What the Wind Knows(46)

“I am a good counter,” Eoin said hopefully.

“Then you won’t be a bit bored.”

We drove through Dromahair and into the fields, following the same road—albeit an unpaved one—I’d taken with Maeve O’Toole’s instructions ringing in my ears. When I saw the church, it was like glimpsing a familiar face, and I found myself smiling despite my apprehensions. We rumbled to a stop among cars of a similar shape and style, and Thomas opened his door and stepped out, lifting Eoin from the back seat and helping Brigid alight before doing the same for me.

“Brigid, take Eoin and go inside. I need to talk to Anne for a moment,” Thomas instructed. Eoin and Brigid frowned in tandem, but Brigid took the little boy’s hand and started across the grass to the open doors that welcomed the stream of congregants arriving in cars, delivery trucks, and the occasional horse-drawn wagon.

“I saw Father Darby early this morning. He was giving last rites to Sarah Gillis, Mrs. O’Toole’s grandmother.”

“Oh no!”

“The woman was so old, she was praying to go,” he said. “She was a hundred years if she was a day. Her passing is a blessing on the family.”

I nodded, thinking of Maeve and the longevity she would inherit.

“But that’s not why I needed to speak to you. I asked Father Darby to make an announcement today from the lectern. He makes announcements every week—church picnics, death notices, birth notices, pleas for help for this parishioner or that parishioner. You know the kind,” Thomas explained. He took off his hat and placed it on his head again.

“I asked him to announce that you’ve returned home after a long illness, and that you are residing at Garvagh Glebe with your son. I thought it would be easier than trying to tell people one at a time. And no one can follow up Father Darby’s announcement with questions, although they will try when Mass is over.”

I nodded slowly, both nervous and relieved. “What now?”

“Now . . . we have to go inside,” he said with a wry smile.

I balked, and Thomas tipped my chin to meet my gaze beneath the brim of my hat.

“People will talk, Anne. They’ll talk, and they’ll speculate about where you’ve been and what—and who—you’ve been doing it with. What they don’t know, they might fabricate. But in the end, none of that really matters. You’re here, impossible as it seems. And no one can dispute that.”

“I’m here. As impossible as it seems,” I repeated, nodding.

“What you say to fill in the blanks—or not—is entirely up to you. I’ll be beside you, and eventually . . . they’ll lose interest.”

I nodded again, more firmly, and linked my arm through his. “Thank you, Thomas.” My words were paltry, considering how much he’d done for me, but he let me hold on to him, and we entered the church together.





8 July 1921

She is the same. But not the same at all.

Her skin has the same luster, her eyes the same tilt. Her nose, her chin, and the shape of the fine bones of her face are all unchanged. Her hair has grown so long that it brushes the middle of her back. But it is still dark, and it still curls. She is as slight as I remember and not especially tall. Her laugh made me want to weep—a memory come to life, the sound of a sweeter time, of an old friend and new pain. New pain because she has returned, and I’d given up on her. I didn’t find her. She found us, and oddly, she isn’t angry. She isn’t broken. It’s almost as if she isn’t Anne.

Her voice is the same, musical and low, but she speaks slowly now, almost gently, like she’s not sure of herself. And the stories she tells, the poetry that trips so effortlessly from her lips! I could listen for hours, but it’s so unlike the girl I knew. The old Anne used to spit out her words like she couldn’t release them fast enough; she was fiery and full of ideas. She could never sit still. Declan would laugh and kiss her to slow her down. She would try to kiss him back while finishing her point.

Anne has a quiet about her now, an inner calm that is very different—like a contented Madonna, though I wonder if it’s because she has been reunited with Eoin. She watches him with such love and devotion, such fascination, that I am ashamed for doubting her. Her joy in him makes me angry at the years she lost. She should be angry too. She should be sorrowful. She should be scarred. But she’s not. The only visible scar is the gunshot wound on her side, and that, she won’t explain.

She refuses to tell me where she’s been or what has happened to her. I’ve tried to imagine plausible scenarios, and I can’t. Was she wounded in the Rising? Did someone find her and care for her? Did she lose her memory only to regain it five years later? Was she really in America? Is she a British spy? Did she have a lover? Or did Declan’s death send her over the edge? The possibilities—or lack thereof—will drive me mad. When I press her for answers, she seems truly afraid. Then her terror makes her mouth tremble and her hands shake, and she struggles to meet my gaze. And I give up and give in and postpone the questions that must be answered. Eventually.

She has holes in her ears—and diamonds, until she sold them—but no gap between her front teeth. I noticed it when she begged to clean them the first time, and I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe my memory’s flawed, but the straight white row of perfect teeth seems wrong.