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Before we headed further north for Giant’s Causeway, we made what they’d all thought was an unscheduled stop in Dundalk, a small town near the border with Northern Ireland.
Daisy broke her silence, looking confused. “Well, this is romantic, Jamie. Why are we here at St. Patrick’s cemetery?”
“Trust me, I just want to find something. We're looking for any gravestones with the name Quinn on them.” Catrina glanced over at me, immediately looking more interested. I didn’t need to explain anything to her. “If we split up, we might find them faster.”
Although this was not what Daisy had expected from her day out, she trod off down one of the overgrown pathways and began to read the tombstones.
All the stones I scanned were unsuccessful. I glanced up a few times and saw each of our party roaming along different parts of the cemetery with no luck. I’d all but given up after fifteen minutes of searching, when Daisy shouted.
“I’ve got six Quinns in a row over here,” she called out. When I looked up puffs of cold air blew out of her mouth and she stamped her feet to shake of the cold.
I made my way over to where Daisy was standing, sure enough there were six tombstones, some three and four to a plot, with dates of birth and death, the oldest going back a few hundred years.
“Okay, care to tell me why the interest?” she asked, as Catrina came to join us.
“In a minute. I just want to take pictures of all these stones.”
“Want to share why?” she asked, again looking confused as her eyes flitted between Catrina and me.
“These people are our, ancestors,” I told her. Ryan came up to join us. “The other day Connor was telling Cat about the Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin. As Connor was taking Catrina and the boys there, I asked her to do some digging. Last year I was contacted by a production company who wanted me to do a program about my Irish family tree. I turned it down because of other commitments, but they forwarded me the research they had. Our mom was a Quinn, and she had my great grandmother’s birth certificate from this parish here in Ireland.” I gestured toward the stones. “And all of these are our ancestors.”
“This is ridiculous because I’m finding this all quite emotional,” Cat confessed, dabbing her eyes with a paper tissue.
Daisy turned, embraced me and kissed me lightly on my chin.
“Oh my God, Jamie, you’re fecking Northern Irish! This explains everything. I thought it was all the spinach you ate, but now we know why your pee is green,” she joked.
“Thanks for the emotional support, Daisy,” I teased, trying to keep a straight face.
“Barney Quinn,” she mused, chuckling. “The positive in all of this is you tick a suitability box on my dating app profile.”
“You have a dating app profile?” a spike of jealousy hit me in square in the chest. Realizing she was joking, I let my breath out in a huff. “Haven’t I ticked enough boxes for you yet?” I asked, amused.
Daisy just smirked but didn’t reply, and by leaving my question in the air about the dating app, I knew she’d do what she needed to keep me on my toes.
For the rest of that day we behaved like the tourists we were. By the time we’d arrived back in Dublin, we had all been ready to part ways and get some much needed rest before the New Year’s party that had been due to take place the following day.
Chapter 16
“No way. You’re full of shite. Get your arse over here right now, Poppy. I don’t have time for any rebellion. I need you at the pub. You promised to help me during the day.”
It was New Year’s Eve and Daisy was furious with her sibling who was supposed to have been at the pub more than an hour before. She cut the call on her sister and threw her cell on the table.
“Selfish little bitch,” she muttered, grabbing a dirty glass cloth and folding it, before glancing at it and throwing it in the laundry bucket at the end of the bar.
“What’s up?” I asked, passing her with a folded table I was about to take up to the function room.
“Your fucking nephew is what’s up,” she shot back, her eyes stormy with rage.
“Ryan?” I asked, expectantly.
“No, Nick. Or should I say, Nick and Poppy. I told you that was a bad idea, but oh no, I was obviously exaggerating how quickly our relationship could go south. I didn’t need to own a crystal ball to know how bad this would turn out.”
Propping the table against the bar, I opened the hatch and pulled my girl into my arms. “Whoa. Breathe, baby. Tell me what’s going on?”
“Nick… you know, the one who was sick from too much alcohol and made a miraculous recovery yesterday after we left? He spent the day with my sister… and the night as well, if I know my sister.”
