Prologue: Mags

Dear Lizzie,

If you’re
reading this, it means I’ve gone off into the great unknown. My last great
adventure. I’m writing this on the first day of the New Year. The doctor said I
have a few weeks, maybe.

I suppose I
should apologize for not telling you, but you know it isn’t in my
nature—especially since I’m rarely wrong. And, as usual, you have been
incredibly busy; I don’t want our remaining time to be spent on specialists and
hospitals and you trying to fix everything. I’m just old, Lizzie. Almost ninety
is, well, almost ninety. We had a good run, kiddo. I could go on and make this
a dramatic goodbye, filled with all the horse manure people expect you to put
into a goodbye message, but I didn’t put pen to paper to communicate
pleasantries from beyond the grave.

This letter
is for three things: 1) explaining the other letters, 2) kicking your uptight
hiney into gear, and 3) apologizing for keeping a promise.

I have
written you seventeen letters including this one. You know I was never one to
hold anything back—always told you exactly what I was thinking. The thing is, I
think I did hold back just a little, either because I didn’t think you could
hear me, or because I thought you would find your own way eventually. But here
I am at the end and I honestly don’t know if you will find the way out by
yourself—while you’re still young. So here I am stacking the deck, making sure
you do. Think of these letters as guideposts. 

You may not
think you’re lost, Lizzie, but you are. Winning isn’t everything. Living is
everything.

I’ve been
disappointed to see all the color drain from your life. You haven’t been able
to separate who you are from what you do as a divorce lawyer. You used to be so
full of life, so vibrant, so . . . fearless. Your opponents
might think you’re fearless, but I know better, Lizzie. You’ve been lost and
scared for a while now.

Here’s the
part where I apologize. There were promises I made a long time ago. I swore to
keep those secrets from you, against my better judgment, and for that I am
truly sorry. Looking back, I think this whole ruthless lawyer thing might be my
fault.

Ever since
you were a girl, you believed certain things about your parents. You believed
that your father divorced your mother and took everything; that she fell apart
and left you, and that’s why, as your great-aunt and only remaining family, I
came to raise you when you were four. I think you became such a formidable
attorney because of this. You thought your mother was weak and abandoned you.
You thought your father was a bastard for ruining your mother and also
abandoning you. It doesn’t take a genius to see where your issues with men come
from, Lizzie.

But none of
what you know is strictly the truth.

I promise to
tell you how it all happened and the truth behind how you and I became our own
unit of two. There’s a plan to these letters. I know you must be furious with
me for not telling you that I’m sick and for not telling you the truth I’ve
been keeping for the last thirty-five years—and for not just spitting it out in
this first letter—but I always did my best by you, so trust in me one last
time.

Mags

P.S. Just
because I’m dead, it doesn’t mean I’m going to take it easy on you. Whether you
know it right now or not, you’ve made quite a mess.

Chapter 1: Ireland

The green was everywhere. The hills, the trees,
even the tiny country road appeared to grow grass through the gravel. Ireland
seemed intent on washing the black and gray out of her mind and replacing it
with green.

There hadn’t been a sign in miles. No way to tell
if she was lost or going the right way.

“Damn it!” She slammed her hand against the rental
car’s navigation system. It kept losing its GPS signal.

There was a clearing one hundred feet ahead. She
pulled to the side of the road and parked. The car purred to a stop as she
turned the key in the ignition. Her knuckles turned bone-white as she gripped
the wheel.

“Breathe, Beth, just breathe,” she whispered,
letting her hands fall from the steering wheel and onto her thighs with a muted
thud.

Her head fell backwards against the headrest. Her
eyes closed as she focused on the feeling of her chest rising and falling. And
the sudden silence.

The light of the day illuminated her closed lids,
creating a green screen for the flood of images and memories that crashed into
her. Mags lying there looking emaciated, showing every bit of her eighty-nine years.
All her vibrancy, her tenacity, her life ending.

And that look she had given Beth—wanting
desperately to communicate something vitally important, but no longer having
the ability to speak. It was a look of love and hope and something
else . . . pity.

The tear trailed slowly down her cheek,
electrifying her skin as it went. And then another.

The funeral had been bright with color, almost
vulgar. Mags hated black and gray; “Anything but that!” she used to say. “Give
me red, green, orange, purple—whatever, just give me something I can work with.
Something to delight the senses.” Her friends had remembered.

She was buried on a Saturday.

By Sunday Beth had received the box. It was blue
with a red ribbon and held seventeen letters, each in its own bright envelope.
No two were alike save for Mags’ ornate writing, which labeled them all. “Start Here Lizzie” identified the
first. It had left her breathless and reeling—sucker-punched her with no
defendant to hold responsible, no legal recourse to make her whole, no escaping
the mirror Mags had held up and forced on her.

No one to hold on to as Mags told her that
everything she had come to believe about the parents who abandoned
her . . . could be wrong.

She hadn’t realized it until the letter, but she
had become a lawyer to feel strong, unlike her mother. She had become a lawyer
to stick it to all the bastards like her asshole father. For the last decade,
she had inadvertently based her entire life on a series of assumptions about
the two people who had created her. Assumptions which, apparently, were total bullshit.

A path subconsciously chosen because of secrets
and lies. And she had no idea how far the rabbit hole went. 

She wasn’t due back in the office until Wednesday,
but she was there on Monday morning resolute in her decision to leave. Bill had
tried to convince her to take a couple of weeks. She needed longer.

He had turned almost purple enough to match his
silk tie; the firm would sorely miss their lethal shark for however long she
would be gone. But what could he do? Nothing. She was the best divorce attorney
in San Francisco and she knew it.

The partners at Livingston & Bloom had always
had to go along with her decisions. When it came to Beth, they had a proverbial
gun to their heads. They were usually happy to oblige since she had made them
millions with some of the most difficult and high-profile cases in California.

“How much time do you need?” Bill had prodded,
following her into her office.

“I don’t know,” she huffed as she packed up the few
personal items she kept in her desk. She stopped and looked out of her corner
office, towards the windows that held the perfect view of the Golden Gate
Bridge and the bay. “At least a couple of months, maybe more.” She returned to
the matter of packing up the box she had brought with her. “I’m taking an
extended leave.”

Bill swayed where he stood, thinking about how to
approach her. His potbelly protruded over his five-hundred-dollar belt. “Come
on, Elizabeth, you’re grieving.” He thought some more. “Just don’t make any
life decisions right now.” He held up his hands like he was trying to calm a
wild animal. “Take the month. We’ll shuffle the clients around temporarily and
then get you up to speed when you come back.”

She finished retrieving her personals. Her office
was massive, but it only took her five minutes. Smoothing her black pencil
skirt quickly with her hands, she turned her attention to Bill. “No, assign
them permanently to Kayla, Mike, and Ben. They’re perfectly capable of handling
all of my current cases. It could be an entire year before I’m back.”

He opened his mouth to argue. She narrowed her
eyes at him. Her contract was ironclad. She didn’t need his permission. His job
was to keep her happy, keep her with the firm. He quickly composed his features;
only the bright magenta color of his skin betrayed his true thoughts. He wasn’t
happy about losing her for an indefinite period of time, but she had him by the
balls.

He relented. “Of course.” She could still see
through him. He thought her reaction to her great-aunt’s death was wildly out
of proportion. After all, Magdalen had lived a long and happy life.

It was
true. More than Bill could know. Mags hadn’t wasted a second. But it wasn’t
about Mags, it was about Beth.

She opened her eyes, leaving the blacks and grays
of her life behind, and looked out the window to her right. Ireland was greener
than green. She restarted the car—the GPS signal was back.

* * *

The trees gave way to a small oval of gravel at
the base of the cottage. Beth stopped the car and expelled all the air from her
lungs as the silence filled her brain again. For a moment she allowed herself
to relish in the arresting of all movement. The stillness. The end of her
journey.

She clasped her fingers in her lap as she studied
the place she would call home for . . . however long it
took. There appeared to be two stories to the little cottage. Double
semi-lancet arched windows flanked a bright red front door. The pitched roof
was a dark black-gray color with a chimney. She could see a lake peeking out on
the right side, behind the house. It was quintessentially Irish.

It looked like a place where peace might be found.
Maybe even enlightenment. A few weeks here and she would have her head on
straight. Her need to leave, to escape the life she had so carefully crafted
over the course of a decade, would be a distant memory, and everything could
get back on track.

She would process Mags’ death; reaffirm her desire
to be the star attorney with the flawless track record; go back to her sleek
San Francisco apartment overlooking the Marina; recommit to
John . . . well, maybe not everything had to go back to the way it was. Mags had never liked
John. She thought he was dull and much too dreary for a thirty-five-year-old.

The corners of her mouth turned up slightly as she
remembered Mags’ disapproving expression.

“Honestly, Lizzie! You’ve been seeing him for
what, a year? It’s no wonder you haven’t said ‘I love you’ yet, he’s awful! And
a total bore, I almost slipped into a coma listening to him. Not bad to look
at, BUT really. I think you may have
gone a little cray-cray with this
one.” Beth laughed out loud at the memory. That was Mags. She loved language,
loved knowing what the young people were saying; she even watched MTV. An
eighty-nine-year-old whose speech patterns oscillated between twenty-two and
forty-five, but nothing north of sixty.

She never had any problem being blunt. And John had talked about the weather for most of
the hour. Beth tried to change the topic more than once, but was more amused by
Mags’ bewildered expression and his incredible ignorance to her knitted
eyebrows and pursed lips. He had spent the rest of their meeting at the café in
Union Square talking about eyeglasses.

John was an optometrist.

Beth sat there in front of the cottage trying to
remember how she had even come to date him. He was a workaholic, like her, and
low maintenance. That was it—he was low maintenance. She liked that she could
ignore most of what came out of his mouth and he wouldn’t notice. The sex
wasn’t bad; he took direction well, especially when she compared the
sensitivity of the cornea to . . . other parts of the
female anatomy.

It had felt good to walk straight past his
receptionist, into his office, and say she was leaving and that they were done.
There was no screaming, no drama beyond her entrance. No passion. Mostly, he
just looked confused.

The wind came to life, making the tall trees on
either side of the cottage sway in greeting. The February sky had turned purple
with near-certain rain. The amethyst brought out the green that existed
everywhere. It was time for Beth to survey her Irish haven.

Her thin T-shirt was less than adequate, ludicrous
really for an Irish February. The chill of the air bit into her bare arms and
chest, making her feel more than a little topless—and yet, she welcomed the
cold, the feeling of being alive.

Leaving the car, she grabbed her high-collar wool
cardigan. She drew it around herself and walked towards the right side of the
house where she had seen the lake.

Her fingers grazed the house as she passed, taking
notice of the windows without looking inside. She would save that, taking in
the interiors all at once, like unwrapping a present.

The backyard was simple. There were two white,
wooden lawn chairs, like those you would expect to find in a quaint cottage.
There was a small table too, and a spectacular lake.

Lough Rhiannon was considered a small lake, almost
tiny in Ireland, but it was more than enough lake in person. The water was
calm. There were cracks in the blue-violet clouds, giving way to golden rays
that lit the surface in no particular pattern, setting the waters on fire. The
golds, greens, and violets took her breath away.

There was magic here in this beautiful, secluded
place. She drew in a deep, cool, healing breath and closed her eyes. The wind
rallied and the brisk air brushed her face, refreshing her senses. She was
ready for whatever needed to happen here.

Her hands moved to the back pocket of her dark
jeans where the next letter waited to be opened. She took it out and inspected
the small yellow envelope. Save for the first, each letter had been marked in
Mags’ elegant script with just a number. This one had a large “2.”

It seemed appropriate to open it now, when she had
just reached the end of her sixteen-hour journey from San Francisco. But here
at the beginning of her own personal quest, her chest tightened and her throat
started to constrict as she thought about the next words that Mags would thrust
upon her from beyond the grave. Would she tell her the truth about her parents?
Doubtful. Was she ready to hear it? No, she was too exhausted. Too drained to
deal with . . . everything.

She would get settled, shower, and open it with a
glass of wine. Her grief at losing Mags and her anger at being lied to her
entire life threatened to swallow her whole.

With some effort, she unclenched her jaw and
relaxed the fingers that had tightened around the letter.

She looked back towards the lake. It looked to be
fairly round-ish, maybe a mile in diameter. Trees bordered the shores,
obscuring the view of what lay beyond. She glimpsed part of a stone-colored
house farther up the lake. It looked like part of a larger structure, but she
couldn’t make out much from where she stood.

The decision to vacate her life was only a couple
of days old. She had made all the arrangements in a very short period of time,
including the cottage. It was the only one that was available on such short
notice and would be hers for as long as she wanted.

Others were available today, but were booked in
the future, cutting her time into two weeks, a month, and so on. This house
didn’t have any reservations on the books . . . at all. The
contact person she had spoken to yesterday assured her that it was through no
fault of the cottage, which was in excellent condition, and only a ten-minute
drive to Dingle.

She had believed the man—Shaun Morgan—mainly
because of the price. It was nearly five times the price of other comparable
houses, situated on similar lakes. The price was so high it was almost as if
the owner didn’t actually want it to be rented out.

Shaun explained that the cottage had belonged to a
woman named Rhia Bannon, the current proprietor’s mother, and hadn’t been
rented since it first came on the market two years before. He had assured her
that it was a fully updated, impeccably maintained, fashionable rental. Beth
hoped he was right.

She ought to have negotiated the price down, but
she just didn’t have any fight left in her after the funeral. She’d only seen
two pictures of the property and didn’t even know if she would have any
neighbors. It was the least prepared Elizabeth Lara had ever been in her entire
life.

A few drops of rain fell against her cheeks,
trailing down her face in much the same way as the tears she’d shed while on
the side of the road. It was time to get her things from the car and get
settled.

She crossed the length of the yard towards the
other side of the house. Carefully, she walked the narrow patch of grass that
separated the outside wall from the tall trees, stepping over small fallen
branches and piles of compacted leaves. She took notice of the first window as
she had before, trying not to look inside and spoil the effect of walking in
through the front door.

She was passing the second large window when she
caught a flash of movement and instinctively turned to look. A large white
bathtub sat in front of the window, a shower was set in the far corner, and a
very fit, very naked man stood gaping
at her. Her eyes found his washboard stomach first, his hands on his hips,
partly obscuring the sharp cut of a V beneath his hips, down to
his. . . .

It happened so fast that she didn’t have time to process what she was
seeing in time to look away. Her mouth dropped and for a moment they stood
staring at each other.