The Eden Tree (27 page)

Bridie was waiting for her in the entry hall. Ned emerged from the kitchen to greet her, winding himself sinuously about her legs.

“Your bags are there, ready to go,” Bridie said, pointing to the hand luggage on the floor. “Do you mind telling me what this is all about?”

Linn picked up the tote and checked for her passport and other essentials. Everything was there.

“Did you find the number of the auto rental place?” she asked.

“I did not,” Bridie replied crisply. “You’re not renting anything. If you’re going anywhere Terence will take you; he’s out back working on his bike. But first you’ll be explaining yourself, Miss America, or my name isn’t Bridget Conlan Cleary.” She folded her arms on her chest and stood between Linn and the door.

Linn almost wailed with frustration. She’d guessed Bridie would do this, but facing her after knowing Con’s secret was worse than she had imagined. “I have to go,” she said wildly. “I just have to go, that’s all.”

“Without a word of explanation for that boy who loves you like part of himself? You won’t get past me, my girl.”

“I’ll leave him a note,” Linn said desperately.

“A note! That’s a fine thing,” Bridie said disgustedly. “He’ll be very happy with that, I’m sure.”

Linn decided to take a different tack and play her departure down. “I’m just going back to teach a pre-session course at my school,” she lied. “I’m not vanishing from the face of the earth.”

“Tell it to the Scots,” Bridie said, shaking her head, not buying it for a minute. “This looks like headlong flight to me and it will to Connor as well. What am I supposed to say to him?”

Linn twisted the strap of the tote in her fingers, trying to think of a reply. The events of the day were proving too much; her mind was a blank.

“He’ll follow,” Bridie said softly. “You know how he is; he’ll follow wherever you go.”

“You mustn’t tell him where I am!” Linn cried, alarmed.

“I certainly will. I never saw such tinker’s manners in my life. He thinks that he’s going to marry you, Linn. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“I’ll call for a car and you won’t know where I’ve gone. There are hundreds of hotels in this country. I’ll be on a plane before he finds me.”

Bridie planted her feet more firmly on the tile floor, indicating her unwillingness to budge. “I don’t think you’re as heartless as that.”

Linn was almost in tears. Time was passing and Linn suspected Bridie was trying to delay her long enough for Con to return. She simply could not face him. She would have to tell Bridie so that the housekeeper would help her get away.

“What is it, girl?” Bridie asked, sensing her weakening resistance. “It’s no good lying to me. I can see you’re on the verge of collapse.”

Linn blinked rapidly, pushing back the wayward strands of hair falling across her face. “Bridie, will you swear never to tell another soul? Will you swear before God to keep what I tell you a secret?”

Bridie’s eyes went wide; she was very religious and took such things seriously.

“I will. What has happened, Aislinn?”

“Say it. Say that you swear before God you won’t ever repeat what I’m going to tell you.”

Bridie pronounced the oath, blessing herself at its conclusion, and Linn was satisfied. The housekeeper would take whatever Linn told her to her grave.

“I went to see Father Daly today. He told me that… that...” She squeezed her eyes shut. “He told me that Kevin Pierce was Con’s father. He told me that Con is my half brother.”

When Linn opened her eyes Bridie was leaning against the entry hall table, her face ashen. “It’s never true,” she whispered.

“It is. Father Daly wouldn’t lie, and besides, Con told me all about our parents when I met him. I knew that Kevin and Con’s mother had been in love, but Con thinks he was born ten months after they were separated, ten months after his mother married Trevor Clay.” She dropped her eyes. “It was seven months. Father Daly changed the records.”

“Merciful Jesus,” Bridie murmured. “You poor lambs.”

“You never guessed?” Linn asked. “I don’t understand why no one even suspected if everybody in town knew about my father and Mary Drennan.”

Bridie shrugged, recovering slightly. “Why should anyone suspect anything? Kevin left and Mary got married on the rebound to a man who’d always admired her. Rejected, abandoned women do that sort of thing all the time. And when she showed up back at Ildathach almost two years later with an infant, why would anyone think it wasn’t her husband’s? A baby is a baby at that age. What’s three months?”

Father Daly had thought the same way thirty years ago, and his small act of kindness to a distraught young mother had led to Linn’s present heartbreak.

Bridie straightened up. “I’ll get Terence to drive you; you can’t wait for a car. Don’t tell me where you’re going. Con will try to get it out of me and it’s best I don’t know. Hustle up now, here’s your jacket.”

Linn’s revelation had immediately altered Bridie’s thinking. She was now as anxious for Linn to go as Linn was. Bridie ran to get Terry.

The boy appeared, wiping his hands on a greasy rag, puzzled by the air of urgency about the two women. He nodded at his mother’s directions and picked up Linn’s bags, taking them outside to stow them on his bike.

Linn grabbed a sheet of paper and dashed off a note to Con, repeating the story about a pre-session course that she had tried out on Bridie. It was feeble at best, and if it had failed to convince the housekeeper Con would see through it in a second. She was too distraught to think of anything else, and yet she couldn’t accept the cruelty of departing without a word to him.

Bridie flung her arms around Linn as she picked Ned up from the floor and kissed him a quick farewell. He leaped down to avoid being crushed.

“I know you must go but write to me. I’ll miss you so,” Bridie said, her mouth working. “Oh, my poor Aislinn. My poor Conchubor.”

“I’ll write as soon as I can,” Linn replied, embracing her tearfully. “I’ll miss you almost as much as . . .” She let the sentence trail off and they both understood. “Try to take care of him,” she sobbed, and left quickly, not looking back.

Terry was waiting for her, the bike idling under him. She climbed on behind him and glanced around at her beloved Ildathach.

Goodbye, my home, she thought. Goodbye, my love.

Linn put her face against the back of Terry’s leather jacket and let the hot tears stream down her face as the boy pulled away.

“Take me to Holy Rosary Hospital in Limerick,” she said in his ear, and Terry nodded, taking Linn down the lane to the road for the last time.

Terry’s bike had just vanished around the bend toward Limerick when Neil McCarthy’s Ford Cortina appeared at the gates of Ildathach.

Con was inside it, sitting next to the driver, gesturing broadly to punctuate some story.

He was laughing.

* * * *

Linn took her leave of Terry on the sidewalk outside the hospital. She didn’t want him to be able to tell Con where she went.

“I’ll be fine here, Terry, you can go. I have some business inside and then I’ll get a cab. Please tell your mother I’ll send for the rest of my things, and thank her for everything.”

Terry’s face changed. “You’re leaving for good, miss?” he asked.

Linn nodded. Of course he didn’t know; Bridie had been careful to tell him very little.

“Safe journey, then,” he said quietly. “Good luck to you.”

Linn looked at him, feeling a rush of affection for this canny, comely teenager who had chauffeured her around for six weeks without complaint when he doubtless had better things to do. Despite his Casanova tendencies he was as generous in his own way as his darling, fussbudget mother. She took a step toward him and hugged him impulsively.

To her surprise he pulled away, taking a deep breath and shaking his head.

“Your man told me to keep off from you, and I’ll not tangle with the likes of him,” Terry said.

Linn sighed. “It’s all right, Terry. Con was just trying to protect me but it doesn’t matter now. Don’t worry about it.”

“You really aren’t coming back?” Terry asked.

Linn shook her head.

“But he loves you, miss. He really does.”

Linn closed her eyes to clear her vision. She opened them and said, “I know that, Terry. I have to go in now. Be good to your mother and stay out of trouble.” She turned and ran up the broad steps of the hospital, head down, intent on her mission.

* * * *

At Holy Rosary the files weren’t computerized and microfilmed as in American hospitals, but they also didn’t have American confidentiality-of-records laws. A very helpful clerk looked up the patient lists for the years during which Linn guessed Con might have been admitted. Everything was alphabetized and Clay was only the third letter in the alphabet. It didn’t take long to discover that Connor Liam Clay, age seven, had been there in March of 1959 for a problem that had required his physician to send for his birth records. A faded copy of his handwritten birth certificate was attached. It stated that Connor Clay was the child of Mary Drennan Clay, age twenty-two, of Horsham, Derbyshire, England, an Irish citizen, and Kevin Michael Pierce, age twenty-six, of Elmwood Park, New Jersey, U.S.A., also an Irish citizen. The birth date listed was February 18
^th
.

Con had told her that his birthday was in May.

Linn gave up her last shred of hope. Her father had still been living in Elmwood Park when he met her mother; Linn had gone to school there until she was ten. There was no mistake.

She and Con had the same father.

Linn thanked the clerk politely for her help and walked outside into the mild, slightly cloudy Irish day. She hailed a cab in the street and told the driver to take her to a hotel with easy access to the airport. And when she got there she booked a 9:30 a.m. flight for New York from her room phone.

Then even though it was only late afternoon she fell on the bed in exhaustion, grateful for the oblivion of sleep.

* * * *

Linn was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of Con pounding on her hotel room door. Confused with sleep, terrified of what she might do if she saw him or touched him again, she stumbled out of bed and backed a chair against the door.

“Go away,” she screamed, trying to make herself heard over his shouts for admittance. “I don’t want to see you.”

The response was a splintering crash as Con broke down the door, overturning the chair and kicking it out of his way. He confronted her wildly, his face dark with stubble, brandishing the note she had left for him. He was drunk or very close to it, swaying slightly on his feet, his eyes narrowed and mean. For the first time since she’d known Con Linn was physically afraid of him. She had never thought before of the damage he could do with his tremendous strength, his powerful body, because he had always been so gentle with her. But now she remembered Bridie’s comment about his temper: You don’t want to be around when it erupts. He had demolished the hotel’s door as if it were made of cardboard. She backed away from him and he advanced menacingly.

“Don’t be frightened, Aislinn,” he said softly, the drink—or his emotions—enhancing his brogue. “Another man might break you in half for this loving farewell,” he sneered, waving the piece of paper, “but I will not. I haven’t come to kill you; I’ve come for an explanation.”

Linn swallowed and squared her shoulders. She would have to calm him down or he might destroy the place, using the hotel’s furniture as a substitute for her.

“Your explanation is in your hand,” she said, striving for a normal tone. “That says I’m going back to New Jersey to teach a pre-session course.”

“Don’t give me that!” he shouted, lunging forward. “Do you think for a moment I don’t know what this is? This is the kiss-off, the—what do you call it in America—the Dear John letter. You’re running out on me!”

The scene was interrupted by the hotel manager and a security man who’d been summoned by the noise. They came through the ragged doorway, looked at Con and glanced at each other. The security man reached for his gun.

Linn raced across the room, putting herself between Con and the men. “I’ll pay for the damage,” she said rapidly. “I’ll pay for everything. Please just let me handle this. He’ll be all right.”

“I will not,” Con said belligerently, moving toward the newcomers, his progress made slower and clumsier by his condition. He lurched to a stop, his jaw thrust forward pugnaciously. He collared the manager and said, “You got something to say to me, boyo?”

Linn could see that any discussion would be concluded with the use of Con’s fists. He was itching for a fight to vent the hurt she had caused him.

“Please go. He won’t break anything else, I promise you. He wanted to talk to me and I wouldn’t let him in; this is my fault,” she said, clinging to the security man’s arm.

He looked down at her.

“You didn’t mash in the door, miss.”

Linn closed her eyes. “If you try to take him out or call the police he will trash you and your hotel before you get him to the street. Please just trust me and go.”

This argument clearly carried weight. The manager and the other man evaluated Con, who was still gripping the former’s lapel. Linn could see that they believed her.