The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

some handsome Irish rogue and have a reckless love affair.”
    “It wouldn’t hurt you any. Put flowers on Cousin Maude’s grave for me, will you, darling? And tell her I’ll come see her when I’m able.”
    “I will. I love you, Gran.”
     
    Jude didn’t know where the time went. She’d meant to do something productive, had really intended to go out to play with the flowers for a few minutes. To pick just a handful to put in the tall blue bottle she’d found in the living room. Of course she’d picked too many and needed another bottle. There didn’t seem to be an actual vase in the house. Then it had been such fun sitting on the stoop arranging themand wishing she knew their names that she’d whiled away most of the afternoon.
    It had been a mistake to carry the smaller squat green bottle up to her office to put on the table with her computer. But she’d only meant to lie down for a minute or two. She’d slept for two solid hours on top of the little bed in her office, and woke up groggy and appalled.
    She’d lost her discipline. She was lazy. She’d done nothing but sleep or piddle for more than thirty hours now.
    And she was hungry again.
    At this rate, she decided as she foraged for something quick in the kitchen, she’d be fat, slow, and stupid in a week.
    She would go out, drive down to the village. She’d find a bookstore, the bank, the post office. She’d find out where the cemetery was so that she could visit Old Maude’s grave for her grandmother. Which is what she should have done that morning. But this way it would be done and she could spend the next day going through the tapes and letters her grandmother had given her to see if there was a paper in them.
    She changed first, choosing trim slacks, a turtleneck, and a blazer that made her feel much more alert and professional than the thick sweater and jeans she’d worn all day.
    She attacked her hair—“attack” was the only term she could use to describe what she had to do to tame it into a thick, bound tail when all it wanted to do was frizz up and spring out everywhere at once.
    She was cautious with makeup. She’d never been handy with it, but the results seemed sufficient for a casual tour of the village. A glance in the mirror told her she didn’t look like a day-old corpse or a hooker, both of which could and had happened on occasion.
    Taking a deep breath, she headed out to attempt anothersession with the leased car and the Irish roads. She was behind the wheel, reaching for the ignition when she realized she’d forgotten the keys.
    “Ginkgo,” she muttered as she climbed back out. “You’re going to start taking ginkgo.”
    After a frustrated search, she found the keys on the kitchen table. This time she remembered to turn a light on, as it might be dark before she returned, and to lock the front door. When she couldn’t remember if she’d locked the back one, she cursed herself and strode around the cottage to deal with it.
    The sun was drifting down in the west and through its light a thin drizzle was falling when she finally put the car in reverse and backed slowly out into the road.
    It was a shorter drive than she remembered, and a much more scenic one without rain lashing at the windshield. The hedgerows were budded with wild fuchsia in drops red as blood. There were brambles with tiny white flowers that she would learn were blackthorn and friesia hazed and yellow with spring.
    As the road turned she saw the tumbled walls of the cathedral on the hill and the spear of the tower lording over the seaside village.
    No one walked there.
    Eight hundred years they had stood. That, Jude thought, was a wonder of its own. Wars, feast and famine, through blood and death and birth, the power remained. To worship and to defend. She wondered if her grandmother was right, and if so, what one would feel standing in their shadow on soil that had felt the weight of the pious and the profane.
    What an odd thought, she decided, and shook it off as she drove into the village that would be hers for the next six months.

THREE
    I NSIDE G ALLAGHER ’ S P UB the light was dim and the fire lively. That’s how the customers preferred it on a damp evening in early spring. Gallagher’s had been serving, and pleasing, its customers for more than a hundred and fifty years, in that same spot, by providing good lager or stout, a reasonable glass of whiskey that wasn’t watered, and a comfortable place to enjoy that pint or glass.
    Now