The guy smiled at me with gleaming white teeth and dimples for days.

  “No damage done, love,” he said in a lilting Irish accent. It was more subtle than his family’s. Almost buried.

  He shifted the bags on his shoulder, running his hand through his dark, tousled hair, not much different from Kellen’s. In fact he was the first person in the family to resemble Kellen at all but it didn’t take me long to realize it wasn’t his DNA that did it. It was his age and his attitude. It was that smile and the look in his eyes. The wolfish way he carried himself, as though nothing and no one mattered, not until he settled his sights on you. Then you were it. You were all there was in the world. I’m sure it worked wonders in bars. It was the same kind of look Kellen used to get with the girls that hung around the gym. The groupies that draped themselves on the back of his bike like snakes slithering up the base of a tree.

  I didn’t care for it.

  “Mason,” he said, offering me his hand.

  I took it slowly, shook it quickly. “Jenna.”

  “Jenna. No one told me there’d be beautiful girls here today, Jenna. I wouldna made such a fuss ‘bout coming round had I known the likes of you’d be here.”

  “Shut it, Mason,” Owen barked. He gestured to Kellen standing behind me. “That’s her fella there. Your cousin, Kellen. Maybe you’d best be introducin’ yourself to him and not makin’ eyes at his girl.”

  “Fiancé by the look of it,” chimed the keen old bird by the fire, her eyes honed in on the glistening diamond on my finger.

  I lifted my left hand and touched the ring absently. All eyes in the room followed my fingers in a moment of silence that I believed carried out into the garden to the children playing. To the rooster that woke my ass up at dawn.

  “Is it true, lass?” Bridgette asked me breathily.

  I opened my mouth, unsure what to say. Unsure what Kellen would want to tell them, if anything. I didn’t know if he was ready.

  “It’s true,” he clarified, his voice ringing out firm and familiar behind me. I felt it when he came to stand at my back the way you feel it when the sun rises. Before you’ve even opened your eyes, your body knows without seeing. “We got engaged yesterday before boarding the plane.”

  The room exploded. Voices hollered, women cried out excitedly, Owen and Sean whooped with joy and clapped their hands together. We were swarmed immediately, the two of us inside a mass of hugs and perfume and cloth. Kisses and congratulations, words in Gaelic that I understood only in context and not in meaning. Blessings for us and our house, our children. Our families still in California.

  It was a reception unlike anything we were going to get back home. Back there the past haunted the present, complicating it and sullying it. There would be bad blood, bad feelings, bad memories when we broke the news there, but here we were clean. Here we were two people in love, something to be celebrated, and I reveled in the free feeling of joy that gave me.

  No one asked me about the dress or the kind of cake I wanted, where I wanted to have the wedding. I was asked to hold up the ring for the room to see then it was forgotten in a shower of questions not about the wedding but about where we’d live. What would our home be like? How many children did we have planned? How far would we live from my mom and dad?

  Most of my answers were smiles and shrugs, and when I looked over Sorcha’s head to where Kellen stood with the men I wasn’t surprised to see him shoot me a desperate glance. A theatrical deer in the headlights stare that made me laugh and shrug some more. His face smoothed as he smiled and tipped a dark, frothing beer to me, instantly making me jealous.

  Where did he get that? Where did all of the men get them? And most importantly, where the hell was mine?

  “Jenna,” Sorcha said softly in my ear, her hand appearing on my elbow. “Grania’s askin’ to see the ring and yer face.”

  “Is that what I call her?” I whispered. “Is it Gaelic for grandmother?”

  “It’s not. Grania’s her name an’ ya can call her that if ya please, but I ‘spect she’d rather ya called her Mamó. It means grandmother.”

  I shook my head quickly as she led me toward the fire. “I can’t pronounce that, Sorcha. I’ll mess it up.

  “Ya’ll never know ‘til you try, lass. Here ya go.”

  She plopped me down on a stool next to the fire, face to face with the old woman sitting back in a large lounge chair. It looked like the most comfortable piece of furniture in the entire house and I got the impression it was here just for her. Specifically for her visits, meaning this was the head of any house. The head of their clann.

  I was sitting down to tea with an Irish Godfather.

  I’d never considered impressing Kellen’s family because until very recently he simply had not had any. No brothers, no sisters. No mother, no father worth speaking of. No aunts or uncles, cousins. No one but my own family and they already loved me. I was set for life.

  Sitting in front of Grania under her shrewd stare, I suddenly felt the full force of a pressure I had previously been exempt from.

  “I’m Jenna,” I told her with a small wave, not sure if I should shake her hand. Not sure if her bones would crumble under my grip. She looked that fragile. That aged.

  When I’d imagined Kellen’s grandma I hadn’t pictured her quite so old and I wondered how old his grandpa had been in comparison. I wondered if he hadn’t left the older woman for the other woman. I hadn’t loved the idea of him as a man before, but that thought made me like him even less.

  Grania smiled warmly, surprising me with a full set of what looked like her real teeth. “Jenna,” she mused, her voice quiet but strong. “What type o’ name’s that?”

  I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. Probably English.”

  “It’s lovely.”

  “Thank you. Sorcha told me to call you mo-mamo? I know I’m saying it wrong, I’m sorry.”

  “What do ya call your grandmother in America?”

  “Nana. I used to call her Granny when I was a kid.”

  Her smile softened, her eyes becoming affectionate. “Me ma called me Granny when I was a babe. Me da as well. Haven’t been called Grania or Granny in donkey’s years.”

  I had no idea what that meant, but I took it to mean a long time.

  “Would it be alright if I called you Granny while my clumsy American tongue gets used to Gaelic?”

  She laughed, a melodic, sweet sound. “Aye, ya can. Ya can call me Granny as long as ya like, a leanbh.”

  I smiled, leaning toward her. Pulled in by her warmth that burned brighter than the fire. “What does that mean? A lean-off?”

  “Uh LAN-uv,” she pronounced slowly for me. “It means child.”

  “I need a notebook to write all these down,” I chuckled helplessly. “I’ve been told I’m bad at learning new languages.”

  “Pft,” she scoffed. “Ya spend a year in Ireland an’ ya’ll be grand.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “We’d be pleased to have ya.” Her eyes drifted over my head to the crowd behind me. I knew without looking that they landed on Kellen. “The both of ya.”

  “He’s nervous to meet you.”

  “Is he?”

  I licked my lips, worried I was overstepping my bounds. Kellen wasn’t big on telling people how he felt, especially strangers. He would never confess to this woman that he was afraid of her. Of her hating him because of who his own grandmother was.

  “He is,” I confirmed, my heart fluttering nervously in my chest. “He won’t admit it to himself or to anyone, but I know he has a lot of hopes about this trip. He wants to find his family and with his mom and his grandpa gone, and his dad out of the picture… pretty much all of his eggs are in this basket.”

  I wondered if that phrase could cross the cultural barrier that rested between us. If it could traverse the years and miles and millions that separated me from her, but then I realized how egotistical a thought that was. That phrase came from Ireland or England for as much as I knew, and this woman had obviously farmed before. I’d never even played Farmville on my phone.

  “He has his eyes,” Granny said wistfully, her eyes still fixed on Kellen. “His face looks nothin’ like Oisin’s, but his eyes are the same. Dark. Mysterious.”

  “Secretive.”

  She grinned knowingly at me. “Enchantin’, aren’t they?”

  “They pulled you in too?”

  “Moth to flame,” she chuckled dryly. “Oisin was a wild one. A fighter. Me da did’na approve. It only made me love him more, o’ course.”

  I smiled. “Kellen’s a boxer. He picked it up when he heard his grandpa was. He never saw firsthand what kind of man he was.”

  “Not much o’ one at all,” she drawled, her grin dissipating. She pulled her eyes from Kellen’s and brought them stonily back to mine. “Oisin was soft on the eyes an’ hard on the heart. We were madly in love to start, but when Bridgette was born, well, he began to drift. He fought more an’ came home less. Then we had Sean. Then Owen. Then nothin’. He was a stranger ‘fore Owen’s first birthday. The boys barely knew him. Bridgette barely ‘members him. I thought for so long he ran ‘cause we had children, but when he had the babe with his French woman an’ kept her even after she left, I wasn’t sure of anythin’ anymore.”

  “Owen said you didn’t know about Madeline for years,” I prodded delicately.

  “Oh, I knew. I knew immediately. I did’na tell my children, though. One night Oisin comes pokin’ around, askin’ for a divorce so he can wed his new woman. Said she was in a family way and was demandin’ he make her legitimate. Can you imagine? A prostitute askin’ he make an honest women of her? I told him ne’er was he to darken me doorstep again, an’ I shut his arse out in the cold.”

  I smiled at the pride in her voice. At the unmovable lines on her face that smacked of determination, indignation, and so many miles of self-respect she could ride them to Dublin and back.

  “’Course part o’ me regrets it now,” she continued quietly. “Knowin’ the boy had no family to turn to when his ma passed, it breaks me heart. I would’ve taken him in had I known. I would’ve opened me doors and me heart to him. We could’ve— well.” She stopped herself, clearing her throat gently. “What’s done is done an’ he’s here with us now. Ya both are an’ with a weddin’ on the way. Congratulations, child.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Your family is excited.”

  She didn’t ask it as a question and that made me feel all the more guilty about the fact that I hadn’t called them yet. I should have said something about it by now. I’d had time. I could have done it as soon as we landed – I had my dad’s international cell phone with me in case of emergency. Didn’t Kellen and I getting engaged constitute an emergency? It would probably send us into Martial Law once Laney found out. She’d take over the world with her anger. Or would she?

  I didn’t know anymore and that’s why I hadn’t called them. She and I were finally good again. I wasn’t ready to go back to ground zero with her.

  I looked down at the ring on my finger, spinning it slowly and watching it catch the light. It was hypnotic. Tiring.

  “I haven’t told them yet,” I confessed reluctantly. “I don’t think… My sister isn’t going to like it.”

  “Why not?”

  “She and Kellen have history.”

  “They were steady?”

  I smiled at the antiquated phrasing but she was an antiquated woman and on her Irish tongue the phrase sounded sweet. So much sweeter than the ugly truth.

  “They were. For quite a while. And I loved him the whole time and he—he loved me for most of it. Even when he was with her.”

  I stopped, my head rising as I realized what I was doing. What I was saying. One second I’m telling this woman Kellen is worried they won’t like him and the next I’m confessing that he was engaged to another woman before he absconded with me. Not that much unlike another boxer with enchanting eyes.

  “That sounds terrible, I know, but I… I shouldn’t have told you all of that. It’s out of context. You have to know the whole truth and it’s not pretty and it’s—it’s—“

  “It’s why your sister will be angry,” Granny finished for me, her tone somber.

  I nodded, lowering my eyes again. Feeling like a child about to be scolded. And I deserved it. I deserved the judgement and the hate and the wrath I’d already endured and all that I would endure for what I did. I hated hurting people, hated disappointing them, and between my mom and Laney it seemed like that was all I ever did.

  “I stopped bein’ angry at Oisin the night I shut him out,” Granny told me slowly.

  I looked up, surprised to find her looking into the fire, her eyes far away, her face almost sad.

  “It wasn’t the baby what done it. It wasn’t his sad mug beggin’ at me door,” she continued dreamily. “It was me own babes in their beds. It was the lamp on the table I’d been readin’ by.” She drug her eyes to mine. “Oisin couldn’t be happy in that life, but I could, I was, and being angry at him was ruinin’ it for me, so I stopped. Simple.”

  I shook my head. “Laney would never see things that way. She’s happy now. She’s in love with another guy, and she and I are better than we were, but Kellen and I getting engaged is going to put us back at square one and I can’t stand the thought of her hating me again. I need to wait. I have to hold off on telling her until…”

  “Until when?”

  I laughed shakily, feeling a tear slip down my cheek. I was shocked to feel it. I hadn’t realized I was so choked up but it didn’t take much digging to understand why. It was the idea of hiding Kellen and I. I was excited. I was happy. I was going to marry the only man I’d ever loved, and I wanted to be thrilled about that but I couldn’t. Nothing about us could ever be easy. We’d never be simple.

  “Um, until Laney gets married,” I answered, wiping at my eyes. “Maybe six or so years after?”

  “Ah, lass,” she sighed sadly. “Ya dear, sweet, eejit.”

  “What?”

  “I said you’re an eejit,” she repeated, shaking her head in disappointment. “A fool.”

  “An idiot?”

  “Sure as yer sittin’ there. Ya canna postpone yer joy for others ‘cause the time will ne’er come. Is yer sister waitin’ round, askin’ yer permission to be happy?”

  “No.”

  “She’s not. She’s livin’ her life, lovin’ her fella, and what makes ya think ya canna do the same?”

  “Because it will hurt her.”

  Granny cut her gnarled hand across the air, swatting down my worries like flies. “She’ll heal.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Have ya made yer apologies to her?”

  “Several times.”

  “Fair focks. Move on.”

  “But it’s—“

  “Have ya not forgiven yerself yet?”

  I blanched under the accuracy of the question.

  She nodded sagely. “If ya don’t move on from it, how will she?”

  I stared at the edge of her chair, unseeing. Unmoving.

  A hand, warm and large, pressed against my back.

  “Are you doing okay?” Kellen asked.

  “No,” I muttered numbly. “I’m not.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I sighed. “I’m a focking eejit.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kellen

  Irish beer is good.

  Irish whiskey is better.

  I got one pint down with Owen, Sean, Donal, and Mason, and before the foam could settle down the side of the glass I had a new drink in my hand. This time it was a squat ceramic mug with amber liquid in the bottom, and for one weird second I thought they were giving me tea. Then I smelled it. Then I tasted it. Then I was in love.

  As the room and the liquor settled we split into two groups – women in the living room, men outside on the patio freezing our nuts off and refusing to complain about it. I wondered why we were out here, all of them going at each other about soccer and making me cringe each time they called it ‘football’, when Donal pulled out a pack of cigarettes. All of them pilfered one from his pack. All but me. I cringed when it was offered, a kneejerk reaction from my mom’s illness. From the lung cancer she’d picked up secondhand from her dad – from their dad – that had landed her in an early grave.

  “Not a smoker, then?” Mason asked. He took a quick drag and expelled a thin white cloud out of the side of his mouth.

  “No, never have been.”

  “They’re mad for health and shite out there in California, aren’t they? Are you a vegan?”

  “A what?” Owen demanded.

  “They don’t eat meat. No chicken or fish. No beef.”

  Sean frowned at me. “Ya look like ya eat beef to me, lad. Hoof and all.”

  I smiled. “No, I eat meat. I’m not a vegan, but yeah, there are a lot of crazy health trends in California. A new one every week.”

  “There’s a bloke at school,” Mason said, his accent taking a turn toward the British. “He doesn’t eat meat. It’s a focking nightmare to go anywhere with him. Always asking the waiter how it’s cooked. Are there eggs in it? Did it touch cheese?” He laughed, flicking the ash off the end of his cigarette. “I order steak every time only to give him the piss.”

  “Where are you going to school?”

  “Trinners,” Owen answered proudly.

  Mason winced at the nickname. “Trinity College. In Dublin.”

  “That’s a great school,” I told him. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. Thanks.” He took a drag, eyeing me scrupulously. “Did you go to college?”

  “I did.”

  “Where was that then?”

  “Berkley Law.”

  “You’re a solicitor?”

  “I was a lawyer. I’m not anymore.”

  I glanced in the window, checking on Jenna.

  “Good money in that.”

  I spotted her sitting by the fire, her back to me.

  “There is. Not for me, though.”

  She was talking to my grandmother.