Mary Kate Read online

  ‘This will come as a bit of a shock to you, I think. You, Mr Malone, are now the major shareholder in Messrs Collins, Murphy, Browne and Sons. Which means that you now own the firm. Your dividends have been building up since the firm went into profit. You are a very rich man.’

  That had happened a month ago, and this morning, in the diner, Joe Junior was beginning to feel the first pangs of frustration.

  The diner was filled with the noise of crashing plates and shouted orders and the smell of crispy-fried bacon. ‘Coffee coming up,’ shouted Enzo. Joe folded the will, rose slightly from the seat, and slipped it into his back pocket.

  The law firm made over $500,000 a year in clear profit, and that was after the likes of Mr Browne had skimmed their dues off the top. Joe had tried to take it all in. The Malones would never know a poor day again. They were a law-abiding, strict Catholic and very successful business family. They were comfortable, though not rich – until now. Malone’s Building, Plumbing and Electrics was a medium-sized firm, employed over fifty skilled and unskilled labourers and was run by a competent foreman. It had been founded by his great-granddaddy to provide Irish labour for the maintenance of the Brooklyn Bridge. But where had the money come from to start it in the first place? For Joe Junior, the worst thing was that there was no one he could ask about it in America: the conditions of the will prohibited him from doing so.

  ‘Here you go,’ said Enzo as he placed the coffee and OJ in front of Joe. ‘Martha’s doing the eggs. Any news from Ireland?’

  Joe downed half the glass of orange juice in one gulp. He’d told Enzo some of the details, that he was tracing his great-granddaddy’s family, but not all of them. His father had sat in this same place and had breakfast with Enzo every day for thirty years. Joe Junior was continuing the tradition and for the first time he looked at Enzo and wondered, did he know? Was Joe Junior really the only person to be told how much money his great-granddaddy had sent back home to his brother ready to be collected when enough time had passed? For some reason known only to him, he had hurriedly posted a cedar box to Ireland via sea mail. How had the Revenue not intercepted it? There were so many questions and Joe Junior had no idea where to look for the answers, which was why he’d thought of Ireland. Maybe someone there knew. Maybe, and he knew it was a long shot, the person into whose safekeeping it had been sent was still alive.

  ‘Nothing yet. Father Francis from St Saviour’s has made enquiries, but apparently all the records of births and deaths are kept by the priest’s housekeeper in Tarabeg, and you have to knock on her door and ask her. That’s the way over there, it would seem.’

  Enzo laughed. ‘You didn’t know that? Every Irishman coming in here who’s tried to trace his roots comes up against the same brick wall. It’s the way all over Ireland. It depends what the housekeeper is like whether or not you get to find out if you’re on the right track or not. Those old crones, they hold the power over there. One of my customers, he told me a few dollars usually sorts it.’

  Martha came over with two plates and laid one down in front of each of them.

  ‘Don’t you ever cook your own breakfast?’ asked Joe as he smiled up his thanks to Martha.

  ‘Hell, no. It doesn’t taste the same. I cook that food all day long – I can only eat it myself if someone else cooks it.’

  Joe looked down at his stack of pancakes smothered in maple syrup and the heap of crispy bacon on the side. Despite his sweet tooth, he retained the slim, toned figure of a young man who was a regular visitor to O’Hara’s Boxing Club, walked Rocket six blocks each morning and went for a run all the way out to the bridge each evening. At night he walked the four blocks to his parents’ brownstone, ate his second meal of the day with his widowed mother, and then walked back home again.

  ‘Don’t be afraid that they’ll be put off in Mayo because you’re American,’ Enzo said. ‘They live for visitors over there and they love it when the names connect and they realise it’s one from their own line in their own village who’s come back to trace their roots. You know, when the O’Connors went back home, the whole village turned out to wave them off. Some were even crying when they left. They all knew they would never be back. I always think Ireland is very like Italy – they’re just the same over there.’

  Joe wiped the maple syrup from his chin with his napkin and took a sip of his scalding sweet Italian coffee. ‘It’s the opposite problem with me,’ he said. ‘My worry is that I’ll get there and won’t want to leave.’

  Enzo let out a long low whistle. ‘Phew, don’t be telling your mammy that, she’ll have heart failure.’

  ‘Don’t I know it. I know this too – while you were talking there, Enzo, I made a decision.’

  Joe looked out of the window at the crowd of people hurrying to work. Some bent and stroked Rocket and then, catching Joe’s eye, straightened up and smiled. Rocket, a regular fixture on the sidewalk at that time of day, looked to him for approval before he took the biscuit the lady who passed him every morning had extracted from her pocket. Joe raised his hand and smiled. He had never met the woman – she’d been a friend of his father’s – but they spoke in a form of sign language every morning.

  The sun was hot, the pavement dusty and the traffic noisy. Joe had no need to work each day. His father had left him and his mother comfortably off. His younger brothers all worked in the business, but not Joe, who had served seven years in the marines. On his return, he’d been made chairman of the company, which took up very little of his time. He knew he was a lucky man. He respected his brothers, who gave their heart and soul to the family business; in turn, they respected him for having given seven years to America.

  ‘I’ve decided that I’m gonna give it a couple more weeks. And if I still haven’t heard back from Tarabeg, I’m going to get on a plane and fly out there regardless,’ Joe said to Enzo.

  He doubted very much that there would still be a million dollars there, not after so many years, but he really didn’t care. He wanted to see for himself what was this place and who were these people his great-granddaddy had trusted so much more than anyone in America; the place where they had chosen to remain when everyone else had jumped on the nearest ship and headed to foreign shores. His great-granddaddy’s company was based in Brooklyn, had a huge contract for the maintenance of the Brooklyn end of the Bridge, so why send a wooden chest all the way across the Atlantic and not just to somewhere safe across the bridge? He must have had a reason, and Joe Malone the fourth knew that he had to find the answers. It was a way to try and fill the hollowness in his heart that had been there since the day his daddy had died.

  ‘Do you think you could put up with my mother bringing the dog in every day when I go to Ireland, Enzo?’

  Enzo picked up his sandwich, which was dripping runny egg over his hands. ‘If it keeps her happy, I’ll step in for you at supper, if you like?’ he said as he licked each finger in turn.

  Joe laughed. Enzo had a soft spot for his mother. ‘Just as long as I don’t come back and have to start calling you “Stepdaddy”.’

  He laid down his knife and fork. He was going home, although it was a place he had never even visited. Home, although he knew no one there. Home, where, apparently, a million dollars and an emerald heart were waiting for him.

  2

  Tarabeg

  ‘Is she after coming home for good, is she?’ nine-year-old Finnbar shouted through cheeks stuffed full of fresh brack. He ran out of the kitchen and through the Malones’ shop, grabbing a bar of chocolate from the counter as he passed, and piled into the waiting car.

  Rosie followed him, trying to keep up as she peeled her cardigan off her shoulders. It was only 10 a.m., but the sun was already too warm for comfort for those who lived on the west coast and were more used to wind and rain than a blisteringly hot day. ‘Finn, that chocolate will melt – give it to me. And did you ask?’

  Finn laughed and turned his mischievous face and chubby cheeks dappled with fresh freckles towards her. His bright
blue eyes sparkled. Both Finn and his sister, Mary Kate, had golden-red hair like their late mother, and on a sunny day it shone, flecked with a multitude of golds and silvers, reflecting the light. ‘I did. I asked Granny Nola and she said yes.’

  ‘I bet she did not.’ Rosie tutted and glanced up the road towards her husband, Michael, who was standing by the display of goods in baskets and wooden boxes on the cinder path outside the shop. He was issuing last-minute instructions to Peggy Kennedy, who would have sole responsibility for the shop while they were gone. Rosie hoped he hadn’t heard Finn. It had been a morning of raised voices and she was already exhausted; it felt as though breakfast had been hours ago.

  She bent her head to peer through the window of the car. ‘Finn, it is speech day, a special day, a day when you need to be wearing clean shorts. Mary Kate is coming home for good today, all the families will be there at the school and she will be wanting you to be looking your best. Please, Finn. Just the one day, will you behave and do as you’re told?’ She reached her hand through the window, her voice pleading, a tactic that never worked well.

  Finn never wanted to upset Mary Kate, the angel in his life. With a sulky expression on his face, he grudgingly slapped the chocolate bar into Rosie’s hand, folded his arms and slid into the tan-leather back seat of the car, where he would be sandwiched between Rosie and his Granny Nola for the journey to St Catherine’s. They were the only family in the village to own a vehicle for leisure purposes. Michael Malone also owned a van, which he used for transporting goods from Dublin and Galway back to his general store in Tarabeg. Rosie had no idea why he’d bought the car as it was used only on high days and holidays. Most people in the village still relied on donkeys and horses and carts, which seemed to amuse the tourists who were now visiting rural Ireland in increasing numbers.

  Rosie looked down and saw only half a bar of chocolate in her hand. ‘Finn!’ She almost shouted this as she thrust her head inside the car.

  ‘It’s gone. Look!’ Finn poked out his chocolate-stained tongue for Rosie to inspect.

  ‘You are one little terror,’ Rosie said as she withdrew her head.

  The car still smelt of new leather. She hadn’t really minded Michael buying it – after all, the business he’d built up had become the most profitable not only in Tarabeg but for miles around. Its success was down to Michael’s relentless hard work, and Rosie had not complained about that either. Rosie never complained. ‘It’s everyone else who’s a pain,’ she would often say to Keeva, whereupon they would both burst out laughing.

  Rosie’s auburn hair was held back from her face in a blue headband, and as she continued freeing her arms from her turquoise hand-knitted cardigan, she shook it down her back. Her skin was pale and freckled and she kept her arms covered whatever the weather, dreading the itchiness that the sun brought. But the heat wafting out of the car was already overpowering.

  She looked over towards the crossroads and saw Nola, her mother-in-law, deep in conversation with Josie Devlin. Rosie didn’t need Bridget McAndrew, the village seer, to tell her what they were discussing: it would be the imminent return of Mary Kate. Mary Kate had been home for the holidays many times since Rosie and Michael had married, but she always ended up spending much of her time at Tarabeg Farm with her grandparents, Nola and Seamus, and her great-granddaddy, Daedio. Somehow she persuaded Michael, against his will, to let her sleep most nights up there, in his old bed.

  Rosie was desperate to be the caring stepmother of a happy family but found herself constantly thwarted by Mary Kate’s unintentional slights and Michael’s unwillingness to challenge his mother or put his foot down. Her friend Teresa Gallagher repeatedly urged her to make Michael do what was right, but how could she? His grief at his first wife’s death had brought him down further than most of the villagers had seen any man fall. Michael was entirely unaware that the longest prayers at Mass were still said for him.

  Rosie had hoped their marriage would lift him up, restore him to the man he’d once been, the man she could still remember. But the Michael Malone everyone knew had never fully returned, and their marriage had not stitched together the torn-apart family. He was not living a married life with Rosie but that of a widower, and that was how people still saw him: as the bereaved husband of Sarah. Similarly, even though Rosie had been in Finn’s life since his mother died when he was only hours old, in the eyes of every single person in Tarabeg he was still Sarah’s son, not hers.

  Rosie glanced across the road to Paddy Devlin’s butcher’s shop and bar and saw her friend, Keeva, the Devlins’ daughter-in-law, standing at an upstairs window, also watching Nola and Josie talking. Keeva spotted Rosie and shrugged her shoulders. Rosie gave her half a smile back. Rosie was thankful she had Keeva over the road; and her husband, Tig, was Michael’s best friend. Between the two of them they spoke a lot of common sense and kept Michael on the emotional straight and narrow. They were Rosie’s only advocates in a village that had never stopped mourning Sarah’s untimely death, the only ones who acknowledged to her that Michael Malone had changed on the night his wife had died. They were Rosie’s true friends and support.

  Mary Kate had completed her education at St Catherine’s in Galway. She was no longer a girl, and today they would be bringing home a young woman.

  Keeva now appeared at Rosie’s side, followed by a trail of little boys, who tried to pile into the car with Finn.

  ‘Oi, get yerselves out! Now!’ shouted Keeva as she grabbed at legs and shoes and ejected them one by one.

  The boys were noisy but lost interest in Finn as soon as Rosie said to him in a voice that brooked no argument, ‘Move out of that seat and you’ll have your daddy and Granddaddy Seamus to deal with.’

  Finn shuffled into place, then stuck his head out the window to watch Keeva and Tig’s two eldest scamper off towards the Taramore river. His face was creased with envy and his lips still smeared with melted chocolate.

  ‘Are you off now?’ asked Keeva as she folded her arms across her apron and watched one of her sons kick a football high into the air in the middle of the road. She frowned, concerned about the bar’s window getting hit.

  ‘Aye, we are. As soon as Michael has finished giving out to Peggy. Eight years now and you would think she started only yesterday.’

  Keeva smiled. ‘It’s a grand day indeed – Mary Kate’s coming home. Isn’t it just fabulous, Rosie? Mary Kate all grown-up. What a blessing that she loved the school so much. Imagine if she’d hated it, after all she’d been through. Nola would have never spoken to any of us again.’

  It had been a plan hatched by Rosie and Keeva to give Mary Kate a proper education, more than Rosie, as the schoolteacher in Tarabeg, could offer. They had met resistance but had won in the end.

  ‘I can’t wait to have her back. What a delight she is compared to that lot.’ Keeva glanced towards three of her red-headed boys running around in the street and shook her head at the din they were making as they kicked the ball. Keeva had been Sarah’s best friend and one of the first to welcome Mary Kate into the world. She liked Rosie, was friends with Rosie and sympathised with Rosie’s position – how could she not. Rosie was the schoolteacher, had been a member of their group, though always on the periphery, and had been working part time in Michael and Sarah’s shop when Sarah died. But Sarah lived in Keeva’s heart also, and, as a result, Keeva loved Mary Kate possibly more than Rosie ever had.

  Rosie laughed. ‘I know I say it every day, but I don’t know what Finn would do with himself without your boys over the road.’

  ‘Come over as soon as you get back and let me know how it all went, and make sure Mary Kate is with you – don’t go leaving her behind.’ Keeva waved as she walked off, and stopped in the middle of the road to issue another warning to the boys, who promptly ignored her.

  ‘Why is Granny Nola talking so much?’ said Finn, leaning out of the car door. He’d climbed over into the front and was now in the driver’s seat.

  ‘Get your feet off t
he seat, Finnbar. You’ll have your father giving out to you.’ Rosie pushed Finn’s boots into the footwell and with her handkerchief began to wipe away the dust left by Keeva’s sons on the leather upholstery.

  ‘Mammy…!’ Finn wailed, exasperated at his question not having been answered. ‘Mammy, why is Granny Nola taking so long?’

  ‘She isn’t, Finn, and shush, she’s coming now.’ Rosie raised her hand to Nola, who was walking towards the car carrying the largest bunch of flowers Rosie had ever seen. Mary Kate had telephoned Mrs Doyle in the post office days ago, asking for Nola to bring flowers to the speech day; they were beginning to wilt in the heat of the morning.

  Rosie looked back to Michael to see had he heard Finn shouting. He had, and he was turned their way. As he saw them, the grumpiness slipped from his face and he broke into a smile. To Rosie it was a look of such deep fondness, and there was such love in his eyes, that her heart did a somersault. She blushed, rolled her eyes at the antics of Finn, and melted, just as she always did when Michael smiled that way.

  Michael continued staring and smiling for a few moments longer. It had been nine, nearly ten, long years and yet still, whenever Finnbar shouted ‘Mammy’, Michael’s heart expected to see and hear Sarah answering their son. As he looked towards Finn now, in the dazzle of sunlight reflecting off the gleaming paint, glass and chrome of the car, he saw her, fleetingly, just as he always did. Her blaze of red hair, shot through with threads of the deepest gold, flashed in the light. He felt her as much as he saw her. She turned to him and smiled, and because he knew her gossamer image would vanish as quickly as it had arrived, Michael smiled back to her, to the love of his life, his dead wife, his Sarah. He had long since learnt there was no point in calling out to her. He had come to accept these visions as a gift. She smiled back to him and he held the vision, controlling his tears, his eyes spilling out to her all the love in his heart.