The alarm emitted a series of slow beeps that accelerated to a rhythm just shy of frantic. Annie buried her head beneath the pillow and groped the nightstand for the offending clock, knocking it to the floor. The insistent noise stopped. Moaning, she drew her knees to her chest, her eyes squeezed shut. Five minutes later the alarm sounded again, fainter, but driving into the edge of her consciousness.
Kicking off the covers, she cast blurred eyes to the floor. The digital face stared back at her, blinking as it passed seven-thirty. Still so early—she had three hours before James arrived—but she wanted get into some sort of recognizable routine. A recovering addict was at her most vulnerable when her routine was thrown off-kilter. She stretched until her elbows and spine popped.
There was a tin of instant coffee on a tray in the kitchen, along with tiny packets of creamer and sugar. Annie’s head pounded as her bloodstream realized it hadn’t been injected with espresso in nearly two days, but this would have to do until she could get some ground coffee for the French press in the cupboard. She stirred, sipped coffee that tasted like cardboard, and grimaced.
Colm Fahey, the mine’s project manager, was due in Ballycaróg that afternoon with a company car for her. Then she’d explore on her own, stock the refrigerator, suss out some running routes, and get to the AA meeting in Bantry. There was a Monday night meeting in Castletownbere, but that was too close. Someone might recognize her, or hear her American accent and put things together.
Annie smacked her mug on the counter. The addiction was like parenting a toddler: You couldn’t take your eyes off it for a minute. In hindsight, being a drunk seemed almost simple. She felt miserable, she drank, she felt better for a few breaths. The guilt and shame followed soon after. The cycle was just shy of unbearable, but it rarely held any surprises.
But recovery. God. It was so complicated. Your entire day directed by the care and feeding of The Addict, the name Annie had given to this unwanted extension of herself. She didn’t want it hanging around, didn’t want to be associated with a disorder that felt like a failure of character, but it was a dependent child and she couldn’t turn her back. She dragged it along to meetings, checked in with her sponsor, made certain it ate right and got enough sleep, and, above all, she kept a constant vigil so The Addict didn’t get into the wrong things. Alcohol, prescription medication, a line, a pipe—pick your poison—the forbidden toys were so easy to find.
“Enough!” she shouted, and the sparsely furnished house echoed her condemnation. How amazing to shout. In her densely packed Seattle neighborhood, noise carried from open windows into backyards and side gardens and onto the sidewalk; she never dared to release her voice there. Here, she couldn’t even see the next house over.
“Welcome to Ireland,” she said and dumped the muddy brown coffee down the sink.
~
“Are you certain you’re up for this? These hills may not look very high, but the ground can be rocky and full of bogs.” James steered with one hand along the blind curve. The Mercedes took up the whole of the narrow road, and again Annie’s foot pressed down on an imaginary brake pedal. They were on their way to meet the hiking guide in Castletownbere.
“More than ready for fresh air and a leg stretcher, trust me. I’m aching to get out.”
“You were a champion runner in college, right? Do you still run?”
“I’m not the runner I once was, but I get out there.” A slight chill rippled through her as James touched this part of her past, but of course it wasn’t a secret. Anywhere her bio was listed—Magnuson’s website, her LinkedIn profile—the bright star of her running career glittered.
“And you were an Olympic Trials finalist at university?”
Annie flinched, and her hands gripped her thighs reflexively. “Yes, I was. My ambitions were big. But they ended during a trail run in the Oregon Cascades. I tripped over a rock and tore my right thigh to shreds when I slid down scree. My left tibia snapped like a cracker and burst through my skin.”
James responded with a sharp intake of breath.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to be so graphic. I was able to run again, after surgery and years of physical therapy.”
They continued in silence. Annie waited for the questions that inevitably followed when people learned her dreams had been dashed by a slip and a stumble, but none came.
James deftly wove into a roundabout before an approaching car and spun through, exiting like a needle pulling closed a stitch. He took the straightaway and entered Castletownbere, where the street became a small canyon bordered on either side of the road with buildings colored like a child’s finger painting: dashes of primary reds, blues, and greens squeezed between buildings of delicate pastels. Annie watched the village take shape. The vibrant rainbow defied the dreary Irish weather and drearier economy. It declared hope and life in this land whose history was written by disaster and conflict.
He parked in the town’s central square. “I’m sorry I pressed you about your injury,” he said, closing a hand over the keys and releasing his seatbelt. “It was a clumsy attempt to get to know you better.”
Annie offered him a half-smile, wanting to steer the conversation away from her past. James unnerved her. His familiarity, the way his cologne lingered in the air. Dammit. She had to put things back on safe footing.
“Annie?”
“Sorry. Lost in thought.” Lost in the repulsive thought that James would learn the facts of her addiction and the infancy of her recovery. At least here she could hide among people who were ignorant about the worst of her past; for a few weeks she could be someone else, in this place that was beautiful enough to be make-believe. She’d become particularly adept at pretending.
“That’s one of Beara’s iconic pubs.” James pointed to a three-story building across the way, its top two floors built of white plaster with black trim. The ground floor was painted fire-engine red, with the words Grocery and Bar spelled out in blocks of cursive gold letters on either side of the door, and MacCarthy’s proclaimed in white block letters in between. Baskets of flowers hung from a lintel across the front façade.
Patrons were already seated at the outside tables, sipping pints and poking through fish and chips, even though it was just past eleven. Annie prayed James wouldn’t suggest they stop in for a pint later. Last night’s sweet-sharp tang of beer and whiskey had been nearly too much. “I’m desperate for some decent coffee,” she said. “Do we have a moment to stop?”
While James sent a text to the guide to let him know they’d arrived at the rendezvous point, Annie jogged across the street to a café and ordered the largest coffee they had on the menu. Back outside, she popped off the lid, blew over the hot surface, and took a tentative sip. Freshly ground, hot and black.
She started back across the road, remembering to look to her left before stepping into the street. Leaning against his car, his arms crossed over his chest, James was in easy conversation with … well, damn.
It was the man who had watched her from the road yesterday. He wore the same outfit—canvas hiking shorts, a ratty wool sweater, and sunglasses pushed back on his head. Annie snorted a private laugh. “Our guide,” James had said. Of course.
Mór mo bhrón. The wind whispered past her face.
Except there was no wind. She could hear the clink of china plates and the hum of voices from the open windows of the restaurant behind her, the clatter as a recycling truck dumped bottles into its hopper, the echoing clang of a buoy bell in Castletownbere Harbor.
Mór mo bhrón. A woman’s voice, murmuring words that sounded like lullabies, in syllables distinct but unintelligible.
And then, the man rushing toward her, his face open in alarm.
The rasping whoosh and grate of car tires coming to a sudden stop and the angry blare of a car horn jolted Annie out of her reverie, and she found herself standing in the middle of the road. She mouthed an apology to the enraged driver and silently ordered her feet forward, embarrassed and bewildered. Where was that voice? Who was it? It was the same voice, if not the same words, she’d heard the night before, standing on the deck, buffeted by the ocean wind. The thought that she was hallucinating, after all the months of sobriety, made her whimper even as the normal sounds of ships’ bells and passing conversation flowed and ebbed around her.
“You all right then?” He met her at the street’s edge, reaching out as if to draw her into the shelter of his embrace. “Daniel. I’m your guide for the day.”
She met his hand with her own, wondering what cloud he’d been dropped from. Her guide. “I’m Annie.”
“Céad mile fáilte, Annie. Welcome to Ireland.”
His voice was warm, but Annie felt absurdly self-conscious under his gaze. “I saw you last night, from the house where I’m staying,” she said. “Are we neighbors?”
He blinked, tilted his head, and gave it a slight shake, as if wiping away a thought. “We are. I live just up the hill.”
She took refuge in her coffee, grateful for something to do with her hands, covering her silence with a sip. Yet she longed to continue on with him, past this street, beyond the village, just walking and talking, as soon as she could figure out what to say. A longing that seemed to be a lingering echo of the voice that had stopped her in the street, the voice that had stopped her heart the evening before.
“So, I’ve done a little exploring of the Beara Way.” James appeared, inserting himself into their stalled conversation. “Where are we headed?”
None of the place names or the directions Daniel explained made any sense to Annie, so she drifted, observing the two men. Other than their height, they couldn’t be more different. James was polished, not a black hair out of place except for a finger of curl that spilled over his forehead. His build—just like a runner’s, with lean limbs and an arrow-straight carriage—brought Stephen to mind, a visual she’d rather not carry around. His clothes were REI-approved: Arc’teryx jacket, convertible nylon pants, boots tastefully scuffed. She wondered if the boots could be ordered that way and had to stifle a laugh.
Daniel, well, he didn’t look as though he’d just rolled out of bed, though his clothes probably hadn’t seen the inside of a washer in a few wears. Several days’ growth on his jaw and around his mouth caught the sunlight and glowed red-gold, but his hair—curling just above his ears and collar—was soft amber. Legs like tree trunks covered in fine red-gold hair. Blue eyes like the inside of a glacier. The very vision of an Irish Celt.
They left the Mercedes in the lot and climbed into Daniel’s battered Range Rover. Annie sat in front, a pack, her camera inside, at her feet. She turned to see James settling in the backseat. From his pursed lips and narrowed eyes, she read his disgust at the dog hair clinging to every surface. Daniel introduced Bannon, who stood with her wiry tail whacking the car door, directing her steamy breath at James’s face. Annie turned back before he could see her grin.
Daniel leaned across her to shove the clipboard into the deep glove box. He slammed it shut and uttered a simple “Oh.” She followed his gaze down to her feet.
“What? What’s wrong?” Annie bent over just as he sat up, his head colliding with her nose. She yelped in surprise. Hot coffee sloshed over one hand, and the other flew to her face. She watched Daniel’s face twist in horror as she cupped her palm over her throbbing nose and waited for the warm trickle of blood.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Are you all right? Here, let me take a look.” She allowed him to lift her hand away from her face, watching his eyes for signs that it was as bad as it felt.
“No blood. You’ve got a hell of a solid gaosán there.” He rubbed the back of his head. Her stomach flipped.
“A what? A geesun?” It hurt to talk, hurt worse to smile, but she couldn’t help it.
“Gaosán. It’s Gaelic for nose.”
“You’re soaked. Annie, you can’t hike in those.” James’s voice collapsed the moment. With him over her shoulder, leaning between the gap in the seats, Annie considered the mess in her lap. A dark-brown stain down one thigh had bled into the crotch of her pants.
“Damn it to hell,” Daniel muttered. He hopped from the Rover, and there was an opening and slamming shut of the back hatch door. Moments later he returned with a towel. Annie was surprised to see it was clean and neatly folded. “I keep a stash in the back,” he explained, reading her expression. “Hikers get more soaked on Beara than they imagine possible.” He began to dab at her pants, but, realizing where his hands were, he stopped abruptly, giving her a stricken look. That’s when she began to giggle. She took the towel from him, shaking with laughter, and he mercifully pulled the coffee cup from her hand to save her from upending the rest.
“It’s fine. I’ll be fine,” she choked out. “This is quick-dry material, right? There. See? Good as new.” She displayed the stain, now lighter brown, before strapping on the seatbelt. She retrieved her coffee from Daniel’s grasp. Their fingers brushed and in the touch, the woman’s voice: Mór mo bhrón. Mournful. Resigned. The same emotions she saw reflected in his eyes. I’m your guide, he’d said. And their hands pulled away.
“Let’s go. Day’s a-wastin’,” she said, trying to return them to the earlier lightness of mood. A small rumble of laughter spilled over, and the release was a revelation: It was the cleanest she’d felt in months. The hollowness had been replaced by something. What was it? What was this sensation that was so foreign, yet reminded her of what she used to feel? Hope.
For the first time in recent memory, she felt hope.