The Kilternan Legacy Read Online Free

free of her pocket, and stepped up close. As she shoved the paper into my hand, she blurted out, “If Brian Kelley calls you, don’t promise anything. Please! Not until you’ve spoken to Mr. Noonan. Oh dear!” With that she turned and ran from the lobby. In a matter of seconds we heard the explosive roar of a heavy motorcycle gunning, then varooming out of the parking lot.
    “Get that!” Simon’s eyes were wide with amazement.
    “That was odd,” Snow said. “What an elegant key!” She took the set from my limp hand, holding up an old key, long and wrought iron, with a curlicue in the handle and huge teeth in the business end: a real honest-to-God lock-the-door-against-invaders key. “What’s the map say?” And she opened it, Simon craning his neck to look too. The mileage was clearly marked between checkpoints, and landmarks were indicated.
    There was also a second small map, marked OFFICE, showing me how to get to Noonan’s, just off the Grand Canal on Baggot Street.
    “I didn’t know Dublin had a canal,” I remarked.
    Snow shook her head dolefully. “The essential mother hath not changed. Let’s put her to bed and hope for an improvement overnight.”
    They did. And oh, how quickly I was asleep, not troubling my conscience over the fact that I was leaving two fourteen-year-olds on their own in a hotel in a strange city.

Chapter 2
    SIMON IS a born organizer. The Renault was ready at the Hertz place at 9 in the morning. All I had to do was sign. I did try to explain how nervous I was about driving on the wrong side of the road, and that I’d be very careful, but Snow and Simon interrupted me. (Preserve the Image.)
    So, planting Simon as map reader and conscience in the front seat, and sternly abjuring him to watch my left-hand side and keep me on and in the right, I drove off. And tried to shift with my right hand.
    “Here, Mother, here,” Simon said, grabbing my left hand and placing it on the gear shift.
    By the time we were on a dual highway, I had the hang of shifting left-handedly and some notion of judging distance on the left side of the car. Just as well, because we turned off the wide road where minor errors were easily correctable onto a very narrow one with walls and high earthen banks, and winds and turns and cars coming down at me on the wrong side.
    “There it is!” Simon cried, his arm across me indicating frantically to make a right turn.
    “Where is what?” I cried, jamming on the brakes in reflex action. There was a screech behind me, and I shuddered, expecting the angry blast of a horn. When nothing happened, I bravely used the right-turn indicator and hastily did what I said I was going to do.
    Swann’s Lane was narrower and dirt.
    “Are you positive it’s Swann’s Lane?” I had a glimpse of incomprehensible syllables on a green-and-white sign imbedded in the low stone wall.
    “Yeah, the first line’s in Irish, Mother.”
    “This is nice!” Snow said.
    I had the impression that it was, but I was watching the road to avoid the rocks and ruts.
    “Look at the old horse! He’s sweet!”
    I got a glimpse of brown rump and tail, and then saw the cottages nestled into the cut of the hillside. And another one on the right side of the lane.
    “Is that where we’re going?” Snow was dismayed.
    “Naw,” Simon replied with contempt, “that one’s where we’re going,” and he pointed to my left where a sandy-colored house loomed beyond some thick hedges and small trees, quite separate from the nest of cottages. As we drove up, a small sign at the corner of the wall confirmed that this was indeed Hillside Lodge.
    The house had a forlorn look, unfinished sort of, despite the fact that (as I later learned) it was two hundred years old and a good example of farmhouse Georgian; I suppose I had envisioned a thatched cottage, charmingly rose-covered. There were gardens front and rear, and a lawn in front which had obviously been seeded when the house was built, because it had