Kate Hoffmann - Riley

“And your son? What was he like?”

“Handsome. Charming. Probably too charming for his own good, that one. All the girls loved him, but your mother, she was the one who captured his heart. When she left, he was so sad and angry.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to him,” Nan said.

Carey nodded, his face etched with grief. “It was a bad time. And my wife, she never really recovered. He was our only child and she grieved for him until the day she died.”

“Did they love each other? Tiernan and my mother?”

He folded his hands over his walking stick. “Oh, yes. I do think so. They were both so young, but they were happy together. When we got the news, it was difficult for Tiernan. My son wasn’t ready to be a father and Laura had no support over here, so she didn’t-”

“I don’t understand,” Nan said. “You said Tiernan was going to be a father. Did he get another girl pregnant? Is that why my mother left?”

The old man took a long breath then shook his head wearily. “You don’t know. You haven’t figured it out, have you?”

Nan pressed her hand to her chest. Had her heart stopped beating? Why couldn’t she breathe? “The baby was me,” she murmured. “It was me?”

“I’m sorry. I thought that’s why you’d come. That’s why I’d written to your mother for all those years. I wanted news of my granddaughter. You’re my granddaughter, Tiernan.”

Nan stood and walked over to one of the tall stones, pressing her hands against it as she tried to breathe again. Now, everything made perfect sense. Somewhere, deep inside her, she thought this might be it, but she’d refused to consider it.

“She was pregnant when she left?”

Carey shook his head. “When your mother got home, she found out she was pregnant. She knew Tiernan was the father and she wrote him a letter to tell him. He threw the letter in the rubbish and I found it and read it. I wrote back to her, begging her to come and live with us, determined to make Tiernan stand by her. But by that time, she’d already married your father.”

“But then Tiernan died,” Nan murmured.

“No one knew about you, outside of our family. But it changed him. He became more reckless, more headstrong. I think, in the end, he realized how much he loved Laura and what a mistake he’d made. But, by then, it was too late.”

“You lost your grandchild and then your child.”

“It killed my wife. After Tiernan’s accident, she couldn’t bring herself to look at your mother’s letters. She was even afraid to look at your photos for fear she might love you and that you might resemble Tiernan-which you do, by the way. Living so far away from you was too much for her to bear.”

“I read your letters,” Nan said. “They’re what brought me here. What if I’d never found them? What if my father had thrown them away? I never would have known.”

“I still have the letters she sent me. And all the photos she sent. And she left a sketchbook that I found in Tiernan’s room after he died. I think you should have them.”

“I’d love to see them,” Nan said.

Carey stood up and whistled for his dog. “Come along, then. I live just down the lane. We’ll walk and chat on the way.”

Nan got up, her knees wobbly and her emotions barely in check, and they started toward the road. Carey peppered her with questions about her life, from her very first memories of her childhood to what she’d been doing a week ago. She answered him numbly, her body and mind on autopilot.

She wanted to sit down in the middle of the road and just take a moment. Everything seemed to be moving so fast, she hadn’t had time to react. She felt like crying and laughing at the same time.

How hard had it been for her father? He must have known, yet he kept the secret all these years, raising the child of another man. And what about her mother, walking away from the boy she loved and stepping into a marriage of convenience, merely to give her daughter a name? Her entire life had been one big charade.

As Carey had said, his cottage was only a quarter mile down the road from the stone circle. It was a tidy little home, much like the Quinn cottage, whitewashed but with a slate roof and pretty blue front door. They walked through the front garden and he held the door open for her, Georgie scampering in beneath her feet.

“I’ll just put on the water for a pot of tea,” he said. He pointed to the comfortable parlor. “Sit down and take a rest. I know this is a lot to comprehend in a very short time.”

Dazed, Nan walked into the cozy room then noticed the framed photos sitting on a shelf between the windows. She crossed to examine them more closely, then realized many of them were of her as a child. She drew a ragged breath and tears flooded her eyes.

This man was her grandfather. She wasn’t alone anymore. She had family. Nan picked up a photo of a handsome boy with dark hair and devilish eyes. And this was her father. “Tiernan,” she murmured, running her fingers over his image, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Carey reappeared, clutching a large black book in his arms. Wiping the tears away with her sleeve, Nan sat down and took the book from his outstretched hands. She recognized what it was immediately. Her father had given her three or four of her mother’s old sketchbooks, filled with drawings of Nan and various places around their neighborhood. But these drawings would be from before Nan even existed.

“Open it,” Carey said. “I think she left it with Tiernan as a kind of memory of the time they spent together. When I moved from the farm, I found it in his closet and I kept it. I always hoped that one day, I’d get to meet you and I could give it back.”

She hugged it to her chest. “Thank you. I-I think I’ll look at it later.”

“Well, I’d expect this has all come as quite a shock to you.”

Nan nodded. “I’m not sure what to say. This morning, I didn’t have a family and now I do.”

“When are you planning to return home?”

“I have a flight back in a few days,” she said. “On Wednesday.”

“If you have a mind to write a letter now and then, I would promise to write back. And I hope we could exchange some photos.” He hurried across to the shelf and took the photo of Tiernan down. “You should take this. You need a photo of him.”

She looked at Carey, at the hope that was in his eyes. He’d never even known her, yet she could tell he didn’t want her to leave. Maybe, he even loved her like every grandfather loved his granddaughter. She tried to imagine him, opening her mother’s letters, staring at the photos, trying to know the girl she was. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“And if you ever come back to Ireland, you must promise to visit.”

Nan nodded. “Yes. I promise.” She paused. “Do you really think they were in love?”

“Oh, yes. I know they were,” he said. “If you’d have seen them together, you’d have known it, too. But I don’t believe your mother was ready to give up her life in America to marry an Irish boy she barely knew. She made the right decision. My son wasn’t ready to be a husband or a father. Ireland would have been an unhappy place for both of you.”

Nan quickly stood. This was too much to take in all at once. “I-I should go. But-but I’ll come back. Tomorrow.”

“Yes,” he said. “Tomorrow. I’ll have your mother’s letters for you. Maybe you’d like to come for a late breakfast? Or lunch?”

“Yes,” Nan said. “Breakfast would be nice.” She hurried to the door, then turned around. “Thank you.”

He smiled. “No, thank you. You’ve made an old man very happy.”

Nan slipped outside, then hurried down the front walk to the road. She started out at a brisk walk, but in the end, she ran, the sketchbook and photo pressed against her chest. When she reached her car, Nan leaned against the bumper and drew a deep breath.