Orla immediately rises and sets aside her knitting. I’ve noticed that she is slowing down a little these days, her movements slower, stiffer, than they used to be. Fine lines have formedaround her eyes and mouth, but she is still an attractive and determined woman.
“I’ll make coffee.” She doesn’t trust me to make it to her standards.
“Stay there, Orla. I can manage.”
“Of course you can manage. I’ve never doubted it for a moment. But we want to make a good impression.”
I smile. “She’s going to be doing our laundry, and making sure that we eat our vegetables, Orla. She’ll think that we brought her here under false pretenses if you’re doing everything for her.”
“You know I always helped Mary.”
“And I’m sure that she was extremely grateful. But you should be getting out of the house more, meeting your friends for a tipple in the local bar, not clearing up after me and the lads.”
Her eyes grow watery. “How would I fill my time if I didn’t have you and the lads?”
“You’d be doing things you enjoy. Taking it easy. Seeing a bit of the world.”
Orla stepped up when Niamh died. She took over the running of the house, brought up my boys, Ruairi and Eoghan as if they were her own sons. It’s about time she started putting herself first.
“Why would I want to see the world when everything I want is right here?” She pushes past me, grumbling, on her way to the kitchen, and I let her go, smiling.
By the time Amelia comes down, her hair stringy-wet from the shower, looking fresh in faded jeans and a floral shirt fastenedinto a knot above her waist, the kitchen is filled with the aroma of coffee, and Orla has spread a selection of home-baked cookies, shortbread, and flapjacks in a basket on the table.
“Coffee!” Amelia exclaims. “Was it that obvious that I didn’t get enough caffeine on the flight?”
This is my first glimpse of the bubbly personality mentioned in her file, and I find myself beaming at her from across the table. “I always come back dehydrated. Doesn’t matter how much water you drink on a flight.”
“Even on a private jet, huh?” Her eyebrows slide into the curls framing her face, and her cheeks turn pink. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”
I laugh. How could anyone take offense at anything Amelia says?
“Even on a private jet. It might be comfortable, but the distance is still the same.” I reach for Orla’s hand across the table. “This is Orla, my mother-in-law. She’ll try to interfere, but you need to be firm and remind her that you’re the housekeeper now.”
“Oh, gosh.” Amelia seems to flinch. “I’m not replacing you, am I?”
“Heavens, I certainly hope not.” Orla chuckles.
“You’ll soon get used to her sense of humor too.” I sit back in my seat and watch Amelia sit across the table from us as if this is her first interview.
She quickly rises again like she got an electric shock. “I’m so sorry. You’re waiting for me to pour the coffee. It’s the jet lag, I swear. I’m not normally this slow.”
“Sit, child.” Orla stands slowly, gripping the edge of the table as she stretches her spine. “I can still make a decent cup of coffee, although it’s probably nothing like the coffee you get in America.”
Amelia sits and helps herself to a shortbread. She doesn’t meet my eyes when she says, “You have a beautiful home,” so it’s unclear which one of us she is talking to.
Orla comes back to the table with three mugs of steaming black coffee. The cream and sugar have already been set out in the middle of the table with the assortment of biscuits. “Our home is your home,” she says. “Isn’t that right, Declan?”
One thing I’ve learned about Orla over the years is that she chooses her words carefully. If she didn’t like Amelia, I would soon know about it.
“Aye, that’s right.”
When she finally looks at me, her expression is unreadable. Is she already having second thoughts? Or is she simply fatigued from the flight?
While I’m still puzzling over the look in her eyes, Orla jumps in with the question I’ve been asking myself since I offered her the job: “What brought you to Ireland?”
Amelia adds too much cream, and three spoons of sugar to her coffee, and stirs slowly, methodically. Then, “My dad is Irish. I never knew him,” she quickly adds. “He… doesn’t know about me. I’m not here because I want him in my life, I just want to find out a little more about my heritage.”
She sips her coffee, adds more cream, then takes a flapjack from the basket. Amelia York has a sweet tooth.
