Forgive me, Reader, for I have sinned. It has been far too long since my last installment (or review!). I'm getting back into the swing of things, I hope...
Peter had filled the sitting room with low light, and quiet music, and weak tea, as if he feared any possibility of overwhelm.
Assumpta watched Fionn, asleep and contented on yet another unfamiliar floor.
"He was another big change in my life after my mother died," she said, her voice already grown hoarse from the last few hours' recounting. "I'd graduated; I'd moved home, took over the pub; sent Leo back to Dublin without me...and then Siobhan came by one day with a dog someone had abandoned at her door.
"You know, Peter...some of the greatest things in my life were dropped in my lap unexpected." She met his eyes now - such a singular green, around such large pupils. "Going off on my own initiative, now...that only ever brought trouble."
"I wonder about that meself," he admitted. "What's a calling, really? How do you tell the difference between God's will and your own?"
She gave a wry laugh. "If even you can't answer that..." Hearing the words, she lost her grin. "Sorry."
Peter put up a sad smile. "Some priest."
"Come here," she whispered, taking him in her arms.
BALLYKISSANGEL
The vet office computer monitor spat angry glare at Siobhan's reading glasses, and she hunched forward to transcribe a few last handwritten notes from the day's farm calls.
Over the whine of the fluorescents, and the snores of a recovering feline spay patient, she missed the noise of footsteps behind her, but the weight and size of Benny's hands on her shoulders did not totally surprise her. A voice in her brain reminded her that she did not allow Brendan to do this; a louder opposing voice pointed out that when Brendan did it, it came off more like a Vulcan nerve pinch. Benny had a gentler touch, a keener sense of tension and release. Was it all those years of looking at what went on under the skin?
She tried to recall her own experience of sonography, and this brought Aisling to the front of her mind. She would have to come clean about this, at least, sooner or later.
Rip off the bandage, she thought, turning reluctantly out of Benny's grasp to face him.
When she opened her mouth, he spoke first. "Oh, no, you're right! It's later than I thought."
Her courage collapsed as fast as it had inflated. "Have a safe drive home," she said, rising from her chair.
He smiled with a flicker of disappointment. "And you."
Driving home, Siobhan gave a sigh of relief as she passed Fitzgerald's and found the lights were on.
Inside, Niamh had claimed the corner of the bar. She and Oonagh took the television off mute each time a news update broke in, then silenced it once more each time the regular evening soap resumed. "Wonder how hard it'll be to reach London in the wake of all this?" she mused.
Siobhan took a seat of her own and made a frame of elbows on the worktop to hold herself up. "The usual, please."
Oonagh drew up a pint of Harp.
Niamh tore her gaze from the telly to give an acknowledging nod.
The vet considered confiding her thoughts in someone, unburdening her still-warm shoulders. But for Niamh it seemed too close to home; for Oonagh, too far. When, moments later, Avril arrived and ordered a Tipperary water, Siobhan quietly finished her pint and bowed out again.
Confession, then, tomorrow.
The phone in the pub's residential quarters went off the next morning, as Oonagh was downstairs, preparing to open.
Paul held the towel at his waist. "Grainne, would you ever pick that up?"
Dermot's voice came back, groggy. "She's gone for Avril's already."
Paul sighed and sprinted for the handset on his night table. "Hello?"
"May I please speak with Mr. or Mrs. Sean Dooley?" came a crisp voice on the line.
Paul flinched. "You are."
"Mr. Dooley, I'm the executrix for the estate of Aloysius McLogan. Would you and your wife have time to meet with me in Cilldargan very soon?"
"I handled a plumbing emergency for his pub back in '95, but for the life of me I can't figure why he would name us in his will," Paul said from inside the fridge.
Oonagh's eyes tried to find something to fix on - the Aga, the sink, the door. "No," she mumbled.
Paul retrieved a hard-boiled egg and rolled it on the table. "Did you ever meet him yourself, at all?"
Oonagh turned and watched her husband create a craquelure and then slowly peel it away. "Once or twice," she said.
Aloysius. Dead.
She felt decimated, somehow. She checked the clock. "Can you cover on your own for an hour this afternoon?"
Her husband nodded, not asking for an explanation.
An undeserved gift, she thought.
MANCHESTER
Peter awoke one sense at a time: sound, a whimpering dog; feel, his suit around him and the settee beneath him and the weight of another person against him; smell, lily of the valley; sight, a head of dark auburn hair on his chest.
Sound again, his spare house key in the door.
"Katie," he whispered, his heart suddenly racing.
Fionn barked now, waking his disoriented mistress.
Kate opened the door now, ushering in the cold light of the morning. "Peter, what on-?"
As Fionn trotted toward her to investigate, her eyes noticed the groggy woman across the room.
"Morning?" Kate offered with a bemused stare.
Assumpta mouthed a greeting, paired with an apologetic cringe.
Peter put up an index finger as if promising to explain, but then turned and marched straight to the kettle.
BALLYKISSANGEL
Vincent inhaled the atmosphere of the confessional - mildew, mahogany, holy water, incense imbedded deep in the fibre of the curtains. The latest penitent added notes of powdery oriental perfume.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," she whispered. "It has been...perhaps twenty years since my last confession."
Oonagh, he now knew. He muffled a sad laugh. "Go ahead," he said.
"My husband was incarcerated for a few years. White-collar crime. During his absence, I fell in love with someone else."
Vincent found himself surprised, and not. Already Siobhan had visited to confess her longing for someone other than the father of her child; already Niamh had dropped by to talk of her wedding vows betrayed by her other wedding vows. Throughout his career he'd heard the anguished admissions of girlfriends and wives, perhaps just as often as husbands and boyfriends. He'd often wondered if it was a function of women confessing more regularly, or of the sexes being more alike than everyone thought.
"It was unexpected. He was older. A fair bit older, really. A businessman from a town nearby," she went on. "I felt terribly alone in those days...abandoned, I suppose. He had no family of his own. We became confidants, of sorts. Can you imagine how strange, how lovely, to hear myself called young and beautiful at my age?"
"At any age," Vincent said absently.
Oonagh was silent.
"Did you have an affair?" He asked.
She was quiet for a moment. "In our way, yes, I believe we did."
"Did your husband ever learn?"
"No; we broke it off when he was released. Though I'm afraid he might suspect something now."
"How's that?"
"Father, I've just learned the other man died recently," she said. "We've - my husband and I have been named in the will. He'll want to know why." She took a long, slow breath. "Must I tell him? Will any good come of it?"
Vincent knew what he was meant to say. Honesty is a virtue. Trust requires it. Marriage is sacred; it has no room for deception.
He thought of Avril.
"Do you grieve the loss of this man?" he finally asked.
"Yes," Oonagh whispered.
"This inheritance, and grieving in silence, will be their own sort of penance. Jesus would tell you to go forth and sin no more."
Her surprise registered as a stunned silence.
He added, "Anytime you need to talk. Okay?"
"Sure," she managed.
The phone call came two hours later, at his desk.
"This is Father Sheahan?"
"Father," came a surprisingly cheerful male voice. "Paul Dooley calling!"
Vincent covered his eyes, shame already filling his bloodstream. "Hiya, Paul. How are you?"
"Good news and bad news, Father. I'll start with the latter?"
"Right, go ahead?"
"You'll need some new hired hands to run your pub. Oonagh and I have inherited McLogan's in Cilldargan."