Devil's Shore Read Online Free

I’m entitled to put my tray back up.”
    “Orla,” Declan said.
    “I didn’t do anything to her. Honest.”
    Declan chose to believe me and said nothing more. And I smiled with satisfaction as that bitch hobbled to the bathroom. She’d be hobbling for quite some time.
    There are some advantages to being the Devlin witch.
    * * * *
    Three weeks in and the sun hadn’t stopped shining. “Not like home, is it?” Declan must have announced at least one hundred times a day. If he said it one more time I would drown him in the Great South Bay.
    My sons took to Long Island beach living like ducks to water. Dec fitted them with new American-style swimming trunks and boogie boards, which I managed to trip over every time I walked into the garage. Drizzly Dublin was a distant memory for the Cahill boys.
    But not for me.
    Still, I wasn’t about to rain on Dec’s parade, so I tried to put a good face on it and I didn’t complain too loudly when the lads tracked sand onto my clean kitchen floor. I packed sandwiches, drinks, sand toys, umbrellas, sun cream and tried to be a good sport when Dec dragged us, again, to the local beach.
    Jesus, I never thought I’d say it, but the winter couldn’t come fast enough for me. Surely then the blasted sun would stop shining.
    I had to admit it, though, Dec found the perfect spot for us. I’d resigned myself to living in a faceless suburb in some enormous box of a house, like we’d seen in the cinemas. But Sayville was a historic town, old at least by American standards. The house he found for us was a vintage Victorian on a tree lined street. Restored to perfection, it was all anyone could wish for.
    So then why, after three weeks, could I still not settle? Why did I miss our cramped three-bedroom semi-detached in Rathfarnham?
    I didn’t know. But I knew enough that I was being unreasonable, so I smiled and for the most part, didn’t complain. Not too much, anyway.
    Summer finally ended and we enrolled the boys in the admittedly good local school. Dec settled into his new role as head engineer for the software company. Everyone was happy.
    But besides shepherding the lads back and forth to school, I hadn’t much to do. The estate agent had suggested a cleaner. Dec insisted we hire her, so I didn’t even have cleaning to keep me occupied. There was no neighborly chat over the garden gate in posh Sayville. No weekend ladies rugby team to join. Nothing but the goddamn unending sun.
    Since my mother died, I’d lost close to thirty pounds, not as a result of diet or extra exercise. I’d always been into sports–not that most people could tell, given the stubborn extra pounds that had plagued me up until two years ago. But after my mother died, my appearance gradually changed. Neither Dec nor I noticed the changes until one day when I was shopping for new jeans, I looked in the mirror and instead of my usual fat spotty face staring back at me was a beauty with clear fair skin, high cheekbones and blue, almost aquamarine eyes. My hair, my lank dishwater blond hair, shone like gold and framed my new heart-shaped face in soft curls. I was startled by my new appearance in the dressing room, but not shocked. I had changed in more substantial, and frankly frightening, ways since my mother’s death, so a complete physical transformation didn’t shock me as much as it should have.
    And now, in my enormous American master suite, staring at my impossibly small, pert bottom encased in Lycra running shorts, I could barely remember the shapeless tracksuits that had been my uniform in Dublin. I pulled the long blond hair I now took for granted into a tight ponytail and popped the plastic white buds of my smartphone into my ears. I had hours to kill before school let out, so I figured I might as well enjoy all the wonderful American sunshine Declan insisted on admiring every fucking morning.
    Besides, since my Devlin “gifts” had appeared, exercise was the only thing that quietened the buzzing