Declan's Cross

A muddy trail led up through wind-stunted trees to a rock ledge with a precipitous drop to the cobble-and-boulder coastline. Lindsey had never been up there and couldn’t see the ledge from the lane, but she had seen it from the water.

And the crosses.

She’d seen them, too. Three stone Celtic crosses rising from golden-copper grass on the small hill at the tip of the headland. She looked up at them now, standing tall against the gray clouds of the damp, gloomy November afternoon. They marked old graves next to the ruin of a small church on the other side of the stone wall. She’d read there’d been a church dedicated to Saint Declan on this spot for more than a thousand years.

Whose graves, Lindsey wondered, were up there on the hill? She tried to imagine the rough, simple life the last residents of this place must have endured. Had they died in the horrible mid-nineteenth century Irish famine? Had they joined the mass emigration to other parts of the world? America, Canada, Australia?

What would she have done in their position?

Survived, she thought.

Her natural enthusiasm and optimism, coupled with her instinct for survival, would see her through what she had to do out here.

She tightened her sweater around her. She hadn’t brought a jacket or even a raincoat. She wore too-tight jeans, the same dark gray as her sweater, and black boots more suited to the Dublin streets where she’d spent the past two days than out here on the south Irish coast. An Hermès scarf with its cheerful mix of reds, blues and purples added a splash of color to her outfit. It was a birthday gift from her father, his first birthday gift to her in years. She’d deliberately worn it to breakfast with him in Dublin that morning.

Handsome, wealthy, lonely David Hargreaves. Smiling awkwardly as he’d complimented her on the scarf, forgetting he’d bought it for her himself just a few months ago.

Lindsey hadn’t reminded him. She couldn’t let the gift or his offer to have her move into the guesthouse of his home on Boston’s North Shore fool her. He would always be the reluctant adoptive father who kept her at a safe, arm’s-length distance.

She’d picked him up at the Dublin airport on Saturday and had spent yesterday with him, taking him to her favorite Dublin sights. The Book of Kells and the Long Room at Trinity College Library, Dublin Castle, Temple Bar, Grafton Street. They’d strolled through quiet St. Stephen’s Green and Georgian Dublin with its famous painted doors, then had dinner at a five-star restaurant, talking about their mutual love for the world’s oceans.

“I’m enjoying this father-daughter time together,” he’d told her.

Lindsey believed him, but she had no illusions. He preferred solitude. He always had, even during his eight-year marriage to her mother.

Her sweet, artistic, vulnerable mother who had died drunk and broke, still desperate for his attention and approval.

They’d married when Lindsey was five and divorced when she was thirteen. Her mother had kept the Hargreaves name and died when Lindsey was eighteen. She was twenty-eight now. Time to put past hurts behind her.

She just had to do it her way.

Her father had caught her off-guard that morning at breakfast when he’d told her he was extending his stay in Ireland. His business in London, his reason for this overseas trip, could wait.

He’d be in Ardmore tonight. Declan’s Cross tomorrow.

“I’ve booked a couple of nights at a two-bedroom cottage on the grounds of a boutique hotel in Declan’s Cross,” he’d told her. “I plan to arrive late tomorrow afternoon. You’re more than welcome to stay with me.”

Lindsey had felt cornered.

She’d told him so many lies.

He knows, she’d thought, staring at her plain yogurt and berries—which she’d ordered because it was what he’d ordered.

Finally she’d mumbled, “I know the hotel you mean. It’s only been open a year. You’ll love it. I’d join you, but I’m staying with a friend. We’re sharing a cottage within walking distance of the village.”

“What friend is this?”

“She’s a marine biologist from Maine.”

Lindsey had welcomed the change in subject and, as she’d left breakfast, told her father she looked forward to seeing him in Declan’s Cross.

“Enjoy Ardmore,” she’d said, keeping any bitterness out of her tone.

His pale blue eyes had taken on a warmth and a distance that together she found disconcerting. “You understand why I’m going, don’t you?”

“I do, Dad, yes.”

“Your mother loved Ardmore.” He’d looked away, then added, “Good memories.”

Lindsey had pretended she hadn’t heard him. Good memories? When they’d gotten back from Ireland, he and her mother had separated.

But her mother had loved the south Irish coast. “It’s magical, Lindsey. Absolutely magical.”

Lindsey didn’t want to see her father in Declan’s Cross. She couldn’t bear having him confront her about her lies.

So many lies.

She blinked back tears. She needed to concentrate. If she tripped and were incapacitated, she’d fast be in danger of hypothermia in the cold, wet conditions. No one would come looking for her. No one even knew she was in Declan’s Cross, never mind out here. She’d made sure.

She was on her own.

“I can pull this off,” she said aloud.

The wind shrieked again, whipping her scarf into her face.

She thought she heard someone above her on the trail, but it had to be the wind, the ocean, maybe a bird. No one else was out here—except maybe the ghosts of the Irish dead.

She suppressed a shudder and stepped over another puddle in the muddy lane.

Lies, lies and more lies.

It was her way.

1

EMMA SHARPE PAUSED atop a craggy knoll and looked out at the ripples of barren hills, not a house, a road, a car or another person in sight. She didn’t know what had become of her hiking partner. Maybe he had stepped up to his midcalves in mud and muck, too, but she doubted it. It wasn’t that Colin Donovan wasn’t capable of taking a misstep. It was that she’d have heard him cursing if he had.

A fat, woolly sheep stared up at her from the boggy grass as if to say, “You might be an FBI agent back in Boston, but out here in the Irish hills, you’re just another hiker with wet feet.”

“This is true,” Emma said, setting her backpack on the expanse of rough gray rock. “However, I’m prepared. I have dry socks.”

She unzipped her pack and dug out a pair of fresh wool socks. The sheep bleated and meandered off, disappearing behind another knoll, one of a series on the windswept ridge on the Beara Peninsula, one of the fingers of land that jutted into the North Atlantic off the southwest coast of Ireland. It had been centuries since these hills were forested. She could see peeks of Kenmare Bay in the distance, its calm waters blue-gray in the midafternoon November light. Across the bay, shrouded in mist but still distinct, were the jagged ridges of the Macgillicuddy Reeks.

Emma kicked off her shoes, sat on the bare rock ledge and pulled off her wet socks. She glanced down at the narrow valley directly below her, a small lake shimmering in the fading sunlight. She and Colin were five hours into their six-hour hike. With the short November days, they would get back to their car just before dark.

As she put on her dry socks, he came around the knoll where her sheep had disappeared. A light breeze caught the ends of his dark hair, and he had his backpack hooked on one arm as he jumped over the wet spot that had fooled her.

He climbed up onto her knoll and dropped his pack next to hers. “I like having you walk point,” he said with a grin.