Green, green, everywhere, green. Meadows, hedgerows, tree-lined lanes. Every shade of green in the artist’s imagination. I had left the M8 to drive on narrow, winding roads, edged in rock walls, that took us through one pastoral vista after another. My uncle Alex, who had arranged the trip, would be so sorry he’d dozed off some distance out of Dublin, but I had a feeling we’d be seeing more of these green picture-postcard scenes during our two weeks in the Emerald Isle. On the flight over, Alex had read to me from one of Colin’s e-mails, and I could almost hear the lilt of his words: “Ireland is the most beautiful place in the world. You’ll be over the moon when you see it!” I believed it already.
I steered our rental car down a hill and around a curve, still getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road, and suddenly we were right upon a flock of sheep. I hit the brakes and shrieked as the car lurched to a stop a few yards from the bleating animals. The herder, trudging along in boots and carrying a staff, made no effort to move the sheep out of the road. He didn’t even glance toward us or gesture Sorry—please wait for my wooly creatures to cross. His shoulders drooped. His shaggy hair was the color of the sheep’s coats. I wondered how many years he’d been herding sheep in the green pastures along these roads.
Alex woke with a jolt, mumbling, “What? What is it?”
“Sheep in our path,” I said. “Can you get a photo?”
Alex rubbed his eyes, took in the sight, and began to rummage in the red duffle at his feet. He came out with his camera and started clicking, making noises of approval: “Ah, yes. Good one. Look at that frisky lamb!” As the last of the flock crossed the road, the sheepherder raised his hand and inclined his head toward us, and I could almost swear he winked, as if he and his sheep had arranged this photo op just for us.
Back on the motorway, we left the emerald countryside behind. A few kilometers more, signs that we were coming into a town began to crop up—houses built close together, tall, narrow buildings with storefronts. We were on the outskirts of Thurles (pronounced “Tur-lis”), where our friends Colin and Grace O’Toole ran a bed and breakfast. Alex checked our map and directed me to turn before we reached the town proper. I hadn’t set the GPS. Alex preferred a good map to fold and unfold, and he was an excellent navigator.
“Colin said the B&B was a short walk from the town square,” he said.
“We’ll be there in time for tea,” I said, but I wondered about that short walk. It looked as if we were heading back into the country, the dwellings more sparse now.
Alex straightened himself and ran his hand through his gray hair, still thick for a man about to turn seventy-three. “It will be so good to see Colin and Grace,” he said, adding, “after all these years.”
I darted a glance at my uncle, who was so rarely sentimental. “Colin was a fine student, a good friend,” he mused. “And Grace—delightful girl.”
I was about to mention Patrick, born while Colin and Grace were in Georgia, now a married man, Alex had said, but the rustic sign with Old English script caught my eye. “Is this it?” I read, “Shepherds Guesthouse Bed and Breakfast.” I thought of the sheep back there.
Alex confirmed that this was the place. I maneuvered the car through the opening in the rock wall that ran along the property, glad yet again that we’d chosen the little Ford Focus instead of the full-size Saab we had considered. What was originally a country house—dating to the 1800s would be my guess—was set back on a patch of lawn as lush as a golf green. Green, green, everything green, except for a few bursts of pink blossoms on the shrubs near the house. We followed a gravel driveway to a parking area and pulled in next to another car that looked to be a rental. Some tiles were missing from the high-pitched roof, near a chimney, I noted on our approach. Close-up, I saw that the high-level window moldings could use fresh paint.
“What do you see?” Alex said as I stared up, and I felt a stab of shame that the need for repair was the first thing to grab my attention. I was wired to notice details like that. I could see Drew, my brother and business partner, shaking his head, saying, “Only an architect.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Let’s go in.” I needn’t have added that we could come back for our luggage. Alex was already on his way.
A few stepping-stones led us to the entrance. The heavy wooden door was wide open, and the modern storm door was unlocked. It seemed we were supposed to go in, and we did. The room was furnished with dark furniture upholstered in faded red brocade. A Reception desk, like one you’d see in a hotel, had been added in the corner. Behind it, a door, leading to—an office? The wood was dark, a good match with the furniture, but the straight lines were a little too contemporary for the room that came off as an old-fashioned parlor. Only an architect.
“Hello?” I called. No answer. “I guess we should announce ourselves,” I suggested, looking for a bell to tap, but there wasn’t one.
Alex, still standing at the door, turned his attention to something outside. “That’s odd,” he said. “There seems to be something going on, maybe something wrong out there.”
I joined him and peered at two women and a man, conferring at the far end of the parking lot, pointing this way and that. Even as Alex cracked the storm door to listen, we couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the tenor of their voices and their excited gestures indicated, as he had said, that something was wrong.
“Good afternoon. May I help you?” someone said.
I turned with a smile, expecting Grace, but I should have known better. This tall, slender woman’s accent was King’s English. Grace was born and raised in Atlanta. I remembered her honey-sweet drawl, not an easy thing to lose, even after all this time. Plus Grace was a smallish woman, maybe five-foot-two, and this woman was at least my height, which was five-ten.
“We’re friends of Colin and Grace. We’re checking in,” Alex said.
“I’m afraid Colin and Grace had to leave.” The woman stood straight as a wooden beam, a model of good posture, with her hands clasped. “It’s rather an emergency. I’m a guest here myself. I can’t check you in, of course, but I can offer you tea.”
“What’s the emergency?” I asked.
“It’s the child,” she said. “The little boy is missing.”
Thirty years ago, Colin O’Toole from Dublin had been a student at the University of Georgia, where Alex taught history. I could say this for Alex: he had a way with his students. He connected with them, befriended them, forged relationships with them that often continued long after they graduated. I knew it for a fact. Stuart, my husband, who did not live to see our five children grow up, once had been Alex’s student for a single semester, and they’d hit it off. Later, when Stuart was a med student at Emory, Alex invited him to his home in Buckhead—the Carlyle family home—for a Christmas party. I was invited to that party, too. Alex was not beyond playing Cupid if the occasion called for it.
Stuart had left UGA before I arrived as a freshman, but Colin and I were there at the same time, and we knew each other through Alex. Time and again he took Colin and me out for pizza or burgers or meat and three, Alex’s least favorite, but there was a nearby diner-type eatery that Colin especially liked. Sometimes other students joined us, a study group from Alex’s undergraduate class or one of his dissertation students. And there were those wonderful little dinner parties for his colleagues at his comfy faculty apartment. Even as a self-absorbed architecture student, I realized how fortunate I was that Alex was my uncle. There I was, accustomed to living on Ramen noodles, and Alex would call. A few nights later I’d be dining with a select few of Alex’s faculty friends, enjoying tenderloin medallions, asparagus, and crème brulee, and drinking excellent wine. Good times.
I remember Colin at a couple of those dinner parties, but he was usually at work. He bartended at an establishment just off campus with the likely name, The Irish Pub. With his pixie face and red hair so wild that the thought of a leprechaun always skittered through my mind when I saw him, Colin was the only thing Irish about the place, other than the name. But it was a fun spot. Sometimes my friends and I wound up at the pub after a late night in the architecture studio, and Colin was always there, working long hours, laughing, charming the ladies with his accent, which he could exaggerate or downplay at will.
Colin never had the money to return to Dublin for the holidays or breaks, so he often stayed in Alex’s apartment while Alex went home to Buckhead. To say Alex was generous was an understatement. After Colin met Grace, an Atlanta debutante, she and I became fast friends, too. More good times. Then I graduated. For Colin and Grace, there was a hurry-up wedding and a baby on the way, and the next thing I knew, they had left with their baby son for Ireland.
Alex and his former student had stayed in contact for a while. “Christmas greetings mostly,” Alex had told me, “but you know how it is. After a while, one or the other misses his turn. A couple of Christmases pass, and there you go.” I would bet it wasn’t Alex who had missed his turn. “Imagine my surprise a year or so ago when I received an e-mail from Colin,” Alex had said. “Somehow he’d found out about my travel series. I think there was an announcement about the book deal on the Publisher’s Weekly website. Isn’t technology a wonderful thing?” Time came to make arrangements for this trip to Ireland. Alex was working on his second travel guide. The purpose of his books was to steer tourists away from the touristy spots, to tell them how to experience the authentic culture of a region. No wonder he’d made our reservations at the Shepherds Guesthouse Bed and Breakfast.
When Alex was writing his first travel guide, he had hoodwinked me into accompanying him to Provence, making me believe there was some issue with his health and his doctor insisted that he travel with a companion. This time, I was genuinely worried about my uncle’s health. When he’d announced that his second book would be taking him to Ireland, I made my position clear: “I’m not about to let you travel alone.”
“A child, missing?” I heard in my voice every mother’s great fear.
“Apparently so,” said the woman, pushing back a strand of bottle-blonde hair that had slipped from behind her ear. “Little Jimmie. He must be about two years old.”
“Two!” I whispered. A flash of memory, Michael as a toddler, disappearing from the backyard for the longest, most horrifying fifteen minutes of my life.
“Whose child?” Alex asked.
“Colin and Grace’s grandchild,” the woman said, taking a step away from us. “Please, let me make you a spot of tea. We can talk in the kitchen.” Alex and I followed her through what looked like a breakfast room. Like lambs, I thought, because we didn’t know what else to do.
“Please make yourselves comfortable.” She gestured to the square table with high-backed chairs in the center of the kitchen. “Forgive me for not introducing myself. I’m Helen Prescott,” she said as she began to fill a tea kettle with water. “My husband and I are on holiday. We live in London. You may have heard of Charles Prescott. He played on the Tour.”
“The Tour?” I said.
“The European Tour. Do you follow golf?”
“I’m afraid not.” I glanced at Alex. He looked so distracted, I wasn’t sure he’d heard her.
Helen gave a wave of dismissal. “Yes, well, he retired from the Tour some years ago.”
“I’m Jordan Mayfair,” I said, “and this is my uncle, Alex Carlyle. We’re from Georgia.”
The kitchen smelled like a bakery, the aromas that seep into the walls in a kitchen where bread, cakes, and pastries are baked day after day, year after year.
“How long has the child been missing?” Alex asked in that tone I recognized as professorial, down to business, no more small talk.
“Half an hour, perhaps?” Helen was assembling cups and saucers, crème pitcher, and sugar bowl on a tray to transport half a dozen steps to the table. Leave it to the English.
“That’s a long time for a two-year-old to be missing,” I said.
“The authorities have been notified, no doubt,” Alex said, more question than statement.
“I would think so.” Helen seemed to be trying to decide how much to say. A quick glance our way, and she said, “Actually, it’s all somewhat strange.”
I waited for more, but she continued to busy herself with preparations for tea.
“We should do something,” I said after a minute.
“Quite right, but what?” Helen finally turned toward us and leaned against the counter while the water was heating. “I heard the disturbance and came running downstairs. Enya and Grace sounded so—upset. They flew out the back door. Enya rang up someone, Patrick, I suppose—the girl is never without her phone!—and Grace came back inside looking—I have to say, not as worried as one would expect, but bothered. That’s the word, I think. I asked her what had happened. Because I knew it was something more than a family row, though—well, never mind that. Something was wrong, clearly.” The tea kettle began to whistle. Helen paused in her story to pour boiling water into a decorative teapot, over the tea leaves she had measured.
“Who’s Enya?” I asked.
“Enya is Patrick’s wife. I get the impression that she’s quite unhappy here.”
So the child must belong to Patrick and Enya, I reasoned, wondering why Helen hadn’t just said so instead of saying he was Colin and Grace’s grandchild.
“Grace told me Little Jimmie had disappeared while Enya was supposed to be watching him and asked if I would look after things while they went out, and I said certainly I could do that, and that’s really all I know.” She opened one of the cabinets. “Ah, here’re the biscuits.”
I hadn’t expected tea time to be exactly like this. A child was missing, a toddler, and here we sat, sipping tea and munching on the best shortbread cookies—biscuits—I’d ever tasted. Maybe Helen was trying to distract us from worrying. According to her, she was taking charge at Grace’s request. I wondered if Grace would be pleased that she was so gossipy about the other guests at the B&B.
Ian Haverty, Helen said, was a charming young schoolmaster from Dublin, with black curls and “dreamy” eyes. Two ladies had arrived just that morning, one of them “rather loud in her pronouncements.” The man Helen knew only as Mr. Sweeney was unfriendly, aloof, “rude, actually,” she said, “except to Enya. He was trying to chat her up this morning when she was putting out the sausages. But Enya is rather standoffish herself, and Mr. Sweeney is old enough to be her father! I could tell the girl was embarrassed that this man, who hasn’t spoken a complete sentence to anyone else, was so eager to have a conversation with her.”
On and on Helen continued until her voice became like the sound of a TV blaring in another room, something I was aware of, but mostly tuning out.
Alex interrupted her monologue. “I expect Colin is out looking for the child, too?”
“Colin?” Helen blinked, as if she’d lost her bearings for a minute. “He wasn’t here when it happened. I believe he’d gone into town, but they may have been able to reach him.”
“I should get our luggage,” Alex said, rising from his chair.
“I’ll go with you.” I stood up, too.
“You can’t check into your rooms yet, not until Colin and Grace come back, or Patrick,” Helen said. “I’m sorry I can’t give you your keys. I’m just—you know—helping out in a pinch.”
“We appreciate your hospitality, Helen. Really we do,” I said. “And probably there’s nothing we can do to help find the child, but—it feels wrong to be enjoying tea and biscuits when a toddler has been missing for—it’s been close to an hour now, hasn’t it?”
Helen stood, and we were eye to eye. “Jordan, please don’t think I’m—unconcerned. I am concerned, but Grace seemed—well, she didn’t act as if she thought Little Jimmie was actually in danger.”
“How could he not be in danger?” I said.
She waited a moment before saying, “It happened before, just like this.”
Alex had already left the kitchen. Noises were coming from the front of the house. Voices. The storm door banging once, twice, needing a new spring, I noted.
I caught sight of a little red-headed boy in his grandmother’s arms. Yes, it had to be Grace carrying Little Jimmie, though they were headed up the stairs, out of my view after just a glimpse. I breathed a silent thank you. Behind them was Enya, no doubt, a dark-haired beauty, her full mouth set in a rigid line, followed by a young man so resembling young Colin O’Toole that I knew it had to be Patrick. The man and two women we’d seen at the end of the parking lot made the storm door bang again and again. I suspected the handsome young fellow was Ian Haverty, judging from Helen’s report.
And then a cheery, boisterous “Alexander Carlyle! Sure ’tis my old friend or a ghost of himself!”
I didn’t hear Alex say a word, but I heard his hearty laughter, blending with Colin’s.
I waited to join the reunion until the bear hugs and backslapping were over.
Colin squeezed me, too, until I gasped for breath. “Ah, you’ve not lost your beauty, girl,” he said, touching my hair, a darker auburn than his fiery red.
“Colin, what a scare! Is the little boy all right? Where did you find him?” I asked.
“He’s a wee bit frightened, but no harm done. Ah, Jordan, Alex, how good it is to have you in our home. Grace will be down as soon as she gets the boy settled.”
“We should get our luggage from the car,” Alex said.
“Sweet Mother! You don’t have your room keys, do you? What a fine welcome for our friends! Would you like to go to your rooms first or maybe you’d like a nice cup of tea?”
“We had tea and cookies—biscuits. Helen took good care of us,” I said, looking around for Helen, but she must have been in the kitchen, cleaning up our dishes.
“Let’s go get your bags then,” Colin said, heading to the door. He shook his head and said in a sing-song of apology. “All this commotion, Sweet Mother of God.”
“All that matters is that you found Little Jimmie and he’s all right,” I said.
“Right you are, Jordan. That’s what matters,” and then with a smile that made his blue eyes light up, he said, “Little Jimmie is safe and sound. All is well.”