The youngest child and only daughter of Amy Dunn and Conor Donnovan, Ciara spent five wonderful years living with her parents and older brother, Timothay, in North Carolina. Then her mother developed an unusual disease, and the family moved to New York state to be near a hospital specializing in research. Amy grew better for awhile, but shortly after Ciara turned ten she grew much worse again. It was neccicary for Ciara and fifteen-year-old Timothay to go stay with Conor's parents in a villiage in Ireland.
In Ireland, Ciara quickly befriended a teenage boy, fond of both boxing and acting, named Liam Neeson. They became quick friends, sharing many interests and Ciara being very tomboyish. Although she returned to the States, with Timothay, after staying for a year with their grandparents, the arrangement was made that each summer they would return for four months or so. Back in the States each fall and winter, Ciara spent as much time as possible with her mother and at her studies. She and her mother were very close and Ciara's favorite thing to do was to sit with her parents in the evening and listen to stories.
Each summer she returned to Ireland, and when she turned sixteen she began experimentally dating, first with the eighteen-year-old Liam, then towards the end of the summer with seventeen-year-old Michael. When she left that fall for home, she felt very close to Michael and liked him a lot. However, the following summer, unbeknownst to her, he dated other women. Devestated when she found out, not only because of his deceit but because shortly after she received the news that her mother had taken a turn for the worse and was not expected to live.
She and Timothay were joined by Liam when they returned to the US, and Liam comforted her where her distant brother could not when Amy died a few months later. Then Ciara went to live with her mother�s family in Colorado, while Timothay and Liam returned to Ireland. She didn�t stay with them long, finishing highschool and then starting at a school there.
When she was twenty, she and Timothay received word from a hospital in New York that their father had been brought in for a heart attack. She and Timothay hurried to New York and were told that although he was fine, it could only be temporary and they were recommending sending him to Chicago for more specific care they could not give him. They helped Conor move to Chicago, near a hopsital specilizing in breakthroughs in heart research, and the doctors there told them it was very likely there was nothing they could do for him, that his heart was in too bad of shape and they might lose him within a year.
Conor decided to give Timothay and Ciara their inheritences before he died, expecting it to be very soon. However the hospital underestimated his stubbornness and with the medical breakthroughs, he did not die that year. Ciara lived with him for another year as Timothay returned to Ireland. After seeing her father independent and comfortable, she moved to California to complete school. She used a portion of her inheritence to remodel an old building and turn it into a coffee shop. She sent a portion of the profits to her father every week with a long letter, keeping in constant touch with him and trying to make it back to Chicago for holidays like Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving.
While attending college in Santa Monica, Ciara met Crystianne, who quickly became her best friend, roommate, and after opening the C&S, employee. The two got along very well and very happily together at their little coast-side coffee shop. |
