Something Found (7 page)

But he was beginning to have doubts. He still believed Emily was the one, but he couldn’t help wondering if the move was too much for her. And the thought of Joni with her I told you so look annoyed the hell out of him.

-

Emily pushed the door open to find herself in a small yet relatively clean looking pub. It was quiet and homey with about five or six customers spread throughout. But what sold the place for her was the fireplace with the empty seat next to it. Her few requirements were satisfied. Emily pushed back her hood revealing a red nose and cheeks and made her way to the bar.

“Lovely weather,” the bartender said by way of greeting.

“Miserable,” Emily agreed.

“What can I get you?” He looked to be in his early fifties. His eyes were bright and his movements were slow but confident.

Emily stood uncomfortably mulling it over. She hadn’t actually considered what she would drink.

“How about a hot port?” he suggested, nodding at her soaked condition. “Something to warm you up.”

Emily blushed, wondering just how bad she looked. “Alright,” she agreed, “sounds perfect.”

“Go ahead and have a seat. I’ll drop it over to you.”

“Thanks.”

Hanging her coat on the back of her chair Emily settled in, possibly for a long stay. Once seated, she took her time examining her surroundings more closely. She found it humorous that it was barely twelve o’clock in the afternoon and she was sitting in an Irish pub waiting for her first drink of the day. Collin would be jealous, and possibly a little proud. She thought about texting him but decided against it. She still hadn’t mastered this new form of communication on her mobile and it would be more fun to surprise him later with the news that she’d actually managed to leave the house all on her own like a big girl.

Emily smirked at herself. That was about the only big girl thing she’d done. Her attitude lately was that of a child with none of the wonder and excitement and all of the tantrums. Is this what moving to a new place did to her? She remembered being sad and upset at times in Chicago but not to this extent.

Her eyes continued to roam the room and she couldn’t fight the uncanny feeling that she’d stepped back into the past. But it wasn’t quite that either. It was more like stepping into the past while coexisting with the present. She’d felt that way more than once in Ireland. It was heady and disorienting.

From what Emily had noticed in Chicago when buildings passed their prime they were torn down or gutted and something new replaced them. It could happen in the course of a month. Something disappeared and reappeared as something else before she even realized it was gone. The oldest bar she’d been in was something out of the thirties. She’d been told it was a speakeasy during prohibition. It had a secret back room behind a candy store where the drinking went on. Just that bit of history had seemed impressive at the time, but in Ireland there were pubs that had been around since the early eighteen hundreds. And when you walked into them they appeared not to have changed much over the course of time.

Emily liked that all the tables and chairs in the bar were of a simple wooden design. They had a used yet comfortable look. The lighting was dim but not too dark. Old paintings of ships and country landscapes hung on the walls and Emily got the impression the pub had actually been around when those ships were in use. There was a tiny t.v. above the bar that two old men in suits were concentrating on. The sound was down low so that it could be heard but didn’t dominate the place. A glance told Emily they were watching some kind of sport she’d never seen before. For a second it seemed like soccer but when one of the players actually picked the ball up and started dribbling it she gave up watching, confused. There was another man in his forties sipping a Guinness and reading the paper and there were two women and a child at another table. The little boy looked bored as he sipped his coke, but the women were deep in conversation.

There was none of the flash of an American bar about the place. No silvery metal or glowing beer signs. There weren’t rows and rows of different alcohols to choose from or beers from exotic places. But Emily liked the red and green stained glass windows on the door that said Guinness. And she liked that the bartender was playing a Beatles album softly from the stereo behind the bar. It was all very simple, a place where people of any age or station could go to relax with a pint.

“Here you are now.”

Emily smiled up as her drink was placed on the table. “Thanks.”

“That should warm you up a bit.”

Emily reached into her pocket to pay for the drink.

“No. No. This one’s on me. A wedding present.”

Emily stared at him confused. “But how-.”

The man smiled warmly. “It’s the least I could do for Joseph’s daughter-in-law,” he said with a wink. “He’s very proud. Brought in pictures two days after the wedding. Normally it would take him six months to get them developed. Now you just let me know if you want another one.” With that he turned and walked back to his place behind the bar.

Emily took a tentative sip still feeling dumbfounded. She let the warm drink slide down her throat and into her belly. Soon that warmth was spreading to all her soaked extremities. Unconsciously she slouched a little further into her seat glad she hadn’t wandered into one of the trendier bars. She knew where some of them were. Collin had pointed them out to her thinking she might meet people her own age there. But she wasn’t looking to meet people, not yet anyway. For the moment she just wanted to be out of the house and on her own. She decided she couldn’t have picked a more welcoming spot.

“So this is experiencing Ireland.” She knew the words were an exaggeration even as she thought them. Ireland was still too many different things for her to comprehend. She was no longer under the illusion that two old men in suits drinking Guinness at a bar could sum the place up.

Emily’s gaze drifted to the fire and her mind began to wander. “Now where were we?” she thought the words at an imagined Jeremy, picturing him with a surprised look on his face. Part of her knew she should just leave him be, but that part didn’t win out.

“I thought you were done with me for the day,” he echoed her thoughts.

“You thought wrong.” A tight-lipped look of determination spread across her face as she got down to business.

“Emily, I’m not a piece of luggage to be carried around.” He looked around the bar uncomfortably. “You can’t just-.”

“Shut up,” Emily interrupted, grounding herself before it became another pointless conversation. “You are whatever I make you and I need to get to the bottom of something before I can let you go.”

“Oh.”

Emily struggled with what she wanted to ask, trying to find the right words to pin down what she needed to know. “Who is my mother? And don’t give me that blank stare. I need help with this. Who is she really?” It was what Emily needed to work through before she could feel at home anywhere. Before she could believe she was wanted by anyone else she needed to understand why for so many years, the one person who mattered most didn’t want her.

Jeremy’s face became more serious. “Okay. This I can understand.”
“Well then?”

“Give me a minute.”

Emily stared intently at the fire, occasionally lifting her drink to her mouth while her mind raced.

“She’s a woman who was hurt. Hurt more than she could explain. She was in love with a man who walked away from her. And it crushed her.” Jeremy’s forehead creased in a way very similar to Collins when he was deep in thought. Emily noticed and wondered if it had always been that way or if she was beginning to change her image of him.

“But who was she to me?” Emily interrupted impatiently. She’d been over that first part too many times. “Why wasn’t she ever there for me? Why did she always have to stay so far away?”

Instead of Jeremy’s voice images began to float through her head. The time when she was four and a bee stung her. Rather than going to her mom’s open arms she ran straight to Jeremy. The time she won the second place medal in swimming and her mom clapped proudly. Emily had looked her full in the face and then looked pointedly away. The day, five months after Jeremy’s death, when her mom got up early just to make her homemade oatmeal and she refused to eat it.

A shiver of guilt and regret traveled down Emily’s spine. “How many of those things did I forget about?”

“Too many,” Jeremy said solemnly.

“But she was distant!” Emily protested defensively. “I remember times when she pulled away from me.”

“Maybe she just didn’t know how. Maybe she always loved you but she didn’t know how to show it. She did lose the only man she ever loved after all. Maybe she thought she would lose you too.”

Her drink was gone and her sadness had a fuzzy glow to it. She rested her head in her hand and tried to casually brush away the tears that were forming. It was all too complicated.

“Emily?”

She looked up startled.

“Joseph?”

Collin’s dad smiled down warmly at her. “A Guinness and whatever she’s having Frank,” he called out to the barman.

“Sure thing Joseph.”

“I didn’t expect to find you here,” Joseph said as he took a seat across from her.

Emily still looked confused.

“Frank’s an old friend of mine. He’s owned this bar for years. We used to spend a lot of Saturday’s here, Colleen and I. I still stop in for a drink now and then just to say hi. Nothing the kids really need to know about,” he said with a wink.

Emily smiled shyly.

“And I won’t tell anyone I found you here either,” his voice turned conspiratorial.

“Thanks.” She hadn’t thought about hiding her visit to the pub but it seemed like the right thing to say.

“So what’re you doing here?”

Emily lifted a pant leg that was still quite damp. “I thought I’d go for a walk. Do a little exploring. Turned out not to be such a great idea. This was the first place I found when I realized how wet I was.”

Joseph chuckled. “I see. That’s Ireland for you. But I admire your attempt.”

“I needed to get out of the house.” Emily wondered if her voice sounded as desperate as she’d felt.

“That’s understandable. You can’t spend every day stuck inside. You’re in a new place. ‘Course you’d want to check it out.”

The drinks were delivered and they sipped in silence for a while but Emily didn’t feel uncomfortable. She liked Joseph. She liked the idea of him being her father-in-law. She liked the idea of having a father-in-law and having a real attachment to the word father.

“So is the rain what’s got you down?”

Emily looked up in mid-sip, caught. Her mind searched frantically for the right lie and then Joseph’s eyes met her own.

“No. It has nothing to do with the rain,” she answered honestly. “In fact it has nothing to do with Ireland though I think I’m worrying Collin.”

Joseph didn’t push her, he sat waiting patiently for her to elaborate in the same way Collin would have. Their expressions were even similar. It softened some part inside of her. “Joseph, what did you think of my mom?”

“I thought she was lovely,” Joseph answered without hesitation. “She seemed very sad about losing you, but lovely.”

Emily could feel the second drink taking hold of her. The need to talk about what was going on in her head intensified. “Did Collin ever tell you about my dad?”

Joseph looked her straight in the face showing no discomfort about the subject. “He said he left before you were born. Can’t imagine how a father could do it. But I s’pose it’s easier before you see a baby’s face. He wouldn’t’ve been able to leave if he’d held you in his arms first.”

“I’d like to believe that,” Emily said softly.

“Then believe it. I remember when Colleen was pregnant with Joni. I was terrified. There I was newly married, trying to start a business, and about to be responsible for a family. It’s very scary.”

“But you didn’t run away.”

“No. But I thought about it once or twice,” he said with a chuckle.

“But you didn’t,” Emily repeated stubbornly.

“Emily, is this about your father?”

Emily shrugged her shoulders. “Not really. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s about my mom more. We, well we haven’t been on good terms for a very long time.” She let out a laugh that lacked any humor. “More like ever really. But before she left I could see how upset she was. And I’ve always blamed her for pushing me away, but I started to wonder how much I was pushing her away.”

Joseph nodded sympathetically.

“And then I began to wonder if I blamed her, well, for other things. If I was so mad at her when I was younger because I thought she pushed my dad away. And maybe my anger was what brought out her own.”

“It sounds like you’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.”

Emily rolled her eyes exaggeratedly trying to lighten the situation. “Constantly. I just don’t feel like I can move forward until I settle things from my past. I thought once I moved it would all go away, but it seems to be with me even more.”

“Why don’t you call her?’

“And say what?”

“Anything. Anything at all. I’m sure she’d be happy just to hear your voice.”