Saving Christmas in the Little Irish Village (The Little Irish Village #5)

Chapter 37

37

Hannah made excuses, leaving her mam, dad, nan, and Judy talking over the top of one another. The two women, strangers but family at the same time, had so much ground to cover. A lifetime in fact. She needed to clear her head because, although she was younger than Mam, Judy was her great-aunt.

What if she was right? Did Judy want to change Emerald Bay, destroying not just the landscape and history but also precious memories. How could she lay that on her mam’s shoulders when she’d just learned her grandfather was a bigamist? It was so hard to take it all in.

She trooped up to her room, scrambled onto her bed and pinched herself, needing reassurance that she was awake and not having the most bizarre dream. The red mark was confirmation she wasn’t asleep – what her mam had said, what Judy had said, wasn’t something she’d dreamed up.

The Kelly family had an enormous skeleton in the closet.

Hannah desperately wanted to speak to Tom because he must have known what had attracted Judy to Emerald Bay in the first place. Her simmering anger threatened to boil and overflow. Who did he think he was keeping a secret that huge and not having the courage to be here when it came out? Underlying the rage, though, was hurt, which had stopped her from snatching up the visitor’s book containing his phone number.

She’d surreptitiously switched her phone to silent when her mam began talking because she hadn’t wanted to put her off with pinging messages. A wise move she saw, fetching it from the pocket of her slouchy cardy and checking it. She’d missed several texts, but Tom hadn’t reached out, and none of the rest were important. Right now, she needed her eldest sister’s calming bedside manner and rang her, hoping Shannon wasn’t with a patient.

Hannah relaxed a little upon hearing her sister’s voice. ‘Shan, we need to get together – you, Imo, Aves and Grace. It’s urgent.’

‘Twice in a few days. Should I be worried?’

‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’ Hannah hesitated because she didn’t want to dump the unbelievable turn of events this morning onto her over the phone. ‘Please, Shan, will you trust me when I say I need to see you all?’

Shannon seemed to be thinking this over, and Hannah was relieved when she said, ‘All right, but you need to calm down, OK?’

The only person who could get away with telling her to calm down when she was anything but calm was Shannon, and that was only because she was a nurse.

‘OK.’ Hannah bobbed her head even though her sister couldn’t see her and did some slow breathing. She wished she had her sick bag on hand because her heart was racing with a borderline panic attack.

‘I was heading home for lunch today anyway. I could meet you at the cottage in an hour. Let me ring the others, OK?’

‘Thanks, Shannon. I’ll see you there.’

Hannah knew working herself into a state wouldn’t get her anywhere. She just needed to take her mind off Tom’s betrayal, Judy’s suspected deception and the abandoned farm and famine cottage. If Eileen hadn’t insisted they store their kit bags at the church hall, knitting might have soothed her. But that wasn’t an option, so desperate for a distraction, she opened her laptop. Her fingers took on a life of their own, and she googled youth mentoring, curious about what jobs came under that umbrella, which calmed and focused her mind.

It proved an excellent rabbit hole to go down because the panic had subsided by the time she made her way back downstairs, sidling past the group still sitting in the kitchen. Only now the best biscuits were open on the table.

Mam and Judy were swapping notes about their childhoods as the initial shock of their meeting face to face wore off. Dad and Nan listened avidly. Hannah hesitated, wanting to blurt her fears about what else had brought Judy to Emerald Bay, but she stayed silent, with only her dad acknowledging her as she slunk past to pick up her keys.

The rain had eased a little, and Doris started with the first turn of the key. ‘At least you’re on my side, eh, Doris?’ Hannah said, flicking the lights on and wrestling the gearstick into reverse.

With the wipers sluicing back and forth, she was soon puttering, a little slower than she would have liked, past the twinkling shop windows and under the festive decorations of Main Street toward Shannon’s cottage, wondering how life in the bay could be carrying on like usual after what she’d learned this morning.

Hannah was vaguely aware there was no tour bus disgorging its passengers to take snaps of the picturesque cottages today as she pulled over to the side of the road, performed a quick U-turn and parked behind her sister’s yellow Honda Jazz. A beacon on a wet day. She saw Imogen had yet to arrive as she got out and ran to the cottage’s front door. It was open, so she stamped her boots on the mat then stepped inside, barely registering her surroundings, before stooping to take off her Docs. ‘It’s only me, Shan,’ she called.

As she dislodged her foot from her boot, Shannon appeared through the door at the end of the passage with chipmunk cheeks and a sandwich in her hand. ‘I made enough for you and Imo if you want one.’ She waggled her sambo, nearly losing the egg salad filling. ‘Whoops.’

‘I don’t think I could eat anything now; I’m too keyed up. Thanks anyway.’ Hannah fiddled with the laces of her other boot.

‘Well, I’m intrigued as to what’s going on, but nothing affects my appetite these days. Will you give me a clue?’

‘No. You rang Imo and the twins, right?’

‘Of course. They’re as intrigued as I am about what’s happened now. I tell you, the excitement never stops in Emerald Bay.’ Shannon eyed her briefly then devoured her sandwich like a human hoover. ‘I can’t stop eating these. Egg salad sandwiches,’ she garbled through her mouthful. ‘I’ve even been eating them for supper.’

‘Your first craving.’ Hannah grinned at her blossoming sister.

‘That or I just really, really like egg sandwiches.’ Shannon eyed the remaining mouthful with adoration and stuffed it in. ‘Mmm.’

Hannah’s foot popped free of her boot, and she straightened then, hearing a loud miaow, beamed at the Persian that had appeared alongside his mistress. ‘Oh, hello!’

Napoleon stalked regally toward her. Shannon, watching on, gave an eggy smile as Hannah swooped down to scoop him up in a cuddle.

‘I’ve missed you. Yes, I have.’ She showered his royal furriness with kisses.

‘I wouldn’t be doing too much up close and personal. He brought a rat in this morning.’

Hannah put him down, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and followed Shannon to the living room, where a Christmas tree shimmered in the fire’s glow. It was a much more respectable size than the Faraway Tree back at the Shamrock.

‘Why does it reek of eggs in here instead of the Vanilla Skies diffuser I bought you?’ Imogen called from the hallway.

Shannon rolled her eyes and whispered to Hannah, ‘I can’t use her stupid vanilla thingamajig. It makes me hungry for Carmel’s vanilla cupcakes all the time.’

Imogen’s perfume arrived in the room before she did. ‘Good, you’ve got the fire going. It’s freezing out there.’ She stood in front of the woodburning stove inside the original fireplace to warm her backside. ‘So, come on, Hannah, spill. What’s going on?’

Hannah was already FaceTiming the twins.

Ten minutes later, the only sound in the little cottage was the stove ticking away and Napoleon washing himself enthusiastically.

Hannah, meanwhile, was relieved to have told her sisters who the woman in the red coat was and everything that had brought her to Emerald Bay including her worry that she was behind the Greenhouse project. They were the voices of reason, telling Hannah to give Judy breathing space and trust that if she was, she’d tell them about her part in the land deal when she was ready. They’d asked her not to spoil things for Mam, and Hannah had promised she would give her the benefit of the doubt, but there was no room in her heart to let Tom off the hook.

When they were done, she looked at Shannon. ‘I think I will have that egg sarnie now, Shan.’

It was a miracle Judy survived her inquisition from the Kelly sisters, who’d launched like rockets into the scene in the kitchen. But survive it she did. The entire family – Grace and Ava staring out of Hannah’s phone with identical flabbergasted faces – listened as they learned about another branch of their family they’d not known existed until today. Time healed wounds because where once there would have been deep hurt and anger over William Kedder’s cowardly betrayal of not just his Irish family but his American family, too, there seemed no point rehashing that now. You couldn’t change the past, Kitty had declared. What was done was done. What mattered was how you handled the future.

Sometimes Nan could be very wise.

As questions were fired at Judy, Nora took herself off quietly to speak to her brother, Tiernan, because he’d been part of that shivering vigil at the harbour for their grandfather all those years ago, and Hannah’s ears burned upon hearing Judy allude vaguely to her and her husband being investors with business connections in Ireland. Investor was a loose term, but in Hannah’s mind, it was further proof she was right about Judy and the famine cottage land.

Liam had gone through to man the bar thanks to Enda tapping on the back door to remind him it was past opening time, so it was left to Kitty and her granddaughters to suggest that Judy check out of the lodgings she’d been staying at in Kilticaneel to stay in the Shamrock’s newly vacated Room 5. It would give them all a chance to get to know her better before her return trip to America. And, of course, it went without saying that she would spend Christmas with them.

Hannah’s insides twisted at the thought of the Christmas invitation she’d issued to Tom, but she quickly dismissed the memory. Whatever might have been blooming between them was over now.