“We would never disrespect your family,” Annika added. “Is it possible your family helps protect the star? Is that the possible Riley means?”
“That’s exactly the possible. Look.” Now she turned to Doyle. “What I do, even the literal digging, is because I respect and value who and what came before. I don’t desecrate, ever, or support anyone who does, even in the name of science and discovery. We need to check this out. We just go back and check it out for now. Okay?”
“Fine. We’ll get out of this filthy weather. And tomorrow, as the chances of the last star popping out of my mother’s headstone are thin, we dive, whatever the weather.”
Since she figured everyone was entitled to mood, and she wanted to think, Riley said nothing as they trooped back to the car, squeezed in.
She spent the drive back using her phone to gather more data on the number three.
“Three divisions of time,” she mused aloud. “Past, present, future. From the first three numbers, all the others synthesize. What makes up a man—or woman—mind, body, spirit. Three. Most cultures use three as a symbol of power or philosophies. The Celts, the Druids, the Greeks, Christianity. Art and literature.”
“You had to say Beetlejuice three times,” Sawyer commented.
“There you go. Third time’s the charm. Actually—didn’t think of it—the Pythagoreans believed three was the first true number.”
“They were wrong, weren’t they?” Doyle replied.
She lowered her phone, met his eyes. “Plato divided his Utopian city into three groups. Laborers, Philosophers, Guardians—who were, essentially, warriors.”
“And in his Utopia, laborers equaled slaves, philosophers rulers. Only Utopia for some.”
“The point is three,” Riley insisted.
The minute Bran parked, she shoved out. “We have to look. We know it’s personal for you, we all do. But that may be part of it. So we have to look.”
“So we look.”
When Doyle started back, Bran signaled to Riley, then lengthened his own stride to catch up.
“Most of my family rest in Sligo,” he began. “But those here are family all the same. For all of us.”
“You didn’t know them.”
“I know you, as we all do. Tell us about them.”
“What?”
“One thing,” Bran said. “Tell us one thing that strikes your memory about each. And we’ll know them.”
“How will that help find the star?”
“We can’t know. Feilim. This is the brother you lost. You’ve told us he was kind and pure-hearted. So we know him. What of this brother?”
“Brian? He was clever and good with his hands. Beside him is his wife, Fionnoula. She was pretty as a sunbeam, and he fell for her when he was no more than ten. Loved her all his life. Steadfast, that was Brian.”
“And their children here with them?” Bran prompted.
“Three more than the two here. I barely knew them.”
Doyle moved to his last brother. “Cillian, he liked to dream, to make music. He had a voice like an angel that drew the girls like bees to honey. My sister Maire’s not here, but buried with her husband and children in a churchyard near Kilshanny. Bossy, opinionated. Always a scrapper.”
He found a kind of solace, finding something about each of his brothers, his sisters. His grandparents. Paused at his father.
“He was a good man,” Doyle said after a moment. “He loved his wife, his children, the land. He taught me to fight, to build with stone and wood. He didn’t mind a lie, if it was entertaining, but he’d tolerate no cheating.
“My mother. She ran the house, and all in it. She’d sing when she baked. She liked to dance, and when Maire had her first child . . . I still remember her holding the baby, looking at its face. She said whoever you were, now you’re Aiden.”
Annika laid her head against his arm. “We believe when one of us dies they go to another place. One of peace and beauty. After a time, there’s a choice to stay there or to come back again. It’s harder to come back again, but most do.”
Solace, Doyle thought again. “I never thanked you for the flowers, the shells and stones you put on the graves.”
“It’s to honor who they were. Even if they choose to come back, we might not know them.”
“That’s who they were, or a part of it. I’ve said their names. There’s no star here.”
“We just need to figure out how to pick the lock. I’ll work on it,” Riley promised. “Maybe not here. Maybe in or around the house, or the old well. Somewhere in the woods. There’s too much weight not to think it’s right here.”
“Let’s go in, take a break. It’s been a dreary couple of days,” Sasha added. “We could all use a break.”
“We can have wine, with cheese and bread. Sawyer said I could be chief cook tonight, and I could make . . . What am I making?”
“Baked potato soup—in bread bowls. Good for a wet day.”
“Bread bowls? How am I supposed to think about research when I’m going to eat bowls of bread?”
Sasha took Riley’s arm. “By having wine first.”
“That could work.”
Wine usually worked, in Riley’s opinion. And she didn’t mind having some in front of the fire, her feet up while she worked on her tablet. Especially when the air began to smell of whatever Sawyer taught Annika to chop, stir, or mix.