What the Wind Knows(6)

I’d memorized “Baile and Aillinn” by Yeats as we drove, a narrative poem filled with legend and longing, death and trickery, and love that transcended life. Eoin had held the dog-eared copy of Yeats’s poetry, listening to me stumble through lines, gently correcting me, and helping me pronounce the Gaelic names of the old legends until I could deliver each line and verse like I had lived it. I had a passion for Yeats, who was obsessed with the actress Maud Gonne, who gave her love to a revolutionary instead. Eoin let me ramble on about things I thought I understood—but only romanticized—like philosophy and politics and Irish nationalism. Someday, I told him, I wanted to write a novel set in Ireland during the Rising of 1916.

“Tragedy makes for great stories, but I’d much rather your story—the one you live, not the ones you write—be filled with joy. Don’t revel in tragedy, Annie. Rejoice in love. And once you find it, don’t let it go. In the end, it is the one thing you won’t regret,” Eoin had said.

I was not interested in love beyond what I could read on a page. I spent the next year pestering Eoin to take me to Ireland, to Dromahair, the little town where he’d been born. I wanted to attend the Yeats festival in Sligo, which Eoin said wasn’t far from Dromahair, and perfect my Gaelic. Eoin had insisted I learn, and it was the language of us, of our life together.

Eoin had refused. It was one of the few times we fought. I spoke in a bad Irish accent for two months to torture him.

“You’re tryin’ too hard, Annie. If you have to think about the way your tongue is movin’ in your mouth, then it doesn’t sound natural,” he’d coached, wincing.

I redoubled my efforts. I was relentless in my fixation. I wanted to go to Ireland. I went so far as to call a travel agent to help me. Then I presented the arrangements, complete with dates and pricing options, to Eoin.

“We’re not going to Ireland, Annie. It’s not time. Not yet,” he said, a stubborn set to his chin, rejecting my travel brochures and itineraries.

“When will it be time?” I wheedled.

“When you’ve grown.”

“What? But I’m grown now,” I insisted, still holding on to the accent.

“See there? That was perfect. Natural. No one would know you’re an American,” he said, attempting to distract me.

“Eoin. Please. It’s calling me,” I moaned theatrically, but I was sincere in my fascination. It did call to me. I dreamed about it. I yearned for it.

“I believe that, Annie. I believe it is. But we can’t go back yet. What if we go and we never come back?”

The thought had filled me with wonder. “Then we’ll stay! Ireland needs doctors. Why not? I could go to college in Dublin!”

“Our life is here now,” Eoin argued. “The time will come. But not now, Annie.”

“Then we’ll just visit. Just a trip, Eoin. And when it’s over, no matter how much I love it and want to stay, we’ll come home.” I thought I was being so reasonable, and his adamancy confused me.

“Ireland is not safe, Annie!” he said, losing his temper. The tips of his ears were red, and his eyes flashed. “We’re not going. Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, girl. Let it go.”

His anger was worse than a slap, and I ran to my room and slammed the door, crying and raging and making childish plans to run away.

But he never yielded, and I was not a rebellious child; he’d never given me anything to rebel against. He didn’t want to go to Ireland—didn’t want me to go to Ireland—and out of love and respect for him, I eventually gave up. If his memories of Ireland hurt him so deeply, then how could I insist he return? I threw away the brochures, retired my Irish accent, and read Yeats only when I was alone. We kept up the Gaelic, but Gaelic didn’t make me think of Ireland. It made me think of Eoin, and Eoin had urged me to pursue other dreams.

I began to write my own stories. To craft my own tales. I wrote a novel set during the time of the Salem witch trials—a young-adult book that I’d sold to a publisher at eighteen—and Eoin had spent two weeks with me in Salem, Massachusetts, letting me research to my heart’s content. I wrote a novel about the French Revolution through the eyes of Marie Antoinette’s young lady-in-waiting. Eoin happily arranged his schedule, reassigned his patients, and took me to France. We’d been to Australia so I could write a story about the English prisoners who’d been sent there. We’d been to Italy, to Rome, so I could write a tale about a young soldier during the fall of the Roman Empire. We’d been to Japan, the Philippines, and Alaska, all in the name of research.

But we had never gone to Ireland.

I’ve gone on dozens of trips by myself. I’ve spent the last decade of my life absorbed in my work, crafting one story after another, traveling from one location to the next to research and write. I could have gone to Ireland alone. But I never did. The time never seemed right, and there were always other stories to tell. I’d been waiting for Eoin, and now Eoin was gone. Eoin was gone, and I was finally in Ireland, driving on the wrong side of the road, with Eoin’s ghost in my head and his ashes in the trunk.

The anger I’d felt as a sixteen-year-old girl—the injustice and confusion at his refusal—reared in my chest again.

“Damn you, Eoin. You should be here with me!” I cried, pounding on the wheel, my eyes filling with tears, causing me to narrowly miss plowing into a truck that swerved and blared its horn in warning.