Read Chasing River (Burying Water #3) for Free Online

morning there were real estate magazines on the kitchen table of our ranch house, with arrows and angry red numbers indicating what that kind of money could get me in the way of a down payment.
    “Awfully nice of that teacher to arrange that for you,” he finally admits.
    “You mean Mary Coyne?” I smirk. Dad knows her name, so I don’t know why he pretends that he doesn’t remember her. I’m pretty sure he had a crush on her, back when she was thirty years old and teaching me freshman science. So did every other pubescent boy and half the male population of Sisters. She has always been a striking woman, her raven-black hair hanging in silky waves down her back, her skin porcelain smooth, and her soft Irish accent mesmerizing. She made me love science. She made me love Ireland without ever having been here. She’s one of the reasons why I’m now on this trip.
    I was her best and brightest student, and her favorite, she told me later. She wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation when I applied to college and we’ve kept in touch over the years, making time to meet for coffee at Poppa’s Diner on Main Street at least twice a year. I loved listening to her regale me with her adventures from when she was a college student in Ireland, hopping all over Europe and Asia and eventually North America, where she met Arnold Coyne, the man who would later become her husband.
    When I told her about taking this trip, and that Ireland would be one of the countries that I visited, she insisted on reaching out to her brother, a doctor in Dublin who spends several months a year lending his healing hands to Doctors Without Borders. It just so happened that he’d be away on one of his missions while I’m here, and his house would be vacant.
    My gaze drifts over the master bedroom, an expansive room on the second floor with a glazed black fireplace and a spectacular view of a timeworn church tower from the window. “You should see this place, Dad.” When the taxi dropped me off out front, I didn’t think much of the semidetached house crammed into this quiet urban side street. From the outside, it looks just like any other building along the way—all brick and boxy, with tall, rectangular windows. By no means fancy and completely foreign, compared to the hundred acres of open fields and ranch-style house overlooking an Oregon mountain range that I call home.
    I should have known better.
    The moment I turned the key that Dr. Simon Hill left with the neighbor and stepped inside the three-story house, I began to appreciate just how much Mary must trust me. Every square inch has been gutted and remodeled into three floors of soothing whites and dove grays. The bathrooms have been finished in floor-to-ceiling marble and tile, the floors in rich honeyed wood planks, the final details opulent and old-world charming. I’ve never met her brother, but I can see that he has an appreciation for the finer things when he isn’t helping the poor.
    “So . . .What have you seen so far?”
    “Umm . . . Wicklow Mountains, Trinity College, the Guinness factory . . .” I start rhyming off all the things I should have seen by now, had I not sequestered myself while recuperating, both mentally and physically. I lost track of how many times I bolted upright in bed the last two nights, after a loud thump or car backfiring on the streets below. “You know, stuff.” I shove a piece of bacon into my mouth to avoid talking. The rest of my thrown-together breakfast stares back at me, growing cold. The fridge is full of food that I bought the evening that I arrived here, hoping to avoid eating out as much as possible. I’ve barely touched it.
    “Stuff,” he repeats, and I can almost see the weak smirk touching his lips. “Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity alright.” Gabe Welles never traveled in his youth, joining the Deschutes County Police Department fresh out of school. He and Mom didn’t even leave Oregon for their