Flash Fiction: It Starts with Soda Bread

Originally written for A Very Bookish Celebration, a flash fiction anthology that is no longer available. Each story had to tie in with a holiday and a classic tale. A unique challenge for sure! This is a story about St. Patrick's Day and pulls in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Kidnapped.

It Starts with Soda Bread

“Aidan! No green? How could you? This is a St. Patrick’s Day party!” Deirdre stood at her open apartment door, hands on hips.

Before his cousin could reach out and pinch him, which she was known to do, Aidan held up his left hand, brandishing his green wristband with white shamrocks. “No, wait!”

“Pushing your luck with me, aren’t you.” Deirdre laughed. In contrast, she wore a short green dress with black tights, an outfit from when she’d done Riverdance in high school. It was the perfect foil for her copper-colored hair. “Well, come on in.”

Aidan entered the small living room, serenaded by lilting Celtic music and the aroma of freshly baked Irish soda bread—their grandmother’s recipe, Deirdre had promised when she’d invited him. It was the soda bread that had brought Aidan more than anything else.

“Thanks for coming,” Deirdre said. “My parents are on their way, and so are yours, but they’re all running late. We have a half hour to kill.”

“Do I get the first slice of soda bread?” Aidan asked.

“Yes, you earned it. But we’ll wait on the sugar cookies. I used Grandma’s shamrock cookie cutter and iced them with green icing. Come look at the table.”

“It’s really cool you took over Grandma’s St. Patrick’s Day traditions,” Aidan said as he followed Deirdre into the dining nook. The table was clothed in green, and a giant platter of cookies and a huge mounded loaf of sliced soda bread with raisins took center stage.

“I can’t believe this is the first time we’re celebrating without her.” Deirdre’s voice was subdued as she placed a slice of bread on a shamrock-printed paper plate. “Let me get the butter.”

Soon, the cousins were perched on the couch savoring the soda bread. “She was the most Irish Irish person I knew,” Deirdre remarked with a smile. “Remember how much she loved green?”

“Even her car was green.” The slightest note of bitterness tinged Aidan’s words.

Deirdre glanced at him, brown eyes filled with concern. “Oh, Aidan, you haven’t gotten over that?”

Aidan swallowed his mouthful. “Remember my favorite book, Kidnapped? I feel kind of like David Balfour when his uncle betrayed him and had him kidnapped by the sea captain so he wouldn’t get his inheritance. Uncle Brad as much as promised me Grandma’s car, knowing how much I needed one and how awesome it’d be for me to have hers. He was going to give me a deal on it. He should have just given it to me. But by the time I’d saved enough to buy it, he sold it to someone else.”

Deirdre looked down and nodded. “I remember how hurt you were.”

“Just because he’s the oldest sibling doesn’t mean he could take whatever was of value.” Aidan smacked his plate down onto the coffee table, the bread almost flying off. “Our moms got virtually nothing, just what Grandma specifically willed to them.”

“He hurt all of us,” Deirdre said quietly. “But we need to forgive him.”

“He doesn’t deserve our forgiveness,” Aidan growled, staring at the table.

Deirdre slid her plate with its half-eaten slice of bread onto the table next to Aidan’s. She inhaled deeply. “That’s what forgiveness is—people don’t deserve it. That’s the whole point.” She waved at the painting of Saint Patrick that she’d hung on the wall for the party. “Do you know the story of Saint Patrick? Grandma loved it. He wasn’t even Irish, and hardly anything about this day relates to the actual Saint Patrick.” She touched her Celtic cross necklace.

“He was kidnapped, too, wasn’t he, like David Balfour?” Aidan asked, his brow still furrowed in anger.

“Yes, by Irish pirates when he was sixteen and sold as a slave in Ireland, way back in the fifth century. He eventually escaped and returned to Britain, but then he found God and felt called to go back to Ireland as a missionary. He confronted Druids and lit a miraculous fire to defy a king and did lots of other amazing things while spreading Christianity. God used him in a mighty way. But none of it would have happened if Patrick hadn’t forgiven his oppressors and shown them love by returning and preaching the gospel to them.”

Aidan brushed away the strands of brown hair that had fallen into his eyes, but he didn’t meet Deirdre’s gaze.

“To me, that’s what Saint Patrick’s Day is about,” Deirdre continued softly. “He was a Christlike man teaching lessons for us even today, far beyond the shamrocks and the color green and ‘Danny Boy.’”

“Did you invite Uncle Brad to this party?” Aidan asked after a moment.

“Yes, but I don’t think he’s coming.” Deirdre sighed. “Which is for the best. I don’t know if our moms are ready to forgive him, either, for how he’s acted after Grandma passed away. But I hope we all do, one day soon. Uncle Brad needs us more than he realizes.”

“I guess that is what God wants us to do,” Aidan said after yet another long pause.

“Saint Patrick obeyed that commandment of forgiving his enemies, and look what happened.” Deirdre fingered the flowing hem of her dress. “I think Uncle Brad needs God, too, and if we’d all start talking to him again and showing him love, he might have a better chance of finding God.”

Aidan had no time to reply before both sets of parents arrived. The party was a great success; though slightly sobered by Grandma’s absence, they all enjoyed themselves. Aidan, the last to leave, helped Deirdre clean up.

He quietly exhaled as he put plastic wrap over the soda bread slices. “Uncle Brad would have liked this party. Maybe we should take the leftovers to him. You know it kills me to say that because I usually took Grandma’s leftover soda bread and cookies home.”

Deirdre laughed and patted his shoulder. “Aidan, that is definitely a start. Who knows where it could lead.”