What the Wind Knows(110)

“Kevin told me your name is Anne Smith,” Maeve interjected.

“You are Kevin’s great-great—” I paused to calculate how many greats. “He’s your nephew?” I asked.

“Yes. And he’s worried about you. He also says you are expecting a child. Where is the child’s father? He seems to think there isn’t one.”

“Maeve!” Deirdre gasped. “That is none of your business.”

“I don’t care if she’s married, Deirdre,” Maeve snapped. “I just want to hear the story. I’m tired of gossip. I want to know the truth.”

“What happened to Thomas Smith, Maeve?” I asked, deciding I would ask a few questions of my own. “You and I never talked about him.”

“Who was Thomas Smith?” Deirdre said between sips.

“The man who painted that picture,” Maeve said. “The doctor who owned Garvagh Glebe when I was a girl. I left when I was seventeen, after passing all my accounting examinations. I went to London to work at the Kensington Savings and Loan. It was a grand time. The doctor paid for my schooling and my first year’s room and board. He paid for all our schooling. Every O’Toole held him in the highest regard.”

“What happened to him, Maeve? Is he in Ballinagar too?” I asked, bracing myself. My cup rattled against the saucer, and I set both down abruptly.

“No. When Eoin left Garvagh Glebe in 1933, the doctor left too. Neither of them ever came back, as far as I know.”

“Now, who was Eoin again?” Poor Deirdre was trying to keep up.

“My grandfather, Eoin Gallagher,” I supplied. “He was raised here, at Garvagh Glebe.”

“So you’re related to the woman in the picture!” Deirdre crowed, mystery solved.

“Yes,” I said, nodding. Closely related.

Maeve was having none of it. “But you told Kevin that Anne Smith is your name,” she insisted again.

“She’s a famous author, Maeve! Of course she has aliases.” Deirdre laughed. “I must say, though, Anne Smith isn’t terribly original.” She laughed again. When Maeve and I didn’t laugh with her, she finished her tea in a gulp, her cheeks scarlet. “I brought something for you, Anne,” she rushed. “Remember the books I mentioned to you? About the author with the same name? I thought you might like your own copies, with a little one on the way.” She flushed again. “They’re delightful, really.” She opened the big bag beside her chair.

She drew out a stack of brand-new children’s books, shiny black rectangles, each one with a little red sailboat drifting across a moonlit lake on the cover. The Adventures of Eoin Gallagher was written across the top in Thomas’s bold hand. Along the bottom, each title was printed in white.

“My favorite is the adventure with Michael Collins,” Deirdre said, browsing through the stack to find it. I must have moaned in distress because her eyes shot to my face, and Maeve cursed on a sigh.

“You are a ninny, Deirdre,” Maeve groused. “Those books were written by Anne Gallagher Smith.” Maeve pointed up at my portrait. “The woman in the picture, the woman who drowned in the lough, Thomas Smith’s wife, and the woman who wrote those children’s books are all the same person.”

“B-but . . . these were published last spring and donated to commemorate the eighty-fifth anniversary of the Easter Rising. Every library in Ireland received a box of them. I had no idea.”

“May I see them?” I whispered. Deirdre set them reverently on my lap and watched as I looked through them with shaking hands. There were eight of them, just like I remembered.

“Written by Anne Gallagher Smith. Illustrated by Dr. Thomas Smith,” I read, running my thumb across our names. That part was new. I opened the cover on the first book and read the dedication: In loving memory of a magical time. Beneath the dedication it said, “Donated by Eoin Gallagher.”

They’d been professionally reproduced on thick glossy paper and machine bound. But each picture and each page, from the cover to the last line, was identical to the original.

“My grandfather did this. These were his books. He didn’t tell me . . . didn’t show me. I knew nothing about this,” I marveled, my voice hushed in tearful wonder.

“Those copies are yours, Anne,” Deirdre pressed. “A gift. I hope I haven’t upset you.”

“No,” I choked. “No. I’m just . . . surprised. They are wonderful. Forgive me.”

Maeve looked as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Her vinegar was gone; her questions quieted. I had a feeling she knew exactly who I was but had decided it served no purpose to make me admit it.

“We loved Anne,” she muttered. Her lips began to tremble. “Some people talked. Some people said terrible things after she . . . died. But the O’Tooles loved her. Robbie loved her. I loved her. We all missed her dreadfully when she was gone.”

I used my napkin to blot my eyes, unable to speak, and noted that Deirdre was wiping her eyes as well.

Maeve stood, leaning heavily on her cane, and headed for the door. The visit was apparently over. Deirdre rushed to rise as well, sniffling and apologizing for leaving mascara on my cloth napkin. I placed the books carefully on a shelf and followed them out, feeling overwrought and weak-kneed.

Maeve hesitated at the door and let Deirdre exit first.