Page 17 of The Matchmaker
“Is this you?” I ask, holding up a black and white picture of a grinning young woman.
“Should be,” Granny says, peering at it. “Ugly little thing, wasn’t I?”
“Would you stop!” I laugh. “You’re beautiful.”
“And you’re a liar. But that’s alright. It didn’t stop your grandfather from falling in love with me. I had other attributes.”
“Your charming personality?”
“That,” she says. “And I was very loose.”
I pretend not to hear her, pausing on the next picture in the pile. It’s one of the newer ones, a snap of my mother sitting draped over my father’s lap. They’re both wearing Santa hats and looking more than a little tipsy as they stare into each other’s eyes, sharing a smile.
My parents died in a car accident when I was five. They were returning from visiting friends in Dublin when a speeding driver hit them on the wrong side of the motorway.
My mother’s grandparents lived in Wales and offered to take me in, but everyone agreed not to uproot me any further, so I went to Granny, moving into her small cottage in a village no one had heard of.
Despite all the odds, it kind of worked.
Granny is stubborn and blunt, with a gallows humor that most people don’t know whether to smile or take offense at, but she was fiercely protective of me and raised me to be proud of who I was and where I came from. It was Granny who first helped me paint a picture of my parents in my mind, who made me believe that I was connected to them even though they were no longer here, filling me in on every detail she could think of, no matter how trivial.
I know, for example, that my dad was an accountant and that he played hurling and would eat dessert before dinner. I know that Mam liked sunflowers and buying expensive stationery that she rarely used. White wine gave her a headache. Her favorite color was blue. And I look just like her.
It wasn’t obvious as a child, but we could have passed as twins once puberty hit. The same wild brown hair, the same button nose. A high forehead, hazel eyes and sturdy hips that would have made me very popular back when my ancestors needed to populate the earth but are not so great now when trying to find jeans that actually fit me. But I love that I resemble her. That I get to have that part of her. Like something private we share just between us.
“Frank says we have to cut down the tree,” I say, placing the box back on the bookshelf. “It’s dead.”
“It’s not dead; it’s winter.”
“That’s what I told him,” I say, as she tsks. “He also says we need to clear out the garden before you fall over and die.”
She scoffs at that. “I’m not going to die in the garden. I’ll die warm in bed with my granddaughter by my side.”
“I hope I’m not also dying in this scenario.”
“Oh no, the apocalypse floods will get you.”
“If you just let me take care of it,” I try again, but she waves a hand, cutting me off.
“I’ll do it,” she says. “I said I would, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, last September.”
“Everyone always wants to cut back and clear out. You know this earth survived thousands of years without anyone touching it? If you ask me, we were all the better for it.” She pauses, fixing a beady eye on me. “Which tree?”
“The dead one? It’s the hawthorn around the back.”
“No.”
I frown at her. “What do you mean,no?”
“You can’t cut down the hawthorn tree. It’s a fairy tree.”
“Oh my God.” I climb to my feet, my legs stiff and uncooperative. “That might have worked when I was five, but not now. Frank’s going to get us the name of someone to deal with it.”
“And disturb the fairies? That’s what you want? I raised you better than that.”
“You also raised me to believe that the pylon down the road was the Eiffel Tower.”
