In the Unlikely Event

“No need to be scared. I reckon you’re highly uninformed regarding the gray squirrels and their hidden agenda.”

He stops behind my father’s tombstone, gazing at the prominent birthmark on my temple. I hate when people do that—stare so openly. Especially because it looks like a scar. A crescent-shaped thing, it is somehow even paler than my normal shade of dead. Mom always encourages me to do something about it. Cover it with makeup. Remove it with a laser treatment.

Something flickers in his eyes when he sees my birthmark. He has fluffy white hair and a face stained with age. His eyes are so small under heaps of wrinkly skin, I can’t even make out their color.

“The gray squirrels endanger the red squirrels, driving them out of their own territory. The reds were here first. But the grays are better at problem solving. Street smart. The grays also carry a disease that only affects the red squirrels.” He removes his reading glasses, cleaning them with the hem of his robe.

I swallow, shifting my weight from foot to foot. He slides his glasses back on.

“’Course, the grays also eat the reds’ food and are better at reproducing. Red squirrels don’t reproduce under pressure.”

I stare at him, not sure if he is an avid environmentalist, an awkward conversationalist, or simply batshit crazy. Why is he talking to me about squirrels?

More importantly—why am I listening?

“I, um, thanks for the info.” I play with the hoop in my nose.

Leave, Rory. Start walking in the opposite direction before he gives you a lecture about ants.

“Just an interesting anecdote about squirrels. And maybe about how unwelcome guests sometimes take over territory simply because they’re better than the locals.” He smiles, tilting his head. “And you are?”

Confused and excessively emotional. “Rory.” I clear my throat. “Rory Jenkins.”

“You’re not from here, Rory.”

“America.” I kick a little stone at my feet, somehow feeling like a punished kid, though I’ve no good reason to. “I’m from New Jersey.”

“That’s why you fed it.” He nods. “Should I take a guess why you’re here, or are you in a sharing mood?”

I’m too embarrassed to tell him I came here to find closure before I go to college, practically flushing all the money I’ve saved the past two years working at Applebee’s down the crap-stained toilet.

“Neither.” I fling my backpack over my shoulder. It’s time to go back to the hotel. Nothing is going to come out of this stupid trip. “Thanks for the fun facts about squirrels, though.”

It was totally worth the trip across the ocean.

I’d taken my first steps toward the cemetery’s gate when I hear his voice behind me.

“You’re Glen O’Connell’s daughter.”

I stop, feeling my shoulders tense. My whole body turns to stone. Slowly, I swivel on my heel, muscles frozen.

“How do you know?”

“You’re the third offspring to visit his grave. I’d heard the last one was supposed to be American. We’ve been waiting for you.”

“We?”

“Well, I.”

“Where are the other two?” I look around, as if they’re hiding behind tombstones.

“One lives just a short drive from here. Known her since she was a wee baby. Still attends this church with her mammy every Sunday. Glen was in her life as much as he could be, considering his…er, limitations.”

Translation: Alcoholism. Strangely, I still envy her.

“And the other one?”

“Lived up north. County Antrim.”

“Why the past tense?”

“He passed away a few weeks ago. Leukemia, would you believe? Such a young lad. He met his da a couple times, but never got to know him quite well.”

My heart sinks like an anchor, clawing at the bottom of my stomach. I had a brother who died, and now I’ll never get to meet him or know him at all. I have a potential family here. This guy…I could have hugged him, comforted him in his last days.

I know next to nothing about my father. Only that he died at age fifty of a heart attack that wasn’t unwarranted, considering his affection for fast cars, fast women, smoking, drinking, and artery-clogging food. He was born in Tolka, the son of a butcher and a teacher, and shot to fame writing “Belle’s Bells,” a Christmas song that exploded all over the charts in Ireland, the UK, and the US, giving Mariah Carey and George Michael a run for their money. The Christmas song was his first and last brush with labor, or anything similar to a career, but it was enough to secure him a house in Dublin and an annual budget for food and booze.

He was a womanizer. The kind to bed everything that moved. He met Mom at a bar in Paris while she was backpacking with friends and he was trying to find his muse again. They had a one-night stand, and he gave her his address so she could write to him if she ever happened to be in Ireland looking for a good time. When she did write to him, informing him I was in the oven, he invited her to come live with him, but Mom never did. Instead, he sent child support money every month. Sent me gifts, letters…but everything was always carefully monitored by my mother. I hated that she controlled our relationship.