The Boatman's Wife(82)

‘Where are you, Niamh?’ her mam asked.

But she didn’t tell her. ‘You were right,’ Niamh replied, her heart breaking all the same. ‘I’m a danger to you all. I have to stay away.’

Her mam didn’t reply immediately, because it was clear she agreed.

‘But Mam, do you forgive me?’ Niamh begged.

‘No, Niamh,’ her mam said in a quiet voice. ‘I can’t. You put Connor’s life at risk. I can’t forgive you for that.’

‘I know you’re taking the best care of him,’ Niamh said, before tears prevented her from saying any more.

It wasn’t her mam’s fault. She had done this to herself.

Niamh stopped calling. The years passed. Connor was better off without her. She knew her mam was a better mother than she could ever have been. Connor gave her mam purpose. Her child had banished her mother’s grief, but now Niamh was drowning in loss.

At night, it took her hours to fall asleep. She’d hug her sides, aching for her baby boy. Either shivering from the air con, or if she turned it off, bathed in sweat. How could she ever get through such pain? When she did fall asleep, she’d have the nightmare. Walking into Tadhg’s house, seeing Brendan all shot up. Tadhg’s face gone, and the dog dead in the hall. Patch the dog would morph into her father. Why had they had to shoot the dog, too? Her own people. That was the terrible thing. Every morning, she felt such outrage. Tadhg and Brendan would never have informed on their own.

Often, she’d wake in the middle of the night, panting and sweating with fear. Imagining she heard sounds outside. Had Deirdre and Johnny come for her? All the way to Arizona? Of course not, she wasn’t important enough. Just the gunrunner, The Boatman’s Wife, with her instruments of death. But a gun had killed Tadhg and Brendan. She knew in her heart she was as bad as any other terrorist. She might not have pulled any triggers, but she was part of the cycle of violence.

Niamh tried praying to God on her knees at night, but it didn’t make her feel any better. So then she went to some of the churches in Arizona. They were all evangelical, which reminded her of the narrowmindedness of some of the Loyalists, so she stopped going to church, too. She’d been raised a Catholic, but God had never felt real to her, and her mother had hated their parish priest in Mullaghmore. Sedona was a hub of New Age healing and Niamh turned to other forms of spirituality to try to ease her pain. She tried all sorts of things: visiting the energy vortexes of all four sites of Sedona natural healing at Airport Mesa, Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock and Boynton Canyon. Although the exertion of the hikes up these big red boulders of ancient rock made her feel momentarily better, it wasn’t long before her heartache returned. She went to chakra balancing workshops and guided vision journeys with shaman healers, but when it came down to sharing circles, she couldn’t tell any other soul who she really was, what she’d done. It was just too horrific. In the end, she told those who would listen that her family had died in a fire back in Ireland. Then they either left her alone, embarrassed to be in the company of such sadness and tragedy, or did their best to try to help her find peace through laying hands, or chanting. But how could they truly help her when what she had told them was a lie? A couple of times, Niamh had considered psychic readings, but she had been afraid of what the reader would tell her: not just the past, but also her future. Would she never see her son again?

It was only when she started painting that she began to feel anything close to okay. Quite by chance, she’d come across an art store on a drive to Flagstaff. On a whim, she’d spent all her wages that week on watercolour paper, paints and pencils. Driving back, she’d turned down a small track into the Oak Creek Canyon, and walked down to the rushing creek with her art materials in a tote bag. She’d spent her afternoon off painting by the water, immersing herself in the sensation of all the colours she could see and feel. At last, she had felt peace, and forgotten her loss – if just for a moment.

For the first time in all her years in America, she thought of Jesse. Could she contact him? She had no idea how she would begin to tell him about all that had happened, let alone that he had a child.

It was later on the same day that Niamh saw the news. What happened had been so awful, the tragedy had spread worldwide. An IRA bomb had gone off in the town of Omagh, north of the border, killing twenty-nine innocent people, both Protestants and Catholics. One of them had been a woman, pregnant with twins.

A tsunami of shame descended upon her as Niamh sat at the bar in Sedona and watched the footage of the devastated town centre in Omagh. She remembered the explosives she’d smuggled across the border in the door panels of her car. She hadn’t wanted to do it, but she hadn’t been brave enough to say no. To walk away. Now she’d been banished and was even more of an exile than she would have been if she’d refused in the first place.

Niamh was bereft of all she’d ever believed in. As she sat at the bar in Sedona, downing Bloody Marys, a man with dark leathery skin and long white hair slid up on a high stool next to her. He homed right in on her, as if sensing how lost she was. Later, Niamh couldn’t even remember how they got talking. Just that Bob was sympathising with her torment over what had happened in Omagh. She got so drunk, she told him a lot. It seemed perfect. A stranger who she’d never see again. She let nearly all of it out. Bob was quite captivated by her story, and sympathetic to her guilt.