The Mighty Quinns: Riley

“Piss off,” Riley muttered. “This is our room, too, and we can talk as long as we want.”

Riley had never been much concerned about his schoolwork. Except when the music teacher, the beautiful Miss Delaney, came round to their room. He loved to sing and the days she brought instruments along, he was always the first to try them, able to play by ear in a matter of minutes.

She’d even lent him a fiddle, which he’d been teaching himself how to play, and she’d promised to bring a guitar once he’d mastered three tunes. But what he truly loved was the songs she taught—old Irish songs, children’s songs and ballads and pub tunes. And then, she’d sing in the simple and sweet style called Sean Nós, her beautiful, clear voice ringing through the room, unaccompanied by instruments.

“Listen to that,” he said, leaning closer to the window. “The storm is singing.” He hummed along with the sound, then added words to the tune.

The only good that had come out of his parents’ work at the Hound was that the five Quinn children were expected to help out on the weekends, which was when the pub hosted local musicians. Rather than dragging his feet to work, Riley arrived early so he could finish his tasks in time to sit in a dark corner of the pub and listen to the music.

Riley pushed away from the window and crawled into the bed he shared with Danny. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “The storm can’t get us.”

“Sing me a song,” Danny said, snuggling beneath the worn bedspread.

“What do you want to hear?” Riley asked.

“The barley song. I like that one.”

“‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley,’ it’s called.” Riley sang the song softly. “‘I sat within a valley green, I sat me with my true love. My sad heart strove to choose between, the old love and the new love.’”

“Why are there always girls in the songs?” Danny interrupted.

“I guess people like to hear about love,” Riley said. He really didn’t understand it, either. He would have preferred songs about battles or murder or even aliens. But most of the songs he knew were about love and sadness. And someone was always dying. “Da says if you can sing a sad tune, the lassies will love you.”

“Go to sleep!” Kellan shouted.

“Feck off!” Riley and Danny said simultaneously. They started to laugh, then pulled the bedcovers over their heads.

“Stupid gits,” Riley whispered.

“Sing the rest of the song,” Danny begged.

Riley continued, the sound of the wind and rain his only accompaniment. He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever like a girl enough to sing her a song. And if he did, would she follow him around the same way the girls followed Kellan?

Love was much easier to understand when it was words in a song than when it happened in real life.

1

THE LINE FOR Customs and Immigration snaked around the room and out the sliding glass doors into the hallway. Nan Galvin searched for a clock, not sure about the local time. Back home in Madison, Wisconsin, it was five in the morning. Here in Ireland, at Shannon Airport, it was … “Eleven o’clock,” she murmured, catching sight of a clock on the wall.

She smiled to herself. Though she’d planned hundreds of exciting trips in her head and flipped through travel books during her lunch hours, this was the first time she’d actually gotten on a plane and flown across an ocean. Everything around her seemed exotic, from the shape of the trash cans to the voice over the loudspeaker to the signs written in Gaelic.

“I’m in Ireland,” she said, smiling to herself.

The line moved and she pulled her luggage along with her, getting ever closer to the row of desks and dour-faced immigration officials.

Her mother had visited Ireland, the summer after her college graduation. Twenty-seven years ago, Laura Daley had stepped off a plane, just as Nan had just done, ready to begin a wonderful adventure in the land of her ancestors. Nan could only imagine the young woman her mother had been. Laura Daley Galvin had died of cancer when Nan was eight.

This trip was a way to discover the other side of her, she’d decided. After her mother’s death, she’d cared for her father, keeping house, excelling in her schoolwork, living at home while she attended college and after she took her first job. As time went on, she’d become more like him—a quiet homebody, satisfied to find adventure between the pages of a book rather than in the real world.

A year ago, she’d buried Jim Galvin beside her mother. But it was the discovery of a trunk full of her mother’s memories that caused Nan to reevaluate the person she was. The contents provided a window into the woman Laura Daley Galvin had been—adventurous, curious, spontaneous. And a packet of letters revealed a lasting friendship with an Irish woman named Carey, a woman that Nan was determined to meet.

She’d decided to start saving for an adventure and, to her surprise, it had taken her only nine months to save enough for ten days in Ireland. What would she discover here? Would she have an adventure as her mother had? Was there anything left of Laura Daley inside of her?

Somewhere, outside the terminal, a driver was waiting for her, ready to whisk her away to the pretty little seaside town of Ballykirk in County Cork and the beautiful country cottage she’d rented over the internet. Nan glanced at the clock and winced. He’d been waiting for three hours.

“Next!”

Nan stepped up to the desk and slapped down her passport and the immigration form she’d completed on the plane.

“Tiernan Galvin?” the agent said.

She never used her Irish given name, mostly because no one in Wisconsin could pronounce it properly. So, she’d adopted her father’s nickname for her—Nan. “Yes,” she said. “Tiernan Galvin.”

“Are you here on business or pleasure?” the woman asked.

Nan couldn’t help but smile. Just the sound of the woman’s Irish accent fired her imagination. Her mother had loved this land so much that she’d given her only child a strange Irish name. Maybe she’d even walked through this very same gate at Immigration. “I’m here on vacation,” she said. “Pleasure.”

“Are you visiting anyone in particular?”

“No one. Well, actually, his name is …” From her jacket pocket Nan pulled out the email she’d printed out and showed it to her. “His name is Riley Quinn. From Ballykirk. But I don’t know him. I’m just staying in his family’s house. Guesthouse. He’s picking me up. At least he was supposed to three hours ago. The plane was late taking off and now this line has gone on forever. God, I hope he’s still there.”

The woman examined Nan’s documents, then nodded.

“If you have anything to declare, go through the red channel. If not, the green channel,” she said. “And welcome to the Republic of Ireland. Enjoy your holiday.”

“Thanks,” Nan said. “I will.”

She followed the green signs and walked out into the baggage claim area. When she found the correct carousel, her luggage was already making its way around on the conveyor. She grabbed her bag and hauled it onto the floor at her feet. Hoisting her carry-on bag to her shoulder, Nan started toward the exit, her suitcase rolling along behind her.

She passed by a line of drivers holding cards with names on them and she searched for hers. When she didn’t find it, Nan walked outside into the late-morning sun.

A row of cabs waited at the curb but there were no other cars or drivers with signs for arriving passengers. Nan cursed softly. What was she supposed to do now? Renting a car was ridiculously expensive and well outside her budget. She’d already paid to use the car provided with the guesthouse.

Though the drive to Ballykirk might be a wonderful adventure, Nan wasn’t sure she could steer and read a map at the same time while driving on the wrong side of the road. There was adventure and then there was adventure. She dragged her luggage over to the first cab in line and leaned into the passenger side window. “How much to go to Ballykirk?”

The driver regarded her with a scowl. “It’s a two-hour round trip. About a hundred and forty kilometers. That would be two-hundred thirty euros.”

“I only have American dollars,” she said. “I haven’t converted my money yet.”

“Oh, I don’t take dollars,” he said. “Don’t really know the conversion rates. You could convert your money inside, but those money changers are all a pack of thieves.”

Nan sighed. “How about a credit card?”

He shook his head. “That I won’t, dearie. Check one of the other lads, they might. Try the bus. Or you can hire a car.”

“All right,” she said. “Thanks.”

This wasn’t exactly the way she’d pictured the start of her vacation. She’d planned so carefully, right down to the last dollar and the last minute. Not only had her plane been late taking off from Chicago, but she’d also nearly missed her connection in New York. Then they’d had to wait three hours until a storm system passed before leaving New York. The meals on the transatlantic flight were barely edible and she’d been stuck beside a crying child for the entire trip to Shannon. And now she was hungry and had a headache that made any more stress difficult. She had Riley Quinn’s phone number. She’d call and find out where he was. But first she’d have to get some change for the pay phone.