“Grand,” Sam said.
Fiadh made a face. “I was just telling Sam he needs to settle down.”
“I’m only twenty-eight,” Sam said.
“I was twenty-one when I married your father,” Janette said.
And forty-one when he died, leaving her with five mouths to feed and a shop to run and no money for burial expenses.
Sam smiled. “You were one of the lucky ones,” he said, but he didn’t believe it.
“There was a girl in the shop,” Fiadh said. “An American. Very pretty.”
Janette looked at Sam. “And?”
His family’s love surrounded him, warm and suffocating. Like wading through a haystack, it was.
“He called her a taxi,” Fiadh said.
“Uncle Gerry. He was glad for the fare,” Sam said.
And Sam... He was glad to do it. Taking care of his family. That’s what he did, that’s who he was now. That’s all he could be.
THREE
I’m sorry we’re meeting like this,” Glenda Norton said.
Her long, thin white hands were folded on top of the nineteenth-century desk in front of her. Behind her, sunlight streamed through the tall, narrow window of the house where Oscar Wilde once lived, sliding lovingly over a photo of two little girls on the glass-fronted bookcase and illuminating her hair to gold—Eileen inA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the gilt-edged Madonna in every art book triptych ever, the Blessed Damozel leaning down from heaven. She was everything I wanted to be: beautiful, smart, composed. Sure of herself and the power she wielded. I wanted her to adopt me or at least to tell me what to do.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m really sorry about Dr.Eastwick.”
“Yes. Poor Morrigan. Tragic. Unfortunately, her death leaves us in a bit of a quandary.”
I waited, my heart thrumming.
Dr.Norton sighed. “I had hoped to speak with you before you arrived.” If her voice weren’t so sweet, she would have sounded almost cross.
“I know orientation doesn’t start for a couple of weeks. I just...”Needed to get away. “Was really excited to come. I’ve never been to Ireland before.” Or out of the country. Unlike our mother, who was always off draping fabric on volcanoes or twisting rope across ravines, creating the massive art installations that made her famous. “I wanted to get settled.”
“You didn’t reply to my email,” Dr.Norton said with gentle reproach.
Heat swept my face.Guilty. It was one thing to drop off social media. But I’d also been avoiding my inbox. My old account, [email protected], had been flooded with emails from prying reporters and creepy fans, strangers searching for the fictional Destiny Gayle. I deleted them unread. Mostly unread. My new Trinity account had felt like a fresh start. A new identity. A chance to be someone else—or maybe to be my old self again. But I still flinched at opening email from unknown senders.
“I must have missed it,” I said.
Dr.Norton hummed. “You were at the University of Kansas for...” She consulted her open MacBook. “Four years?”
In a three-year program. I cleared my throat. “The first two years were mostly coursework. I also taught English composition.”
Dr.Norton templed her long white fingers. “We welcome writers at all stages of life. And your grades are very, very impressive. Well done, you. But there was some concern about your transferring programs at this point in your academic career. Some of the staff questioned whether you had the necessary, ah, commitment to succeed.”
I sat up straighter. “One of the things that attracted me to Trinity was that it’s a one-year program,” I said. “One and done,” I’d said to Toni as I left her at her freshman dorm. “I’m eager to finish my dissertation and move on to the next stage of my life.”
Which wasn’t a lie, exactly. I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do after graduation. But one step at a time, right? And simply coming here had been a giant leap into the unknown.
Another hum. “Morrigan was a vocal advocate for your admission. But now that she’s no longer with us...” Dr.Norton trailed off delicately.
I wasn’t welcome anymore.
