Running Back (New York Leopards 2)

Apparently Mike’s granddad really got around.

Cork felt like a massive city after several days in Dundoran, but I still wanted to stop every ten seconds and whip out my camera. I walked along the river, strolling across the bridge and admiring the colorful houses and the cathedral’s steeple. I got hungry again and settled in a tiny café for an hour, eating another scone accompanied by a mocha. I alternated between people watching and one of my comfort books on my eReader.

At ten, I headed over to Cork’s Central Library, located on the Grand Parade. I spent a happy afternoon buried in the stacks. I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted, so I pulled everything that mentioned Kilkarten, the neighboring farms, Dundoran Village, local archaeology, Iron Age Ireland, Rome... I ended up with stacks of books. I could access the digital newspaper archives for free from the library itself, so I delved into old articles.

Libraries were dangerous places. Start researching one topic, and the next thing you know it’s three hours later and you’re reading up on family feuds from two-hundred years ago. I did pretty well at staying on topic, but I was surprised to find it near seven o’clock when I left. I ate at a South Indian restaurant while reading a copy of the local paper. I thought about calling my mom, but decided I’d shoot her an email when I went back to the inn instead.

I got back just as the sun set, and after grabbing my laptop from my room, headed down to the inn’s library. It was a cozy room lined with books and a small fireplace. Lauren sat at a round polished table in the window alcove, typing away on a laptop. She looked up when I stopped in the doorway, and pushed back some of the bright corkscrews that had fallen loose from her messy bun. “Oh, hey. You’re back from...”

“I went into Cork. Did some research.” I dropped down at her table. “Where’re your mom and Anna?”

“Oh, back at the cottage. I needed to get away and relax.”

I laughed sympathetically. “Long day?”

She sighed and shook out her hair. “You have no idea.”

I studied her. Lauren wasn’t very forthcoming, but she seemed smart and practical and down-to-earth. I had no idea how she felt about Kilkarten or if she fully sided with Mike’s excavation ban, but I wasn’t quite ready to ask her that straight out.

“I think Mike mentioned you were meeting your uncle’s widow? How’d that go?”

Lauren shrugged and closed the laptop. “It was an experience.”

“Was it awkward? Mike told me a little about your family dynamics.”

Her brows rose. “He doesn’t usually talk about our family. But, yeah, it made it awkward. Mom and Maggie were polite but cold, and it kind of felt like they were taking digs at each other.”

Kind of like when my dad and his ex-wife were in the same room. “Did you ask your mom about it?”

Lauren nodded. “I tried to pry it out of her, but she wouldn’t tell me what the big deal was. Though I guess she did invite Maggie and Patrick to Dad’s funeral, and they didn’t come, so Mom thinks we currently have the high moral ground for coming out here at all. I don’t even know.” She shrugged. “But we’re going back for lunch tomorrow, to meet Maggie’s nephew, so it wasn’t an entire disaster.”

We spent the next hour chatting about innocuous things—mostly school. Lauren had just wrapped up her Masters of Public Health, and while that had no relation to archaeology, everyone in grad school had a small kinship. We had finals and capstones and defenses before panels or committees. We had undergrads and advisors and exhaustion and a deep disdain for everyone who kept telling us how much harder life would be in the “real world.”

It was Lauren who finally moved the topic closer to home. “Where did you grow up?”

“Just outside of the city.”

“So you’re actually a New Yorker. Leopards’ fan?”

“I’ve been a Leopards fan since I was little girl.” I relaxed back in the seat, loose and mellow. “There was a... I used to wear a jersey as my night-shirt. Dustin Jones, the QB before Carter. My dad got it for one of my brothers, and he forgot it at my house... God, they fought over who’d taken it when Evan couldn’t find it.”

“You must have really wanted it.”

I’d really wanted a present from my father about something he loved. That was the year I’d started doing my own laundry, because I didn’t want my mom to see it and make me give it back. Which, in retrospect, was pretty pathetic. “I was a weird kid.”

She laughed. “Weren’t we all.”

“Mike too?”

She wavered her head back and forth. “When we were little, sure. But after our dad died... He got really serious.”

“But now everyone describes him as charming.”

Her brows scrunched. “Don’t I know it.”

I blinked.

She sighed. “Sorry. More bitterness than I meant, there. I just wish he’d spend some time with this family. But—I don’t know.”