“So, how old were you when you discovered St. Patrick?” I teased.
“Twelve! He was bloody twelve!” Tiffa bellowed from the backseat, making everyone laugh. “When Darcy was born, he was wearing a tiny little bow tie and braces.”
“Braces?” I giggled.
“Suspenders,” Wilson supplied dryly.
“He has always been an absolute geek,” Tiffa chortled. “That, my dear Blue, is why he's brilliant. And wonderful.”
“Don't try to be nice to me now, Tiff,” Wilson smiled, catching her gaze in his rear view mirror.
“All right. I won't. Did you know he was going to be a doctor, Blue?”
“Tiffa!” Wilson moaned.
“Yes . . . actually. I did know that.” I patted Wilson's shoulder.
“He wasn't cut out for it. He would have been completely miserable. Dad saw how brilliant Darcy was and just assumed that meant he should be a 'man of medicine' like he was, and his father before him, and his father before him. But Darcy was brilliant in all the ways that had nothing to do with science, right luv?”
Wilson just sighed and shook his head.
“Darcy always had his nose in a book. He used enormous words and used them correctly . . . at least I think he did. He loved history, literature, poetry.”
“Have you heard him quote Dante?” I interrupted.
Wilson's eyes shot to mine.
“What was that lovely poem you shared with us . . . about harpies?” I questioned.
Wilson chuckled at the memory and quoted the lines obediently.
Tiffa moaned, “That's awful!”
“I thought so, too,” I laughed. “I couldn't forget it, though. I ended up carving 'Bird Woman' as a result.”
“That's what inspired 'Bird Woman?'” Wilson asked, astonishment coloring his voice.
“Your history lessons seemed to find their way into my carvings more often than not.”
“How many? How many carvings were inspired by my history class?”
“Counting 'The Arc?'” I counted them in my head. “Ten. Tiffa bought a couple of them the first time she came to the cafe.”
Tiffa and Wilson seemed stunned, and the car was quiet for the first time since we'd set out. I fidgeted uncomfortably, not sure what the silence meant.
“Blue!” I should have known Tiffa would find her tongue first. “Blue, I have to see all of them. We should do something big, a big display with all of the pieces together. It would be brilliant!”
My cheeks flushed and I looked down at my hands, not wanting to get excited over something that hadn't even happened. “Some of them I sold at the cafe, but you are welcome to see the rest.”
“Darcy can die a happy man now,” Tiffa added after a moment. “His teaching has inspired art.” She leaned up and hoisted herself over the seat and kissed Wilson's cheek with a loud smack of her lips.
“Actually. For once, Tiffa is absolutely right. That might be the best compliment anyone has ever paid me.” Wilson smiled at me. Warmth pooled inside me, and the baby kicked in response.
“I saw that! The baby kicked!” Tiffa was still hanging over the front seat and she laid her hands against my belly, a look of intense rapture on her face. The baby rolled and nudged a few more times, inducing squeals of delight from Tiffa.
For the rest of the ride we talked, listened to music – I introduced them to Willie Nelson – and took turns driving and dozing off. But I couldn't get the image of a young Darcy Wilson out of my head, plodding over Irish hills in search of a saint who had lived many hundreds of years before. It was easy to see how a boy like that could go to Africa for two years or shun a medical profession for something simpler and less glamorous. It was harder to see how a boy like that, so inspired by a saint, could be attracted to a sinner like me.
Chapter Twenty
The process was incredibly easy. I met with a Detective Moody, who had been the responding officer on the case more than eighteen years before. He was bald, whether by choice or necessity, I wasn't sure. He was in his early forties, but tired looking, like he had a long life so far. He looked fit and slim in khakis, a dress shirt, and a shoulder holster that he seemed as comfortable with as everything else he wore.
“I can't give you details of the case. Not yet. You understand that if you aren't this woman's child, you have no right to the information. Not to her name, to her child's name, to the details of her death, nothing . . . do you understand?” Detective Moody was apologetic but firm. “But if you are who we think you are, when we get that DNA confirmation back, we'll give you everything we have. I have to say, I hope to hell that you are that little girl. It's bothered me for a lotta years, I can tell you that. It would be a happy ending to a very sad case.” Detective Moody smiled at me, his brown eyes sober and sincere.