The short drive to Skibbereen didn’t give Maura much time to sort out her thoughts. How had things gotten so complicated in a single day? John Byrne’s death. Helen dropping into her life out of the blue. And then this thing with Mick—if it was a thing. Sure, they’d been circling each other for a while, but she hadn’t wanted to start anything when she hadn’t even been sure she was going to stick around. Even now that she’d kind of committed to staying, she had mixed feelings about getting involved with someone she worked with. Or more specifically, someone who worked for her. Of course, maybe “involved” wasn’t the right word. Maybe it had been pity on his part and Mick hadn’t meant anything more than to comfort her. She certainly wasn’t the type to fool around casually, but she also didn’t believe in instant happily-ever-afters. And if she was honest, even after a year of working side by side with him, she really didn’t know Mick Nolan very well.

She took the back way to the hotel to avoid the church traffic and was lucky to find a parking space just past the bridge over the river. She hadn’t given much thought to dressing up, either for the hotel or for Helen—could she have been a little distracted this morning? But she wasn’t out to impress anyone. Let Helen impress her. Well, no, she’d already kind of done that by showing up wearing designer clothes and working alongside this now dead millionaire who was leader of some mysterious multinational business she’d never heard of. Okay, message received: Helen had done well for herself after ditching her immigrant mother-in-law and demanding child in their seedy Boston neighborhood. She’d made a new life for herself. But now she had a lot of explaining to do.

Maura had worked up a good head of steam by the time she entered the hotel. She marched through the lobby and spied Helen at a table for two in the restaurant, which was well filled. She looked like she hadn’t slept well—she was pale with dark circles under her eyes. But her face lit up when she saw Maura hovering in the doorway. Helen waved her over and stood up to greet her but then seemed uncertain how to proceed. A hug? Maura would have rejected that. But shaking hands seemed weird under the circumstances. After some awkward hesitation, they both sat down. A middle-aged waitress appeared and filled Maura’s coffee cup, then retreated.

“To tell the truth, I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” Helen began, clearly nervous.

“Why?” Maura asked bluntly. “There’s nothing that says we’re supposed to fall into each other’s arms right now, but I know I have a lot of questions for you.”

“You’re angry,” Helen stated. “You have every right to be. I was young and stupid and scared. What I did was wrong, and I was thinking only of myself. And once you’ve asked your questions, we can go our separate ways if that’s what you want.”

“Did you come over here just to make yourself feel better? Or to try to make up for what you did? To apologize? To ask my forgiveness?” Maura realized she was getting mad all over again and forced herself to stop. If there was a call of blood between the two of them, she wasn’t feeling it, but she did want to know what had happened when she was a small child, and Helen was the only one who could tell her. “Does your family know about me?”

“My husband does. I’ve never told the kids—they’re barely in their teens. Look, Maura, I want to make this right, as far as possible. No, I’m not a religious fanatic trying to atone for my sins, and I don’t expect to carry you back with me for a happy family reunion. But I do want to apologize. Will you let me tell the story my own way? Then you can hit me with your questions.”

“Fine. I don’t have to be at work until noon.” The waitress appeared again, and Maura decided to order the full Irish breakfast, while Helen asked for a plain omelet and toast.

When the waitress was gone, Helen took a deep breath and began. “I loved your father, you know. I was a kid from Southie, one of six, lousy at school, with no real skills. I was a waitress for a while, and I got by, barely. Then I met your father. You don’t remember him, do you?”

Maura shook her head. “Nope. Or you either. I was, what, two when you split?”

“You’d just turned two when your father was killed. But let me back up. Did you ever see a picture of him?”

“Gran had a wedding picture of the two of you.”

“He was a good-looking man, Tom—sweet and funny and kind and pure Irish. Still living with his mother then. He had a job, off the books, so he had a little money. We started seeing each other, and a few months later, we got married.”

“Were you pregnant?”

Helen looked sadly at Maura. “No. We married for love, if you can believe that. We stayed with your grandmother, saving up for a place of our own, and then I did get pregnant with you. We had some happy years then. What did your grandmother tell you?”

“Nothing. We never talked about you at all. She found it hard to talk about my father’s death, so all I ever heard was that he died in an accident and you couldn’t handle living with your mother-in-law and a baby, so you’d just left. Gone. Poof. But she never said anything bad about you, even when I asked what you were like. The whole subject was off limits, and after a while, I stopped asking.”

“That story is pretty much right,” Helen said, and she looked away before going on. “Tom and I were happy, and we had you, and then one day he died. No insurance, no money coming in. I could have gotten another crappy job, but you know your gran had to work, so there was no one to look after you. I was barely twenty then, and all I could see was a dead-end life in Southie. I panicked. I scraped together enough money for a bus ticket, and I just left while your grandmother was at church with you.”

“No note? No call? No explanation?” Maura demanded.

“What could I say? I wasn’t proud of what I’d done, but I couldn’t see any other path. It took me a while to get on my feet. I kept heading west, picking up jobs along the way until I got to Chicago, and then I decided I needed a plan of some sort. So I dug in, got a better job, started taking classes at night. I guess it was my way of fighting my guilt: if I’d done such a lousy thing to you, the least I could do was work hard to make a success of my life.”

“So, fine, you did. Look at you now,” Maura said, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“You want me to apologize for doing what I set out to do?” Helen said with a spark of anger. “Sure, maybe I could have taken my hard-won successes and gone back to Boston and claimed you. And we all could have lived happily ever after. But I didn’t. I met my husband, and we got married, and the kids came along. In case you’re wondering, I do like kids. I like being a mother. I’m sorry you never got to see that.”

The waitress delivered their meals, giving Maura a chance to control her thoughts—and her tongue. Being angry at Helen might feel good, at least for a while, but it wouldn’t fix anything in her life.

“What about you?” Helen asked, poking at her omelet.

“What about what?”

“Your life after I left?”

“Boring. Work, school, repeat. I never figured I could plan a future, but then Gran died and I ended up here in Leap.”

“Do you like it?”

“I guess. It’s not anything I ever imagined, running a pub in Ireland.”

“Is there anyone special in your life?”

Getting a little too personal, are we? “No. I haven’t had time for that. I’m not even sure I want that. I guess I’d have to say I don’t have a very rosy picture of relationships. Gran was a widow and never got involved with anyone again. My father died. You bailed out. Too many of the girls I went to high school with had a baby by the time they graduated. If they graduated. The guys were out for a good time with no strings. I didn’t see anything I wanted there.”

“I think I can understand that. But when your gran died, did you have a plan? I mean, any idea what you wanted to do with your life? Stay in Boston? Try someplace new?”

“I didn’t really have time to think. I had to clear out our apartment by the end of the month, and Gran always said she wanted me to go to Ireland and tell her friends face-to-face that she was gone. I found a letter from her—she even left enough money for a plane ticket. And then I got here and found she had set it up that I would inherit the pub from an old friend of hers, plus his house. She never told me.”

“I can’t imagine what you must have felt then.”

Maura sat back in her chair. “I think I just went numb for a while. But I kept it together enough to claim the business and the house. I thought I’d just sell both of them and go back to Boston, but here I am. Listen—how did you track me down?”

Helen tilted her head. “I always knew where you and your grandmother lived. I heard when she died. And yes, I could or should have reached out to you then. But you disappeared pretty fast—I guess to come over here. So I went through the few things of your father’s that I’d kept and figured out where he’d been born, and then I started hunting. I have to say, there are a heck of a lot of O’Donovans in this neighborhood, but I figured it out. After that it was easy.”

“Fine, so you knew where I was,” Maura said impatiently. “Why did you come over here after you ignored me for years?”

“Oh, Maura, I couldn’t live with myself any longer. I had to see you, if only once. I know I have no claim on you and you have your own life. So maybe I’m being selfish, wanting to know what kind of a person you are, what you’ve become without me. I was prepared to learn that you were a drug-addled hooker, and of course I would have blamed myself. But I needed to know. I am so proud of what you’ve done here, Maura.”

Maura ignored that last comment, filing it away for later. “How did this whole hotel thing come up?”

“That was a gift from the gods. I took it as a sign. I’d been working for the company for a few years, and the deal for Crann Mor was already done when I got my last promotion to management. When I heard they wanted to send a team over here to get a feel for the area, I lobbied hard to be included.”

“And your big pitch about including the pub in the plans? Was that your idea? And was it for real or just your excuse to snoop?”

“It was a legitimate proposal, Maura. It still may be if plans for the hotel go forward, and it could benefit both of us. I’ll admit I was glad of the opportunity to meet you without all this other baggage, but I can see that you might think it was kind of sneaky. Unfair to you. But I really didn’t know how you’d react.”

“So, let me get this straight. Your company just happened to buy a hotel in the same area where I inherited a pub?”

“Maura,” Helen said wryly, “if you do the math, you’ll realize that the hotel deal was in the works long before you arrived here. The two events were unrelated, unless you believe in fate.”

“Huh,” Maura said since she had no better response. What Helen said was probably true. Multimillion-dollar deals didn’t happen overnight. Not that she believed in fate. It was just a strange coincidence. “So, okay, it happened and here we are. But why is your boss dead?”

Helen looked relieved that they had moved away from the personal stuff. “I have no idea. I’ve worked with John for years, and he seemed to be exactly what you’d expect: a good businessman who could turn on the charm when he needed to. Good at making money, but not by cutting corners or cheating anyone. A hard worker. A family man who valued his marriage, as far as I know. I don’t know of any enemies he might have had at home or here. Are the police sure it wasn’t simply an accident?”

“I told you, murder is rare here, so they’re reluctant to call it a murder too fast. But that doesn’t mean they’re sitting on their hands waiting. They’re investigating.”

“That’s good to know.” Helen smiled. “May I ask how it is you seem so chummy with the local police?”

Maura forced herself to sit up straighter in her chair and looked squarely at Helen, even as she struggled to figure out what she wanted to say. This was not the time to get into how she’d gotten entangled with so many crimes in the short time she’d been in Ireland. “That’s a complicated story. Let’s say I’ve been on the fringes of a couple of recent investigations.”

Helen seemed to accept Maura’s evasion. “Is your pub a violent place?”

“No, not at all. But there are things going on around here, things I never knew about, like drugs and smuggling. I think I’ve gotten sucked into some of them because I’m American and I see things differently. The Skibbereen police department is small, and they don’t see many murders or even much violence beyond the occasional pub fight. I can’t say they ask me for help, but sometimes I hear things at the pub and help them put the pieces together. They’ll treat you fairly, if that’s what you’re worried about. They’re good people and not yokels. They aren’t going to try to pin this on anyone just to close the case in a hurry. But you have to play fair with them too. Don’t hold back any information or decide for yourself what is or isn’t important. You don’t know what matters. Just tell the truth.”

Helen was still smiling. “Maura, you are one smart young woman, and I appreciate the heads-up. You’re right—if you hadn’t given me a heads-up, I might have dismissed them as unskilled rural cops. You’re saying that would be a mistake, and I appreciate it. Thank you. But I’m still not sure where you fit with them.”

Maura looked down and realized she was twisting her napkin into knots and made herself stop. “Think about it, Helen. I can help them because I run the pub, and people talk when they come in, especially about things like the unexpected death of a stranger. I listen, and I pass on anything that might be important but not so much that people who stop in won’t trust me. Plus, this case isn’t exactly typical. I’m involved because you’re involved. If I’ve learned anything in my time here, it’s that family comes first. You’re family. I owe it to you to help figure this out if I can. So back to the question, why is John Byrne dead?”