Running Back (15 page)

“Mmm?” His thumb dragged against my lower lip. He leaned
closer, but I pulled away.

“Talking to your mom.”

Chapter Fifteen

When we returned to the inn Mike headed straight for Kate’s room. I didn’t expect her to be there, but she was, sitting at her desk before her computer.

“Mom. Can I talk to you?”

Kate’s face swiveled back and forth between the two of us. “What’s going on?”

I touched Mike’s arm softly. “I can go.”

“No.” Instead, he shut the door. “I wanted to talk about Kilkarten.”

I had said almost the same thing to him, long ago.

“Of course.” She glanced at me curiously, and then back. “What about?’

He took a deep breath, his gaze flicking briefly at me. For some reason, I reached out and took his hand.

He squeezed it like a lifeline, and looked back at his mother. “When I was ten I heard you talking to Dad about Kilkarten. It was an—an unpleasant conversation. About him being involved with nationalists. About Kilkarten being used for that. So I wanted to know if you knew—or had any reason to think—that there are any weapons buried on the land.”

“What?” Her face paled until only the red stain on her lips stood out, a macabre representation of life and love. “Weapons? On Kilkarten? No!”

I could feel the change in Mike. He’d been braced for revelation, for confirmation, but never imagined his mother would stare at him like he’d spoken in tongues. “What?”

“Michael, there’s nothing buried there.”

“But—” He stared at me wildly. “But he was so upset. You were crying. He said he’d been part of a rebellious group and that Kilkarten had been sacrificed for it.”

“Michael. Oh, honey. That conversation was never about guns.” She stood and came around and hovered before him, like she wanted to embrace him or touch his face but wasn’t sure how. Then her eyes widened, and she looked back and forth between us. “Is that why you didn’t want the excavation to go through? Because you thought there was something buried there?”

He stared. “There’s no statute of limitations for treason.”

She sat back down—more of a collapse into her hair. “How long have you thought this? Why didn’t you ask me? Why didn’t you talk to me?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“But, Mike. Oh, honey.” I could see the agony etched in each line of her face, and every line looked deeper today. “I am my own person. You cannot try to protect me. That’s not your role.” She shook her head. “You can’t just steamroll everyone else. It’s because you’ve always kept everything bottled up inside so much. I never taught you how to let it out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“After your father died. You just seemed like you were coping, and the girls and I were such a mess and it was too late that I realized you
weren’t
all right, that you never mourned—”

“Mom!” He jumped up, his hands fisting. “I am fine. I was fine.”

“No, you’re not.” She ran a manicured hand down the side of her face, over closed eyes.

He shook his head, hair flying everywhere. Bewilderment and anger and hurt fought for control of his features. “What, just because I tried to save our family?”

“Because you never let your family
in.
Why didn’t you talk to me about this? Or with Lauren?”

He sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, honey.”

He stared at her, and then grabbed my hand. “Come on.”

I stumbled. “Where—”

Behind us, Kate’s worried voice piped up. “Michael, don’t leave—”

He didn’t turn. “Sorry, Mom. I need to think
.
”

We didn’t speak until we walked up the stairs, and he held open the door to his room and I hesitated. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted—Because I slept in my own room last night.”

His eyes widened, and then he nodded. “Right. Not a problem.” He walked through and let the door close behind him.

I stood there for half a second, and then banged on in. I might have imagined it, but I thought he looked at me with relief. I offered a hesitant smile. “So, on a positive note, no guns.”

He dropped onto the bed. “I’m such a fucking idiot.”

“What? No. You were a kid. You misheard a conversation. It happens.”

“My mom thinks I’m insane.”

I shrugged. “So does mine.”

He rolled an arm out. “Come lie down with me.”

I happily obliged, curling against his side on top of the floral quilt. But I didn’t stop with my listing. “Hey, I had an idea.”

“A brilliant one, no doubt.”

“I was going to hire someone to do a survey about substructures on Kilkarten. Why don’t we have someone come down and do one to see if they find any weapons? Just so you know for sure.”

Mike grinned at me. “And just in case you happen to see your lost city, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, look. That is not the primary purpose.
But
if there happens to not be any weapons, and there
does
happen to be, say, a quay, wouldn’t that all just be wonderful?”

He was silent a long, long moment. Then he sat up and spoke with absolute certainty. “All right. Get me the contract.”

It took a moment for his words to make sense. “The contract?”

“Consider it a second positive note.”

I tucked my legs underneath me and stared at him. “Are you serious?”

He laughed a little. “Yeah.”

He’d rendered me speechless, at least for a minute. “Thank you.”

And I had my permission to dig at Kilkarten.

So I wrote to Dr. Sam Gregory, the Dublin specialist I’d always meant to contact for the electrical resistivity survey. He came down on Wednesday. He brought two assistants, grad students my age, and we spent three afternoons walking over Kilkarten, staking the land with metal probes and taking readings of the voltage. The survey created a map that showed the resistivity of the land. If we had any large, subsurface features, they’d show up.

Not much showed up.

I’d hoped for a very obvious footprint of a ship, but nothing indicated that strongly. There were some areas that looked promising enough to dig units there, but not what I’d been hoping for. The entire northwestern quadrant of the site was impenetrable by radar because the soil was too dense, so that was a waste.

It would be fine, I was sure. I’d just sort of wanted Jeremy to arrive and to be able to say, “Look! Here it is! I found Ivernis!”

However, I had good news for Mike. “Oh, hey,” I said as we lay out on the grass, and his head rested in my lap. “No weapons.”

He kept shaking his head, amazed. “I don’t understand. This was the defining trauma of most of my life. How can it not exist? Did we just miss them?”

“I don’t know, it’s possible. We seemed to have missed my harbor.”

He laughed and turned his face against my thigh. “What am I going to do without you this week?”

My hand froze on the top of his head. “Um. What? Why will you be without me?”

He stared up at me guilelessly. “I told you. I’m going to London for a charity event this week.”

I scowled down at him. “You most certainly did
not
tell me.”

He looked surprised. “Oh. Well, I am.”

“Hmph.”

I wasn’t exactly pleased, but at least I had no trouble keeping busy. I had to organize the crew, and gather all my tools. One day I went with Amanda O’Rourke to a folk festival several towns over, and Maggie had me over for dinner with her and Paul. Everyone was very sweet about my boyfriend leaving me for a week. Especially when I sat in the pub and scowled at the wall. At least three different people bought me drinks. As I finished off my last, O’Malley from the restaurant, Tim O’Brien and Eamon Murphy came over, wide grins on their faces.

“We hear he’s quite the athlete, your man. He any good at hurling?”

“Don’t know.” I took a swig and widened my eyes. “He plays football, actually.”

“Does he now? And how is he then?”

They couldn’t have been genuine. I bet they thought they were laying a trap. It made me smile for the first time all day. “He’s a professional, if you’d believe it.”

“Isn’t that a surprise? Charlie, did you hear that? Mike O’Connor plays football. You should have him in your next match.”

Charlie, a young man with gleaming blue eyes, looked back at me with unintentionally complicit glee. “That so?”

I widened my eyes. “It
is
so.”

We parted with mutual pleasure at binding poor Mike into a soccer game.

I also went into Cork to rent a truck. I had never rented one in my life. I wasn’t even sure if it was legal. Didn’t you have to be twenty-five? Or maybe you just have to pay ridiculous fees under twenty-five? I didn’t know. I lived in the city and barely ever drove.

I needed a truck; something that would carry the archaeologists and crew around, and fit our shovels and pick axes and buckets in the back. In Ecuador, we used to cram in ten people. Our shoulders and knees overlapped while the wind slapped our faces. We clutched the sides and laughed hysterically at each bump.

Which worked great, on the Pan-American. These little Irish roads looked far too narrow for an actual truck.

I managed to make it over to the hardware store without dying. It was much cheaper to buy local than to ship supplies over, and I’d already done my research and figured out where to shop for screens and tools. By the time Jeremy arrived, I’d have everything in perfect shape.

Theoretically.

Next, I set up a meeting with the local crew hires. In the pub, of course, no surprise there. They’d already congregated in the back half of the pub when I arrived on Saturday. They laughed loudly, foam clinging to the sides of their pints. I lifted a hand and smiled, and headed first for the bar and Finn. “Can I have a dozen pints of Guinness?”

“That’s a lot of alcohol.”

Startled, I took in Anna to my left. “Hey. What are you up to?”

Anna finished off her clear liquid. “Day drinking.”

I raised my brows and examined her glass. “Sounds like a solid life choice.”

Anna frowned, like she wasn’t sure if I was teasing or not. “Why are you here?”

“I’m meeting with the crew. You want to come with?”

Anna threw a look back at Finn, and then shrugged her shoulders with studied disinterest. “Yeah, sure.”

Anna’s inability to be impressed actually reassured me as we approached the table. If Anna could be that devil-may-care, surely I couldn’t be intimidated by a table of brawny Irish. I cleared my throat. “Hello, everyone. I’m Natalie Sullivan, crew chief for the Kilkarten dig. Thank you for all meeting me.”

I recognized some of the dozen. Sean Larry, who’d spoken to me at the month’s mind. Eileen’s granddaughter, Amanda, who helped around the inn, and Finn’s sister, Molly, who as far as I could tell was one of five siblings that belonged to the pub. A young man with the same stretched face as MacCarthy—his nephew, I thought he’d mentioned. In addition to the four I knew, eight others ranged around the table. The youngest was Simon Daly, at eighteen and nervous, while the oldest was in his forties with a suspiciously thick mustache for a balding man. The Wójcik siblings, Anka and Jan, whose parents had immigrated here thirty years ago. And three men in their thirties and a twenty-something with attitude. But they were all strong and healthy and outdoorsy, which was the important thing.

One of the men, with a head full of prematurely gray hair, said, “Not to worry, lass. Why don’t you pull up a chair?”

Lassied in the first thirty seconds. I worked to maintain level breathing. Not a good sign for establishing authority.

“Call me Natalie, please.” I tried to make my tone firm but friendly as I sat, Anna squeezing onto the bench next to me. “This is Anna O’Connor, Patrick’s niece.”

Everyone nodded, because most of them had already met her. She delivered her signature scowl, but didn’t say, “I’m not his fucking niece,” so I considering it a positive.

We did a round of introductions as Finn delivered the pints, then I plunged in. “I had several requests that I give an overview of the work, so I thought I’d tell you a little about the dig and answer any questions.” I took a long pull of my Guinness.

Anna kicked me, delivering a pointed look as she raised her hand to her nose. I wiped mine quickly. Dammit, I’d gotten foam on it.

Several of the gathered smirked slightly. One of the men, Colin, who had ears that stuck straight out of his head, a bobbing Adam’s apple and startling beautiful green eyes, spoke. “And you’re the one in charge and all?”

The others laughed.

I sat straighter. “I’m a doctoral candidate in archaeology and I’ve worked on plenty of digs before.” I’d just never been crew chief. “I’m very well qualified.”

The twenty-something smirked and leaned back in his chair. “Don’t have to be,” he muttered, adding some additional comment under his breath.

MacCarthy thwacked him and sent an apologetic look my way. “It’s all in good spirits.”

Anna and I exchanged uncertain glances. Devon of the suspicious mustache said, “Knew his dad.” He nodded at Anna. “Yours too, now.”

Anna bared her teeth. “Actually—”

I kicked her before she started spreading any more rumors, and she rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’m gonna get another drink.”

They watched Anna go. A man from a nearby table leaned over to speak to Devon. “Doesn’t look much like the old boy.”

One of his cronies joined in. “Has his eyes.”

Devon’s eyes twinkled. “Has his trouble.”

I slammed the flat of my hand on the table. “Sirs. Sirs!”

They all looked at me with surprise—either at my exclamation, or that I was still here. The prematurely gray one—Tim? Tim O’Brien?—smiled benignly. “What is it, lass?”

“It’s Natalie. Please.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s go over what we’ll be doing in the upcoming weeks.” I smiled brightly, making sure to meet everyone’s gaze. “We’re having a specialist come in next week to see if we can identify any interesting subsurface features. We’ll clear the field before—I’ll be supplying the tools. Next week the other three archaeologists will come down from Dublin and we’ll start opening the selected units.”

Green-eyed Colin leaned forward. “You think we’ll really find something?”

Quiet Jan piped up. “How long do you think this dig could last?”