Perfect Timing

  “I thought O’Hourigan sounded familiar,” Frank said. “I only needed a quick look inside to know I wasn’t rememberin’ wrong. Back in the eighteen hundreds, when the Irish immigrated here to escape the famine, name changes were pretty common. Sometimes to make them sound less Irish, other times to make them simpler to say and spell.” He flashed Quincy a quick grin. “O’Hourigan, for instance. Here in America, H-O-U-R is pronounced like the hour of the day, with no H sound. Changin’ the spellin’ was probably a smart move. Everybody probably would’ve called me Hour-Again.”

  Quincy smiled and nodded. He’d mispronounced his share of surnames. Behind the original family-tree page, his ancestors had slipped in additional parchment or paper as the years passed to keep track of marriages, births, and deaths. He noted that the record ended with his dad’s generation.

  “You stopped keeping track?” Quincy asked his father.

  “No, of course not. Your mother just felt this Bible was getting too fragile, and she bought a new one. I have it over at my place. She went back a few generations and then recorded our marriage. All you kids is in there.” His voice turned thick. “After she died, I had to enter her death and Samantha’s birth. It took me a few months to muster the courage, but I finally got it done. Had myself a good cry afterward, feelin’ like I’d just lost her all over again. Pain like I can’t explain. Nowadays, it’s easier for me. I made note of my marriage to Dee Dee, and I’ve kept track of Clint’s babies, and the little one Sam and Tucker lost before it ever got born.” Frank’s eyes grew moist. “I just hope and pray I won’t have to enter the death of another loved one anytime soon.”

  “Loni.” Quincy didn’t state it as a question. He knew Clint’s wife was never far from Frank’s mind. “Any updates since I talked to Clint this morning?”

  Frank shook his head. “Not on her condition. Zach called to tell me Clint is busy tryin’ to get ready to transport her home. He’s worried about how she’ll handle the flight and about them removin’ the IV catheters. Once they get a vein, he hates for ’em to lose it. She’s so dehydrated that it’s the very devil to find a new one. But the nurses at the center refuse to leave ’em in. They say new catheters will have to be used if she’s seen here, anyway.”

  Quincy sighed. For a few hours, the relentless sadness that had formed a lump in his throat had been pushed aside by the events of the morning. Now his concern for Loni came flooding back. All he could do was pray for her. He believed in the great power of prayer, but even so, he was, by nature, a do-it-yourself man. Loni’s illness made him feel so damned helpless.

  He took a seat at the table to study the family tree. The first entry dated back to the seventeen hundreds, making this Bible nearly three hundred years old. The thought was mind-boggling.

  “Dad,” he said after a long silence. “Look at this.” Frank came around the table to peer over Quincy’s shoulder. “Practically all the first wives of your ancestors died at young ages.”

  “Dyin’ young wasn’t uncommon back then. Men often lost their wives durin’ childbirth or shortly afterward from childbed fever.”

  Quincy knew that was true, but the theory didn’t hold up under closer examination. “Most of the second wives made it. I mean, well, they eventually died, of course, a few of them at fairly young ages, but a good majority of them lived nice, long lives for that day.”

  Frank fetched his cooling coffee and took a seat beside Quincy to study the tree himself. “I’ll be damned. You’re right.”

  A prickly sensation moved over Quincy’s skin. He could only hope he wasn’t allowing his imagination to get the better of him. “Mom died at only thirty-one, which was really young by our standards, even then. And now there’s Loni. She’s what—only thirty-five?” He met his father’s gaze. “What about your father and brothers, Dad? Did any of their first wives die?” Quincy knew his uncles and saw them fairly often, but he wasn’t familiar with details of their younger years. “Like before I was born, or when I was really little, I mean. Any deaths?”

  A thoughtful frown pleated Frank’s brow. “My father, your grandpa Zachary, did lose his first wife, now that I think of it. They were both real young when they married. I think she was only eighteen. Then, right here on Harrigan land, she was injured in a farm accident and bled out before Dad could get her to the hospital. It wasn’t much of a hospital back then, but he always blamed himself for not gettin’ her there in time. Later he made a trip back to Ireland to see some relatives and met my mother, Mariah. They was married over there, and she lived here on this land to a ripe old age.” Frank smiled slightly. “You remember Mama, don’t you?”

  Quincy sank back on his chair. “Of course I do. Not as well as I’d like. I was still pretty young when she passed away, but I’ll never forget her Irish brogue and her big laugh. And, oh, man, how I loved her soda bread.”

  Frank nodded. “No one makes it like Mama did. It was her mother’s recipe, straight from the old country.”

  “So Grandpa lost his first wife when she was really young.”

  “Yep.” Frank took a sip of coffee. “And come to think of it, my brothers all lost their first wives, too. Paul lost his—well, that was truly a tragedy. They’d had three little kids, and after she gave birth to the fourth baby, she got postnatal depression real bad. He came home one evenin’ to find her dead in the bathtub. She’d slit her wrists.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Quincy whispered.

  “Back then they didn’t have many treatments for postnatal depression,” Frank expounded. “Women were expected to buck up and just get on with it. Paul nearly went off the deep end when he found her. For a long time, he blamed himself.”

  Quincy could understand that. To walk in and find your depressed wife dead by her own hand would be devastating.

  “Then there was my brother Marcus. He lost his first wife in a car accident. They was on their way to church, and he had his whole family in the vehicle. A pickup truck came over the center line, and there was a head-on collision. Nobody else was bad hurt, but Marcus’s wife came out of it with a severed main artery. She died at the scene. Then there was Hugh, whose first wife was an undiagnosed hemo—” Frank broke off, frowned, and waved a hand. “Hemo-something-or-other.”

  “Hemophiliac?”

  “That’s it,” Frank said, snapping his fingers. “She died early in the marriage, and Hugh, now with his second wife, has five healthy kids, thank God.”

  Quincy’s mouth had gone dry. “Are you seeing the same pattern I’m seeing, Dad? Your father, you, and all your brothers lost your first wives, and each and every one of them died of things related to the blood. Mama hemorrhaged to death giving birth to Sam. Paul’s wife slit her wrists and bled to death. Marcus lost his wife in a car accident due to a severed main artery. Hugh’s first wife died of hemophilia.” Quincy had to stop and swallow before he could go on. “Now Loni may be dying of leukemia.”

  “What’re you sayin’?” Frank asked. “That this Ceara gal might be tellin’ the truth?”

  Quincy wasn’t sure what he was saying, but this coincidence spooked the hell out of him. “I’m just looking and seeing a pattern, is all. Did you keep up with other branches of the Harrigan family?”

  Frank shook his head. “My dad had a fallin’-out with his old man way back when, and he lost touch with all his siblings. If any of them are still alive, I reckon they’re in the States somewhere, but Dad never tried to find them, and I never saw much point. To me they’re strangers.”

  “I wonder if there were other Harrigan men who lost their first wives in similar ways.” For Quincy, it was a scary thought. He wasn’t a superstitious man. He knew that druids had once existed in both Ireland and Scotland, but he’d never for a moment believed that they possessed magical powers. “I wish we could track down some of your other relatives.”

  “It’d probably be more trouble than it’s worth. Me callin’ folks out of the blue to ask if any first wives died at young ages? They’d think I was crazy.”
Frank carefully lifted a journal from the box and opened it. It looked more fragile to Quincy than any of the others. “I never read much of this one,” he said. “Far as I’m concerned, it’s just a bunch of hocus-pocus. Your mama was fascinated by it, though.”

  Quincy leaned over to peer at the book. Much of the writing was in archaic English, and some of it was in another weird language.

  “Irish Gaelic,” Frank explained. “If it looks strange to you, that’s because it is. At least, to us who never learned the language. As I recall it was based on the Latin alphabet and used fewer letters.”

  Quincy began studying what appeared to be a recipe, written in English but still difficult to decipher because of the badly faded ink, odd wording, and elaborate script.

  “It’s a spell, I think,” Frank said. “There was some real weird characters in my family. Apparently they practiced witchcraft of some kind. That’s why I’ve never read much of this journal. Never wanted any part of it.”

  “And Mama did?”

  “Your mama did some research and insisted the spells were actually beautiful prayers. My Emily, she was a sweetheart. Never saw the bad in anybody, and especially not in a Harrigan. She couldn’t bring herself to believe my ancestors dabbled in anything dark or evil.”

  Frank carefully closed the book and looked at Quincy. “As much as I prefer to avoid this kinda shit, I can’t stop thinkin’ about this Ceara woman,” he said slowly. “What if she’s for real, a druid from centuries ago who traveled forward in time to end a curse on our family?”

  Quincy had been mentally circling that possibility ever since he’d seen the old family tree, but it shocked him to hear his father echo his thoughts. Frank always kept both feet firmly rooted in reality. “Dad, you’re a devout Catholic clear to your core. You don’t believe in stuff like that.”

  Frank held up a staying hand. “I know it sounds crazy, but there’s no denyin’ that my Emily bled to death givin’ birth to Sam, or that my father’s first wife bled to death, or that the first wives of each of my brothers died from things havin’ to do with the blood. Now Loni, Clint’s wife, is at death’s door with a rare form of leukemia. I think you’re right; there is a pattern. And we’d be fools to ignore it. Loni’s life may hang in the balance.”

  It was Quincy’s turn to throw up a hand. “Whoa. That woman says she came here to marry me. Well, she didn’t specifically say me, but I’m the one she sought out, and I’m the only single male left in our branch of the family.” Quincy cocked his head. “What are you saying, Dad, that I should slap a ring on her finger? That’s nuts. Why are we even entertaining the notion that the woman uttered a single word of truth? Traveling forward in time? Ancient curses? Hell, according to her, she’s of druid blood, and so are all the Harrigans. What exactly is a druid, anyway? In my opinion, they were simply learned people who found it easy to hoodwink the uneducated into believing they had special powers. It was all a bunch of BS then, and it still is now. Stuff like this doesn’t happen in the twenty-first century.”

  Frank drew a can of Copenhagen from his hip pocket. With a flick of his wrist, he tamped down the contents and put a chew in his mouth. “You mind findin’ me a spitter? I need to think, and I do my best thinkin’ with a wad of tobacco tucked inside my lip.”

  Quincy left the dining room to hunt up an empty water bottle. He detested his father’s tobacco habit and wished Frank would quit, but he’d come to accept over the years that it would never happen. At least Quincy’s stepmom, Dee Dee, kept Frank’s use of tobacco at a minimum. She pitched a holy fit if she smelled wintergreen on his breath, wouldn’t allow Frank to enjoy a chew inside their house, and essentially forced him to sneak behind her back to get his nicotine fixes.

  As Quincy passed his in-home office, he saw that Nona Redcliff had returned and was just slipping out of her jacket. He stopped to ask, “Before you took off for lunch, did you happen to find anything odd in the camera footage?”

  Nona shook her head. “Nope. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d swear that woman dropped into Beethoven’s stall from out of nowhere.”

  A cold wave of uneasiness washed over Quincy. “Well, you’re right. That is impossible, so keep on it, Nona. I’m counting on you to make sense of it.”

  “You got it.” Her brown eyes twinkled with humor. “Being Native American, I was raised hearing tall tales, but even as a child at my grandfather’s knee, I never believed any of them. The stars are not stepping-stones to the afterworld. The Milky Way wasn’t created by snow dropping from the paws of a large bear racing across the sky. It follows that druids cannot travel forward in time. I don’t know what the real story is, but I guarantee I’ll have an answer soon.”

  Quincy hoped so. Feeling slightly off balance, he returned to the dining room. Frank gratefully accepted the empty, clear plastic water bottle and removed the cap to spit. “Quincy, don’t blow a gasket, okay? I got somethin’ to say, and the only way I know is straight-out. I think you should either drop the charges against Ceara O’Ceallaigh or bail her out of jail, one or the other.”

  Quincy met his father’s gaze. “Do what? You’ve got to be kidding. Why the hell would I do either? She broke into my stable. Beethoven is worth two hundred grand, for God’s sake! I could probably sell him for two hundred and fifty, just like that.” Quincy snapped his fingers. “She must have had a purpose in mind, and it sure as hell wasn’t to take a nap in the straw. Give me one good reason why I should get her out of the clinker.”

  Frank rocked back on his chair. “While you was gone, I took a little journey backward in time, recallin’ old stories told to me by my grandfather. He was Irish, straight from the homeland, and I can remember him sayin’ that a heap of his ancestors had magical powers. Maybe we are druids, Quincy, and over time, we forgot about it.” Frank paused for effect. “One of my buyers, who’s also a good friend, found out a few months back that his great-great-great-grandmother was a Louisiana slave. He never knew he was part black until he paid someone to trace his family. Ain’t that somethin’?”

  Quincy shrugged. “There was a time when people preferred to forget if they had certain ancestry. The blacks and Native Americans for sure. Hell, even the Irish and Germans had reason. If a family was trying to bury the secret deep, it wouldn’t have been something they’d have talked about at the supper table to make their kids aware of it.”

  “Maybe the same can be said of druid blood in the Harrigan family, a secret my father or grandfather decided to keep buried.” Frank put the mouth of the water bottle to his lips again. As he capped the container, he added, “I don’t get why some folks are sensitive about bloodlines, but in some cases, I reckon there’s good cause. It wasn’t all that long ago that blacks, Irish, Germans, Jews, and Native Americans was discriminated against.”

  “In a lot of instances, they still are, Dad.”

  Frank nodded. “Reckon so, shameful as it is.” His jet brows drew together in a frown. “And maybe, for similar reasons, my family wanted nobody to know of the druid blood. Think about it. At the next American Quarter Horse Association meetin’, how would people react if I announced that I’m part druid? Don’t you think a good share of folks might avoid me like I had a nasty virus they might catch? That right there would be reason enough for my family to have buried the truth.”

  Quincy’s knees felt as if they’d turned to water. He took a seat across from his dad. “I wouldn’t announce that you’re a druid if you want to keep your position on the board of directors. Come on, Dad, this is a time for clear thinking. We can’t buy into this woman’s story. It makes no sense.”

  “Nope, not a lick,” Frank agreed, “but that don’t negate the fact that she appeared, like magic, in Beethoven’s stall. Them there cameras don’t lie, son.” He hooked a thumb over his chest at the box. “And that damned family tree don’t, either. You saw the pattern. I saw it. Our first wives die, damn it. And now Loni is dyin’.” Frank sat forward on the chair to nail Quincy with a gaze that spar
ked like flint. “Sweet Christ, think. I know you’re concerned about your horses, but bottom line, is that damn stallion as important to you as Loni? What if this Ceara gal can save her life? What if you can? Would you hesitate?”

  Quincy could no longer feel the seat of the chair under his ass. He groped for words. Was insanity catching? But no, Frank hadn’t even seen the woman except on camera. Quincy’s brain felt like mush. Finally, his tongue moved. “Of course I wouldn’t hesitate, Dad. I love Loni, too. And I love my brother! I know he’s going through sheer hell right now. But think about what you’re suggesting. I’m supposed to go bail a crazy loon out of jail, and—”

  Frank held up a thick, work-roughened forefinger. “A confused lady, you mean?”

  “All right, confused. Majorly confused, Dad. And in order to save Loni, I’m supposed to marry her? She may have entered my arena to harm my horses. She’s sure as hell confused by any normal standards. Give me a break! Hand her over to a good psychiatrist and she’ll be taking medication for the rest of her natural life.”

  “Point taken. Maybe she is crazy. But if we get her out of jail, we can put her to the true test, and it’s better than any examination by a psychiatrist.”

  Quincy mentally circled that. “The true test? I’m not following.”

  Frank spit into the bottle again. “Introduce her to Loni. Let them touch hands.” He snapped his fingers. “Loni will know in a heartbeat if this Ceara gal is a fake. A simple touch, and Loni will know. She’s more accurate than any damned lie detector.”

  All the breath rushed from Quincy’s lungs. He sank back on his chair. “Damn, Dad, that’s brilliant. Loni will know, won’t she?”

  “Of course she will.”