What the Wind Knows(50)

Sometimes Brigid came too, first because she feared Eoin and I would disappear together and then because she seemed to enjoy the exercise. She started to soften toward me, infinitesimally, and sometimes she could be coaxed to talk of the days when she was a girl living in Kiltyclogher in northern Leitrim, giving me a glimpse into her life. It seemed to surprise her that I listened so intently, that I cared to hear her stories, that I wanted to know her at all. I discovered she had two sons and a daughter, all older than Declan, and a little girl buried in Ballinagar. I hadn’t seen a stone and wondered if the child’s marker was just a plot of grass with a heavy rock to mark her resting place.

Her oldest daughter was in America, in New Haven, Connecticut. Her name was Mary, and she’d married a man named John Bannon. They had three children, grandchildren Brigid had never seen, cousins Eoin had never told me about. Brigid’s two sons were unmarried. One, Ben, was a train conductor in Dublin, and the other, Liam, worked on the docks in Sligo. Since I’d been at Garvagh Glebe, neither had come to visit. I listened to Brigid provide updates on each one of her children, and I hung on her words, trying to absorb things I should have known, things Anne would have known, and doing my best to bluff my way through the rest.

“You are kind to her, to Brigid,” Thomas remarked one day, when we returned from our walk to find him already at home. “She has never been especially kind to you.”

Maybe the difference between the “real” Anne Gallagher and me was that Brigid was her mother-in-law and Brigid was my great-great-grandmother. Brigid’s blood ran in my veins. She was part of me—how big a part, only my DNA would tell, but she belonged to me, and I wanted to know her. The first Anne might not have felt the same sense of belonging.

Thomas went to Dublin for a few days in the middle of August. He wanted to bring me along, and Eoin too, but changed his mind in the end. He seemed reluctant to leave and anxious to go, but he made me promise, as he stuck his medical bag and a small suitcase in the back seat of his Model T, that I would still be at Garvagh Glebe when he returned.

“Don’t leave, Anne,” he said, his hat in his hands, fear in his eyes. “Promise me you’ll stay close. Promise me so I can do what I need to do in Dublin without my head running back here.”

I had nodded with only a flicker of fear. If I hadn’t gone home yet, it was doubtful I ever would again. Maybe Thomas saw the flicker in my eyes, faint as it was, for he pulled in a sigh and held it, weighing it, considering it, before he released it with a gust of submission.

“I won’t go,” he said. “I’ll wait a bit longer.”

“Thomas, go. I’ll be here when you get back. I promise.”

He looked for a moment at my mouth, as if he wanted to kiss it, to taste it for the truth, but Eoin rushed out of the house and threw himself at Thomas, demanding affection and wheedling a prize from Dublin if he was very good while Thomas was away. Thomas lifted him easily and hugged him close before extracting his own promises.

“I’ll bring you back a present if you mind your nana and look after your mother. And don’t let her go near the lough,” he said to Eoin, raising his pale-blue eyes to mine as he set the boy back on the ground.

My heart lurched, and a memory flooded back, bringing with it an odd sense of déjà vu and a line tripping through my mind.

“Don’t go near the water, love, the lough will take you far from me,” I murmured, and Thomas cocked his head.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing. Just something I read once.”

“Why can’t Mother go near the lough?” Eoin asked, confused. “We go there all the time. We walk on the shore and skip rocks. Mother showed me how.”

Eoin had taught me how to skip rocks, once upon a time. Yet another dizzying circle of what came first.

Thomas frowned, ignoring Eoin’s question, and sighed again, as if his head and stomach were at war with one another.

“Thomas, go. All will be well while you are gone,” I said firmly.





22 August 1921

I drove to Dublin with both hands on the wheel and my heart in my throat. I’d had little contact with Mick since de Valera had returned and Lord French had been replaced as general governor. I wasn’t much help to Mick in the scheme of things. I was nothing but a sounding board. A friend. A financial backer and a secret keeper who did what I could, where I could. But still, I’d been away too long, and despite the truce, I was worried.

I met Mick and Joe O’Reilly, Mick’s personal assistant, at Devlin’s Pub. They were huddled in the back room Mick had been given for an office. The door was left ajar so he could see trouble coming. The rear exit provided a quick escape. Mick was at Devlin’s more than he was at his own apartment. He rarely stayed in one place too long, and if it weren’t for the loyalty of average citizens, who knew exactly who he was and never said a word despite the reward on his head, he would have been captured long ago. His reputation had grown to epic proportions, and I was afraid much of the rub with the president of the Dáil was due to Mick’s popularity. I became alarmed when he told me Dev (de Valera) was considering sending him to America to “get him out of the fight.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Mick is the fight, and I told him as much. Without him, our Irish rebellion is all symbolism and suffering with no results—just like every other Irish rebellion over the last several hundred years has been.