It was probably the dumbest thing she had ever thought in her life
and the very dumbest thing she had ever said. There they were, coming down
the escalator at the airport in Dublin, Ireland, and she had to blurt out,
"Wow! All these people look Irish." Well, duh. No wonder he had left
her. Sure, he had waited ten years, but she just knew it had to have been
that idiotic remark. Who could live with anyone dumb enough to say the
Irish looked Irish'
And now here she was again, arriving in Ireland, without a man,
without a job, but with every intention of getting a job working with
horses, getting a husband, and getting settled in the one place on earth
she had always wanted to be. It seemed there was just one problem: at the
moment, the Irish police thought she was a terrorist.
"I've told you; those things in my small bag that look like pipe
bombs are horse medicine. The people I'm coming to visit asked me to bring
some of a new kind of horse wormer to try. If you'd just open the case, or
let me open it, you'd see," Moira said.
"We can't touch it; it's your property. And you're a foreign national
and have not been charged. But the superintendent will be here soon, and
he'll sort it all out," the Gard had told her. They called the cops Gards;
plural was Gardai. She didn't know any Gaelic, not even after all the
previous visits, but she knew that much. She also knew Cead Mille Failte
meant 100 Thousand Welcomes. That much you could get on the Internet,
trolling the Irish Web sites. Right. And there it was, printed in large
Celtic letters above the door. And she knew Mna meant Ladies. Darn! She
could use a Mna right now. All that Jameson's in celebration on the plane,
followed by coffee for breakfast before the landed. But here she was,
locked in a tiny, cold room on a tiny cold chair. And the Gard had gone
away.
She knew it would turn out all right. Everything in...