Black combat boots tapped on rain-washed cobblestones as Morgan walked in step to the music that percolated through the streets of Dublin. The city had an earthy smell, just minutes after the rain, and she was soaked through. Her clothes were damp beneath her anorak and water dripped from the ends of her dark hair. The sun was shining again, though, bright as a pot of gold and dappling the colorful buildings. A faint rainbow of red, orange, yellow, indigo, and violet ribbons shimmered, showing her the way.
She knew she could find them here, at Dogg & Duke’s, a nondescript pub off the district’s main drag. The cobblestones were worn a little smoother down this way, the buildings characterized by cracks and chipped roofs and the odd graffitied poem now and again, which she loved. It felt like home.
The bar had a teal door and a brass tiger head for a knocker. She paused before touching it, as though it might bite. But in the past six months, she had explored and experienced more of the world than she had in her thirty-one years before, and it would take more than an inanimate object to scare her. Instead, Morgan took two steps back, raised her camera, and took a photo. She’d taken thousands of photos in the time she’d been away. And when she rode on dingy subways and slept in spartan hostels, her photographs of doors and their locks and their keyholes were all she had—and all she needed.
Lowering her camera and closing her eyes for just a moment, Morgan breathed in her new life. It smelled of butter and battered fish. It sounded like fiddles and flutes and pipes. It tasted of freedom.
The warmth of the pub cloaked her like a blanket, fogged her glasses. Entering this new world within a world, she took off her anorak and folded it over her arm as she swam through a crowd that had gathered to hear the band.
Finding a high-top table, she watched and listened, enchanted, as two men and a woman began to play a haunting air. The man with a grey ponytail strummed on a harp. The younger man—raven-haired like the woman—whispered into a flute. Melodic notes transported Morgan from the noisy, humid pub to rolling hills and salty waves crashing against crags, and when the woman sang it sent a shiver down her spine.
Her lips moved in memory to the lyrics: Siúil, siúil, siúil a rúin / Siúil go socair agus siúil go ciúin …
It was the song Clive had sung to her, lost amid years of nightmares and forced forgetting. She wanted to remember now, though, for out of flames fueled by torture and pain had she been fearfully made. And she had nothing left to fear.
Few souls could say as much.
When the set was over, Morgan wiped her eyes, careful not to smudge her mascara. She ventured toward the stage area, and the woman, Saoirse, immediately embraced her as though they were long-lost friends.
“Morgan,” she cried. “This feels like a dream.”
Maybe it all was, Morgan thought, letting her mind wander for a brief passing moment. Maybe all we are and were was but a dream. Within a dream, within a dream.
“This is Cillian,” said Saoirse, once they’d parted.
Morgan nodded and shook the younger man’s hand. His fingers were calloused.
“And our dad, Gerry.”
Morgan stepped toward the older gentleman who was tall and burly. She offered her hand and her name. “Morgan Reynolds.”
Her Uncle Gerry smiled as he took her hand, then pulled her into an embrace. “There are no strangers in Ireland,” he said. “Certainly not among the Reynoldses. You’re staying with Saoirse, then, for a while?”
Morgan nodded. She’d found Saoirse Reynolds as all people find one another these days: on Instagram. She showed her the decades-old picture of Saoirse and Cillian with the other Reynolds children, explaining who she was afterward, of course, and, since she was exploring France at the time, less than two hundred dollars and two hours later, she was here, in Dublin.
“Will you join us?” asked Cillian. “We’re headed over to Johnnie O’s as soon as we pack up.”
Morgan looked at each of them, her family, and felt her heart constrict, swelling against her rib cage. “I will,” she promised. “But I have to meet someone here, first.”
Saoirse shared the address with her, and Morgan returned to the high-top table, extracting a book from her backpack, nestled next to her Bart Simpson doll. The cover was softened and it had a few more tears than when she’d bought it at a bookstore in London to read on the train to Paris. Setting the copy of Fight Club on the table, she ordered two pints of Guinness and two shots of Jameson, and waited for Hudson to walk through the door.