The Crow of Connemara (14 page)

Colin saw Tommy's sympathetic glance toward him. “Mom,” Tommy said, “I know you and Dad always tried to do what you thought best, and for me, that turned out to be the case. For Jen, too, mostly. But Colin's not me and he's not Jen. If Colin needs to do something else, then I completely understand that, and I not only won't stand in his way, I'll support him unconditionally.” He paused—and Colin saw the polished, studied cadence of a public speaker in that. “And that's what you need to do as well, Mom,” he finished.

His mother's eyebrows lifted and her head tilted. “That sounds as if there
is
something else that Colin is intending. Colin?” His mother's gaze hadn't left him, nor had she relaxed the arms folded over her stomach.

“Mom, I know how much everyone's hurting right now, and believe me, I am, too. And I appreciate that Tommy's going to take over Dad's path. We all miss Dad . . .”

“Colin.” His mother's mouth tightened into a line, pulling the skin of her cheeks into taut, short canyons. “Just tell us what you've decided—or tell us if you haven't.”

The image of the crow on the table flashed across his mind, followed by the memory of his grandfather's journal. The competing pulls of family and his earlier decision to leave school and pursue music in Ireland seemed to tear him in half, ripping down the center of his mind. His head ached, his pulse throbbing in his temples. He put his hand in the pocket of his jeans, cupping the well-polished surface of the crystal Aunt Patty had given him. The stone felt icy. He clenched it tightly, pressing the silver lace of the cage into his skin.

“Mom, you remember that I'd wanted to go to Ireland to study the music, before you and Dad convinced me that I should go for the PhD?” he said. “Well, I've left school; a couple weeks ago before I even heard about Dad—it just wasn't for me, and I haven't been happy there. It's music that calls me right now. I'm sorry.”

Tommy nodded. His mother gave a cry that might have been a sob, and she turned away, fleeing the room. A few moments later, they heard her feet on the stairs and the closing of her bedroom door.

Tommy came over to Colin. He hugged him tightly. “Don't worry about this,” he said into Colin's ear. “I understand—you gotta make the decision that works best for you, and say what you truly believe. It's something maybe I should have done myself, some time ago.” Then he stepped back and ruffled Colin's hair as he had when Colin was a child. “But I think you'd better go talk to Mom. Without Dad . . .” He stopped. “Just go talk to her,” he repeated. “She loves you, and eventually she'll understand.”

Colin nodded, patting Tommy on the shoulder. “You're gonna win this race,” he told him. “I know it.”

“I hope you're right. And I hope you're right about your own choice.”

“Yeah. So do I. I'll go talk to Mom.”

Aunt Patty was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. She inclined her head toward his parents' bedroom. “She's in there,” she said softly. “I knew you were going to follow your music. I knew it all along.”

“I didn't.”

“You would've if you'd listened inside,” Aunt Patty told him, tapping her own forehead with a bright red fingernail. “You've read the journal?”

“Yeah.” He didn't elaborate, and Aunt Patty simply nodded.

“You're doing what I think he always wanted to do himself, but he couldn't bring himself to make the journey. I think he always wanted to know the truth behind it all. Maybe you'll find that somewhere.”

He managed a shrug, her comment igniting a smoldering in his stomach. He had to admit that now that he'd committed to going, a fear trembled through him. He didn't know what he was going toward, didn't know what was expected of him or understand it, didn't know what was going to happen.

The crow, dead on the table . . .
That still felt as if it were sent as a sign to him. His stomach churned.

“Maybe,” he said. “If there's any truth to it at all.”

Patty laughed. “Your grandfather told some entertaining tales, and I know he sometimes elaborated on them to make them better ones. So who knows.”

He chuckled with her; the amusement tore away some of the tension in his stomach. “I remember a few of those tall tales, though I wonder why he never talked about the one in the journal.” He glanced toward at the closed door down the hall. “I worry about Mom.”

“Don't,” Aunt Patty told him. “Rebecca and I and the rest of the family will take care of her when you're gone. You only have to take care of yourself.” She went to him, pulling his head down to her and kissing his cheek. “Promise me you'll do that.”

“I will,” he told her. He hoped it wasn't a lie.

“Good,” Aunt Patty answered. “Now go tell your Mom how much you love her and how much you'll miss her.”

13

“D
'YEH KNOW ‘The Ghost Lover,' Colin?” Lucas Flaherty asked, turning away from his mic.

Colin pressed his lips together, tapping long fingers on the top of his Gibson. He pushed his glasses up his nose; with the sweat from the stage lights, they'd slid halfway down. “I remember it well enough, I think,” he said. “What key?”

“G, but the song starts on the five, remember.” With that, Lucas nodded to Padraig, Bridget, and John, the other musicians on the little stage, and gave his attention back to the mic and the audience in the pub. “Right, then,” he said. “We're endin' this set with another of those lovely little necrophilia songs: a woman pining for a lover lost at sea, his ghost visiting her at night and she wishing that the night would never end. Here we go, then. One, two, three, and . . .”

They launched into the song, first an instrumental verse with Padraig's concertina taking the melody while Lucas' fiddle added musical filigrees to the tune and John's bodhran drove the beat. The second time through, Colin began singing, with Lucas—also playing mandolin—and Bridget adding occasional harmonies.

Johnny, he promised to marry me

But I fear he's with some fair one and gone

There's something bewails a man, I don't know what it is

And I'm weary of lying alone.

Well, Johnny he came there at the appointed hour

He tapped on the window so low

This fair maid arose and she hurried on her clothes

And she bid her true love welcome home.

She took him by the hand and she lay him down

She felt he was as cold as the clay

She said, My dearest dear, if I only had my wish

This long night would never turn to day.

The audience was clapping along by the second verse, and there was applause and a few shouts as he finished the verse and Lucas launched into a fiddle solo. Colin grinned into the glare of the stage lights, buoyed by the energy of the band and the crowd.

As Lucas played, Colin took the time to scan the audience. Regan's, one of several pubs situated around and near the main square of Ballemór, was fairly well-packed on a Friday night, the crowd a mixture of locals and tourists. Ballemór was one of the larger towns in the Connemara district, attracting a large share of those visiting the region. The main road linking the mountains called the Twelve Bens to scenic Ceomhar Head ran through the town, and there were ample inns and B&Bs all vying for the tourist trade. The “Sky Road” led out from Ballemór in a loop along the head, giving scenic panoramas of the Atlantic and some of the nearby islands.

The locals were mostly belly to the bar or ensconced at their usual tables. The booths nearest the stage were full now, though they hadn't been when they'd first started playing. Through the stage lights' smeared haze on his glasses, Colin noticed one particular booth a few down from the stage. There were six people crowded into the wooden confines: two women and four men. A woman with long black hair was seated at the edge of the booth, facing him, and she was the one that Colin fixed on. She was watching the band; no, she was watching
him
, because he suddenly felt the shock of eye contact. He smiled, but looked quickly away. When he glanced that way again, she was still watching him, and this time it was she who smiled and seemed to nod once in his direction, raising her hands in silent applause.

For him. He knew it, somehow.

The person sitting next to her, a burly, dark-haired young man, seemed to notice her attention to Colin as well. He scowled, and leaned over to her as Colin began to sing again.

Oh, crow up, crow up my little bird

And don't crow before it is day

And you'll keep shielding made of the glittering gold

And your door of silver so gay.

And where is your soft bed of down, my love?

And where is your white hall and sheet?

And where is the fair maid who watches over you

As you lie in your long, dreamless sleep?

Colin's gaze kept returning to the woman in the booth through the rest of the song, and she watched him in turn, nodding her head slightly in time to the music. She wasn't exceptionally pretty—there were a dozen women in the pub that Colin found far more physically attractive—but there was a presence about her that compelled his attention. Every time he noticed her, he could see her laughing, grass-green eyes.

Oh, the sea is my soft bed of down, my love

And the sand is my white hall and sheet

The long, hungry worms they do feed off of me

As I lie every night in the deep.

Oh, when shall I see you my love? she cried

Oh, when shall I see you again?

When little fishes fly and the seas they do run dry

And the hard rocks do melt with the sun.

When little fishes fly and the seas they do run dry

And the hard rocks do melt with the sun.

With the reprise of the last two lines and a flourish, the song came to an end. “T'anks all,” Lucas called into the applause. “We'll be taking a wee bit here to wet our throats, and if any of yeh would care to buy a thirsty band member a pint or a dram or both, well, we wouldn't be saying no.” He put his fiddle in the case; Colin slid the strap of his guitar over his head, put the Gibson on its stand, and adjusted his glasses. The jukebox began to drone over the crowd noise—American country music; something by Blake Shelton judging by the voice, though country wasn't a genre Colin knew well at all. Colin let Bridget slide by him (“Yeh sounded grand, Colin. Just grand.”) then stepped down from the stage.

He immediately looked toward the booth and the dark-haired woman. He thought she gave him the slightest incline of her head, as if beckoning him. He sidled slowly through the crowd until he was standing next to her. Up close, her eyes were even more extraordinary; the green of a shallow sea with swirls of aquamarine lurking around the iris, large enough to drown in. The color of her eyes struck him—they matched that of the stone of the pendant he kept in his pocket, the stone that his Aunt Patty had given him, his grandfather Rory's stone. They also matched a stone around her own neck, a polished green pebble caged in silver wire that looked similar to his stone. Her hair was so dark that it seemed to swallow the little light the pub afforded. He ran fingers through his own sweat-damp locks, pushing the strands back from his forehead.
Start with music; it's all you have, and it works often enough.

“Hope you liked the set,” he said. “I noticed you listening.”

Her eyebrows lifted a bit, and the man next to her snorted. “Yer American,” she said. “I'm surprised at that, yeh playing with the locals.” Her voice was lower than he'd expected, with a growl to it that he found interesting, and her own brogue was more pronounced than most of those in Ballemór:
yeh playin' wit' da lahcols . . .
He wondered if the gravel would be in her singing voice as well, and what that might sound like. The voice sounded tantalizingly familiar to him somehow, though he couldn't place it.

“Yeah, you pegged it,” he told her. “I'm American, from Chicago originally, though I've been in Ireland for almost a month now, playing here and there. Just got to Ballemór a few days ago, actually, but Lucas—he's the fiddler—was nice enough to let me sit in with his group; he heard me playing up in Galway a few weeks ago with some other friends of his, and he lost his guitar player last week and said he liked my playing and my voice, so—” She seemed amused as the man next to her rolled his eyes, and Colin realized he was babbling. “Sorry,” he said. “My name's . . .”

She shook her head as he started to tell her, and stopped. “No, let me guess,” she said. “Yer name starts with . . .” She paused, fingers spidering on her chin. “ . . . an R,” she finished.

Colin laughed at that. “Not bad, but wrong. My grandfather's name was Rory, Rory O'Callaghan; he was born in Ireland. I'm Colin. Colin Doyle.” He put out his hand.

She shook the proffered hand with a smile. “Maeve Gallagher,” she said.

“Maeve,” he said. “Good to meet you.” He glanced at the others in the booth, and Maeve chuckled.

“Ah, me mates . . .” She went around the circle, starting with the dark-haired man next to her. “Niall Tierney, Dolan Connor, Aiden Nolan, Keara Shea, Liam Doherty.” They each nodded in turn, though none of them offered a hand. Niall, especially, favored him only with a scowl, and Colin wondered, again, if he and Maeve were together.

“I thought you sounded wonderful,” Keara, the other woman, who looked to be no more than nineteen or twenty, said to Colin. Niall snorted.

“'Tis jus' bloody tourist crap,” he said. “Next set they'll be doing feckin' ‘Danny Boy.'” He stared at Colin with pupils the color of oak and just as hard. “Won't you, Yankee boy?”

Colin smiled, trying to blunt the edge of Niall's animosity, looking at him over the top of his glasses. “Hell, if I started that one, Lucas'd pull out wire cutters and snip the strings right off my guitar,” he answered. “And I wouldn't blame him, myself. But yeah, for most Americans, if you say ‘Irish music,' that's the first song they think of. That's a shame, ain't it?”

Colin wasn't certain still if Maeve and Niall were actually a couple, but it was obvious that Niall was territorial with her, even if Maeve didn't share that opinion. A couple of the others chuckled at Colin's comment, but Niall just shook his head. Colin could see that the man wanted to retort, and the belligerence that colored his cheeks and balled his fists on the booth's table made Colin decide that Niall was going to pick a fight. He'd seen such behavior before in pubs: alcohol-fueled confrontations, but Maeve managed to defuse the fight that Niall seemed to want. She placed her hand on Niall's arm and smiled up at Colin.

“How about I buy yeh a pint, Colin?” she said, rising from the booth and linking her arm with Colin's.
Okay, maybe they're not a couple . . .
There was a musky, earthy smell around her that he thought might be perfume. She led him away before he could answer, though he heard Keara and the others talking heatedly to Niall as they made their way toward the bar. “Just shut the feck up, Niall. You know why Maeve . . .”

He wondered just how well Niall knew Maeve, and if that was going to cause problems for him. But he walked with her to the bar. The regulars in the pub—easy to tell from the tourists, who were wearing new Aran Islands sweaters and were in general too well and too warmly dressed for the evening—glanced at Maeve and slid aside to let her approach the bar. The expressions on their faces weren't particularly appreciative or friendly, however, and Colin found himself wondering at that. If Maeve noticed, she said nothing, just lifted a hand to the bartender with two fingers up in a “V.” The bartender lifted his chin in understanding and set two pint glasses under the Guinness tap, filing them and setting them aside to settle.

As they waited, Maeve turned to face him. The crowd pressed them together; Colin found that he didn't mind that at all. “No, Niall and I aren't an item,” she said. “At least not in the way yer thinkin'.”

He laughed nervously. “Umm, was I being that obvious?” She didn't answer, just raised an eyebrow. “Okay, so I probably was. But I don't think your Niall likes me much.”

“Niall's being a wee overprotective, 'tis all. Yeh have a sister?”

“As it happens, I do.”

“Wouldn't yeh be watching who she talked to if yeh were out with her?”

Colin shrugged. The comment made him think of Jen, and he wondered how she and Aaron were doing. It had been a week since they'd last talked. “I guess so. Niall's your brother, then?”