Lilac Lane (Chesapeake Shores #14)(79)

“Someday you’ll need to accept that you’ll never know. Even if she were right here in this room, she might not be able to explain it herself. People make rash decisions all the time based on reasons that aren’t totally clear, even to them. Then they try to justify them.”

Deanna gave her a weary look. “Life’s complicated, isn’t it?”

Kiera laughed. “You have no idea. It can take a lifetime to figure it out, and then you might only understand the half of it.”

Deanna focused on the scone that Kiera had put in front of her. She broke off a piece, tasted it, then took another bite. Eventually she asked, “How long have you known him? My father, I mean.”

“Only a few months really. I came here from Ireland to visit my daughter and my father, who are living here now. My daughter’s husband owns the pub where Bryan and I work.”

“He’s the O’Brien, then?”

“One of many of them. It’s his family that the pub is named for.”

“How on earth did my father wind up working in Chesapeake Shores? I always thought he was in New York.”

“Something for him to explain, if you’ll let him.”

“Do I have a choice? I’ve come this far. I can’t leave without knowing all of it.”

“That’s an open-minded way of looking at it,” Kiera told her. “Would you like another cup of tea and another of these scones, since you’ve mostly crumbled the first one to bits? I’m more of a cook than a baker, but the scones aren’t so terrible, are they?”

“It’s delicious, actually,” Deanna said with an apologetic shrug as she looked at the plate of mostly crumbs in front of her. “I just don’t have much of an appetite right now. But I will take more tea.”

Kiera poured the tea, then sat across from her once again.

“Who’s the better cook, you or my father?” Deanna asked. Her eyes suddenly lit up. “Wait! When Milos and I were here on the Fourth, we got a flier about a cooking competition. The two of you are going head-to-head with your Irish stew, aren’t you?”

“That’s the plan,” Kiera admitted. “It’s not a position either of us was eager to be in, but apparently our competitive spirit in the kitchen is well-known. There are some who’d take advantage of that to ensure a big crowd at the fall festival.”

“It sounds like fun.”

“Perhaps you can come back for it.”

“I’ll be back in Charlottesville in school by then,” she said.

She sounded a little bit disappointed by the thought of missing it. Another good sign, Kiera thought, along with all the questions she had for her father and her apparent willingness to listen to his answers.

“I’m not certain of the geography, but is it so far?” Kiera asked.

“Not really, come to think of it. I’ll mark my calendar.” She took out her cell phone, then looked at Kiera expectantly. Kiera gave her the October festival dates.

“And will you be on my side or your father’s?” Kiera teased. “Will family loyalty win out? Or can you be an impartial judge?”

“If your stew is the best, it will get my vote,” Deanna promised, just as Bryan tapped on the door, then walked into the kitchen carrying a cardboard box.

“Did I just hear that Kiera’s gotten you to take her side in that foolish contest?” he grumbled.

Deanna chuckled. “Kiera said you two were highly competitive. I think I see that. My mother always said I’d take any bet offered. I must have gotten that from you.”

“There are better traits you could have inherited,” Bryan said, placing the box on the table in front of her.

“What’s in here?” Deanna asked, studying it curiously.

“The photos I mentioned to you and the record of every step I took to track you down. I had to have my attorney bring it by the pub.”

She peeked inside the box. “There’s so much.”

“Every investigator report, every police report, the court documents and all of the checks paying for the search.”

She glanced at the file on top. “This was only a month ago.”

Bryan nodded. “I never gave up, Dee, not even after several investigators told me repeatedly that it was as if the two of you vanished.”

She frowned at that. “Are you saying that my mother took me and just left without a word?”

Bryan nodded, then sat. Kiera gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“Would you like me to leave the two of you alone?”

“No,” they said in unison.

“I’d like you to be here,” Deanna said. “Please.”

Kiera gave Bryan a questioning look, but he nodded readily.

“Okay, then,” she said, pulling her chair a bit away from the table in an attempt to be less intrusive.

“Why would she leave like that?” Deanna asked.

Bryan explained what their life had been like back then, the long hours at the restaurant, his wife’s growing restlessness. Being home alone most of the time with a newborn baby and no family nearby... “I had every intention of cutting back, spending more time at home, but I kept delaying it. One day she simply tired of our life, of fighting to make me see her point of view. In what may have been an act of spite, she took you and left. I don’t know if her intent was to punish me by never getting in touch, but that’s how it turned out. Maybe it was a test to see how hard I’d try to find you, but then she made it all but impossible.”