the bottom. Beyond the wall, wide green swaths rolled up into hills and
sky, only interrupted by bushy trees and hedgerows.

I let out a deep sigh.

“You okay?”

I waved my arm expansively. “I’m just happy. It’s so beautiful.
All these greens—all the colors.” The land rose slightly and the path followed
it upward, giving us a splendid view of the heather covered green that sloped
down to the shore. The water lapped gentle against the pale yellow strip of
sand.

Mike stared at me. “You
cannot
get
this turned on by nature.”

I tossed a grin back at him. “Why not? What else is this
amazing?” I closed my eyes and inhaled a warm, fresh breeze, grass and blooming
flowers, all underlain by the sea. “In Ecuador, you can smell the eucalypti.
It’s sickly sweet. Heady. The bark peels off like paper, and it’s
everywhere
—the Spanish introduced the trees as a
source of cheap firewood, and then it spread all over. I dreamed of those trees
when I left.”

“Why did you leave?”

I opened my eyes. “Why? Well, the dig was up.”

“Hmm.” There was something in that noise, like I’d revealed a
facet of myself I hadn’t intended to. “And what are you going to dream of
here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the sea. Salt and earth and wind.” I
laughed. “Am I getting too fantastical?”

He studied me. I was learning that when Michael O’Connor fixed
his attention on me, I felt like we were the only two people in the world. Out
here in this rugged landscape, we could have been. “So you’ve lived in New York
and Ecuador and now you’re here. You don’t put down roots, do you?”

I shrugged. “I put down enough.”

He lifted a challenging brow. “But you travel more than most
people, don’t you?”

I’d always been proud of my travel spiel before, but now I
wondered if he had a point. “I spent a year abroad in London. Did my field
school in Greece summer after my sophomore year and then went back there the
next season. Worked in the Great Plains for the summer after that. Did some work
on Inka fortresses for one of my profs last year. My degree’s archaeology, so
not place specific, though I’ll just be focusing on Ireland for my thesis.”

We kept walking, and he offered me a hand as we jumped over
some mud. “Don’t you ever want to stay put?”

The idea of remaining in one place for a marked period of time
gave rise to a fluttering anxiety. I pulled my hand out of his warm one as we
walked on. Staying put seemed synonymous with being weighed down. Trapped.
Suffocated. “No. That idea terrifies me.”

“What’s the longest you’ve ever spent in one place?”

I smiled grimly, picturing the silent, echoing halls of my
parents’ house. “Eighteen years.”

“And since then?”

I shrugged. “Nine months, tops? I wouldn’t want to be anywhere
longer than that.”

“Why?”

I shrugged, staring ahead. The land turned back in on itself,
the coast curving and forming small coves. Yellow gorse carpeted the fields to
the left. A hedgerow wound closer, enough that I could see the fuchsia flowers
tangled in the green. “I don’t know. I just get such wanderlust, and if I can’t
go I feel empty and constrained and whenever I move I feel like I can breathe
easier. Don’t you feel...exhilarated when you make the perfect drive, and you
didn’t think you were going to but you do, and everything is just
perfect
for a moment?”

I glanced sideways to see if he thought that was silly and mad
and impractical, like most people did, but a small, crooked smile lifted the
corner of Mike’s mouth. He stopped walking and regarded me with those warm brown
eyes. “Yeah.”

I took a step closer to him. I could smell his aftershave, a
scent already becoming familiar to me. “That’s how I feel when I’m in a new
place. When I excavate a new site.” I hesitated. “That’s how I feel about
Ivernis.”

His throat and jaw worked, his brows tensing, but he didn’t
look away. “Why can’t you just go back to Ecuador? Why does it have to be
here?”

I smiled a little wistfully. “Don’t get me wrong. The Inka were
badass. I mean, they conquered most of South America. They had an advanced road
system and they drafted soldiers intelligently and they had the most gorgeous
ashlar masonry you’ve ever seen.

“But it’s not the same. I know that’s silly, and part of it is
just me...anthropomorphizing the site, but it doesn’t get to me the same way
Ivernis does. It doesn’t sing. Sure, I would be happy working there—I
was
happy, it was amazing—but Ivernis— This is the only
thing I want to do for the rest of my life.”

“I understand that.”

I glanced over at him. Most people I knew cared about what they
were studying, maybe even loved it to a degree, love mixed with irritated and
aggravation—but they didn’t obsess. But Mike O’Connor... “You do, don’t you?” I
looked out over the endless fields. “What would you do, if you couldn’t play
football? How would you feel? Like a musician with broken fingers? Like a runner
who’s lost her legs?”

He pressed his lips together. “You’re not being fair.”

I sighed. “I know. I’m sorry.”

We were silent until the hill crested and the land fell away
before us. To the west, the water stretched out, a flat blue under bright sky,
while a mile in the distance a tiny village lay nestled between two hills, a
patchwork of pastel houses with slate-gray roofs. Beyond it, the hills climbed
again, brushed with green grasses and black stone dotted with purple.

Before the village, midway down the hill, a church rose up, the
Gothic steeple perfectly piercing the sky. Moss covered the roof of an ancillary
building. It looked so surreally perfect that my heart ached and my feet
stopped.

Mike must have been paying attention, because he turned
impatiently. “Aren’t you coming?”

“It’s beautiful.”

He grinned. “Kind of like the fields were beautiful? You’d
probably find something good to say about the subway.”

I made a face at him. “And you’d probably say Rome is just a
pile of rocks.”

He laughed. “I’m not
that
bad.”

We reached the church. Cypress trees stood before it, their
branches curved tightly up toward the sky like they had been cultivated, while
apple trees formed looser circles, blue peeking in between the leaves.
Everything felt still and quiet as we curved around the old building. A tidy
graveyard spread down the hill, while manicured grasses framed plots and
placards.

“Oh,
look.
” At the back of the
cemetery, by swooping, draping trees, a Celtic cross stood alone. I cut through
the graves, fixed on the marker. Beneath the dark green moss, the stone was worn
and dark, smoothed by age and pitted by weather.

“Natalie, I don’t think—”

I crouched down and tried to make out the year.
1158.
I reached out and then hesitated, my fingertips
centimeters from the stone. The instruction not to touch art hovered between me
and the cross.

But with living history, maybe it was meant to be part of our
world. My fingers landed on the stone, cold even after an afternoon soaking up
the sun. I could feel the aerated bubbles of rock as I brushed my fingers over
the surface. “Look at this. Eight hundred years old. Eight
hundred
years old. And just sitting in a village graveyard, of no
note, no record, just...here.” I shook my head. “It’s amazing.”

My fingers traced the carvings, the Celtic knots, etchings that
had been chipped out eight centuries before I was born. This was the direct work
of some nameless artisan. That’s what always got me. How very close I was with
this unknown person. How very far away.

So many people, lost to obscurity. So many stories I could
bring back.

It took me a while to notice the silence. I got lost easily,
tangled in thoughts and time and other worlds. Usually someone called my name or
touched my shoulder to get my attention, but this time Mike’s silence outgrew my
own, and I turned to see him standing across the small graveyard, silent as the
stone saint behind him.

He didn’t move as I came up by his side. I followed his gaze to
the stones he studied so carefully.

Martin O’Connor.
Ellen O’Connor.
Kathleen O’Connor.
Mary O’Connor.
Sean O’Connor.

I swallowed over the sudden lump. “You okay?”

He shrugged. “It’s not like they were real to me. I mean—”

“I know.”

He nodded. “But it’s sort of funny—all of their names written
out. And—” He nodded at the newest-looking stone, still sharp cornered and
smooth.

Patrick O’Connor.

The bottom of my stomach fell out. “Ah.”

“And then—it’s like no one else ever left. I feel— Would my dad
have wanted to be here? Should he have been?”

I didn’t know what to say or do. I wanted to comfort him, but
wasn’t sure how. I reached down and laced my fingers through his, and stepped
sideways until our arms lined up against each other.

He squeezed my hand, and we stood there, staring at the
O’Connors.

“What happened to your dad?”

The tension seemed to drain out of Mike’s body, and he leaned
slightly into me. “Car crash. The other driver was drunk.”

“That’s awful.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “What can you do? You can be the best
driver in the world, and it doesn’t matter if someone smashes into you.” His
fingers squeezed mine. “My mother sat down on the kitchen floor and just started
crying when they told her. I’d only heard her cry once before. I waited until
everyone was asleep and then I broke into his whiskey collection.” He took a
deep breath. “On the third night I found Lauren there, and then I poured out all
of them.”

I leaned into him. “You were a good brother.”

He shook his head. “I left them six months later for
college.”

I turned my head up so I could see him, staring stony-eyed
across the graves. I reached up to touch his cheek, so he turned to look at me.
“And do you still feel guilty?”

His eyes tore through me, wide with remembered pain. “I feel
guilty about how happy I was to leave.”

We heard the clearing of a throat and looked up, our hands
falling apart. In the still, silent cemetery, it seemed only right that the only
person was a thin man with thinner white hair, dressed in a well-worn brown
tweed suit. He nodded at both of us, but it was clear his attention latched onto
Mike. “You’ll be Brian’s son.”

Mike looked swiftly at me, and then gave the older man a bright
smile. Back to normal, friendly Mike O’Connor, without any trace of sadness or
discomfort. “Yeah. I’m Mike O’Connor.”

“Darrell MacCarthy. Used to give your da lifts to school.” He
glanced my way. “And this young lady is...?”

“Natalie Sullivan.” I extended my hand to grip his firmly.

“Ah, you also have family here?”

“Oh, no, I’m Irish in name only.” That didn’t sound as eloquent
out loud as it had in my head, so I grimaced and then wished I had some
capability to keep my emotions off my face, and that the older man didn’t think
I was grimacing at him.

But Mr. MacCarthy had already returned his attention to Mike,
whose smile looked a little fixed to me. He wasn’t asking, as I would have, for
every last hopefully rapscallion recollection Mr. MacCarthy could whip up about
his father. I remembered Mike saying
I
don’t talk about Kilkarten
when we first met, and I
wondered if he didn’t talk about his father, either.

Except that he just had, with me.

In any case, the silence kept stretching, so I hurried to fill
it, because who liked silences? Silences were for black holes. “I do specialize
in Irish history, though. I’m an archaeologist.”

At my overly bright tone, MacCarthy focused on me. “The one
Patrick hired? I thought you’d be a bit older.”

Well. Patrick hadn’t
hired
me. The
brightness corroded. “Well, I’m not.”

Beside me, Mike’s smile eased into a slightly more natural
version, and he nodded to Mr. MacCarthy. “We should get going but—it was nice to
meet you.”

Mr. MacCarthy wasn’t done, even though Mike had already turned
away. “Where are you off to?”

I hesitated, unwilling to walk off on this old man. “Um...”

Mike’s hand reached back and wrapped around my mine, tugging me
gently after him. “To pay a call,” he said over his shoulder as I stumbled to
catch up, “on my dear Aunt Maggie.”

* * *

A pair of main streets cut through the village, lined
with two story buildings painted pale yellows and blues and greens. Ivy climbed
up the level walls and low peaked slate roofs. All the signs were written in
Gaelic as well as English, a language of curlicues and accents.

Maggie O’Connor lived at the far side of the village, so we
walked past O’Malley’s Restaurant, the village pub and a café with outside
seating. Several patrons looked up with curiosity as we passed, and Mike’s hand
tightened on mine.

And then we were before a lavender house nestled between two
off-white ones. Window boxes filled with white flowers hung beneath long, thin
panes of glass, and the door itself was painted blue. I sighed happily before
knocking.

The door opened immediately.

Maggie O’Connor stood five-feet tall, with thick black hair
gathered at the nape and streaked through with silver. I put her somewhere in
her fifties, and she gave me the same puzzled look most women her age gave me,
like some dusty corner of their mind recognized my face from when they’d been
seventeen and poured over fashion magazines.