Page 2 of Dublin Debacle

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “It’s a mystery.”

The man seated beside the American lifted his chin toward Em. “That would be because Miss O’Brien’s mother took her and her brother, young Finn, off to America to raise them after her father’s family tried to drag the children back into her Irish heritage.”

Em scowled at the Irishman who’d outed her and then transferred her glare to the Yank. “Look away,” she said. “I’m not your next article to be written about.”

“Maybe not, but now I’m curious,” the American said. “Was your father part of the Irish Republican Army?” he asked.

Her eyes narrowed, and she shifted her glare toward the man beside the Yank.

“Hold your tongue, Liam. I am not, and never will be, part of my father’s legacy. He fought hard enough to keep our family distant from them.”

The Yank turned to the man beside him, eyebrows lifted. “Them?” he asked, a question mark practically written on his forehead.

Liam tipped his glass and swallowed a long gulp before answering.

“Them being Travellers, you see. Emily O’Brien’s father was born into the Irish Travellers. Only his mother saw fit to send him to university with the money she’d squirreled away from her thievin’ husband. She had the good sense to send him all the way to the Americas—far enough away to escape family ties, if only for the four years he was in school. That’s where he met and fell in love with Em’s mother, Katie.”

Em’s lips pursed. “Haven’t you had enough to drink, Liam? Isn’t it time for you to head back home to your wife?”

The old man chuckled. “Aye, it is.” He slapped some euros on the counter and slid off the barstool.

“Wait,” the Yank said. “You can’t leave me hanging on just the beginning of a story.”

“I am deep in me cups and me bed be a’callin’,” Liam said, lifting his chin toward Em. “Let Miss Emily fill in the blanks.”

The American’s gaze followed the old man as he shuffled through the tables in the barroom and out the front entrance. By the time he turned back toward Em, she’d shifted her attention to another patron at the opposite end of the bar, intent on avoiding the man and his questions.

Em kept her head down and her gaze averted, although she watched the Yank out of the corner of her eye. The last thing she wanted was to get into a discussion about her family history. She filled orders for others and finally worked her way back down to the American, whose glass was almost empty.

“Can I get you another?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

She refilled his glass and set it in front of him.

“So, if your father met and married an American, how did you end up here? I take it he brought his bride back to Ireland?”

Emily drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Not at first,” she said. “They lived in a suburb of Boston for a couple of years after they graduated. My father worked hard to build a business in financial planning, and my mother was a nurse. When she was pregnant with me, my father received word that his mother had fallen ill and had no one to care for her. My father offered to bring his mother to America. She could have lived out the remainder of her life comfortably, but she refused and begged him to return to Ireland to be with her in her final days.”

“So, he returned to Ireland?” the journalist asked.

Em snorted softly. “He refused. He didn’t want to go back. But my mother insisted that somebody needed to take care of his aging mother. My mother, being a nurse and too soft-hearted, offered to do that while she was pregnant with me. So they packed up their lives and moved back to Ireland.”

“And you were born here.” The Yank’s brow furrowed. “That doesn’t explain the American accent.”

“What my father’s mother hadn’t told him was that she’d inherited her family’s pub and left his father. She was the only one running the place, and she feared her brother, my Uncle Paddy, would mismanage the finances and drive them into debtors' prison. She was on the verge of having to sell it, though it had been in her family for centuries. She wanted to pass it down to her only son, my father, thus keeping it in her family.”

“But if you were born here,” the Yank said, “you must’ve taken after your mother’s accent. I’d still think you’d have a deeper Irish accent.”

Emily grimaced, imagining the story the Yank would concoct about her dismal family tree. “My father’s pub came with strings attached.”

The Yank frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Another man nearby piped in, “Em’s Irish grandmother married the man in charge of the Travellers at that time. When she inherited the pub from her father’s family, she left her Traveller husband to keep the family business going. Though Em’s father eventually inherited the pub from her, he was still considered a Traveller choosing to live independently of them. They exact a tax on members of the community who choose to live outside their realm.”

Emily nodded. “Before my father agreed to come to Ireland, my grandmother’s husband was leaning heavily on her to pass the pub down to one of the other members of their community to hold for her absentee son. She begged him to come back under false pretenses. She wasn’t sick at the time. She wanted him back in Ireland to inherit the pub and not be forced to hand it over to the Travellers because she couldn’t afford to keep it running. But shortly after my father returned, his mother became ill with cancer.”

The Yank’s head tilted. “Go on,” he encouraged with a grin. “The story is convoluted, but interesting.”

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