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“Not to fuck you, as much as I would love to, but we don’t have time right now.”
“Why?”
“I’m taking you to meet someone.” I smile at her and tap her legs. “Put some shoes on. We need to leave.”
She sits up and reaches for her socks and sneakers beside the sofa. “Who?”
“It’s a surprise.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Is it business stuff?”
I shake my head.
“Can I have a hint?”
“No.”
An hour later, we pull up outside the cottage in the countryside and Jessie peers out of the window. There are wind chimes hanging all around the outside as well as overgrown bushes that hide the house largely from view. It hasn’t changed much since I was a kid. I love this place.
“Come on,” I say as I climb out of the car and Jessie follows suit.
“Whose place is this?” she asks, wide eyed as she looks around at the flowers in huge colorful flowerpots. There is a giant sundial on the middle of the lawn and a fountain a few meters behind it. “I love it,” she breathes.
I take her hand and walk her up the path. I don’t even have a chance to knock on the door before my Aunt Em opens it. She has barely changed either, except her hair is slightly grayer, but she still wears it loose and wavy. She still wears long flowing skirts and dozens of bracelets and I only just realized how much I have missed her.
“Shane!” she says as she steps out and pulls me into a hug. The smell of patchouli and jasmine takes me back to the summers we would spend at this cottage when we were kids. It was my grandmother’s back then. Em inherited it when she died, given that she was the only surviving daughter.
When she releases me, she doesn’t even let me introduce Jessie before she wraps her in her arms too. “And this must be Jessie. Shane has told me so much about you.”
“This is my Aunt Em,” I say as Jessie looks at me over Em’s shoulder with a huge smile on her face.
“Come in,” Em says when she finally lets Jessie go. “Aoife is here too.”
“Who’s Aoife?” Jessie mouths to me as we go inside.
I slide my hand around her waist and press my lips close to her ear. “My cousin.”
We follow Em into her sitting room and are immediately greeted by a tall, dark haired woman in her mid twenties, with a huge pregnant bump, whose smile is even wider than my aunt’s.
“Shane!” she says excitedly. “You haven’t changed at all. From your pictures, I mean.”
“Well, you certainly have. I think you were about one the last time I saw you?”
“Yes,” Em replies. “It was about a year after your mum’s funeral.” She wipes a tear from her eyes. “It was the last time I saw any of you.”
“I know,” I say as I wrap an arm around her shoulder and kiss the top of her head.
“Come on, tough guy,” she sniffs and straightens up. “You can help me make the tea.”
I follow Em into the kitchen and she fills the kettle and places it on her stove. I recognize it immediately. It’s an old fashioned kind that whistles when the water is boiled and it belonged to my grandmother too. She turns to face me, her hands resting on the countertop either side of her.
“Your Uncle Paul came to see me,” she says, searching my face for a reaction.
“Oh? I didn’t realize he was back yet?”
“It was late last night,” she replies with a slight bob of her head.
I don’t speak. I stand in her kitchen, listening to the sound of the water boiling while neither of us mentions the thing that is most obviously on both of our minds.
