The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

woman.”
    “My grandmother was very fond of her.”
    “More like sisters than cousins they were, despite the age difference.” Kathy nodded. “Your granny, she lived here as a girl after she lost her parents. My own mother was friends with the pair of them, and both she and Maude missed your granny when she married and moved to America.”
    “And Maude stayed here.” Jude glanced around the kitchen. “Alone.”
    “That’s the way it was meant. She had a sweetheart, and they planned to marry.”
    “Oh? What happened?”
    “His name was John Magee. My mother says he was a handsome lad who loved the sea. He went for a soldier during the Great War and lost his life in the fields of France.”
    “It’s sad,” Betsy put in, “but romantic too. Maude never loved another, and she often spoke of him when we cameto visit, though he’d been dead nearly three-quarters of a century.”
    “For some,” Kathy said with a sigh, “there’s only one. None comes before and none after. But Old Maude, she lived happy here, with her memories and her flowers.”
    “It’s a contented house,” Jude said, then immediately felt foolish. But Kathy Duffy only smiled and nodded again.
    “It is, yes. And those of us who knew her are happy one of her own is living here now. It’s good you’re getting around the village, meeting people and acquainting yourself with some of your kin.”
    “Kin?”
    “You’re kin to the Fitzgeralds, and there are plenty of them in and around Old Parish. My friend Deidre, who’s in Boston now, was a Fitzgerald before she married Patrick Gallagher. You were at their place last night.”
    “Oh, yes.” Aidan’s face immediately swam into Jude’s mind. The slow smile, the wildly blue eyes. “We’re cousins of some sort.”
    “Seems to me your granny was first cousin to Deidre’s great-aunt Sarah. Or maybe it was her great-granny and they were second cousins. Well, hardly matters. Now the oldest Gallagher lad”—Kathy paused long enough to nibble on one of her cakes—“you had your eye on him at one time, didn’t you, Betsy?”
    “I might have glanced his way a time or two, when I was a lass of sixteen.” Betsy’s eyes laughed over her cup. “And he might’ve glanced back as well. Then he went off on his rambles, and there was my Tom. When Aidan Gallagher came back . . . well, I might have glanced again, but only in appreciation for God’s creation.”
    “He was a wild one as a lad, and there’s a look about him that says he could be again.” Kathy sighed. “I’vealways had a soft spot for a wild heart in a man. Have you no sweetheart in the States, then, Jude?”
    “No.” She thought briefly of William. Had she ever considered her husband her sweetheart? “No one special.”
    “If they’re not special, what would the point be?”
    No point at all, Jude thought later when she showed her guests to the door. She couldn’t claim he’d been her great love, as John Magee had been to Maude. They hadn’t been special to each other, she and William.
    They should have been. And for a time, he’d been the focus of her life. She’d loved him, or had believed she loved him. Damn it, she’d wanted to love him and had given him her best.
    But it hadn’t been good enough. It was mortifying knowing that. Knowing how easily, how thoughtlessly he’d broken still fresh vows and dismissed her from his life.
    But neither, she could admit, would she have grieved for him for seventy years if he’d died in some heroic or tragic fashion. The fact was, if William had died in some freak accident, she could have been the stalwart widow instead of the discarded wife.
    And how horrible it was to realize she’d have preferred it that way.
    What had hurt more? she wondered now. The loss of him or the loss of her pride? Whichever was true, she wouldn’t allow such a thing to happen again. She wouldn’t simply fall in line—into marriage, then out again, because it was asked of her.
    This time around, she would concentrate on herself, and being on her own.
    Not that she had anything against marriage, she thought as she loitered outside. Her parents had a solid marriage, were devoted to each other. It might not have had that cinematic, wildly passionate scope some imagined forthemselves, but their relationship was a fine testament to a partnership that worked.
    Perhaps she’d pretended she would have something near to that with William, a quiet and dignified marriage, but it hadn’t