The Parting Glass by Emilie Richards Page B

Peggy said. “Be honest.”
    Megan looked torn, but in the end she shook her head. “There’s nothing you can do. We’ve got inspectors coming, insurance adjusters, and later there’ll be contractors. It’s going to be a zoo, but at least it will give me something to do so I don’t have to think about what happened.”
    “It’s another piece of luck that Aunt Dee already had our suitcases,” Peggy said. “And I guess there won’t be any hurry on cleaning out what’s left in the apartment….”
    “We won’t be renting it out for a while, that’s for sure.”
    “A delay would be hard to explain to Irene. She’s made special arrangements to have me picked up at Shannon.”
    “I wish we knew this woman. I wish somebody in the family had met her.”
    “She is family,” Peggy said. She had expected this last-ditch effort on Megan’s part to get her to reconsider, and she settled in for it.
    “But what do we know about her? Her grandfather was the brother of our great-great grandfather. That’s not much of a tie. And until she found us on the Internet, we didn’t even know there were relatives on that side of the family. We were supposed to be the last of the line.”
    “Well, we will be soon enough.” There was little that Peggy knew about Irene Tierney, but she did know that the old woman wasn’t well. She was eighty-one, had never been married and had no family in the small village of Shanmullin or in all of Ireland. She lived in the thatched cottage that had once been the home of Terence Tierney, the sisters’ great-great grandfather, and sadly, her life was drawing to a close, most of it lived without knowledge of their existence.
    “And I don’t really understand what she wanted with us in the first place,” Megan said. “Information about her father, who we never even knew existed? I don’t know what we can tell her.”
    Peggy thought Irene’s story was intriguing. In her first contact Irene had written that her mother and father had brought her to Cleveland as a small child. There had been no future for the family in Ireland, and there had been some hope there might be relatives remaining in Cleveland. They’d found none, as it turned out, and after Irene’s father died just a few years later, her mother had taken her young daughter back to Ireland to eke out a living on the Tierney land. Not until four months ago, when Irene, surfing the Internet, had come across mention of Terence Tierney in a newspaper article about the Whiskey Island Saloon, did she realize the Tierney family had indeed lived on in Ohio.
    “She wants to find out how her father died here,” Peggy said. “That’s natural. You of all people should be able to understand that. When Rooney was missing all those years, we wanted to know what had happened to him.”
    “I just don’t understand why her own mother didn’t tell her. Or how she thinks we’re going to find out anything.”
    Peggy didn’t know herself. She had done a little research at City Hall for Irene but hadn’t found anything. She hoped her sisters would continue while she was in Ireland.
    “It just seems like so much to take on,” Megan said. “Kieran, caring for an old woman you don’t know…”
    Peggy didn’t repeat what she’d told Megan so many times before, but it hung unspoken between them. She was determined to help her son, and that meant hours of work with Kieran every day. Irene needed a companion, but not constant care. Going to Ireland was the only way Peggy could afford not to work at a full-time job. Irene was giving her free room and board, and with Phil’s monthly check, Peggy could manage their other expenses if she lived simply. And what other way was there in rural Ireland? The arrangement was ideal, a surprising and wonderful gift.
    “She’s excited about having Kieran there.” Peggy got to her feet. “She’s never had a child in the house. She needs help, she needs family. It’s an opportunity I can’t afford to