Chasing River

Things have changed.

Aengus has changed.

But so have I.

“Jimmy will make sure he gets the message, and he knows exactly who he’s messing with.” Silence hangs between us. Finally, Aengus asks, “Eamon do that for ya?”

“Yeah.”

Another pause. “So what now?”

“You idiot . . .” I mutter, hearing the meaning between his words. Can I be trusted not to say anything when the gardai come knocking on our door? Like I’d ever turn on my family. “Now I get up and go to work, just like every other day, and try to forget this.” I pause, a pinch of disappointment in my chest. Four months ago, when I picked Aengus up at the prison gates to bring him back to the house we three brothers own—left to us by our nanny—I was hopeful that after losing six years behind bars, freedom would straighten out his priorities.

“There’s an open house on Saturday. Make sure you’re not here.” The house is nothing fancy—a detached three-bedroom, one-bath home with dated décor, gardens in the front and rear, and a separate garage—but the mortgage was long since been paid off. It should fetch us at least 300,000 euro. Rowen and I will take our share and invest in some real estate together. Aengus will likely piss his away in a kip somewhere. “You’re living on borrowed time, and I don’t want to be around your poor choices. I don’t want Rowen around them. And don’t you fucking dare tell Jimmy that I was even at the Green that day.”

For once, he doesn’t argue with me.

FOUR

Amber

“I know! It’s crazy, right? I’m so glad I was out of the city that day.” I wonder if he can hear my voice shaking from over four thousand miles away. My dad has a built-in lie detector, thanks to years of policing. The thing is, it’s never been me doing the lying. I don’t think he expects it. That’s probably the only thing that’s saving me now.

“How long are you in that country for, again?” Metal clangs in the background, telling me he’s in the garage with Jesse, likely working on his retirement project—the green Mustang he bought after handing in his sheriff’s badge last fall.

“In Ireland? Twelve days. I have nine left, now. I fly out next Sunday.”

He mumbles something incoherent.

“Staying for free,” I remind him. I made the mistake of admitting what this trip was going to cost me one night over dinner, before I left. The next morning there were real estate magazines on the kitchen table of our ranch house, with arrows and angry red numbers indicating what that kind of money could get me in the way of a down payment.

“Awfully nice of that teacher to arrange that for you,” he finally admits.

“You mean Mary Coyne?” I smirk. Dad knows her name, so I don’t know why he pretends that he doesn’t remember her. I’m pretty sure he had a crush on her, back when she was thirty years old and teaching me freshman science. So did every other pubescent boy and half the male population of Sisters. She has always been a striking woman, her raven-black hair hanging in silky waves down her back, her skin porcelain smooth, and her soft Irish accent mesmerizing. She made me love science. She made me love Ireland without ever having been here. She’s one of the reasons why I’m now on this trip.

I was her best and brightest student, and her favorite, she told me later. She wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation when I applied to college and we’ve kept in touch over the years, making time to meet for coffee at Poppa’s Diner on Main Street at least twice a year. I loved listening to her regale me with her adventures from when she was a college student in Ireland, hopping all over Europe and Asia and eventually North America, where she met Arnold Coyne, the man who would later become her husband.

When I told her about taking this trip, and that Ireland would be one of the countries that I visited, she insisted on reaching out to her brother, a doctor in Dublin who spends several months a year lending his healing hands to Doctors Without Borders. It just so happened that he’d be away on one of his missions while I’m here, and his house would be vacant.

My gaze drifts over the master bedroom, an expansive room on the second floor with a glazed black fireplace and a spectacular view of a timeworn church tower from the window. “You should see this place, Dad.” When the taxi dropped me off out front, I didn’t think much of the semidetached house crammed into this quiet urban side street. From the outside, it looks just like any other building along the way—all brick and boxy, with tall, rectangular windows. By no means fancy and completely foreign, compared to the hundred acres of open fields and ranch-style house overlooking an Oregon mountain range that I call home.

I should have known better.

The moment I turned the key that Dr. Simon Hill left with the neighbor and stepped inside the three-story house, I began to appreciate just how much Mary must trust me. Every square inch has been gutted and remodeled into three floors of soothing whites and dove grays. The bathrooms have been finished in floor-to-ceiling marble and tile, the floors in rich honeyed wood planks, the final details opulent and old-world charming. I’ve never met her brother, but I can see that he has an appreciation for the finer things when he isn’t helping the poor.

“So . . .What have you seen so far?”

“Umm . . . Wicklow Mountains, Trinity College, the Guinness factory . . .” I start rhyming off all the things I should have seen by now, had I not sequestered myself while recuperating, both mentally and physically. I lost track of how many times I bolted upright in bed the last two nights, after a loud thump or car backfiring on the streets below. “You know, stuff.” I shove a piece of bacon into my mouth to avoid talking. The rest of my thrown-together breakfast stares back at me, growing cold. The fridge is full of food that I bought the evening that I arrived here, hoping to avoid eating out as much as possible. I’ve barely touched it.

“Stuff,” he repeats, and I can almost see the weak smirk touching his lips. “Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity alright.” Gabe Welles never traveled in his youth, joining the Deschutes County Police Department fresh out of school. He and Mom didn’t even leave Oregon for their honeymoon, a fishing trip in the wilderness. To say he doesn’t understand my need to hop on planes and listen to foreign languages and see the world outside of Sisters, Oregon would be accurate. He tried to dissuade me right up until the night before I left, grumbling about how I wasn’t being responsible.

My dad sighs. I think he’s tired of trying to understand my decision. “We miss you here. The Felixes are getting fat and lazy without you to ride them.”

I smile at the mention of the horses next door. It’s been almost four weeks since I left home with one turquoise suitcase and plans to make a lifetime’s worth of memories. “Tell Jesse to give them a run.”

A deep chuckle fills my ear. It’s so rare to hear him laugh. “I’ll be sure to suggest that to him.”

My twin brother, Jesse, has avoided the stalls since a horse hip-checked him and he landed in a pile of manure that had yet to be mucked. We were eleven then and, if it weren’t for Alex, I’m guessing he still wouldn’t step inside that barn today, fourteen years later.

“Mom working tonight?” Dad was surprised to get my call at nine p.m. Oregon time. It’s still yesterday back home. Here, it’s five a.m. and I’ve already been up for an hour, unable to sleep.