Chapter Eighteen

Time is an optical illusion—never quite as solid or strong as we think it is.

Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

“I’ve never thought much about why it looks the way it does.” Colleen stood in front of the Lark in the late evening. Above, an egret swooped toward her and Beckett, and then eased. When it landed lightly on the magnolia tree a few yards away, Colleen touched the edge of Beckett’s shoulder and pointed to the pub to redirect his attention. “For me, it just always looked like this.”

Beckett held copies of two photos—one of O’Shea’s pub in Ireland and one of the Lark when it had been called McNally’s. Colleen shaded her eyes and stared at the building. Dad didn’t do anything accidentally. If he chose a pub from Ireland to replicate in South Carolina, he chose it for a reason.

“He never talked about it?” Beckett asked.

“I’m trying to remember. I don’t know much about his life before I was born. Why don’t I?” She shrugged and paused, tasting the unknowing with its hints of something larger. “He never went back to Ireland; he never took Mother there. He never visited again, so it couldn’t have been all that important to him. I’ve never given his time there much thought. As little kids we think our parents’ lives started when we came along. What I do know only has to do with how that journey to Ireland influenced us—you know, his funny sayings or once in a while a phrase or two about how it all felt there, how one day he wanted to take me.”

“Not the family?”

“Huh?” Colleen shifted her feet, feeling the ground was moving with each new piece of information, each question. Shouldn’t things be left well enough alone? Digging into the past never did much good; she sure as hell knew that. It only led to pain that had not faded, but lay in wait like one of those ridiculous fairy-tale dragons that slept until you roused it.

“Didn’t he want to take the whole family, or was it just you?”

Colleen pulled at the strings of memory, yanked at the threads of the promise of an Ireland trip. Was it once or twice that he’d promised? Maybe more? But one time—yes, when she and Dad had been alone in the pub washing glasses. She’d been twelve or maybe thirteen years old. They’d been singing together, but even the song had disappeared from her memory bank. What was it?

Whatever it was, she’d said, “I like ‘The Lark in the Clear Air’ better.”

He’d set the glass he’d been washing onto the bar, which smelled like lemon polish, and put both arms around her to pull her close. She’d rested against his flannel shirt, which carried the aroma of salt and sea and whiskey. Her mother had often joked that she could sense him coming home not by the sounds he made but by the scents that preceded him. Colleen had rested into her dad as he whispered, “You’re a chip off the old block, Lena. Someday I’ll take you there, take you to the land of eternal green, and staggering cliffs you can’t imagine even with the best of your imagination, to the land where fairies live in the knots of old oaks and the ocean is always thrashing itself against a land so beautiful there’s not another like it.”

Colleen stared off with this memory fresh in her mind—so quick and vivid in its entirety—as she answered Beckett, “I think he wanted to bring only me. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe he told the others, too, at a different time.”

“Maybe.” She smiled at him as he placed his hand on the brass doorknob. “Or maybe I’m special.”

“Well, that you are.” Beckett opened the door and together they entered the dimly lit space.

“I was joking of course.” She shut the door behind them. “Of course I’m not.”

Beckett stopped so quickly that Colleen bumped into him, their bodies touching. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her in close. “Yes, you are.”

Colleen blushed, felt the heat in her face and under her ribs, along her arms and thighs. Thank God for the dim light. She kissed his cheek lightly and let go to glance around the room.

Her dad stood behind the bar talking to a man on its far side, engaged in a conversation that had put serious expressions on both their faces. There were only six patrons, two couples and two women alone, scattered at different tables. It was too early for the crowd to be settling in, but this had always been Colleen’s favorite part of the day, when she could be alone with her dad. He’d tell her an old myth or joke. He was always saving news from the beauty of the day to share with her—a dolphin that had visited the dock with its new calf; a phone call from his sister; a pub patron who had found true love; a sick person healed. He gathered these gems like Hallie had gathered oyster shells to place around their room.

“He looks so serious,” she said to Beckett.

Together they approached the bar and Gavin spied them. His smile spread sure as a sunburst across his face. “My Lena!” he called out.

“Hi, Dad.”

“When did you get here?”

“Just now.” She pointed at Beckett. “I went to the historical society today. Remember, like we talked about over breakfast?” Then she remembered to quit using the damned word “remember.”

He nodded in agreement. The man he’d been speaking to, Colleen recognized him—Mr. Dalton, her teacher from junior year algebra. She exchanged a few words with him and then he rejoined one of the women sitting alone at a table.

“Dad.” Colleen sat on the stool that had just been vacated by Mr. Dalton. She would start over, make sure he understood.

“Yes?” He smiled at her and nodded at Beckett. It was a vacant word, a preconditioned response.

“Today I went to the historical society with Beckett here.” Beckett took a bar stool next to her, reached under the bar to squeeze her knee in complicit sympathy. “We found such interesting photos.”

“Photos?” His eyes lit as if someone had turned something on inside him.

Beckett pulled out color copies of the originals.

The door behind the bar swished open and closed, and Shane emerged, preoccupied on his phone. When he glanced up and saw them, he smiled. “Oh, hey. What’s up?”

“We found these at the historical society.” Colleen spoke softly and tilted her head at her brother in question. “Are you okay?”

Shane glanced at their dad, a sideways slide of the eyes that only Colleen would notice. “I’m fine. What are these?” He eased his way to the bar, pushing the photos under the domed light above.

“Dad,” Colleen said, “one is a photo of the pub you used as a model for this pub. It’s some place in Ireland.”

Gavin slapped his hand on the counter and let out a laugh. “The old O’Shea pub in Clare. How many hours I spent behind that dirty counter, dragging the old kegs and cleaning after the brawls of the locals. Did you know it takes exactly 119 seconds to pour a perfect Guinness?” He looked at Colleen.

“I did, Dad. I did know that. You taught me.”

He shook his head and lifted the photo closer to his face. “How long has it been?” His gaze found Colleen’s and there seemed a desperate need for an answer. “How long?”

“I don’t know exactly when you were there. But before I was born, so at least thirty-five years ago.”

“Oh, my dear, you’ve always been a part of the pub.”

“No, Dad. That’s a different pub. That’s not the Lark.”

Her dad kept his gaze fixed on hers. She understood why he wouldn’t look away; he needed to be grounded in that moment, to find his way back to reality. But it wasn’t happening.

“Dad, that’s another pub. Did you work there? At that pub in Ireland?”

“Yes, I did.” He straightened and pushed the photo away. He glanced at the next one. “And this pub I found here.” His smile was sad, a mere lifting of the edges of his lips.

“Is O’Shea’s where you first heard ‘The Lark in the Clear Air’?” That was Shane asking, his voice quiet so not to scare away the memories if he spoke too loudly. “And that’s why you named this pub . . .”

“Yes.” Gavin’s smile was real then, reaching into the rivers of wrinkles at his eyes. “And it was my wedding song, indeed it was.”

With that, he stood, turned quickly and moved to the far end of the bar to greet another patron, whistling his favorite song.