Best of Friends by Cathy Kelly

recently retired. Al-though he hadn’t been home for four years, his whole family had been to Chicago for the wedding. They’d been politely curious about the absence of any of Erin’s family. But she was used to that.
    “My grandmother brought me up and she’s too old to travel,” was her stock answer. It was also untrue.
    The reason Erin hadn’t been home to Dublin for nine years and the reason none of her family made the journey to Chicago for her wedding had nothing whatsoever to do with her grandmother’s age. Erin had left home and Ireland at the age of eighteen to get away from her family. She had never been back. Now twenty-seven, the guilt she felt at that abrupt departure had grown into a solid block of pain. When she’d cut the ties to her family, Erin couldn’t have foreseen she’d feel so strangely adrift in the world. But it was impossible to explain that to the honest and genuine Kennedy family, although Greg knew. For his parents, roots and family were important. People who didn’t appreciate family had to have something wrong with them.
    Erin adored their son and wanted them to feel that he’d made a good choice in marrying her. She couldn’t tell them the truth. “Gran would love to be here but the trip would have been too much for her,” she said, feeling terrible for the lie.
    “I suppose you’ll fly home later this year, then,” said Mrs. Kennedy hopefully, thinking that if the newlyweds visited Dublin, well, they’d certainly spend a couple of nights in Wicklow too.
    “We’ll see,” said Erin politely, privately thinking that there was as much chance of her being picked to play for the New York Yankees as there was of her flying home to the bosom of her family. They wouldn’t want to see her now. Why would they? Yes, she’d been so hurt by them, but to run off and stay away—apart from those first few phone calls soon afterwards to let them know she was still alive—what family could forgive that, even a messed-up one like hers? And clearly they hadn’t forgiven her. When she and Greg got engaged, the longing for home had become intense and she’d writ-ten several letters to her family. Nobody had replied.
    Four years after the wedding, Erin and Greg’s circumstances had changed.
    The day after their heart-to-heart about their finances, Greg heard from a head-hunter friend about a job heading the Irish division of a multinational telecoms company. They particularly wanted someone with his international experience. It seemed like a good omen.
    The relocation fee would take care of their debts until they man-aged to sell the apartment, and their friend, the head-hunter, as-sured Erin that a human resources manager of her calibre would have no problem getting a job. Even better, the Cuchulainn Telecoms people, Greg’s new bosses, promised to rent a beautiful home for the couple for the first six months.
    The job sounded like the sort of challenge Greg loved, and he’d been told great things about his management team and particularly his recently promoted second-in-command, a guy named Steve Richardson. The final plus was the location: a heritage town outside the city of Cork that looked incredible when Greg and Erin checked it out on the Web. Neither of them had ever visited Dun-more when they’d lived in Ireland, but they’d certainly heard of it.
    Greg told the company they’d have to think about it.
    “It’s a big move, honey,” he said to Erin. “I don’t want to force you to move back to Ireland because of me.”
    “Oh yeah, and who said I was going to move back with you?” she teased. “I might stay here and be frivolous with our money while you work your butt off in Cork.”
    “Money? We have money?” he said, nuzzling her earlobe.
    “The jar of quarters in the kitchen is getting awfully heavy. There’s at least forty dollars in there,” began Erin.
    “Forty dollars! You hussy. You could go wild with that, splurging on wine, men and song. I can’t