She’s a smart one, her eyes zeroing in on the knuckles I used to get the money back from Benoit and putting the pieces together. I saw the recognition in them, and I was sure I saw disappointment follow. She glimpsed the true me, while I glimpsed how she felt about that.
And it bothered me. For a moment there I regretted my actions and wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have pummeled him, especially after he emptied his wallet of all the money he stole. Not because I think he didn’t deserve it.
But because the way she looked at me today, and yesterday at the bar, as if I can do no wrong . . . She obviously sees me in a better light than I actually warrant, and I like the feel of that light.
I was so surprised—and relieved—when she threw her arms around me. I lost a few breaths, just appreciating the feel and smell of her, in a way I definitely didn’t in the Green. I almost kissed her. I was so close to her neck, so close to just turning in farther. But I held back because, while she may look at me like I’m some sort of angel, I don’t want to assume that it’s more. Worse, I don’t want her to think I expect anything in exchange for what I did.
So I stopped myself. And I cursed myself for not growing a pair the entire drive here.
“Her family must be worried sick about her.” Ma’s prattling voice cuts into my thoughts.
“Probably.” Good question. I never even asked. I was too busy trying not to stare at those legs of hers. She must know they’re something to look at. She keeps wearing those little shorts.
“What’s that smile about now?” Ma chirps, the heavy creases in her face folding with her frown.
“The stew. It’s delicious,” I lie, soaking a crust of bread in the gravy and taking a bite.
It was a split-second decision, as I was climbing out of my car to go meet her, to keep the list. And another split-second decision to hint to her that I’ve seen it. I figure it gives her an excuse to come back to Delaney’s, if she wants one. And if she does, then she’s definitely chasing me.
A prospect that has me beaming inside.
“You’re such a good son, River.” Ma musses my hair up. “When are you going to find a nice Irish Catholic girl to marry?”
I wonder if Amber’s Protestant.
“When I’m thirty and she’s old enough to work in the pub and get knocked up.” I wink at Da and he roars with laughter. He and Ma are twelve years apart in age. She applied for a waitressing job at Delaney’s on her eighteenth birthday and he married her four months later. Aengus was born seven months after that.
“Six more years for grandbabies! Oh, River . . .” She clucks her disapproval.
I just grin wider at her and shrug my shoulders.
“These boys exasperate me some days.”
TEN
Amber
“Are you an art student?” an old man asks, parking his walker next to me, his white-knuckled grip of the handles telling me he’d fall flat without that support. The age spots all over his arms put him somewhere in his nineties, likely.
“No.” I chuckle. “I finished school already. I’m just doing a little traveling and a friend told me I needed to come to the museums and experience some real Irish history.”
“You’re an American! Well, there’s surely a lot to learn about here.”
You’re telling me. I just spent four hours investigating the Collins Barracks Museum and the National Museum of Ireland, my head swimming in information on the famine, the many rebellions and civil wars fought, the animosity between English and Irish, Protestant and Catholic. The Irish Republic Army. It’s a lot to process, and all I really got out of it is that River was right and I am, indeed, an ignorant tourist.
“One of our most famous artists, Burton was,” the old man muses, jutting his chin toward the painting. “But The Meeting on the Turret Stairs is arguably his best. Such a beautiful image of such an ill-fated couple.”
I study the haunting watercolor painting that hangs before me in the long, narrow hallway of the National Gallery, and I immediately see what he means. The couple depicted is meeting secretly in a narrow stone staircase. The woman—royalty, in her vibrant blue dress, her long braid running down her back—both reaching for and pulling away from the knight who cradles her arm with a kiss. The description says that it’s a story of a princess and her bodyguard, whom the king does not approve of and orders to be killed. This painting is of their final goodbye.
“It’s tragically romantic,” I agree. “I mean, why would the king kill a man whose sole job was to protect his daughter, and whom she obviously loved?”
He chuckles, a soft sound that reminds me of my grandpa. “I was on me knees on the cobblestone streets of Galway in the early thirties, shining shoes like I did every day, when I found me princess. She traipsed past me, on her way to school. It took me two years to work up the courage to talk to her and when I did,” his face erupts into a mass of wrinkles as he smiles, “it was magic between us.” The smile slides off. “Of course her da didn’t think so. When I asked his permission to propose, he said he’d kill me with his bare hands if I didn’t leave her be. No shoe shiner could ever be good enough for his daughter.” He snorts. “How’s that for a God-fearing Catholic.”
Obviously the man didn’t kill him. “So what happened?” I ask, intrigued. I’m a sucker for stories like this.
“Well, I broke it off.” When he sees the disappointment settle on my face he quickly adds, “I liked me skin! But Darcy was stubborn and she refused to give me up. So we jumped on a boat headed for Scotland, settled in a small coastal village where I had friends, and eloped. Didn’t come back for years, with three wee ones in tow. What was her father going to do? Kill her daughter’s husband and the father of his grandchildren? Besides, I had me a good job by then. Could provide well for me family.”
I smile at the man. “I’m glad that story has a happy ending.”
“It does. God rest her soul, Darcy and I were together for sixty-four years before she left me,” he says wistfully, his eye wandering over the many paintings that line the wall. “She used to love it here. Sometimes I can feel her still roaming the halls . . .”
I’m guessing he spends a lot of time here.
There’s a long pause. “Why was I . . . oh, right! I was telling that story to prove a point. Her father was a doctor. He could have been a king, and he could have been a pauper, and he’d still be right about one thing: that I was never good enough for her. But luckily I was smart enough to realize that, and never stop trying to be the man she deserved.” He lets go of his walker long enough to pat my shoulder gently. “Ya remember that, pretty lass. And maybe give the shoe shiner a second look.”
I imagine what he must have been like, a young Irishman crouched on the streets so long ago, and what life was like back then. Even though times have changed, if I were to bring home a guy who shines shoes to meet my parents, I can’t say they’d be thrilled either.
But what about if I were to bring home an Irish bartender . . .?
I stifle the eye roll that those thoughts deserve. Is there anything that won’t make my mind segue into thoughts of River?
“Carpe diem, miss. Foolish youth is a strange and wondrous time that vanishes too quickly.” He shuffles over to the next painting with slow, easy movements, sparking a conversation with a young couple.