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.”