Chapter 3

I shifted in bed, trying to find a comfortable position, but despite the silky sheets and a mattress that could’ve easily fit four adults, I couldn’t fall asleep. Sighing, I sat up in bed and rubbed my temples. 

“Stupid jet lag,” I muttered to myself. I’d even taken a Benadryl, but all it had done was make me feel fuzzy-headed. Gulping down a glass of water, I went to sit in front of the fireplace—no fire, it was the middle of summer, after all—and after turning on a light, tried to read a book.

But my brain kept bouncing from subject to subject. After I’d encountered Golden Man, I’d met with Mr. McDonnell. 

Months ago, Mr. McDonnell had written me a letter to inform me that Grandda had left me more than just the inheritance that had paid for my college education. When I’d written back via email, because this was the twenty-first century after all, Mr. McDonnell had sent his reply once again on actual paper.

I didn’t understand his drive to waste money on postage, but perhaps he had more trust for the postal systems of Ireland and the United States than he did his internet provider.

At any rate, he’d told me that if I were to receive this inheritance, I’d have to come to Ireland myself to claim it. It had been your grandfather’s wish for you to do so, Mr. McDonnell had written in curling script. 

Oh, had I mentioned he’d handwritten those letters? I was half-convinced he’d walked straight out of an Austen novel. 

Apparently, according to Mr. McDonnell, my grandda had been an odd sort, and this had been his last demand before he’d died. Considering that he’d died four years ago, it had seemed odd to me that I’d only gotten this missive earlier this year. 

I closed the book I was failing to read. Even the smuttiest of smut couldn’t hold my attention tonight. Getting up, I went to the window of my expansive bedroom. The window overlooked the stairs and, just on the horizon, the black waters of the Irish Sea. The moon was silvery white, full and shining on the waters like a beacon. 

The meeting with Mr. McDonnell had been short. He’d only needed to inform me that my additional inheritance was, in fact, the entire estate. Yes, really.

“Are you serious?” I’d stared at the lawyer in confusion, hardly believing his last words.

“Yes, miss.” Mr. McDonnell had cleared his throat. “But there’s a complication, you see.”

“Oh, lovely.”

He’d ignored my sarcasm. “You see, your grandfather was…an interesting sort of man.” He pulled out an envelope, much like the one I’d received from Mr. McDonnell all those months ago. “Well, he can explain himself better than I can.”

Frowning, I ripped open the envelope, unfolding the thick parchment. 

To my granddaughter,

By now, you must’ve met with Mr. McDonnell in person. He most likely has now given you this letter because he’s incapable of explaining things himself. He’s a useful sort but not clever. 

Let’s not waste time. I hardly have any left, to be sure.

Your father is alive, and before you ask, I’ve always known he was alive. I didn’t inform you of this fact because, quite frankly, I doubted that it mattered. A more useless, moronic individual than your father I’ve never known. He threw away everything to marry your mother and then decided he’d had enough and abandoned his entire family. Why, you may ask? I don’t know, nor do I particularly care, either.

This letter is to tell you that, as my only heir that is worth a bloody damn (your fool brother squandered the opportunity to inherit years ago, as you’re well aware), you can inherit this estate and everything inside of it if you find your father and give him a letter Mr. McDonnell will provide to you after you read this one.

I’m sure you’re wondering: where is my godforsaken son? I don’t know. I wasn’t able to discover his location before my illness made me unable to do anything but pray to God that I wouldn’t spend all eternity in Purgatory. Now it’s up to you, Granddaughter. If you’re at all clever and capable, you can find your father. If you cannot find him, then suffice to say this estate will go up for auction and most likely bought by some English arsehole looking for a summer home for his sallow-faced children.

Yours,

Sean Gallagher

If the ground had dropped out from under me before, I was now hurtling into a black hole into space. Hope, along with dismay, made it impossible to speak.

Da was alive. He was alive, and Grandda had known.

I wish I could strangle you myself, I thought bitterly. No wonder Liam hated your guts. You wily old asshole. Even from beyond the grave, you’re trying to mess with us.

I stared dumbly down at the paper in my hand for such a long time that Mr. McDonnell finally cleared his throat to get my attention.

“Are you quite well, Miss Gallagher?”

“My da is alive?” was all that I could say.

“Indeed. You haven’t been in contact with him in a number of years. Is that correct?”

I shook my head. “He left us before I was even born.”

Mr. McDonnell shuffled some papers, looking extremely uncomfortable.

I barely registered his discomfort. My heart was clamoring in my chest. I wanted to ask every question under the sun, all the while knowing that it was unlikely this lawyer would have the answers. I doubted Mr. McDonnell could tell me why my da had abandoned his family and had never tried to contact us again. 

While Liam had been content to believe our da was six feet under, I’d never stopped wondering about him. We only had a handful of photos of him; Liam had torn up a bunch of them when he’d been an angry teenager, never thinking that his little sister might have an interest in our deadbeat father.

Since Mam had died when I’d been so young, I’d always longed to know about Da. The thought that I still had one parent alive was strangely comforting. And, in that hope that only a child could have, maybe he’d have a reason as to why he’d had to stay away from us. 

Now as an adult, I knew very well that it was pretty unlikely that he’d gone into hiding because he was a spy or because the mafia was out to kill him. I couldn’t blame some shadowy villain for my da being a deadbeat, yet that still didn’t stop the need to ask him in person the question: why did you leave and never come back?

“So how exactly am I supposed to find my da?”

“I have some information that we were able to gather regarding his whereabouts.” Mr. McDonnell handed me another envelope, painfully slim. “Your father has not wanted to be found. I will say that.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Frustration tinged my voice. I’d already Googled my da multiple times, but his name was a common one in Ireland. Even if I’d found records of him, it didn’t mean I could discover his latest address without a lot of digging.

“We received this about two years ago. As you can see, it was addressed to your grandfather, but of course, he was no longer with us to open it.” 

In the corner of the manila envelope was the name of some appraisal company here in Ireland. Confused, I opened the envelope to find a few documents that contained something about an antique clock that had been appraised two years ago by Sean Gallagher, my dead grandda.

The clock was made of porcelain and covered in ormolu. At the top was a painting of a cherub with a laurel wreath adorning the miniature; below was another cherub, an acorn adorning it at the bottom. A sky was painted in the center of the clock face.

Most tellingly, the appraisal price of this clock was listed at a staggering €25,000. My eyes nearly bugged out of my head seeing that. 

“Okay, somebody has a freaking expensive clock somewhere. What does this have to do with my da?”

“The signature on the last page,” said Mr. McDonnell, not the least bit fazed by my confusion. He pushed another document toward me across the desk. “It matches your father’s.”

“But the name listed is for Sean, not Connor,” I countered.

“Your father’s full name is Sean Connor Gallagher. And if you notice the first name of the signature on that document…” 

I peered more closely at the scribble. It looked like someone had begun to write a C but had awkwardly changed it to an S, as if remembering what his name really was.

“I realize this is extremely strange and not absolute proof that your father is alive, but considering your grandfather had had located him five years ago in Spain, it doesn’t seem impossible he’d still be alive just three years later.”

I placed the appraisal documents back inside the envelope. Okay, so my da was most likely alive. “But no one knows where he is now? Or within the last year?”

“I’m afraid not, miss.”

Of course not. That’d be too easy. “Why would these documents be sent here and not to my da’s address?”

Mr. McDonnell shrugged. “I’m not certain why he’d forge his signature, but from the bit of research I was able to do, the clock itself is an antique once owned by Mr. Connor Gallagher’s mother. Perhaps he wanted to send a message to Mr. Sean Gallagher that he’d acquired it.”

“But my grandda was dead by then.”

“Yes, but perhaps your father did not know that.”

It seemed as plausible a theory as any. None of the men in my family had been fond of my grandda, it seemed. Sean Gallagher had hated that his only son and heir had married beneath him, and then he’d apparently hated his son even more for leaving the wife he’d never approved of. 

Talk about complicated family history. It made my head hurt to think about it.

“Although I have not been able to locate your father,” said Mr. McDonnell, “logic seems to point in the direction that if you can locate this antique clock, you most likely can locate Mr. Connor.”

I let out a sigh. “I never knew my da, but given how my brother always talked about him, I have a feeling he’d enjoy making us go on a wild goose chase to find him.” Holding my grandda’s letter and the appraisal documents, I asked, “May I keep these?”

“Of course, miss.”

Now, staring at the fireplace sans fire, I shook my head. I’d nearly choked on my own spit when Mr. McDonnell had told me that. Me, the owner of all of this? It made zero sense. 

Grandda hadn’t known me. He’d disliked Liam simply because Liam had never been a good, submissive Catholic who’d cater to Grandda’s every demand. When Liam had taken me from Ireland when I was six and he was twenty-three, apparently Grandda had been livid. When he’d told us about our inheritances when we came of age, he’d punished Liam by giving him a piddly amount while giving me ten times that when I’d turned eighteen.

It was strange, being beholden to a man I’d not really known and who was now, even from the grave, pulling the strings in my own family. I was sure wherever he was, he was enjoying making us squirm. 

As far as our father, Connor Gallagher, he’d been disinherited and disowned after he’d married our mother without Grandda’s permission. So even if he were still alive, he wouldn’t have gotten a penny from Grandda anyway. He really loved disinheriting people, I thought wryly.

Looking at my phone, I considered calling my brother for advice. It was only six in the evening in Seattle. But Liam would be worried if I called him in the middle of the night, and he and his wife Mari would be busy with getting the girls dinner and then to bed. I didn’t want to add to their stress.

I sighed. I wrapped myself in a robe and put on some slippers, wondering if a late-night stroll would calm my mind. Although part of me felt weird about wandering around a house that wasn’t mine, I reasoned that it was almost mine. Besides, everyone was asleep, and I was just going to wander the hallways.

Dim lights turned on as I walked. I stopped a few times to admire artwork hanging on the walls. Some were more traditional paintings of what I guessed were Irish landscapes. Others were more avant garde, splotches of color that weren’t depicting anything except maybe chaos. Looking at one that could’ve been painted by my four-year-old niece Fiona, I had a distinct feeling that Grandda wasn’t the one buying these pieces. He would’ve hated this one.

I wandered for a while longer, coming to a hallway I hadn’t been down. As I walked, I saw that a door was open, and I peered inside to see a library. The moon was the only light, although more lights turned on as I began to wander the aisles. 

Had my grandda been a big reader? I wondered. One aisle had books that were all written in Irish. I pulled one out, curious, but my Irish was rudimentary at best, and I could hardly read a heavy tome that seemed to be about Ireland’s flora and fauna. 

Other aisles had books in English, most of which seemed to be nonfiction: natural history of Ireland, Catholic treatises, and a variety of Bibles were all collected together. I did finally find a section of fiction, most of the authors being Irish—James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde were all there.

I pulled out a collection of Yeats’ poems. I flipped it open to find an inscription at the front in Irish that I was able to translate: to my beloved Maire, Sean. I knew that Maire was the Irish version of Mary.

My heart started pounding. It felt like kismet, coming upon this book dedicated to my grandmother after that strange conversation I’d had with Mrs. Walsh.

I flipped through the pages, and my heart nearly fell to my toes when a note fluttered to the floor. I grabbed it, noting that edges were yellow with age. I carefully unfolded it after I’d set the book down on a nearby table.

I squinted at the handwriting. It was in Irish, I realized, so I could only make out a few words that I remembered learning as a child. Liam could still speak Irish; he’d lived here in Ireland until he was twenty-three. Whereas I’d left when I was only six and he’d placed me in the care of my uncle Henry and aunt Siobhan, Siobhan being our mother’s younger sister. Siobhan had never learned Irish, and I’ll admit, I hadn’t had much discipline to take classes when I was younger.

Now I desperately wished I’d learned the language. The letter was from my grandmother Mary to Sean, dated over seventy years ago. 

I carefully folded the letter up again and placed it back inside the book. I would take a photo of it and send it to Liam to see if he could read it and translate it for me. I had no idea how good his reading skills in Irish were these days. For all I knew, he could only speak it and understand it orally.

I could always try to translate it myself, I reasoned. I mean, did I really want Liam involved? He might not be all that gung-ho about a letter written to our grandda, unless the contents were basically the Irish version of “go fuck yourself.” 

Well, Google Translate could at least give me the gist of it, I told myself.

Snagging the book, I was about to go back to my room when I heard a noise to my left. I hadn’t realized that there was a smaller wooden door, partially open, that led to another part of the library. 

I heard another noise, and my heart started pounding. I considered just scurrying back to my room, but a part of me felt stupid for being afraid. It could just be a rat or this old house creaking from the wind. It’s probably ghosts, my mind whispered, only half-joking.

I opened the small door. There were no lights on in the room, although I couldn’t tell if the lights installed were motion-detected like the ones in the hallways. I listened intently, still clutching the books of Yeats’ poems, when I heard a thump.

I froze. It was the middle of the night. Would any of the workers even be here at this hour? Despite its Downton Abbey feel, the estate didn’t actually house the people who worked here, at least according to the butler Roger, whose name I’d finally learned today. He’d told me that everyone returned home by the end of the day like any other employee going home from the office. The exception being the lone security guard that sat in a tiny office at the front gate, waving people in without so much as looking up from his iPad.

I waited, listening intently. And then I heard the squeak of door hinges, and then it was complete silence. 

Who knew how long I stood there in the dark, clutching my book, my heart hammering in my throat? When I finally told myself that whoever had been in here was gone, I practically ran back to my room and bolted the door behind me.

Maybe Roger hadn’t meant that every single person went home? There could still be someone working here. Maybe it had been the security guard. But why would he be in the library? That made no sense.

Shivering, I got in bed, pulled the covers up to my chin, and failed miserably to fall asleep.