“You should see it at Christmas,” Sean O’Riley said, and his eyes were bright, despite his weakened state as he lay in his hospital bed. “We’re on the coast, so there’s no guarantee of snow, but it’s crisp and cool, always, and the breeze comes just right, and it’s just beautiful.”
Caer smiled, impressed by the old man’s vigor. Being assigned to him had been a pleasure. He still sported a cap of thick silver-white hair, and he was watching her with eyes as bright a blue as the sky over Tara itself. If Sean O’Riley said that the weather at Christmas was crisp and cool, it probably meant people froze their buns off. She liked him, liked hearing the story of his life. He had been born here in Dublin, in the very hospital where he now lay, but home to him now was across the Atlantic Ocean. A city called Newport, in Rhode Island, known for fierce weather, including crippling nor’easters. He hadn’t even been back in Ireland a day before he’d been rushed to the hospital, but already, a bit of a brogue was returning to his speech, even after the years he’d been gone.
“I’m sure Newport is lovely,” she told him.
He nodded, satisfied by her agreement, then winced slightly, adjusting himself on the bed.
He had a strong constitution and had gone quickly from ICU to a regular room. Dr. Morton, the internal-medicine specialist, suspected some kind of food poisoning, but Sean had eaten the same meals at the same places as his wife, and an inspection at the restaurant where they’d dined had turned up no bacterial contaminants. Amanda remained fine. In fact, she was at the hotel spa right now, having declared that she needed a massage to ease the tension that had filled her because of Sean’s illness.
Sean was seventy-six.
Amanda was thirty-one.
That made her stomach forty-five years younger than Sean’s, so perhaps that had helped her. Then again, the doctors weren’t sure what had brought Sean to the hospital. They had checked his heart—which was healthy—and performed scans, and they had no real answers. They were pleased with his progress, but he was weak as a kitten right now. The kind of pain he’d endured had put tremendous pressure on his heart, and that had nearly taken his life. But as to what had caused that pain, they still had no good answer.
“It’s been good to come back to Ireland,” he said quietly, then smiled in realization of how strange that must sound. “Despite…this.” He gestured to include his hospital room and all the monitors still hooked up to him. “We saw a terrific production of Brendan Behan’s ‘The Hostage’ at the Abbey Theatre. A matinee, luckily.”
“You haven’t been back since you moved to the U.S.? Fifty years ago?” Caer asked.
He shook his head, and he looked at her, but it was as if he were looking back in time. “Caer,” he said, pronouncing her name correctly, “kyre.” “It’s so easy to get caught up in life, so you plan to do things, but…well, at least I made it back at last. But,” he said, and wagged a finger at her, “you’ve never been to the United States, have you, young lady?”
“No,” she admitted, smiling. “No, I haven’t. I tend to be busy right here.”
“Nurses are always in demand,” he said.
She felt a bit guilty as she replied, “Yes, nurses are always in demand.”
“Used to be, we had tons of Irish nurses and Irish priests in the U.S., but they say that the economy here has gotten so good that they don’t need to come over to find work anymore.”
“I never thought about it. I’ve always had plenty of work here,” she said.
“Well, someday you must come to the States. And not just New York or California, either. Take Rhode Island, you take Rhode Island, now. We have a wealth of beauty and culture and history. I went over because my grandfather died and my father wanted to stay here. I understood how he felt—even shared his feelings, to be honest—but my grandfather had built a magnificent house and begun a business that someone needed to take over and make it into a solid, profitable enterprise. So I did. And when I saw where the house sat, atop a cliff, high above the water, with the wind whipping up sweet and wild, well, I knew it was the home I wanted. Here…the world is progressing, and it’s right for Dublin, but in Newport I found the past, somehow. When I’m not on the water, I’m following the trail of one Revolutionary fellow or another. Ever hear of Nigel Bridgewater?”