What the Wind Knows(21)

“Did they do this to you?” he asked.

“Who?” The word was a wail in my head but a sigh on my lips.

“The gunrunners, Anne.” It was his turn to whisper. “Were you with them?”

“No.” I shook my head adamantly, the room swimming with the movement. “I need to use the restroom.”

“The restroom?” His voice rose, puzzled.

“The toilet? The loo?” I searched my memory for the Irish terminology.

“Hold on to me,” he instructed, leaning over me and sliding his arms beneath me. I grappled with the sheet and didn’t hold on to him at all, struggling to remain covered as he straightened, hoisting me as he did.

He carried me from the room, down a narrow hallway, and into a bathroom, setting me down carefully on the toilet. The tank was high on the wall, connected by a long brass pipe to the perfectly round seat. The space was spotless and white; the pedestal sink and claw-foot tub with heavy rounded curves gleaming and proud. I was ridiculously relieved that he hadn’t had to traipse through the house and out into the yard to an outhouse or that I hadn’t had to squat over a chamber pot. At the moment, squatting was out of the question.

Thomas left without a word, clearly confident I could handle the rest by myself. He was back, tapping softly, a few minutes later, and I opened the door to him, catching our reflections in the little mirror above the basin before he swept me up again, careful, his eyes clashing with mine in the glass. My hair was a curling mess, flatter on one side than the other, and my eyes were hollow beneath the tepid green. I looked terrible, and I was too exhausted to care. I was almost asleep before he laid me back on the bed and pulled the covers over me.

“Five years ago, I found Declan. But I didn’t find you,” he said, as if he couldn’t stay silent any longer. “I thought you and Declan were together. I was evacuating the wounded from the GPO to Jervis Street. Then the fire was too great, and the barricades were up, and I couldn’t get back.”

I lifted my concrete lids and found him watching me, his expression desolate. He scrubbed at his face as though he could wipe the memory away. “When the fires consumed the GPO, everyone abandoned it. Declan . . .”

“The GPO?” I was so tired, and the question slipped out.

He stared at me, his brow furrowed. “The post office, Anne. Weren’t you and Declan with the Volunteers at the post office? Martin said he thought you evacuated with the women, but Min said you turned back. She said you insisted on being with Declan to the end. But you weren’t with Declan. Where did you go, Anne?”

I didn’t remember, but I suddenly knew. The Easter Rising. He was describing events I’d read about in considerable detail.

“It was a battle we weren’t going to win,” Thomas murmured. “We all knew it. You and Declan knew it. We talked about what revolution would mean, what it meant to even fight back. There was something glorious about it. Glorious and terrible.”

“Glorious and terrible,” I whispered, picturing it, wondering again if I’d conjured this scene the way I’d imagined stories as a child, putting myself in the very center of the action and losing myself in my own productions.

“The day after we withdrew from the GPO, the leadership surrendered. I found Declan lying in the street.” Thomas gazed at me, watching my face as he spoke of Declan, and I could only stare back helplessly. “He wouldn’t have left you in the GPO, and the Anne I knew wouldn’t have left him at all.”

The Anne I knew.

Fear, sour and hot, churned in my stomach. I didn’t like this development in the story. They had never found Eoin’s mother. They’d never found her body. They had assumed she was dead, alongside her husband, lost in an insurrection that had ended very badly. And now I was here, raising questions that were long since buried. This was bad. This was very bad.

“We would have known. If you’d been sent to England with the other prisoners, we would have known. They released the other women. Everyone has been released. Years ago. And . . . and you’re well!” Thomas insisted. He turned away, shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “Your hair . . . your skin. You look . . . well.”

My good health was an accusation, and he threw the words at me, although he never raised his voice. He turned back toward me but didn’t approach the bed.

“You look well, Anne. You definitely haven’t been wasting away in an English prison.”

There was nothing I could say. No explanations I could give. I didn’t know what had happened to the Anne Gallagher of 1921. I didn’t know. The image of the graves in Ballinagar rose in my mind, a tall stone with the name Gallagher at the base. Anne and Declan shared that stone, and the dates had been clear: 1892 to 1916. I’d seen it yesterday. I was dreaming. Only dreaming.

“Anne?” Thomas pressed.

I was a wonderful liar. Not because I was deceitful, but because my mind could immediately conjure variations and plot twists, and any lie became an alternate version of a tale. I didn’t especially like that I was so skilled but considered it an occupational hazard. I couldn’t lie now. I didn’t know enough to create a convincing story. Not yet. I would go to sleep, and when I woke, this would be over. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes, blocking it all out.

“I don’t know, Thomas.” I used his name, a plea to let me be, and turned my head toward the wall, needing the safety of my own thoughts and the space to examine them.