Two days sitting in the back of what used to be a dry cleaners. Two days of wondering where Sarah was and if that was really her on the ferry.
Two days.
Mike sat at the counter and looked out the window onto the street of Boreen, County Wexford.
Two days. Just long enough to cool her trail down to make it impossible to ever pick up again. It had been her. He knew it.
A light tap on the door prompted him to his feet and he stood watching the front door—still with its welcoming customer’s chime intact—open on the form of a tall woman holding a covered tray. As usual, she was accompanied by a man—never the same one—with a gun.
“Aideen,” Mike said, his eyes never leaving the man and his gun.
“Good morning, Mike,” she said. She was a good-looking woman, Mike had to admit. Big where it counted, delicate everywhere else. “I’m afraid we’ll be seeing the back of you today.”
“Oh? Finally going to shoot me, are you?”
Her laugh was a rich, throaty one and nearly prompted a smile from him too. If circumstances had been different, he found himself thinking.
“Liam, you big mug, I told you not to bring that in here. It’s not necessary.”
Liam frowned and put his gun back in its holster. “We don’t know that for sure,” he said, eyeing Mike suspiciously.
“Now, Mike,” Aideen said, spreading out the tray of food on the counter. “We’ve had this discussion before. You know that no town can function without rules, and I am sorry that you were caught in them. But tolls are important these days. Especially now. We couldn’t run the town without them.”
Mike sat back down and reached for the cup of tea on the tray. “I’ll be getting me horse back today? And me rifle?”
“Of course. We’re not uncivilized. Edgar doesn’t enjoy incarcerating people.”
Yeah, right.
“But we’ve had the use of your horse for two days and so your toll is paid, and also the fine, mind, for breaking the law in the first place.”
“The law? Which would be entering the town without first asking permission?”
“Ah, now, Mike, don’t be like that. I’ve told you before, the law pertains to anyone on horseback or horse-drawn vehicle and it’s a good law and we’ll stand by that. What with you coming into town without a punt in your pocket, what else could we do?”
“But I’m free to go now?” Mike stood up.
“Aye, but I thought I might make a suggestion?”
“I’m listening.”
“You’re keen to cross to Wales, am I right?”
Mike nodded.
“Well, that’s expensive, ya see. And what with you as broke as—”
“What’s your suggestion, Aideen?”
“Work on my father’s farm for two weeks. He’ll pay you enough for a round-trip passage to the UK.”
Mike hesitated. “I’ll need a fare for another on the way back.”
Now Aideen hesitated and Mike thought her eyes grew a little brighter. “Oh, I see. A runaway wife?”
“No. Just a friend.”
She extended her hand across the tray. “Two weeks and you’ll be on your way again. You have my word.”
He hesitated. In the two days he’d had to cool his heels, he realized he needed to be smarter about what he was doing. Partly the reason he’d been caught unawares by the toll—and Edgar—was that he was too focused on his goal and he missed all the important clues around him.
He shook her hand. “Two weeks.”
An hour later, he had his horse and rifle back and was riding alongside Aideen’s pony trap to her father’s farm.
He glanced around the scenery in this part of Ireland. While the cliffs and crags still buckled beneath the green sod like the area he was from, there was something more tranquil or tame about this part of his country. His eyes lighted on Aideen as she held the reins on the trap. She couldn’t be yet thirty, he thought as he watched her curly brown hair cascade down her back, her face freckled from the sun and lack of makeup.
She’d brought a food tray to him for two days in the back of the dry cleaners and spoke cheerfully to him each time. But she had a story. He could see it in her eyes, eyes that weren’t as cheerful and ready as her easy smile.
He stretched his back and wondered how far away from the coast her father’s farm was.
If his plan wasn’t to turn right around and head back to Donovan’s Lot, then he needed to use his head better about how he went about things.
He had to get to the UK because that’s where Sarah was.
That meant he had to get on the ferry because that was the only way, short of swimming it, to get to the UK.
The ferry cost money.
He had no money.
He’d take the time to make the money.
He could run around like a goose trying to make everything happen fast and get nowhere. Or he could put his shoulder to the plow, probably literally, for two weeks and ensure he got to England.
Now if only Sarah could hold on that long.