Chapter 5

The morning after Sean and Tom got back from Omagh, they sat down for breakfast with Mrs. Bridges as usual, but this morning, the tenor of the meal was quite different.

"Did you hear the news about what happened last night?" Tom asked Mrs. Bridges as she joined them at the table.

"You mean about Sean getting engaged to Maeve?" she asked, glancing over at a smiling Sean. Tom nodded. "I think it's wonderful," she continued. "She's such a sweet girl."

"Isn't she, though?" Tom agreed. "Tell me, Sean, how long will it be until the blessed day?"

"We haven't set a date yet, if that's what you mean. It's only been one night, you know. It'll be at least another six months, though. She's got an internship at the library near her home, and she wants to get something out of that first. Not to mention, it'll take at least that long to reserve the church," he laughed.

"That's good, it's best not to rush into things," Tom nodded. "After all, how long were you seeing her before you proposed?"

"Tom, you know how long I've been seeing her, it's been more than seven months."

"But she was seeing both of us for six of those."

"True, but that doesn't change the fact that Maeve and I got to know each other during that time."

"Fair enough. So then, once you knew that you were her choice, it didn't even take six weeks to decide you wanted to marry her."

"Not even that. More like three weeks."

"Well. You don't waste any time, do you?"

By this time, Mrs. Bridges clearly looked worried. Sean dropped his fork and turned to face his cousin. "If I didn't know you better...I'd say you were trying to convince me that my proposing to Maeve last night was a mistake."

"But nothing could be further from the case. I'm just curious about how you came to your decision."

The younger cousin shrugged. "I love her. There's no other way to explain it."

"That's the best way to know, dear," said Mrs. Bridges, touching Sean's hand.

It was true that Tom had no intention of getting in the way of his cousin's marriage to Maeve. As much as it pained him to admit it, he knew what Maeve saw in Sean, and he'd never seen her so happy as when they'd announced their engagement. Still, his questioning Sean was not exactly innocent, either.

A couple weeks later, on a Friday evening after Sean came home from a day of monitoring work at INTERPOL, Maeve showed up at their doorstep, without warning. Mrs. Bridges answered the door, and brought her to Sean.

"Look who I found scratching at the door," Mrs. Bridges said to Sean while waving Maeve into the room.

Sean stood up to welcome her, but before he could say anything, Maeve rushed into his arms and rained kisses all over his face.

"I didn't know you were coming," he remarked when she slowed down.

"Da got me a new bike as a graduation gift!" said Maeve. "I thought I'd give it a test drive, and rode it down here!"

"You got a new bike, that's great! Wait a minute," Sean's expression suddenly changed to concern. "Wasn't that awfully dangerous, though? What about that dirty cop who sent us off a cliff and later ran me off the road?"

"Ah, but you forget, I'm not living in Omagh anymore!" she grinned, shaking a finger in his face. He remembered, and went "Ah" along with her. "So I'm coming from farther east, and can go around that pig's territory! No worries. How was INTERPOL today?"

"Boring and tedious as hell," Sean murmured into Maeve's hair. "But at least they didn't send me away this week, and I got to be home when you showed up."

"Yes, that was good of them. When's your next field assignment?"

"They're sending me to Turkey next week. I'll be gone for a month," he moaned, his face still buried in Maeve's wind-fluffed hair.

"Then it's a good thing I came down here tonight! Come on, let's go take the new bike for a ride around the hills," said Maeve, and started leading him out by the hand.

"You mean you haven't done enough riding tonight?" Sean laughed.

"No! It's beautiful, I want you to see it. Honestly, who knew a pediatrician could have such good taste in wheels?"

"Can't I 'see' it tomorrow, and we stay in tonight?"

"No, I want to take you for a ride now, before I lose my momentum. Then we can 'stay in' tomorrow," she explained, while towing him down a hallway, where they ran into Tom. Maeve let go of Sean's hand and gave Tom a tight hug. "Hello, Tom, how're you doing?"

"I'm well, Maeve, and I didn't know you'd be here tonight," Tom answered.

"Neither did he," said Maeve, pointing at her fiancé. "Look, we're going for a ride on my new bike, but I'll be here for the weekend. Will you have time to talk to me later on?"

"Absolutely. Drive safely, now," Tom suggested as he let go of Maeve.

"Not a chance," she said, clapping her helmet onto her head.

Maeve spoke the truth; her new bike was amazing, or maybe it was just that she was so good at driving it. She took them through the backroads that ran between Newport and Castlebar, and especially enjoyed accelerating over the hills. Sean whooped it up along with her, and he had to admit that after 5 days of "boring and tedious as hell," this was great fun. He'd been accustomed to riding without a helmet before, but getting run off the road had taught him better, so the wind-in-his-hair factor was gone, but this left him to appreciate the wind-in-his-shirt. It was a beautiful late-June day, with the sun getting low in the sky, and they joyously sailed past cars at several points in the ride.

The next day, Maeve found Tom working in the garden in front of the Keep. He'd been maintaining and improving the garden since he'd come back from Oxford, and it was the one place where anyone could find him on his hands and knees, handling dirt.

"Those are beautiful, Tom," said Maeve, referring to the roses from which Tom was picking beetles.

Tom, who hadn't known Maeve was watching him, looked up. "They won't be for much longer if I let these little beasts get any farther."

"You said you'd have time to talk to me this weekend. So how about it?"

"I'd love to, if you don't mind staying out here and watching me do this," said Tom.

"No, I don't mind at all," said Maeve. She sat down on the grass behind Tom. "It's just that we haven't had much time together since...well..." she stalled, unable to name it.

"Since the spring ball at your university?" Tom finished. She nodded. "True enough," he continued. "What is it you wanted to talk about?"

"Oh, I don't know, anything. I want to know what you've been up to lately."

"More of the same, really. Not enough to bother telling you about. How is your internship going?"

"It's very...historical. There's a lot of fascinating information to be found in some of the musty old books they keep back there that no one ever reads. I've only been at it for a couple weeks, though, you know? Who knows what it'll be like once I've been there a few months? Either way, the library is wonderful, but I don't want to bore you."

"Okay then. Have you gotten started on the wedding plans yet?"

"You have to ask? My God, after Sean and I got engaged, Mum woke me up early the next morning to take me around to bridal shops."

"Ah, so you're making preparations. In that case, have you set a date?"

"Well, not exactly. Mum suggests about a year from now, next June, which I think is a good idea. Right now we're looking around for what to use when the date's been set and the day comes."

"It sounds like your mother's enjoying this more than you," Tom laughed.

"You don't know the half of it. Sean's left all the planning to me and her, since his schedule makes it hard for him; he just asks that we don't make him wear a canary yellow tux or do anything silly like that."

"My cousin has taste? This is news."

"Oh, hush up," Maeve laughed. "But, yes, Mum's having great fun, and I don't know why; I mean, both of my sisters are already married, and she planned both of their weddings; it ought to be old news to her by now."

"Maybe she likes arranging big parties."

"That could be it. In any case, I just try to take her onto the back porch when she gets immersed in planning, because she scares my Da." They both laughed.

"I'm sure it'll be great," said Tom.

"If it were up to me, I'd just kidnap Sean and sneak off to a judge and be done with it, but nooo, we had to go and announce our engagement like it was the second coming of Christ. What a couple of jerks we must have looked like."

He wasn't about to divulge his feelings about Sean to her, but he certainly didn't think she'd acted like a jerk. "No you didn't. You had every reason to be happy. I only hope you stay that way." *Because if Sean disappoints her, I will bury him.*

"Thank you." She was quiet for a moment before she got up. "I'd better go back inside, and leave you to your gardening."

"It's been nice talking to you. Come again some time."

Maeve started towards the doors, but then she turned towards him again. "Tom, are you angry at me?"

He let go of his flowers to look at her. "No. What reason would I have to be angry at you?"

"Because I broke up with you, and now I'm prattling on to you about how I'm going to marry your cousin."

"You chose Sean over me because he made you happier, but we're still friends now, right? There's nothing wrong with that."

"I'm so glad you think so." And she went back inside.

Sean went to Turkey as he promised, and when his month was over, he didn't go straight home. Instead, he went to Belfast. Mrs. Rourke was duly surprised when she answered the door.

"Why, Sean! To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I know I wasn't invited, but I do miss Maeve."

"And I'm sure she misses you, too. Come in, come in. Maeve, darling, look who's come to see you!"

He arrived back at the Keep on Sunday evening to find Tom in a familiar place: sitting in the main hall, reading the day's newspaper. Sean strode up to his cousin to ask his question. "Tom, I've got a favor to ask of you."

Tom put his paper down and stood up to face Sean, mere inches away, deadly serious. "And what's that?"

"Be the best man at my wedding."

The picture of him standing as second banana while Sean kissed Maeve and a whole church sanctuary full of people barely contained their happiness flashed like a neon sign in front of Tom's eyes, and it made him snarl. He grabbed Sean by the shirt collar and jerked him forward so their foreheads pressed together. "Fine, you've won Maeve, now stop rubbing my face in it!"

This would have been a more intimidating action if Sean hadn't been slightly taller than Tom and much stronger. He easily pried Tom's hands off his shirt and pushed him back. "I'm not rubbing your face in anything, I'm asking you to be my best man."

"You'd love that, wouldn't you!" Tom railed, stalking around the couch. "Make me stand there and watch you put a ring on Maeve's finger like I'm behind it. Wouldn't you just find that so funny!"

Sean stared and quirked an eyebrow; eventually he found a response for this. "What's the matter with you? I'm asking a simple favor that'll take one day out of your life. What's so terrible about that?"

"What's so terrible about that is when you come back from your little INTERPOL trip, the first thing you say is to remind me that you're getting married to Maeve!" He stopped beside the arm of the couch, and stood there with clenched fists, fuming.

There was another pause of Sean staring at Tom like a mad ape escaped from the zoo. "Now I see," he said. "You're still attracted to her."

"You think I'm 'attracted' to her?! Are you daft?! I've never met anyone like her in all my life, and you couldn't wait to snatch her up, and now you think I just want a chance to screw her! I thought better of you, really I did."

Sean spluttered, trying to decide which insanity to shoot down first. He started to count the women Tom had "snatched up" from him, then realized this would take too long. "Number one, you need to cool off. Two, I'm not going to pretend Maeve and I aren't getting married, just because you've finally fallen in love. Three, you are not the center of the bleatin' universe, so stop thinking my proposing to her was about you! It was about me and her. There's nothing you can do about it except live with it. Now, if you're going to act like a raving lunatic, I'd just as soon keep you out of the wedding, but Maeve thinks you should be the best man. If you don't want to do that, then I'll tell her we'll have to find someone else."

"Fine. I'll do it."

"Thank you," said Sean, who promptly headed towards his room. He stopped partway up the staircase. "Wait a minute," he called down.

"What now?"

"What's this business of 'winning' Maeve about? She's not some sort of prize, she's a woman who made her choice, and if you'd realized that a few months ago, maybe you'd be the one getting ready to marry her."

Tom said nothing to that. He scrambled for his keys and hurried outside to his car. There, he began driving towards the busiest possible road, where the rumble of all the engines kept him from thinking about what Sean had said.

After that night, Sean and Tom rarely spoke to each other except in front of Mrs. Bridges or Maeve. It was usually the former, since Sean spent most of his free weekends in Belfast with the Rourkes, and Maeve didn't come to Cassidy Keep except when she came down unexpectedly and arrived before Sean left to visit her. Tom was all in favor of this arrangement except that it meant he didn't get to see Maeve very often, and he missed her.

The date was set at the first Saturday in June of 1977, blithely ignoring the old poem about "Saturday no day at all."(1) They weren't about to ask people to come up in the middle of the workweek just to follow an old superstition, after all. Sean applied for the time off, and Maeve informed her mentors at the library that the preceding Friday would be her last day with them. They were to be married at the church where the Rourkes attended Mass, and a honeymoon was planned in the Azores. For Maeve's side, they invited her family and many neighbors, church friends, and old schoolmates, and for Sean's side, Mrs. Bridges, the neighbors from the nearby village, his old schoolmates, and several fellow INTERPOL agents coming under the guise of Trinity graduates.

On the night before the wedding, the dinner table was unusually quiet. Sean and Tom said nothing to each other, though they steadily glared at each other throughout the meal. They were normally civil for Mrs. Bridges' sake, but that night, they didn't want to say more than "pass the peas" even to her. The tension was driving her to distraction, she could hardly eat for all her hand-wringing and begging them to talk to each other.

"I can talk to him after tomorrow's over," said Tom.

"But why not now?" she pleaded.

"There's really nothing to be said," Sean answered for him.

"You shouldn't be acting like this," Mrs. Bridges insisted. "Tomorrow's a special day."

"Doesn't matter," said Sean, who kept glowering at Tom.

Mrs. Bridges made a strangled noise in her throat, and got up to take her dinner to her room.

They were alone for a few minutes before Tom spoke up. "So, you're going to marry Maeve tomorrow."

"That's what I intend to do."

"Does she know about your big assignment a month from now? The one that'll take you out of contact with her for only-God-knows-how-long?"

"Of course she knows about it. You think I'd marry her without telling her about that?"

"And how does she feel about it?"

"She's fine with it."

"She says that now, but how will she feel later on? Are you sure you should be getting married when you'll be away from your wife for untold months out of the year?"

"You're a little late to bring this up, besides which, I'm not rising to your bait."

"It's not bait, Sean." This time, Tom was looking straight at him. "I'm just asking you to consider how Maeve will feel about being married to a man who spends all his time in the wrong part of the world."

"Far better that, than a lazy rich layabout like yourself."

"If only you had the slightest idea what I do with my time," muttered Tom.

"Honestly, I don't see why you bother," said Sean. "I'm not backing out. Just accept that there's one woman in all of Europe who isn't impressed by you."

*And you think you're so ungodly grand because there's one who's impressed with you,* Tom thought. "I know you'd never back out of this. Maeve's a smart woman. She knows what she's getting into," he said.

"Then why are we having this conversation?"

"Because she may be willing to get herself into it because she loves you that much, but that doesn't mean it won't wear her down."

"So why did you decide to start bugging me about this on the night before my wedding?"

"So that you could think about it, and be prepared to deal with it in the future."

"Marital advice from the man who goes through women like cheap socks. Now I've heard it all," said Sean, getting up to clear his plate into the garbage. "Here's some better advice: I'm going to bed, as we've a long day ahead of us tomorrow. You should do the same."

(1) Old Irish poem about what day of the week a couple should get married: "Monday for health/ Tuesday for wealth/ Wednesday the best day of all/ Thursday for crosses/ Friday for losses/ and Saturday no day at all."