Scintillate (14 page)

Twenty-Seven

I

was overcome by the force of Finn’s energy. Something was different about him. Maybe being on his own turf infused him with more confidence. His aura was so big, and so strong, that it washed against the shores of my own with each step he took in my direction.

“The pub’s not far from here,” he told me. When he held my hand, it felt completely natural, like there’d never been a good-bye. “Let’s walk.”

Inwardly, I lashed myself for not being stronger, for not kissing his cheek and parting ways again with resilient grace, like a woman from an old movie, whose heart bleeds as she smiles politely through her farewell. I wanted to fully understand why he’d left as abruptly as he had. He seemed so happy to see me, though, that I couldn’t make myself confront him. I was happy, too.

Finn and I strolled hand in hand through the streets of Dublin lit blue by the early evening light. I was charmed by the cobbled streets and the juxtaposition of the old and new in the buildings we passed. While we walked, I told him about my mother’s letter and how I hoped to find out what had happened to her. Astonished, he promised he’d do what he could to help me, though he didn’t know what. “A dozen years is a long time to be missing.”

Across the street from Mulcarr’s Pub, there stood a beautiful church and a rather imposing shrine of the Virgin Mary. I wondered if it made the people who had too much to drink feel guilty leaving the pub under the watchful eye of Mary.

The pub was quiet inside. A family occupied one table in the corner. A lone gentleman at the bar hovered over a brown pint of Guinness. Pictures and posters depicting the recent history of Ireland covered the green walls. The ceiling was a quilt of yellow tin stamped with intricate patterns. At the juncture of ancient beams above us was a carved wooden square—a
boss
, Finn called it when he saw me looking—engraved with three rabbits chasing each other in a circle. Three had become an eerie number. My eyes found it everywhere.

Within thirty minutes or so, a crowd filled the pub. From grandmothers to babies in strollers, families took seats around the perimeter of the room. “It’s funny how many kids are in here,” I said.

“You’ve got to know, Cora, in Ireland a pub is much more than a bar. It’s a place of gathering. It’s our tribal fire pit, in a manner of speaking. I grew up in this place. When I was a wee bit, my uncle said I’d toddle from table to table trying to get a dram off people’s cider.”

I tugged his short stubble. “Trouble, even then.”

To my left, I noticed what appeared to be a small room adjacent to the bar. There was a red door with wrought iron looping over the top like cursive writing. A window opened to the back side of the bar. “What’s with that little room?”

Finn smiled and grabbed my hand. “Come with me.”

Inside, it was exactly as it looked from the outside—a tiny room no bigger than a walk-in closet. The window was painted with a family crest and the worn floor looked as though centuries of feet had smoothed its grain. We sat on one of the two benches that ringed the peculiar little space.

With one arm around my waist, Finn slid me closer. He brushed the curls from my cheek. We stared into each other’s eyes, an epic, wordless conversation. He kissed the tip of my nose. I reveled in his tenderness but was scared to open to him again. I’d missed him. I’d hurt over him. But before I could fully marinate in my fear, he squeezed my chin gently, easing my mouth open. He held me and kissed me in such a way that I remembered my heart was still his.

It might always be.

“You don’t mind, do you? I had to kiss you,” he whispered against the sensitive corner of my mouth. “I’ve missed you so much, Cora.” Longing amplified in his energy field. His aura enveloped me, leaving me breathless and light-headed. “This room is called a snug.”

“Good name for it.”

“Aye!” boomed a voice from the bar. “There’s a bit of canoodling going on in this snug, isn’t there now?”

Finn winked at me and whispered, “That’d be my uncle Clancy.” He introduced us and slapped his uncle’s arm. “What’s the
craic
?”

Clancy Mulcarr had robin’s-egg-blue eyes under dark brows, snowy hair flecked with gray, and a snowy beard. He looked like a seaman, rosy-cheeked and weathered. Unlike Finn’s mother, he smiled warmly and kissed both of my cheeks through the snug’s little window. “If this is how they grown ’em in the States, perhaps I’d better seek my romantic fortunes there,” Clancy said with a wink.

“Actually, Uncle, Cora was born here.”

“Is that so? Welcome home, daughter of Ireland.”

I smiled and sat back down. Uncle Clancy passed two small glasses half-full of amber liquid through the opening. Finn took one and passed the other to me. I sniffed it.

“Bulmers. It’s the cider I was after as a child,” he said, leaning on the ledge of the snug’s window. “Taste it.”

Finn and his uncle chatted back and forth, and it took my kiss-addled brain a few seconds to realize I had absolutely no idea what they were saying. When Finn caught me watching him, listening intently, he smiled and bent to kiss me again.

“Were you speaking Gaelic?” I asked excitedly.

This earned me a stern look from Finn. “We do
not
call it Gaelic,” he said in a serious, proud tone. “We speak
Irish
.”

I nodded, contrite. “Noted. I want to hear more.”

He leaned in. The hairs on my arm stood when his warm breath caressed my ear. He whispered the strange words slowly, seductively in my ear. It was beautiful. A language of old, salty winds and softly ringing, weathered bells. My brain didn’t know what he said to me, but my heart did.

We left the intimate cocoon of the snug and joined the growing crowd in the pub’s main room. Finn led me to a table made of a glossy square of wood affixed to the top of an old barrel. We sat on little stools topped with woven leather. The fire warmed my cheeks, or maybe it was the cider. Next to us sat a group of men. Each held a different instrument—a banjo, a fiddle, a small accordion-type box, and a guitar. Finn grabbed a guitar from atop an ancient leather-covered piano and sat on the stool next to me.

A young woman with braided hair sat alongside the men with a deep bass drum in front of her. She tapped her bare feet while she played. As the music got going, other people, women mostly, joined with flat drums, which Finn told me were called
bodhráns.
They brushed the drums with wooden sticks that resembled thick paintbrushes. Each beat thrummed deep in my chest like a pulse. I’d never view musicians the same way after seeing how their auras pulsed with the music as if their bodies were tuned to it. It was another moment of confirmation of something I’d always known subconsciously: music affected our energies. Music wove around us and asked our souls to dance.

Finn accompanied on guitar while his uncle Clancy sang a slow song. Clancy had a beautiful voice, river deep, that carried and fell like water over mossy stones. As when Finn had sung, I choked up. The song was so full of melancholic emotion, almost like a call to ancient kin, and I instantly understood what Finn had meant about their music.

The ghosts inside of me stirred.

When the tempo picked up again, the entire room exploded with energy and colors. We all clapped along, whistled, and cheered. Two elderly women stood up and, with their palms touching, did a kicking sort of dance together around the room.

“You so owe me a Riverdance!” I yelled to Finn over the music.

One of the women bounced over to me with her palm up. I shot a questioning look at Finn, who indicated with a tilt of his head that I was being invited to dance with her. His grin was wide and teasing, probably anticipating my goofy version of an Irish jig. “It is wrong on so many levels that I have to do this before you,” I said. He just laughed.

Inside my body, there lived a quiet me, a previous version of me, who desperately didn’t want to dance like this in front of a room full of people. But the newer version of me very much wanted to. Besides, how could I politely turn down an elderly lady, even if she was going to show me up on the dance floor?

The crowd hooted when I pressed my palm to hers. I took a big breath and kicked my feet around in my best approximation of Irish dance. She smiled approvingly, raised one hand over her head, and tossed her silver hair. For a moment, I could see the other version of her: the one who was my age, having her first taste of cider; the one who danced all night and kissed a boy in the snug. She was still in there, shimmering with light.

The music ended to raucous applause. I plopped down in an exhausted heap, having danced three songs in a row.

“Well played, Cora,” Uncle Clancy said with a squeeze of my shoulder. “I’m so pleased you danced. Sibyl loves a new partner.”

I was breathless. Happy. “Thank you. I actually had fun!”

“Of course you did!” Clancy looked at me with kind, sincere eyes. “It was a sight to behold. You were positively glowing out there.”

Uncle Clancy left the bar in the care of his employees and walked us a few blocks away to introduce me to what he swore would be the best beef stew I’d ever had in my life. Once we were seated and eating, he poked me in the arm and raised a caterpillar brow at me. “Well?”

“You sure do know your stew.”

He smiled so broadly it was as if he’d cooked it himself.

“Thank you so much for your welcome tonight,” I said. “You’ve been really sweet.”

“As opposed to my mother,” Finn added with a bit of throat-clearing.

“I didn’t mean—”

Finn waved a hand. “No worries, Cora. She was a wretch to you. That’s just the truth of it.”

Clancy took a swig of his Guinness. A spot of tawny froth remained on his mustache. “My sister give you a bit of a breezy welcome, did she?”

I shrugged, not wanting to criticize Finn’s mother, even if she had made me feel like gum on her shoe. I kept my thoughts to myself. In my experience, the only people who are safely allowed to trash parents are their own offspring.

Clancy patted my hand. “Oh now, child, that’s Ina, especially when it comes to her little prince here,” he said, motioning to Finn with a tilt of his head. “Don’t let her get to you. She puffs up and pecks like a goose, but she’s all fluff and feathers.”

That wasn’t how I would’ve characterized Ina Doyle. She was regal, queenly, with sharp and efficient mannerisms that said she couldn’t afford to make a wasted move or speak a wasted word. Or waste her breath on a girl like me.

“You’ll not take it personally, eh.” Clancy said it like a command. But she’d basically accused me of
doing
something to Finn. Of changing him.

Finn scooped the last of his stew from the bowl and pushed it aside. He ran his hand down my arm, leaving a trail of warmth. “She said no dating. How was I supposed to know I’d meet someone so rare?”

I choked on a bit of my water, and he patted my back.

“Surely Ina could tell how special this one is,” Clancy said, pointing his fork in my direction. “I’m not surprised you were drawn to her.” He winked at Finn. “And fair play to you for luring her here.”

We finished our dinner and walked outside into a light drizzle. Clancy kissed both my cheeks and handed Finn an umbrella. “I’ll be seeing you,” he promised and strode down the street in the direction of the pub.

“Well, you’ve got Uncle Clancy charmed.”

I sighed. “Why does it seem like we never parted?”

“Maybe because we were never supposed to.” Finn leaned in to kiss me but stopped, leaving my willingness evident on my parted lips, which he touched lightly with one finger. “I’ve been beating the
shite
out of myself ever since I left you.”

“Oh.” My lips hungered to kiss him, but I held eye contact and whispered, “Well, I’m here now.” Warmth heated in his eyes. “I’ll take over the beating.”

He burst out laughing and kissed me. A deliciously wicked kiss with my head cradled in both of his hands. My fingers dug into the back of his neck. Having him in my arms, his mouth on mine, left me breathless and my body hungry. He wrapped both arms around my shoulders. “God, you do things to me, Cora. When I’m with you, I feel ten feet tall and bulletproof.” Our eyes met. “I’m greedy,” he admitted, bending his head forward, speaking his words into his chest. “I thought I could walk away, but in my heart I never did. I’m with you now, and everything in me wants to hold on. I want to keep you with me. Possess you. Am I wrong for feeling that way?”

I didn’t think so. It was the same for me. I wanted Finn to adore me so completely, he’d never say good-bye again. He’d forever be ruined for any other girl. I wanted to claim him right back. Did that make me wrong, too?

We stood in the rain. Chest to chest. Heart to heart. I’d never regret coming to Ireland. No matter what disappointments the trip might hold regarding my mother, seeing him again was worth it. I’d fly across the world for one kiss from Finn Doyle.

Still, he wasn’t the reason I came, and I’d be doing myself and my mother a disservice if I didn’t honor that. “This has been so lovely,” I said, aching already. “But I have to go back to my room now. I’ve got this journal of my mother’s, and I was on my way to read it when I ran into you. The truth is I’m dying to read it. It’s like she’s waiting for me. She’s been waiting for me for twelve years.”