What the Wind Knows(60)

I couldn’t look at Thomas, couldn’t breathe, but Michael Collins was in charge, and he drew us around him and slung an arm over my shoulder, smirking at the camera as though he’d just bested the Brits. I was flooded with the feeling that I’d seen and done this all before. The bulb flashed and realization dawned. I remembered the picture I’d seen of Anne standing in a group beside Michael Collins and the picture of Thomas and Anne, the suggestion of intimacy in the line of their bodies and the angle of their gazes. Those weren’t photos of my great-grandmother at all.

They were pictures of me.

“Was Thomas in love with Anne?” I’d asked my grandfather.

“Yes and no,” Eoin had answered.

“Oh wow. There’s a story there,” I’d crowed.

“Yes. There is,” he’d whispered. “A wonderful story.”

And now I understood.





26 August 1921

I’ll never forget this day. Anne has gone to bed, and still I sit, watching the fire as though it holds a different, better set of answers. Anne told me everything. And yet . . . I know nothing.

I called Garvagh Glebe before we left for the Gresham Hotel, knowing the O’Tooles would be hovering, waiting for word on Robbie’s condition. There are two telephones in all of Dromahair, and Garvagh Glebe boasts one. I’d rationalized the expense of phone lines; a doctor needed to be easily accessible. But no one else had telephones in rural Ireland. They didn’t call me; they fetched me. The only calls I ever received were from Dublin.

Maggie was waiting breathlessly on the end of the line as the operator patched me through, and I could hear her tears when I told her “my patient” had come through surgery well and that the swelling had receded substantially. She was crying the Rosary as she handed the telephone to Daniel, who thanked me profusely, though he knew better than to specify what for, and then, oddly, he gave me an update on the foal that wasn’t due for another two weeks.

“We went in to check on her this afternoon, Doc . . . and the foal was gone,” Daniel said, his voice slow and heavy with meaning.

It took me a moment to understand.

“Someone’s been in the barn, Doc. It’s gone. Nobody knows where. Liam’s been by to see Brigid, and I had to tell him. He’s upset. He had plans for the foal, as you know. Now, with her being gone . . . we need to figure out who took her. Tell Miss Anne, will you, Doc? Liam is certain she already knows. But I don’t imagine how.”

I was silent, reeling. The guns were gone, and Liam was blaming Anne. Daniel was quiet for a moment too, letting me process his metaphor. I told him we would inquire further when I returned from Dublin. He agreed, and we signed off.

I almost told Anne we weren’t going to the Gresham after all, but when I stepped into her room and saw her, lithe and lovely, her curling mass of hair loosely bound, her eyes warm, and her smile eager, I changed my mind once more.

She held my hand, and I walked, half numb and wholly unprepared for the risk I was taking. All I knew was I wanted Mick to meet her. To reassure me. To absolve me. It was madness, bringing Anne to see him. I don’t know what compelled me to do it or what compelled him to draw a confession from her red lips. It was his way; I knew that well enough by now. He was completely unconventional, but he never failed to surprise me.

He asked her what she thought of me, asked her if she loved me, and with only a small hesitation, the kind that comes from admitting personal things publicly, she said she did. The world spun, my heart leapt, and I wanted to pull her back out into the night where I could keep Mick safe and kiss her silly.

Her colour was high, her eyes were bright, and she couldn’t meet my gaze. She seemed as dazed and dazzled as I, though Mick has that effect on people. He insisted we pose for a picture, then coaxed her onto the dance floor, despite her protestations. “I can’t dance, Mr. Collins!” I heard her say, though she’d always been a frenetic dancer, dragging Declan to his feet whenever there was music.

Mick made up for whatever skill she thought she lacked by tucking her close and doing a simple two-step to the ragtime rhythm that mostly kept them in the same spot. And he talked to her, eyes boring down into hers like he wanted to know all her secrets. I understood the desire. I watched her shake her head and answer him with great seriousness. It was all I could do not to cut in, to save him, to save her, to save myself. It was all madness.

I was pulled towards the corner table, Joe O’Reilly at my side. Tom Cullen put a drink in my hand while the newly released Sean MacEoin, who I had seen and administered to in Mountjoy jail in June, pushed me into a chair. They were ebullient, the calm of the truce and the cessation in hiding and fighting making them loud and loose in their conversation and celebration. I could only marvel. How long had it been since they could sit at the wedding of a friend and not have guards stationed at the doors, watching for patrols, for raids, for arrests?

Mick brought Anne back to the corner table as well, and she fell into a seat beside me and took a long pull from my drink, wincing as she set it down.

“Dance with the woman, Tommy. I’ve monopolized her long enough,” Mick ordered. His eyes were shadowed, and his mood was not nearly as jubilant as his men. They had been relieved, temporarily, of their burdens. He had not, and his nomination to attend the Treaty talks, to play the dancing puppet, was not sitting well on him.