It might have been her last taste of preadolescent stardom, but her great-grandfather cast her, at age six, as the free-spirited Mary Kate in Donovan’s Dream. She spent six weeks on location in Ireland, and shared the screen with her father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-grandmother.
She delivered her lines in a west county accent as if she’d been born there.
The film, a critical and commercial success, would be Liam Sullivan’s last. In one of the rare interviews he gave toward the end of his life, sitting under a flowering plum tree with the Pacific rolling toward forever, he said, like Donovan, he’d seen his dream come true. He’d made a fine film with the woman he’d loved for six decades, with their boys Hugh and Aidan, and the bright light of his great-granddaughter, Cate.
Movies, he said, had given him the grandest of adventures, so this, he felt, was a perfect cap for the genie bottle of his life.
On a cool, bright February afternoon, three weeks after his death, his widow, his family, and many of the friends he’d made through the years gathered at his Big Sur estate to—as Rosemary insisted—celebrate a life well and fully lived.
They’d held a formal funeral in L.A., with luminaries and eulogies, but this would be to remember the joy he’d given.
There were speeches and anecdotes, there were tears. But there was music, laughter, children playing inside and out. There was food and whiskey and wine.
Rosemary, her hair as white now as the snow that laced the tops of the Santa Lucias, embraced the day as she settled—a bit weary, truth be told—in front of the soaring stone fireplace in what they called the gathering room. There she could watch the children—their young bones laughing at winter’s bite—and the sea beyond.
She took her son’s hand when Hugh sat beside her. “Will you think I’m a crazy old woman if I tell you I can still feel him, as if he’s right beside me?”
As her husband’s had, her voice carried the lilt of her home.
“How can I, when I feel it, too?”
She turned to him, her white hair cut short for style and ease, her eyes vivid green and full of humor. “Your sister would say we’re both crazy. How did I ever produce such a practical-minded child as Maureen?”
She took the tea he offered her, winged up an eyebrow. “Is there whiskey in it?”
“I know my ma.”
“That you do, my boy, but you don’t know all.”
She sipped her tea, sighed. Then studied her son’s face. So like his father’s, she thought. The damnably handsome Irish. Her boy, her baby, had silver liberally streaked through his hair, and eyes that still beamed the bluest of blues.
“I know how you grieved when you lost your Livvy. So sudden, so cruel. I see her in our Caitlyn, and in more than the looks. I see it in her light, the joy and fierceness of her. I’m sounding crazy again.”
“No. I see the same. I hear her laugh, and hear Livvy laugh. She’s a treasure to me.”
“I know it, and to me as she was to your da. I’m glad, Hugh, you found Lily and, after those long years alone, found happiness. A good mother to her own children, and a loving grandmother to our Cate these past four years.”
“She is.”
“Knowing that, knowing our Maureen’s happy, her children and theirs doing well, I’ve made a decision.”
“About what?”
“The rest of my time. I love this house,” she murmured. “The land here. I know it all in every light, in every season, in every mood. You know we didn’t sell the house in L.A. mostly for sentiment, and the convenience of having it if either of us worked there for any stretch of time.”
“Do you want to sell it now?”
“I think no. The memories there are dear as well. You know we have the place in New York and that I’m giving it to Maureen. I want to know if you’d want the house in L.A. or this one. I want to know because I’m going to Ireland.”
“To visit?”
“To live. Wait,” she said before he could speak. “I may have been reared in Boston from my tenth year, but I still have family there, and roots. And the family your father brought me is there as well.”
He laid a hand over hers, lifted his chin to the big window, and the children, the family outside. “You have family here.”
“I do. Here, New York, Boston, Clare, Mayo, and, bless us, London now as well. God, but we’re far-flung, aren’t we, my darling?”
“It seems we are.”
“I hope all of them come to visit me. But Ireland’s where I want to be now. In the quiet and the green.”
She gave him a smile, with a twinkle in her eyes. “An old widow woman, baking brown bread and knitting shawls.”
“You don’t know how to bake bread or knit anything.”
“Hah.” Now she slapped his hand. “I can learn, can’t I now, even at my advanced age. I know you have your home with Lily, but it’s time for me to give back, we’ll say. God knows how Liam and I ever made so much money doing what we did for the love of it.”
“Talent.” Then he tapped a finger gently to her head. “Smarts.”
“Well, we had both. And now I want to shed some of what we reaped. I want that lovely cottage we bought in Mayo. So which is it for you, Hugh? Beverly Hills or Big Sur?”
“Here. This.” When she smiled, he shook his head. “You knew before you asked.”
“I know my boy even better than he knows his ma. That’s settled then. It’s yours. And I trust you to tend to it.”
“You know I will, but—”
“None of that. My mind’s made up. I damn well expect I’ll have a place to lay my head when I come visit. And I will come. We had good years here, me and your da. I want what came from us to have good years here as well.”
She patted his hand. “Look out there, Hugh.” She laughed as she saw Cate do a handspring. “That’s the future out there, and I’m so grateful I had a part in making it.”
While Cate did handsprings to entertain two of her younger cousins, her parents argued in their guest suite.
Charlotte, her hair swept back in a chignon for the occasion, paced the hardwood, her Louboutins clicking like impatient fingersnaps.
The raw energy pumping from her had once enthralled Aidan. Now it just made him tired.
“I want to get out of here, Aidan, for God’s sake.”
“And we will, tomorrow afternoon, as planned.”
She whirled on him, lips sulky, eyes sheened with angry tears. The soft winter light spilled through the wide glass doors at her back and haloed around her.
“I’ve had enough, can’t you understand? Can’t you see I’m on my last nerve? Why the hell do we have to have an idiotic family brunch tomorrow? We had the goddamn dinner last night, we had this whole endless deal today—not to mention the funeral. The endless funeral. How many more stories do I have to hear about the great Liam Sullivan?”
Once he’d thought she understood his thick, braided family ties, then he’d hoped she’d come to understand them. Now they both understood she just tolerated them.
Until she didn’t.
Weary to the bone, Aidan sat, gave himself a minute to stretch out his long legs. He’d started to grow a beard for an upcoming role. It itched and annoyed him.