We smiled, bright and sudden, like two people who have learned to see what the other is thinking in a very short amount of time.
“There’s something wrong here,” Finn said. “This doesn’t make sense.”
But Ida and I weren’t listening. Heads bent over her phone, we mapped out our route. Drumcliff, or close by. North again.
“We could walk it,” I said. “It’s not properly dark yet, and we have our phones for flashlights.”
“Have you two even stopped to consider how crazy this is?” Finn said. “This doesn’t mean Mandy is leading us to her. She could have set all this up before she died. And, either way, what kind of a fucked-up treasure hunt did she think she was playing at?”
“We were supposed to do this together,” I told him. “As my birthday present. A road trip. She was meant to tell me all this in person. Instead, all I have are her letters. All Ida has. This is a thing we’re doing, with or without you.”
Finn softened. “I wasn’t backing out,” he said. “I just . . . Mandy’s funeral was yesterday. I know you’re grieving. Hurting. I can’t imagine. I just want you to be careful. Because if . . . if she was here last week, like Cale said, if she left all these letters before she died . . . then at the end of this, wherever that is, she’ll still be gone.”
I saved the location on my phone. “You’ll see,” I said. “You will.”
Cale had listened throughout the reading of the letter and was standing still behind the bar, eyes on the words I had just read aloud, customers forgotten, pints left to go flat on the bar. Her grandparents, who seemed to be used to this kind of behavior, circled around her, busily tending to the pub patrons. The sound of the last of the stallholders still chatting together after the market drifted in through the open doors.
This place was in the story I’d just read. This town was the one Mary Ellen arrived at after having walked the whole way from Donegal. The market that had been closing up outside when we arrived was the same one she’d come to 132 years ago, met Ann Gorman, carried my great-grandfather in her belly. We were right inside the story. The past was so close we could touch it.
Cale reached across me and touched one of the pictures on the wall by the bar. Heat rose in my cheeks as her arm brushed against mine.
“Look,” she said. “Tell me what you see.”
She pointed to the frame under which I’d found Mandy’s letter. It showed a sepia print of a large group, a family perhaps, under whose feet were written the words Sligo, 1877 in faded cursive script. Along the border of the frame a more modern hand had noted down names.
“Look,” Cale said again, with more urgency.
I read through them, stopped suddenly in the middle of the row. I trailed a fingertip up the dusty frame from the name—Ann Gorman—to a thin, blurry figure with light hair, blond maybe, had the picture been in color: a girl in her early twenties, unsmiling, flanked by an older couple, who were probably her parents.
The young woman’s name was Ann Gorman, Mandy had written. Ann had been cast out of her mother’s house two years before for reasons she did not like to discuss.
How many Ann Gormans were there in Sligo in 1877?
“You see?” said Cale.
“Ann Gorman,” I whispered. “Ann, who lived with Mary Ellen.”
“She’s family,” Cale said. “My—hang on.” She cocked her head as she worked it out. “My great-great-great-great-aunt.”
“What?”
Cale nodded at the photo. “That’s the oldest family picture we have. My granda found it a few years ago when he was researching our ancestry.”
“Whoa. It’s the same Ann,” I said, head spinning. “It’s why Mandy sent us here.”
Cale was nodding, eyes wide. “My granda always said there was a witch in the family. An herbalist. After she died, Granda found her recipes. They’re the ones we still use now. She had a small orchard, like we do. Her parents kicked her out. Like it says in the letter.”
“Because she was a witch?” asked Ida.
“That’s not what we were told,” Cale said. “My granda always says she was kicked out because her parents found her with another girl. Which I suppose back then was just as bad as witchcraft.”
A warmth entirely unrelated to the cider I’d been drinking rose through me.
“Which means,” Cale went on, “that if I’d been alive back then, I’d’ve been basically screwed on both counts.” She laughed.
I studiously avoided the meaningful look I could feel Finn boring deep into the side of my head.
He cleared his throat to get my attention and when that didn’t work he said, “That’s such a coincidence,” to Cale, while still staring at me.
Ida, who wouldn’t have known the real meaning behind Finn’s words, shook her head. “Not a coincidence,” she said. “Mandy knew all this. She sent us here because of it.”
“I knew it,” Cale said. “I knew there was a reason you came here. And your sister, the one you’re looking for. I knew I recognized her. Our families’ histories are tangled together.”
She shook her head in wonder, eyes dark and shining. She was so pretty it was hard to look at her for long.
Finn glanced at me, then at Cale. His mouth twisted into something that was part mischief, part innocence. “When do you get off work?” he asked. “Because we’re going to your—what was it?—great-great-great-aunt’s cottage, if you’re interested in coming too.”
He opened up the route on his phone and Cale tilted her head to squint at it. She gave a secret smile.
“That’s the long way,” she said. “Believe me. But I know the area better than a map. I can show you a shortcut.”
* * *
—
Just like that, we became four. The journey I had begun alone that morning—although it felt like several lifetimes ago already—had widened, expanded to include my best friend, the niece I never knew I had, and a mysterious half-stranger, who led us off-road through fields and forests, over streams and marshes, drinking in our story like it was fine apple cider.
Twilight misted itself across the sky, changed the cloudy blue to the purple of a new bruise, streaked with scarlet. It was almost eight. Houses started to light up, windows shining in the growing dark, the people inside settling into their evenings as we walked past.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket: Rachel again. I didn’t answer, couldn’t face her voice, knew that the moment she realized I wasn’t really at Finn’s house, this journey was over. She’d be after me in a heartbeat.