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When she saw another house it was almost a shock. It was nestled just off the road behind the hedgerows and rambled front, back, and sideways as if different pieces of it had been plopped down carelessly on a whim. And somehow it worked, she decided. It was a charming combination of stone and wood, juts and overhangs with flowers rioting in both the front yard and the back. Beyond the gardens in the rear was a shed—what her grandmother would have called a cabin—with tools and machines tumbling out the door.
In the driveway she saw a car, covered with stone-gray paint, and looking as though it had come off the assembly line years before Jude had been born.
A big yellow dog slept, in a patch of sunlight in the side yard, or she assumed it slept. It was on its back with its feet in the air like roadkill.
The O’Tooles’ house? Jude wondered, then decided it must be so when a woman came out the back door with a basket of laundry.
She had brilliant red hair and the wide-hipped, sturdy frame that Jude would imagine in a woman required to carry and birth five children. The dog, proving she was alive, rolled over to her side and thumped her tail twice as the woman marched to the clothesline.
It occurred to Jude that she’d never actually seen anyone hang clothes before. It wasn’t something even the most dedicated of housewives tended to do in downtown Chicago. It seemed like a mindless and thereby soul-soothing process to her. The woman took pegs from the pocket of her apron, clamped them in her mouth as she bent to take a pillowcase from the basket. Snapped it briskly, then clamped it to the line. The next item was dealt with in the same way and shared the second peg.
Fascinating.
She worked down the line, without any obvious hurry, with the yellow dog for company, emptying her basket while what she hung billowed and flapped wetly in the breeze.
Just another part of the painting, Jude decided. She would title this section Country Wife.
When the basket was empty, the woman turned to the facing line and unhooked clothes already hanging and dry, folding them until her basket was piled high.
She cocked the basket on her hip and walked back into the house, the dog prancing behind her.
What a nice way to spend the morning, she thought.
And that evening, when everyone came home, the house would smell of something wonderful simmering in the kitchen. Some sort of stew, Jude imagined, or a roast with potatoes browned from its juices. The family would all sit around the table, one crowded with bowls and plates wonderfully mismatched, and talk about their day and laugh and sneak scraps to the dog, who begged from under the table.
Large families, she thought, must be a great comfort.
Of course, there was nothing wrong with small ones, she added, immediately feeling guilty. Being an only child had its advantages. She’d gotten all her parents’ attention.
Maybe too much of their attention, a little voice murmured in her ear.
Considering that voice very rude, she blocked it out and turned to return to her cottage and do something practical with her time.
Because she felt disloyal, she immediately phoned home. With the time difference she caught her parents before they left for work, and squashed her guilt by chatting happily, telling them she was rested, enjoying herself, and looking forward to this new experience.
She was well aware that they both considered her impulsive trip to Ireland a kind of experiment, a quick forty-five-degree turn from the path she’d been so content to pursue for so long. They weren’t against it, which relieved her. They were just puzzled. She had no way to explain it to them, or to herself.
With family on her mind, she placed another call. There was no need to explain anything to Granny Murray. She simply knew. Lighter of heart, Jude filled her grandmother in on every detail of the trip, her impressions, her delight with the cottage while she brewed a pot of tea and made a sandwich.
“I just had a walk,” she continued, and with the phone braced on her shoulder, set her simple lunch on the table. “I saw the ruins and the tower from a distance. I’ll have a closer look later.”
“It’s a fine spot,” Granny told her. “There’s a lot to feel there.”
“Well, I’m very interested in seeing the carvings and the arcading, but I didn’t want to wander that far today. I saw the neighbor’s house. It must be the O’Tooles’.”
“Ah, Michael O’Toole. I remember him when he was just a lad—a quick grin Mick had and a way of talking you out of tea and cakes. He married that pretty Logan girl, Mollie, and they had five girls. The one you met, Brenna, she’d be the oldest of the brood. How’s she faring, pretty Mollie?”
“Well, I didn’t go over. She was busy with laundry.”
“You’ll find no one’s too busy to take a moment, Jude Frances. Next time you’re roaming you stop in and pay your respects to Mollie O’Toole.”
“I will. Oh, and Gran?” Amused, she smiled as she sipped her tea. “You didn’t tell me the cottage was haunted.”
“Sure and I did, girl. Haven’t you listened to the tapes, or read the letters and such I gave you?”
“No, not yet.”
“And you’re thinking there goes Granny again, with her make-believe. You just go through the things I sent along with you. The story’s there about Lady Gwen and her faerie lover.”
“Faerie lover?”
“So it was said. The cottage is built on a faerie hill with its raft, or palace, beneath, and she waits for him still, pining because she turned off happiness for sense, and he losing it for pride.”
“That’s sad,” Jude murmured.
“Well, it is. Still, it’s a good spot, the hill, for looking inside yourself to your heart’s desire. You look inside yours while you’re there.”
“Right now I’m just looking for some quiet.”
“Take as much of it as you need, there’s plenty to go around. But don’t stand back too long and watch the rest of the world. Life’s so much shorter than you think.”
“Why don’t you come out, Gran, stay here with me?”
“Oh, I’ll come back, but this is your time now. Pay attention to it. You’re a good girl, Jude, but you don’t have to be good all the time.”
“So you’re always telling me. Maybe I’ll find some handsome Irish rogue and have a reckless love affair.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you any. Put flowers on Cousin Maude’s grave for me, will you, darling? And tell her I’ll come see her when I’m able.”
“I will. I love you, Gran.”
Jude didn’t know where the time went. She’d meant to do something productive, had really intended to go out to play with the flowers for a few minutes. To pick just a handful to put in the tall blue bottle she’d found in the living room. Of course she’d picked too many and needed another bottle. There didn’t seem to be an actual vase in the house. Then it had been such fun sitting on the stoop arranging them and wishing she knew their names that she’d whiled away most of the afternoon.
It had been a mistake to carry the smaller squat green bottle up to her office to put on the table with her computer. But she’d only meant to lie down for a minute or two. She’d slept for two solid hours on top of the little bed in her office, and woke up groggy and appalled.
She’d lost her discipline. She was lazy. She’d done nothing but sleep or piddle for more than thirty hours now.
And she was hungry again.
At this rate, she decided as she foraged for something quick in the kitchen, she’d be fat, slow, and stupid in a week.
She would go out, drive down to the village. She’d find a bookstore, the bank, the post office. She’d find out where the cemetery was so that she could visit Old Maude’s grave for her grandmother. Which is what she should have done that morning. But this way it would be done and she could spend the next day going through the tapes and letters her grandmother had given her to see if there was a paper in them.
She changed first, choosing trim slacks, a turtleneck, and a blazer that made her feel muc
h more alert and professional than the thick sweater and jeans she’d worn all day.
She attacked her hair—“attack” was the only term she could use to describe what she had to do to tame it into a thick, bound tail when all it wanted to do was frizz up and spring out everywhere at once.
She was cautious with makeup. She’d never been handy with it, but the results seemed sufficient for a casual tour of the village. A glance in the mirror told her she didn’t look like a day-old corpse or a hooker, both of which could and had happened on occasion.
Taking a deep breath, she headed out to attempt another session with the leased car and the Irish roads. She was behind the wheel, reaching for the ignition when she realized she’d forgotten the keys.
“Ginkgo,” she muttered as she climbed back out. “You’re going to start taking ginkgo.”
After a frustrated search, she found the keys on the kitchen table. This time she remembered to turn a light on, as it might be dark before she returned, and to lock the front door. When she couldn’t remember if she’d locked the back one, she cursed herself and strode around the cottage to deal with it.
The sun was drifting down in the west and through its light a thin drizzle was falling when she finally put the car in reverse and backed slowly out into the road.
It was a shorter drive than she remembered, and a much more scenic one without rain lashing at the windshield. The hedgerows were budded with wild fuchsia in drops red as blood. There were brambles with tiny white flowers that she would learn were blackthorn and friesia hazed and yellow with spring.
As the road turned she saw the tumbled walls of the cathedral on the hill and the spear of the tower lording over the seaside village.
No one walked there.
Eight hundred years they had stood. That, Jude thought, was a wonder of its own. Wars, feast and famine, through blood and death and birth, the power remained. To worship and to defend. She wondered if her grandmother was right, and if so, what one would feel standing in their shadow on soil that had felt the weight of the pious and the profane.
What an odd thought, she decided, and shook it off as she drove into the village that would be hers for the next six months.
