Page 8 of The Apple Cider Orchard

If only her grandmother could see her now.

Chapter 4

The bus was practically empty at this early hour – just Molly, an elderly man dozing in the back corner and a young woman with headphones who stared intently at her phone.

Molly claimed a window seat a couple of rows down, setting her laptop case carefully on the seat beside her. The driver, an older guy with salt-and-pepper stubble, eyed her luggage with good-natured suspicion before hefting it into the storage compartment beneath.

‘American?’ he asked, the question more statement than inquiry. When she nodded, he smiled. ‘Visiting the ’oul sod, I suppose.’

But when Molly mentioned that she was headed to Golden Valley and he told her she’d been facing the best part of two hours’ journey further, her mood deflated afresh.

That long?

The bus seats were narrower than she expected, upholstered in a scratchy blue fabric patterned with what might have been shamrocks or maybe just abstract squiggles – it was hard to tell in the dim interior lighting.

She shifted, trying to find a comfortable position for her travel-weary body. Her neck still ached from her awkward airplane sleep, and her lower back protested after hours of sitting in cramped quarters.

The engine rumbled to life, vibrating through the floorboards and up into her bones. As they pulled away from the airport, she pressed her forehead against the cool window glass, watching the airport service roads give way to a bigger highway.

Dawn was breaking now, the sky transitioning from charcoal to gray, revealing glimpses of the landscape beyond. Molly’s eyelids felt weighted, but she fought against sleep. She didn’t want to miss this – her first real view of Ireland, the homeland her grandmother had described in such vivid detail that Molly sometimes felt she’d already visited.

‘You’ll know it when you see it,’ Aoife had said once, describing the particular green of Irish fields after rain. ‘Like God took all the emeralds he could and crushed them into dust to paint the land.’

The memory made Molly smile despite her exhaustion. Her grandmother had never been one for understatement.

After about an hour, the highway narrowed, becoming a two-lane road that twisted between hedgerows so tall and dense they formed green walls on either side.

Molly’s breathing gradually slowed to match the rhythm of the passing scenery. Her shoulders, which had been hunched nearly to her ears since the airport check-in in JFK, began to lower incrementally.

She hadn’t truly realized how tightly she’d been holding herself until the tension started to unwind. Then the bus hit a pothole, jolting her forward. Her hands instinctively went to her laptop case, steadying it on the seat beside her. Her fingers lingered on the zipper, confirming it was securely closed, protecting what lay within.

Occasionally the bus would round a corner and the landscape would open suddenly – fields stretching to the horizon, patchworked in various shades of green and gold beneath the gradually lightening sky.

‘First time to Ireland?’

Molly turned to find the bus driver watching her in the rearview mirror, his eyes crinkling at the corners with what might have been amusement, or simple curiosity.

‘Yes,’ she replied, straightening in her seat. ‘My grandmother was from Tipperary.’

He nodded as if this explained everything. And it did.

‘Tipp people can be stubborn as the day is long, but sound out to be fair.’

Molly couldn’t help but smile. Stubborn was certainly a word that applied to her grandmother.

The sky continued to brighten further, clouds breaking apart to reveal patches of pale blue. Rain had fallen the night before – the road glistened with puddles that reflected the emerging sunlight and drops sparkled on the hedgerows. Molly found herself leaning closer to the window, taking in details.

The hedgerows were a universe unto themselves. Not just green, but a hundred variations of it – dark ivy intertwined with lighter hawthorn, golden lichen crusting the occasional stone wall that interrupted the living barrier. And there, nestled among the green, were clusters of blackberries – a deep purple-black that gleamed in the morning light.

‘We used to pick those wild when I was a young fella,’ the driver commented, noticing her gaze. ‘Make jam that puts shop-bought shite to shame.’

Molly nodded, remembering her grandmother’s preserves, made from berries they’d picked in Prospect Park – a poor substitute for Golden Valley’s crop, Aoife had claimed, but better than nothing.

‘My grandmother made jam too,’ she told him, the words emerging without conscious thought. ‘She said Irish blackberries tasted of sunshine and secrets.’

The driver laughed, a rich sound that filled the small bus. ‘Your granny obviously had a way with words.’

The road curved again, and suddenly they were passing through open countryside. Fields of barley stretched on one side, the grain golden … almost amber in the strengthening morning light. The stalks rippled in the breeze like waves, moving across the surface in hypnotic patterns. On the other side, a scattering of sheep dotted a hillside, their white forms stark against the green grass like miniature clouds.