Page 46 of Charlie
“Oh, wow.” After the narrow driveway, the grounds opened up and revealed a large estate surrounded by stone walls and hedges. “How old is it?” I was referring to the manor house that stood like something from an Irish postcard.
“I have no idea.”
My eyes scanned the fancy cars parked out front and the beautiful horses watching us from their paddock. This place was like an advertisement for material success.
I didn’t expect this place to be so large. The other houses we passed were tiny compared to this.
Charles raised his hand and pointed behind the manor itself. “Conor is having an annex with ten rooms and bathrooms built down there by the pond;, do you see it?”
“Yes.”
“I love the back yard. In the summer we had bonfires and there’s a tennis court that you can’t see from here.”
The closer we got to the house, the more nervous I got. I wasn’t blinded by the loveliness of the place because unlike Charles, I knew what cruelty Conor O’Brien was accused of. The man had a long list of criminal offenses in his repertoire, from blackmailing to fraud. There were also several restraining orders against him from former members of his group. The report spoke of situations where he’d turned violent. Eileen’s words from the day before yesterday ran through my mind. The cruel behavior toward Julie, who was in a psychiatric hospital right now while her daughter, River, still lived under Julie’s tormentors’ control. According to the report from Kit, Julie had been devoted to O’Brien, and so desperate to show her loyalty to him that she’d accepted living in a bare room without any furniture or as much as a blanket or pillow to sleep with. After a month, Julie had begged him to allow her back with the group but the monster had told her that she was unworthy and accused her of stealing from him. That’s when he’d kicked her out in front of her own daughter.
Mr. Robertson, Eileen, and Kit had all warned me that O’Brien was a predatory psychopath, and now Charles was taking me to meet him.
“Don’t be nervous. You’ll love them.” Charles held my hand and I squeezed his fingers tight as we walked up the stairs and entered the house. Inside was an entry way with a high ceiling, modern art on the walls, and a round table with flowers in the middle of the room.
“Come on.” With another reassuring smile, Charles led me to a kitchen where three women were cooking and chatting. They looked up as we entered.
“Ah, there ye are. We thought ye’d gotten into trouble.” A woman who looked to be in her late thirties and spoke with a clear Irish accent put down the knife she’d used for slicing tomatoes. “And who is yer friend?” She cleaned her hands in her apron and came to greet me with the two other women.
I shook hands with the Irish woman as Charles introduced me. “This is Liv. She and I met back in the states five years ago and now we’re a couple.”
“A couple are ye?” I caught a glimpse of skepticism before she stepped aside to let the other two women greet me. They looked similar with olive skin, brown hair, and noses with an arch that made them appear as they’d stepped out of a painting from ancient Greece or Rome.
One of them showed me all the flour on her hands and spoke with a lovely Mediterranean accent. “Hello, it’s so nice to meet you, I would shake your hand but I’m baking pita bread for our dinner tonight. I hope you’ll join us. We’re having moussaka, Greek salad, and fresh pita bread.”
“That’s sounds amazing. It smells lovely in here.”
“Oh, that’s because we have a cake in the oven.” Ciara’s smile didn’t seem genuine to me, or maybe I was just being careful not to trust anyone in this house.
“Ciara bakes something sweet for us every day,” the Mediterranean woman without flour on her hands said with a loving smile to the Irish woman, who managed to look both stylish and maternal with her silk blouse, jewelry, apron, and make-up.
Charles put his arm around me. “Ciara has been with the group the longest. She runs this house and has two boys with Conor. Maya and Isabel are from Portugal. They’re twins although not identical.”
“Yes, we’re Trinners like Charles,” one of the twins said.
I looked at him because I’d no idea what a Trinner was.
“Except I teach there while you study.” He gave the twins, who couldn’t be more than twenty-three, a smile.
“Is a Trinner someone who studies at Trinity College?” I asked them and the taller of the twins, Maya, nodded. “How come you chose to study here in Ireland?”
“We wanted to try something different.” They exchanged a glance and I picked up that there was something they weren’t telling me.
“How long have you been here?”
“Almost a year. We were just supposed to stay for a semester, but then we got this unique opportunity to work with Conor, and he has helped us so much.”
“That’s right.” Isabel chimed in. “We used to be these clueless kids who just cared about fashion and likes on social media, but now it’s like we see people for what they are and we’re tapping into our full potential.”
“That’s… eh, nice.” I took mental notes that these girls fit the description of the people that O’Brien targeted. They were without their family’s protection in a foreign country, and I would bet a lot of money that they came from an affluent family too.
“Conor is upstairs in the schoolroom with the children. I know he wants to talk to ye.” Ciara opened her arms to Charles and pulled him in for a hug. “And don’t ye scare us like that again.”
Charles looked ever so happy to be fussed about, and thinking back to what I knew about him, he probably never really had that maternal figure in his life. With a grandmother who was sick, and a grandfather who was busy, he’d been left to nannies.
