It was all just the way the Maguires had screwed with her head, the way they screwed with everyone’s head. How could she ever explain any of that to Ronan? She couldn’t, and even if she could, he would never listen to her. She had betrayed him, and he wasn’t the sort of man to give her another chance to do so again.
No, there was no reason for her to return to Dublin. She’d have to find a way to stay and just start over. She’d make a new life for herself, live among the humans, and become someone else. The imprint meant she’d spend the rest of her life longing for Ronan on some level, but she’d just have to endure.
“We’re here,” the driver said finally.
“How much?” she asked.
“Taken care of by card,” he replied, pushing a button and printing a slip for her to sign.
“Thanks,” she replied, slipping out of the backseat and heading into the train station. It was late, and all the trains were gone for the day. She took a seat in a corner where she could lean against the wall and let herself doze while she waited for the first train out.
According to the boards, that was to New York City.
Several weeks later, it all seemed like a bad dream. She’d stayed in the city briefly, meeting a woman named Becky who was renting out a room at her farm upstate and invited her to take a look. She’d ended up staying and helping on the farm, working off the books until she could sort out a green card of some sort.
She was busy doing some of her laundry when Becky had come in.
“You want to come and work at the flea market with me?” Becky asked.
“Flea market? That sounds riveting,” she laughed.
“Yeah, I know, but it helps pay the bills.”
“I don’t know.”
“Carole Ann Bastion sells snow cones like she’s been doing since I was a kid.”
“Snow cones?”
“Yeah. You have those in Ireland, right?”
“Sure we do.”
“These are delicious. She brings her eighty-two-year-old backside down to the square the first Saturday of every month, and her grandson sets up the machine for her.”
“That’s crazy!”
“Crazy good. Come on. You don’t have to sit with me the whole time. You can wander around the other booths and check things out.”
“I really don’t know if I’m up for seeing people.”
“Listen, I don’t know what man you are running away from, but he ain’t up here. No reason for you to stay locked away on this farm talking to the goats when no one’s around.”
“You’ve heard me talking to the goats?” Maeve said, embarrassed.
“What? No. Of course not. They told me when I talked to them,” she replied without a hint of a smile.
Maeve laughed and folded the last of her clean shirts and put it in the basket on top of the dryer.
“Aye, but there had better be snow cones.”
The flea market turned out to be just a random assortment of tables placed around the town square. The courthouse sat in the center of the layout, and no one was allowed to set up outside of it, but the sidewalks on the opposite side of the street were overflowing with wares and treats.
Becky made wood crafts in her spare time and sold them both online and at sales like this. Her regular job as a bank teller was steady but not very well paid, and the farm was more a labor of love than profitable. It had been in her family for generations. How she had time for it all was beyond Maeve.
Of course, she was right about the snow cones. They were quite tasty. Maeve was happily munching one when she ran into Derrick, one of Becky’s friends that sometimes dropped by the farm. He was with some other friends looking at a table full of survival gear.
“You boys planning on going into a bunker later on to play some weird war games?”
“As kinky and fun as that sounds, no. We’re planning on hiking up the old river bed tomorrow. I lost some straps last time we went up. I thought there might be some here. How’s that snow cone?” Derrick replied, still looking through items on the table while the two guys with him, twins named Walter and Jesse, of all things, debated whether they needed a Bowie knife.
“Divine.”
“You want to go with us?” he asked, garnering a glare from the twins.
“I thought we agreed on no girls?” Jesse said.
“She’s not just some girl, and dude, she’s standing right here. Rude much?”
Jesse grimaced and turned back to the Bowie knife discussion.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been climbing in a long time,” she replied.
“It’s not so much climbing as it is hiking. Most of the trail is solid. There’s just a small section broken off now from erosion, so you have to climb the rocks to rejoin the trail.”