Page 69 of The Apple Cider Orchard

Suddenly, a shiver ran through Molly that had nothing to do with the evening air.

‘We were inseparable that summer,’ Patrick continued, his gaze now fixed on some middle distance where the past played out before him. ‘She’d help at the orchard when her father didn’t need her at their shop. We’d talk for hours under the old oak tree. I told her everything – my dreams, my fears about not measuring up to family expectations.’ His voice caught slightly. ‘She listened in a way that made you feel truly heard, truly seen.’

In the distance, music continued to drift over the garden walls, the cheerful melody incongruous against Patrick’s wistful remembrance.

‘I carved our initials in the oak that autumn,’ he said, his fingers moving as if tracing invisible letters. ‘Took my time with it, made sure the letters were perfect. She teased me for being so careful, said love wasn’t meant to be tidy.’ His smile turned sad at the edges. ‘But I wanted it to last, you see. Wanted something permanent to mark what we’d found together.’

The revelation struck Molly like a physical blow. The carved heart she’d traced that morning – her grandmother’s initials intertwined with the very man sitting before her now. PF + AB inside a heart.

Patrick Flynn and … her grandmother?

She gripped the edges of her chair, steadying herself against sudden vertigo.

‘Yet a few months later, she was gone.’ Patrick’s voice hardened slightly. ‘No goodbye, no explanation. Just disappeared from the village overnight. Her parents said she’d gone to stay with relatives in Dublin, but something in their manner …’ He shook his head. ‘I knew there was more to it. I wrote letters. They were returned unopened. I tried phoning the number she’d given me for her cousins, but they claimed not to know where she was.’

Molly’s throat tightened with emotion.

‘I was … heartbroken,’ Patrick admitted, the word seemingly difficult to voice even after so many decades. ‘Kept expecting her to return, to explain. Each morning I’d wake thinking “today might be the day”. Then months became years.’ He looked down at his hands, the skin mottled with age spots, veins prominent beneath the surface. ‘Eventually, I stopped expecting. Started living again, though not quite the same way.’

A painful tenderness filled Molly’s chest, imagining this lovely man waiting for a woman who would never return, who would instead build a life across an ocean with someone else.

‘It was Brid who finally told me the truth,’ Patrick continued. ‘Aoife had emigrated to New York. Started a new life there.’ His voice grew thick with emotion. ‘I’d worried, you see, if something had happened to her. If that was why she never came back. Learning she was alive and well – it should have been a comfort.’

‘Was it?’ Molly asked, already guessing the answer.

Patrick met her gaze directly, his eyes sharp despite the gathering darkness. ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘It was harder somehow, knowing she’d chosen to leave. Chosen not to say goodbye.’ He paused, his breath visible in the cooling air. ‘I’ve often wondered what I missed, what signs I failed to see. Whether she was unhappy or didn’t feel what I felt but I was too wrapped up in my own feelings to notice.’

The garden had darkened further, the heat lamps now creating warm light in the deepening blue of evening. Above them, the first stars punctured the twilight sky, bright pinpricks against the encroaching night. Festival bustle continued beyond the garden walls, but it seemed to belong to another world entirely – one separate from this quiet space of confession and memory.

‘And you never married?’ Molly ventured gently, though she already knew the answer from her conversations with Jack.

He shook his head. ‘Came close once or twice. But something always held me back.’ His smile turned self-deprecating. ‘Jack thinks I’m a romantic ’oul fool. But he’s a lot more like me than he thinks.’

Brid appeared at the garden door then, a tray balanced in her hands. She approached with calm efficiency, setting out cups and saucers on the small table between them. ‘Something to warm you both,’ she said, pouring steaming tea from a blue willow teapot. Her sharp eyes moved between them, clearly burning with curiosity, but she retreated without comment after ensuring they were supplied with sugar and milk.

Patrick waited until she’d disappeared back into the hotel before speaking again. ‘I don’t tell you this story for pity, mind,’ he said, wrapping his hands around his teacup as if drawing strength from its warmth. ‘I’ve had a good life, a fortunate one in many ways. Goldenridge has been my constant companion through it all.’

‘Then why tell me now?’ Molly asked, though a suspicion was forming in her mind, a sense that Patrick knew more than he was letting on.

‘Because,’ he said, his eyes finding hers with startling directness, ‘when I see you standing by the lake, or hear you humming that old song, or watch you arrange wildflowers with such familiar care—’ he paused, his gaze steady and knowing ‘—I see it. I see her.’

The implication hung in the air between them, unspoken yet unmistakable. Molly’s heart hammered against her ribs, her hands suddenly unsteady around her teacup. The garden seemed to close around them, the stone walls holding this moment of truth separate from the festival revelry beyond.

Her hands trembled slightly, rattling the fine china against its saucer. The secret she’d carried across an ocean pressed against her lips, demanding release after all these years of silence.

‘You know who I am,’ she said softly, not a question but a realization.

Patrick’s expression remained gentle, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘I’ve had my suspicions for a while. Harris … that was her married name?’

She nodded, her throat tight with emotion. ‘Yes.’

‘And when you hummed that song, and were so keen to see the oak …’ His voice trailed off, years of wonder condensed into that unfinished thought.

Molly set her teacup on the table, afraid her unsteady hands might drop it. The moment of decision had arrived – whether to confirm what Patrick already suspected, or to maintain the fiction of being just another American tourist with Irish roots. But sitting across from this man who had loved her grandmother, who had carved their initials into a tree that still stood, truth felt like the only possible choice.

‘Aoife Brennan … was my grandmother, yes,’ she said, her voice stronger now with certainty. ‘She died last year.’

Though Patrick had clearly suspected this, the confirmation still registered on his face with a physical impact. His eyes closed briefly, a small flinch betraying the emotion beneath his composed exterior. When he opened them again, they glistened in the lamplight.