CHAPTER 27
“I’ll never get used to driving on the wrong side of the road,” my dad says. I rest my head in Stephen’s lap in the backseat of the car.
“It’s not wrong to us,” Stephen says.
“We’ll be home before you know it, Teeny,” my dad says in the rearview mirror. “Baseball games. Swimming in the lake. No more tabloids and dreary hospitals.”
“Now that you’re found, you’ll be yesterday’s news,” Stephen says with a wave of the hand. “Plus, I think Prince Harry has a new girlfriend. That’ll keep them busy for a while.”
I should be relieved to go home, but the past month replays in my head. How could I have been so stupid? So foolish? I thought I was lying to Kieran, but really I was lying to myself. How could I have thought this would end any other way? It was a fantasy. Kieran knew it all along. I thought I was creating my own story, but really, Kieran was. And I fell in love with him, like a total idiot.
That’s the part that hurts so much. My heart is broken, and I want to hate Kieran for all that he’s done, to wipe him from my mind, but I know I never can. Even all the way in America, I’ll think about him. Dream about him. Because that’s how memories work. They come back to you, knock you down, and beg you to surrender.
“I like the new do. Looks lovely,” Stephen says. I wish I was open to receiving his kindness, but my head hurts, and my heart feels worse. “Are you going to keep it like this?”
“I haven’t really thought about it,” I say.
“I think you should.” And then he leans down and whispers so my dad can’t here. “So was I right?”
“About what?”
He gives me a wicked grin. “Clementine likes sex?” I nudge Stephen. “Come on, I saw the way that boy looked at you. There was only one bed in that apartment. Was it how I thought? Like having your first kiss all over again?” Stephen gets a dreamy look about him, but his questions only threaten to bring back my tears.
Kieran confessed everything to my dad over the phone last night. How he helped me escape the hospital. How he hid me out in Waterville. How he’s a friend of James’s and felt obligated to help. And how he had no intention of keeping me away for so long, but the situation got out of hand.
“He thought he was helping,” my dad said. “I can’t fault him for trying, as misguided as it was. I remember how I was at twenty, with your mom. If she said jump, I did it, even if there was a plate of glass inches from my head. I didn’t care about the consequences. I only cared about making her happy.”
This isn’t what happiness feels like, though. This is what it feels like when the plate of glass shatters at your feet, and all that’s left is a bump on the head and regrets.
I roll onto my other side. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“We have a lot to discuss,” my dad says from the front seat. “I can’t believe it’s already mid-July.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Well . . . like college, for instance. You’re a sophomore now. I think you need to consider transferring out of Cleveland State and going away to school. Ohio University, maybe? I hear Athens is lovely in the fall.”
“Dad.” I sit up, watching him in the rearview mirror.
“Just think about it.” Then his face lights up. “Dorms . . . parties . . . football Saturdays . . . While I hate to admit it, it would be good for you to be away from home. Lord knows I’ve had enough practice not having you around this summer.” The last bit comes out strained, and I’m reminded of the pain he must have gone through.
“I’m so sorry, Dad. I’ll make it up to you.”
But he waves it off. “I have you back, Teeny. That’s all I want. Plus, I’m a Cleveland Browns fan. I’ve lived through worse, and every year I still think we have a chance. You think one month in Ireland is going to kill me?”
Stephen watches the pastures pass out the window.
I grab him in a hug. “Thank you for staying with him, and for coming to get me. You’re the loveliest person I’ve ever met, Stephen.”
Stephen holds me tightly. “I thought your dad might need reinforcements. You’re a hard one to let go of, Clementine Haas. I knew it the second you woke up in the hospital. You charmed me from the get-go.”
Stephen is unaware of how much his comment hurts. It just reminds me how easy it was for Kieran to let me go. He let me walk out of his life. Worse, he forced me out of his life.
I take a deep breath, sitting back, knowing I need to move on now, and ask my dad, “If I go off to college, what’ll happen with the bakery?”
“Gail Bober’s been running it all summer. She’s actually pretty good at it. She offered to manage the place until you graduate, and then you can decide if you want to take over. You might find you want to do something else with your life.”
What my dad is proposing is not like him. We’ve been a team ever since my mom died. Now he wants to break us up. “Where is this coming from, Dad?”
He pulls over to the side of the road so he can face me in the backseat. “This past month, Teeny . . . made me look at our life differently. I kept you home because I needed you. Without your mom . . .” He takes a deep breath. “You’re all I have. But that’s not fair. You need a life. That’s why you left the hospital, right? You wanted to find yourself?”
Tears form again as I nod. “But that was different.”
“I can’t imagine how scary it must have been to wake up with no memory, but you pushed through it, Teeny. You took control of your life. In a way, I couldn’t be more proud of you.” He shakes his head. “You can’t stop now just because we’re going home. You have to keep searching. Life is going to take you on a wild ride. You need to be open to that. And I need to let you experience it.”
“Really?”
He agrees. “Really.”
I grab him in a hug. “Thank you,” I whisper.
“Just promise me you’ll come home for at least one Browns game.”
“Browns/Steelers. Save me a seat in the Dawg Pound?”
He nods and turns back onto the road, muttering, “I still hate Ben Roethlisberger.”
As we drive, I lie back down on Stephen’s lap, and he plays with my hair again. I’m going to miss him. I barely know him, but he will always be etched in my memory. He was there on the day I was born, after all. He cut my hair and fixed me up. Made me feel human when I didn’t know who I was. And tomorrow, I’m leaving Ireland behind. All that will remain are the memories.
“I can tell you this,” my dad says. “Heather can’t wait for you to get home. She’s been calling and texting me every day. At one point, I thought she might get on a plane and come here herself.”
The name conjures memories—two little girls choreographing dances in my musty old basement, secretly putting on makeup at school when we weren’t allowed, driving along Lake Erie in the summer with sunburns, the windows rolled down, blasting music and singing at the top of our lungs, getting drunk for the first time, and then throwing up. Heather is my best friend. The love I have for her, the connection, becomes real in an instant.
“You should probably give her a call when we get to the hotel,” my dad says. “Let her know you’ll be home tomorrow.” His excitement to be home is written all over his face.
But my mind is elsewhere. Kieran said James was his best friend. But he can’t call him anymore. Can’t talk to him. Can’t hug him or laugh with him. After all that Kieran has done, I don’t want to feel sympathy for him, but his best friend is dead. The loss must run deep. I now understand a piece of Kieran’s burden that he couldn’t share, the distress I saw in him at times. He was grieving. It makes sense that Siobhan was protective.
Until now, I hadn’t considered Siobhan’s role in all of this. She knew who I was the whole time. She knew what Kieran had done. He asked her to lie. No wonder she didn’t like me. She was forced into a game she didn’t want to play.
I sit up again. “How far away is Tralee from Shannon Airport?”
“A little less than two hours,” Stephen says, surprised.
“Dad . . .” I find his reflection in the rearview mirror. “Can we make a detour? I need to go to the hospital.”
As I walk into the Tralee hospital, I try not to look in the direction of the grassy field where Kieran and I first kissed, but memories come back to me nonetheless. I press on, asking my dad and Stephen to wait in the lobby while I go up to see Siobhan.
“You’re not going to run away again, are you?” my dad says nervously.
“No.”
“OK, just had to check. You know what I always say—even when you’re winning, you’re one moment away from Earnest Byner dropping the ball on the one-yard line.”
“I promise.” I kiss him on the cheek and head to the elevator.
Siobhan and Clive are curled up in her bed, watching TV, when I walk into the room.
“More episodes of Shortland Street?” I ask.
They both sit up, surprised. Clive says, with a smile, “Please, soap operas have nothing on this story. A girl with amnesia hides out in a small town in Ireland while tabloids search for her, rocking the country with the drama of it all. I’m not even sure if Jane Austen herself could bloody well write this.”
The screen displays news coverage of me walking out of Millennium Tower, surrounded by reporters.
“Is it true what they say?” I ask. “Does the camera add twenty pounds?”
Clive climbs off the bed and comes to kiss me on the cheek. “Rubbish. You look gorgeous.”
“You’re lying. I look awful.”
“You look”—Clive gives me a sympathetic grin—“like you’ve survived a plane crash.”
I hesitate. “Can you ever forgive me for lying?”
Clive waves away my question. “You know I love a good story, and this is a good story. I’m just glad I got to play a part in it.” Then he leans down and adds, “I figured it out a few days ago. Your face flashed up on the screen in the waiting room while you were asleep. Surprised the hell out of me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Just promise you won’t forget about us when you’re back in America and dating Justin Timberlake. You’ll come visit, right?”
I grab Clive in a desperate hug. “I promise.”
“And keep the purple hair,” he whispers. “It suits you better than the bleached-out look you were sporting before.”
“I promise,” I whisper back. “Thank you for being my friend when I didn’t have one.”
“You always have a place in Ireland, Jane. Don’t forget that.” He notices Siobhan watching us with a keen eye. “I think I’ll go find us some tea.”
When he’s gone, I walk to the bed and sit down on the end. Siobhan is still, her lips pressed together. There’s a healthy glow to her skin.
“You look good,” I say.
“It’s all Clive’s doing. He dotes on me and the baby. You’d think he was the father.”
“You deserve to be doted on.”
“He asked me to move in with him. Wants to take care of me and the baby. Like a real family. Pretty untraditional, if you ask me, but I’ve never been one for rules.”
“Did you say yes?”
She nods, happy.
“Where will you go?”
“Belfast, maybe. Or Galway. He wants to open a new store, somewhere where people . . . will appreciate us more.”
“I’m happy for you, Siobhan.” And I mean it. She deserves a life filled with love. “You knew who I was the whole time. That’s why you didn’t like me.”
Siobhan nods slowly. “I knew it would blow up in Kieran’s face, but he was hell-bent on taking you in. I just didn’t want to see him in any more pain.”
“Him in pain?” I say it with too much sarcasm, my own self-pity and anger taking over.
“Yes,” Siobhan says strongly. “He lost his best friend, Clementine.”
“But he lied to me.”
“And you lied to him.”
I stand up, not wanting to get into this, the wound too fresh to break it open again. “I’m happy for you and Clive. I really am,” I say. “I just came to say thank you. And that I’m sorry I couldn’t get Kieran to change his life. He wasn’t in love with me anyway. He was just pretending.”
I start toward the door. It’s time to leave. I’m glad I saw Clive and know they both will be OK. At least someone’s story has a happy ending.
“Do you want to see the baby?” Siobhan says.
I turn back toward her, surprised. “Really?”
She stands up from the bed, dressed in black-and-white skull-and-crossbones pajama pants and a red T-shirt. Even in the hospital, Siobhan looks cooler than me. She leads me down to the NICU nursery. There are only a few babies being tended to by nurses. Siobhan talks to one and then waves me over toward one of the cradles. It has a protective shield over the top and holes to put your arms through. Inside is a small but perfect baby girl with a full head of blonde hair.
“Clive convinced me to name her Elizabeth,” she says. “I call her Lizzy.”
“I like that.”
“He said it would guarantee she’ll be a strong female who doesn’t take anyone’s shit.”
“I think her mother will teach her that,” I say. “Did she get your blue eyes?”
“No, they’re gray right now, but I bet they’ll turn brown like her father’s.” Siobhan turns to me. “She’s going to need to be strong. She won’t ever have her dad to hold her hand when she crosses the street or teach her how to kick a football or cry with her when her heart’s broken for the first time.” The emotion in Siobhan’s eyes is one I’ve never seen before—heartache. But a perfect baby is before me—blonde fuzz covering her flawless head.
James comes to mind. His naturally blond hair was the one feature he cared most for, constantly checking his reflection in the mirror to make sure it lay perfectly across his forehead.
And then, as I look at Lizzy, the puzzle of my life comes together, and my dreams begin to make sense—though the picture is not what I expected.
“How well did you know James?” I ask.
“Well,” Siobhan says. “Kieran would probably say I knew him too well.”
“He’s the one. James is the father.”
Siobhan confirms my revelation with a small nod. A moment isn’t long enough to let all of this sink in. My mind searches for clues to explain how I stumbled into this web I didn’t even know existed.
“I thought he was in love with me,” Siobhan says. “I should have known better when James wanted me to keep our relationship from Kieran. No one in love would do that. But I was desperate to keep him. I was so used to being left, I just wanted someone to stay. I begged him not to go to America.”
“But he left anyway,” I say.
“He wasn’t the kind of person to settle down. I knew that. He wanted to travel the world.” For just a second, it’s as if Siobhan’s wearing her broken heart. “He didn’t know about the baby when he left. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. I wanted him to pick me instead of being forced to out of obligation. But he picked you in the end.”
“I swear I didn’t know—”
Siobhan waves off my explanation. “I know.” She looks back toward Lizzy. “When Kieran found out I was pregnant, he made me tell James. He was sure his best friend would come home from America and take responsibility, but James refused. He’d fallen in love with some Yank by then.”
“It’s no wonder you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.” Siobhan laughs. “I quite like you now, but then . . . in the state I was in . . . left by James, sent into hiding, my dad threatening to cut me off if I didn’t give the baby up for adoption . . . It was a mess. And Kieran did what he always does. He stepped in to help me. He threatened James, said he needed to come back and take responsibility or Kieran would tell his parents what happened. James kept them in the dark, of course. He didn’t even tell them about you. If his parents found out he’d fallen in love with some Yank and left me behind pregnant, it would have killed them. James knew it. So did Kieran. I knew it crushed Kieran to threaten his best friend, but he was angry. We both lied to Kieran for months.”
To wrap my head around all of this feels impossible, but Siobhan continues peeling back the layers of the story.
“I was the reason you were on that plane,” she says.
“What?”
“Kieran’s threat worked. James promised he’d set things right so long as Kieran kept his mouth shut until he got home. James said he was planning a trip to Paris this summer, but he’d come to Ireland instead, and we’d work it all out.”
“The trip to Paris was my birthday present,” I say, baffled. “James changed our flights at the last minute to come to Ireland first.” With Siobhan filling in the missing pieces, my dreams solidify. They weren’t nightmares, but memories. I knew it, but I couldn’t admit it.
“He told me about you,” I say. “But not until we were on the plane here. He waited until the last minute, until I couldn’t go anywhere . . .”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
All the lies James weaved, the unknown story he didn’t tell until the end . . . But my anger eases. James is dead, and anger isn’t useful. My only choice is to let him go, like a ghost of my past.
I gesture to Siobhan’s arms. “James dared me to get a tattoo, even though he knew I didn’t want to do it. He said he ‘fancied a girl with a little color.’”
Siobhan scoffs. “He always had a way of charming you into something you knew was a bad idea . . . except he wasn’t ever the one to pay the consequences.” Her face creases with heartache. Her eyes fall to Lizzy. “James gave me a gift, really. He left behind a piece of himself, so he’s not entirely gone from us. It’s kind of poetic in a sad way.” She squares herself to me. “When the plane went down, Kieran felt guilty. He said it was his fault because it was his threat that put you on that plane. Ten years of friendship, burned in a field.”
“But it wasn’t his fault. It was just . . . an accident.”
“Kieran felt responsible for you. Like maybe making sure you were OK would make up for what had happened between him and James. I warned him not to do it. He was inviting a mess into our already messy lives, but he said he couldn’t leave you alone. James wouldn’t want it that way.”
Siobhan’s convoluted story eases my fury toward Kieran. Instead, my heart breaks for him. For the friend he lost. For the pain and guilt he must have felt. “But what about all the lies?” I say.
“You were lying, too, might I remind you.” Siobhan cocks her head at me. “And what was Kieran to do? Tell you the truth? Drop a load of baggage on your lap—a dead boyfriend with a pregnant ex-girlfriend? You could barely walk, let alone handle that.”
“But once I got better, he kept lying to me.”
“Did you really want to know the truth then?” Siobhan asks.
I deflate, my defenses weakening. I pull over two chairs so we can sit down.
“I’m just so confused,” I say. “I don’t know what’s the truth and what’s just a function of Kieran ‘keeping me safe.’”
Siobhan shakes her head. “Why can’t it be both? Love is never safe, but it’s the truth. He loves you. I saw it with my own eyes.”
I’m not sure any of this matters now. My life in Ireland is over. This story has come to a close, and not in the way I expected. But I can’t pretend my life is here anymore. And as long as Kieran allows his dad to control his life, he’ll never be free or fully happy.
“You should tell James’s parents about the baby,” I say.
Siobhan looks at Lizzy. “I will. Kieran’s right—they deserve to know.”
I take a chance and hug Siobhan. It surprises her for a moment, but then she eases into my arms. “I’ll miss you.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ll miss you, too, my Yankee Muppet. Come visit us.”
“Do you mean that?”
Siobhan nods. “You’ve got Ireland in your blood now. You can’t stay away too long.”
The little baby in front of us stretches her arms over her head as she yawns. She’s so new to this world. So fragile.
“She’ll be OK, won’t she?” Siobhan asks.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Teeny-tiny girls grow up to be the mightiest of creatures.”