Anne shook her head. “That’s just tragic.”
Liam nodded. “That’s when Sean’s son, Fin, took over the pub.”
“So those are two of the ghosts,” Anne said, and Liam nodded. “What about the third?”
“A cousin, Kellen Greely.” He pointed to a black spot on the bar a few feet away. “See this burn mark?” He looked at Anne, who nodded. “It’s Kellen’s. It was the first burn on the new bar, just after it was installed in 1907.”
Anne looked at him, tilted her head to the side, her eyebrows lowered. “Kellen?” she pointed to the storage room. “As in the Kellen who just broke a glass?”
“One and the same.” He smiled.
San Francisco- April 1907
The third incarnation of Molly’s reopened a year after the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, at the same location on Mission Street, and everything went back to normal. The pub was busy in the evenings, and a few regulars showed up every afternoon. Kellen Greely was a regular.
Bent over and forced to rely on a cane, Kellen made his way inside after visiting the outhouse behind the pub. He hobbled to his stool at the end of the bar and dropped down.
He was no longer the muscular, energetic Irishman he had been when he arrived in San Francisco in 1860. The black hair of his youth was now gray, and he was in need of a haircut and shave. His skin held the grayish cast of someone not well. Too weak to work, he spent his afternoons at Molly’s. Years ago, he loved to sing with friends and family in the pub and enjoy the craic, but decades of cigarettes left his voice sounding like sandpaper. Now he barely spoke above a whisper. His bones ached, and his strength was gone. His age showed on his deeply wrinkled face, making the scar on his cheek, a result of a youthful boxing match, more pronounced.
Doing the best he could to control the shaking of his gnarled, arthritic hand, he lit a cigarette, blew out the match, and tossed it in the tin ashtray. Taking a deep pull on the cigarette, he held it in his lungs for a few seconds then blew the smoke into the air.
How lovely to read this atmospheric story again! Congratulations Alicia.