Matters of the Heart

“No, I’m going to stay here and go back afterward,” he answered. “My son is flying over the day after Christmas. He goes to MIT, he’s a bright kid. He’s a computer whiz. His mother died when he was seven, and he grew up with me. I really miss him now that he’s in college in the States. It’s more fun for him here in London than in Dublin. And then he’s going skiing with friends. We’re very close,” Finn said proudly, and then looked at her intently. He was curious about her. “Do you have kids?”

“No.” She shook her head quietly. “I don’t.” He was surprised. She looked as though she would. She didn’t look like one of those career women who had decided not to have children. She seemed more motherly and there was a noticeably gentle softness about her. She was soft-spoken and seemed nurturing and kind.

“Married?” He glanced at her left hand, and there was no ring.

“No,” and then she opened up a little. “I was. My husband was a cardiovascular surgeon at Harvard. Heart-lung transplants were his specialty. He retired ten years ago. We’ve been divorced for over two years.”

“I think retiring destroys people. I’m going to keep writing until they carry me out. I wouldn’t know what else to do with myself. Was retiring hard on him? It must have been. Heart surgeons are always heroes, particularly at Harvard, I imagine.”

“He had no choice. He got sick,” she said quietly.

“Worse yet. That must have been tough for him. Cancer?” He wanted to know about her, and as they talked, she watched the movement of his face, and the bright blue of his eyes. She was glad they were shooting in color—it would have been a shame not to get the actual color of those eyes. They were the bluest she’d ever seen.

“No, Parkinson’s. He stopped operating as soon as he found out. He taught for several years after that, but eventually, he had to give that up too. It was very hard on him.”

“And probably on you too. That’s a brutal disappointment for a man in the midst of a career like that. Hence the divorce?”

“That and other things,” she said vaguely, glancing around the room again. There was a photograph of Finn with a handsome young blond boy, who she guessed was his son, and he nodded when he saw her looking at it.

“That’s my boy, Michael. I miss him now that he’s at school. It’s hard getting used to his not being around.”

“Did he grow up in Ireland?” She smiled at the image. Like his father, he was good-looking.

“We lived in New York and London when he was small. I moved to Ireland two years after he left for college. He’s an all-around American kid. I never really was. I always felt different, maybe because my parents weren’t born in the States. All they ever talked about was moving back. So eventually, I did.”

“And Ireland feels like home?” she asked as their eyes met.

“Now it does. I reclaimed my family’s ancestral house. Restoring it will take me the next hundred years. The place was falling apart when I got it, and parts of it still are. It’s an enormous old Palladian home built by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce in the early 1700s. Unfortunately, my parents died long before I got it back, and Michael thought I was nuts to take it on.” There was a photograph of it on the mantelpiece, and he handed it to Hope. It was a gigantic classic house, with a large stone staircase in front, and rounded side wings with columns. In the photograph Finn was in front of the house, astride an elegant black horse. He looked very much the lord of the manor.

“It’s an amazing house,” Hope said with admiration. “It must be quite a project to restore.”

“It has been, but it’s a labor of love. It will be my legacy to Michael one day. I should have it in decent shape by then, providing I live for at least another hundred years to do it.” He laughed as he said it, and Hope handed back the photograph. Now she was sorry she hadn’t shot him there. In comparison to the remarkable Palladian palace, his London mews house suddenly seemed ridiculously small, but all his publisher wanted was a head shot, and for that the cozy room they were sitting in was good enough.