What the Wind Knows(67)

What has turned to smoking wick

Nature’s pure unchanging light.

—W. B. Yeats

I read somewhere that a person will never know who they really are unless they prioritize what they love. I had always loved two things above everything else, and from those two things, I had formed my identity. One identity grew from what my grandfather had taught me. It was wrapped around his love for me, our love for each other, and the life we’d had together. My other identity was formed from my love of storytelling. I became an author, obsessed with earning money, making bestseller lists, and coming up with the next novel. I had lost one identity when I’d lost my grandfather, and now I’d lost the other. I was no longer Anne Gallagher, New York Times bestselling author. I was Anne Gallagher, born in Dublin, widowed wife of Declan, mother of Eoin, friend of Thomas. I had assumed several identities that were not my own, and they had begun to chafe and rub, even when I did my best to wear them well.

In the weeks after Dublin, Thomas kept his distance, avoiding me when it was possible, remaining politely aloof when it was not. He treated me like Declan’s Anne again, though he knew I was not. I’d told him a truth he could not accept, so he wrapped me tightly in her role, refusing to cast me in another. Sometimes I caught him staring at me like I was dying from an incurable illness, his countenance stricken and sad.

Thomas returned to Dublin and brought a healing Robbie O’Toole back to Garvagh Glebe. He had a jaunty patch over his missing eye, an angry scar on the side of his head, and a mild weakness on his left side. He moved slowly, a young man grown old, his days of smuggling arms and ambushing Tans behind him.

No one spoke of Liam or the missing guns, but the foal was finally born, making honest men of us all. Thankfully, the Auxiliary captain did not return to Garvagh Glebe either, and whatever suspicions and accusations had been leveled against me were quietly shelved. Still, I slept with a knife beneath my pillow and asked Daniel O’Toole to put a lock on my bedroom door. Liam Gallagher might feel safe from me, but I didn’t feel safe from him. There would be a point of reckoning, I had no doubt. The worry made me weary, and the wondering stole my sleep.

I thought about the lough relentlessly, pictured myself pushing a boat out onto the waves and never coming back. Each day I walked along the shore, considering. And each day I turned away, unwilling to try. Unwilling to leave Eoin. To leave Thomas. To leave myself, this new Anne, behind. I ached for my grandfather—the man, not the boy. I mourned for my life—the author, not the woman. But the choice was easy to make. Here, I loved. And, in the end, I wanted to love more than I wanted to return.

The years ahead, years that would come and go—years that, for me, had already come and gone—weighed heavily on me as well. I knew what was to come for Ireland. Not every twist and bend or every turn and tumble. But I knew the rocky destinations. The conflicts. The never-ending fighting and turmoil. And I wondered what it was all for. The death and the suffering. There was a time to fight, but there was a time to stop fighting too. Time had not proven especially helpful—not in Ireland’s case—in ironing it all out.

Eoin was the light in the continually darkening tunnel that was closing around me. But even that joy was dimmed by the truth. Loving him didn’t excuse lying to him. I was an imposter, and all my devotion didn’t change reality. My only defense was that I had not set out to harm or deceive. I was a victim of circumstance—improbable, impossible, inescapable—and I could only make the best of it.

Eoin and I had filled several books with expeditions and adventures to far-off places. Thomas had made the connection between my confession in Dublin and Eoin’s stories; I had climbed into a boat on Lough Gill and found myself in another world, just like the little boy in Eoin’s tales. Thomas had stared at the words and then looked at me, realization flooding his face like a black cloud. He’d made himself scarce after that, adding pictures to the stories after Eoin and I had gone to bed.

When we weren’t writing stories, I’d begun to teach Eoin how to tell time and how to read and write. He was left-handed, like me. Or maybe I was left-handed like him. I showed him how to hold his pencil and form his letters in neat little rows so he would be ready when he started school, which came sooner than either of us would have liked. The last Monday in September, Thomas, Eoin, and I walked in silence to the schoolhouse, Eoin dragging his feet, unhappy about our destination.

“Can’t you teach me at home, Mother?” Eoin whined softly. “I would like that so much better.”

“I need your mother to help me on my rounds, Eoin. And you will be with friends. Your father and I met when we were boys. You might miss a chance at making a lifelong friend if you are tutored at home,” Thomas said.

Eoin looked skeptical. Eoin already had a few good friends and probably figured he could see them without attending school. Plus, Thomas hadn’t been taking me on his rounds since we returned from Dublin; he didn’t want to be alone with me.

Seeing that Eoin was unconvinced, Thomas pointed at a little cottage peeking out of the trees in a small clearing, a cottage I’d seen before but never thought much about. It was clearly abandoned, and the foliage had begun to overwhelm it.

“Do you see that cottage, Eoin?” Thomas asked.

Eoin nodded, but Thomas kept walking, moving us along. There was rain in the air.

“A family once lived in that cottage. A family like us. But then the potato blight came, and the family was hungry. Some of them died. Some of them went to America to find work so they could eat. There are abandoned homes all over Ireland. You must go to school to learn how to make Ireland better for her people, so that families don’t die. So our friends don’t have to leave.”