“Naomhán House is Gran’s house,” she laughs. “Naomhán means saint in Gaelic. Gran’s a saint in these parts, so the council went and made her house a bloody landmark. Went straight to her head. She’s quite the diva now.”

“I’m staying with your grandmother?”

“Yeah, she’s got plenty of space,” Freya says. “She runs a shop out of the front. She’s a seamstress, so there’s always people popping by. You’ll love it here.”

“I… don’t want to impose on her.”

I’m going to kill Holly. I should have known not to trust the girl who left a bar with a guy and woke up alone in Mallorca.

“She’s very excited to have you,” Freya says. “Plus she has a few trips planned over the next couple weeks, and she’s banking on you looking after Reggie and Ethel.”

“Who are Reggie and Ethel?”

“The only things that Gran loves more than Ollie.”

I look back at Naomhán House and all of its pastel glory. It gives off more light than the streetlamp in front of it. Something tells me that this house is the center of this tiny village’s universe, and like the sun, everything revolves around it.

“Go on.” Freya nudges her head at the door. “I promise she won’t bite you. Ethel might, though. Don’t look her in the eyes. She’s a nasty old hag who will suck out your soul, and nick your hobnobs when you’re not looking.”

Anyway…

I’ve never been afraid to walk into a room. I’ve mingled with CEOs and CFOs and the presidents of billion dollar corporations, schmoozing my way through New York’s grimiest.

“Kill them with confidence, Bree.”

“Fake it till you make it, Bree.”

“Do what you have to do to get where you want to get, Bree.”

Unfortunately, my mother’s sage wisdom won’t work on the village’s saintly grandmother. She’ll probably smell all the sin on me and throw a glass of holy water in my face. Send me off to confess my lengthy list of trespasses. The church will explode. And I’ll be exiled back to the hell of my Greenwich Village apartment.

Still, I knock on the door three times and wait and wait and wait until it swings open with a screech from the rusted bell above.

Gran has a hot pink stripe in her ashy blonde hair, and she’s wearing leggings and a Rod Stewart tour shirt from 1988. Not exactly the cane-wielding, bible-toting grandmother, who douses herself in floral perfume and offers you a plate of warm cookies, that I was expecting.

“No need to knock, love! Come in, come in.”