Read Chapter 6: GREYSTONES

They did not go to Greystones immediately.

Rule two stopped them.

First they had to find Thomas.

The printing company where he had worked closed in 2003. A trade union newsletter mentioned a Thomas Mullen who later joined a small press in Phibsborough. That press had dissolved in 2010. A poetry magazine published three of his poems in the eighties, none since.

Then Julian found a probate notice.

Thomas Mullen, born 1953, died April 2014.

Maeve stared at the date.

Less than a year after his final letter.

The notice listed no spouse or children. Funeral from a nursing facility in Dublin. Donations to the Irish Heart Foundation.

“He’s dead,” Maeve said.

Julian read silently.

For weeks, Thomas had been a voice more alive to Maeve than many people she knew. Irritating, restrained, occasionally funny, often maddening. Dead had not occurred to her.

“What do we do now?”

Julian took off his glasses.

“We decide whether finding Evelyn serves her or only us.”

Maeve looked at the letters.

“She never got them.”

“We don’t know if she wanted them.”

“He wrote for twenty-six years.”

“That tells us what he wanted.”

Maeve hated the answer because it was correct.

That evening, she closed early and walked without direction. Across the Liffey. Through Temple Bar before the night crowds. Past Trinity’s stone walls, where students smoked under umbrellas. Dublin was full of people beginning things as casually as if endings had not been invented.

Her phone rang.

Julian.

She nearly ignored it.

Then answered.

“I found something,” he said.

“What?”

“Thomas’s executor.”

The executor was his cousin, Brendan Mullen, a retired electrician living in Clontarf. Julian had contacted him carefully, mentioning Bellwether and Nora but not Evelyn’s name.

Brendan agreed to meet.

Two days later, they sat in his conservatory overlooking a small garden where rain shone on paving stones.

Brendan was blunt, broad-faced, and visibly suspicious of academia.

“Tom wrote poems no one understood and never threw out an envelope,” he said. “If you’re hoping for a tragic genius, you’ll be disappointed. He liked horse racing and complained about bin charges.”

Maeve liked him immediately.

She explained the letters.

Brendan rubbed his jaw.

“Evelyn.”

“You knew?”

“Knew there was an Evelyn. Never met her. Tom got fierce quiet if anyone mentioned the old days.”

“Did he ask about her after her husband died?”

Brendan looked toward Julian, then back to Maeve.

“Once. Maybe 2002. He asked Nora where she’d gone. Nora told him to find out himself.”

“Did he?”

“No.”

Maeve exhaled sharply.

Brendan shrugged. “Tom could walk ten miles in rain to return a borrowed book but couldn’t knock on a door if his heart was involved.”

Julian asked, “Did he ever say why?”

“Because she’d told him to leave her alone, years before.”

“Before she married?”

“I think after. There was some row. Tom took promises like court orders.”

Maeve glanced at Julian.

Promises can trap people long after the conditions change.

Brendan stood. “Wait.”

He returned with a document wallet.

“Found this clearing his flat. I nearly binned it.”

Inside was a single sealed envelope.

On the front:

Nora Kavanagh, Bellwether Books.

Postmarked March 2014.

Maeve’s hands trembled as she opened it.

Nora,

I am worse, and the doctors have changed from speaking in months to speaking in tones. I know what you think of me. You are probably right.

The letters are still with you, I hope. I do not ask you to send them to Evelyn. I never had the courage to decide whether that would be kindness or selfishness.

If she comes into the shop one day, give them to her.

If she does not, burn them.

Do not let some sentimental stranger turn us into a story.

Tom

Maeve stopped reading.

Julian looked at the floor.

Brendan said, “Well.”

Maeve read the final line again.

Do not let some sentimental stranger turn us into a story.

“That’s us,” she said.

Julian’s mouth moved. “Unfortunately.”

“He wanted Nora to burn them.”

“If Evelyn never came.”

“Nora didn’t.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Julian looked around the conservatory. “That may be the last question Nora left you.”

On the DART back into the city, Maeve kept the letter in her bag and watched the sea flash between houses.

At Tara Street, Julian stood.

“I’m going to Trinity.”

Maeve looked up. “We’re stopping?”

“For today.”

“Because Tom called us sentimental strangers?”

“Because he asked Nora not to make the decision for Evelyn unless Evelyn appeared.”

“And she might never appear.”

“Yes.”

Maeve felt an unreasonable urgency. “So that’s it?”

Julian held the overhead rail as the train slowed.

“No. But the next move can’t be breaking a dead man’s last request because we dislike uncertainty.”

The doors opened.

He stepped onto the platform.

Maeve watched him walk away and thought, with sudden irritation, that Julian was very good at leaving at the exact moment she wanted him to stay.