I felt the memory rise, thick and hot, like the smoke that had filled my lungs as I’d gone to Moore Street that long-ago Saturday, looking for my friends; 29 April 1916 was the worst day of my life. Before today. Today was worse.
“Connolly told me to make sure everyone was out of the GPO before I evacuated,” Liam continued, the morphine slowing his cadence. “That was my job. I had to watch as men ran for their lives, one after another, dodging bullets and tripping over bodies. That’s when I heard her. She was suddenly there, in the GPO, walking through the smoke. She scared me, Thomas. I was half blind and so tired, I would have shot my own mother had she come up behind me.”
I waited for him to say her name yet recoiled when he did.
“It was Annie. I don’t know how she got back inside the post office. The place was an inferno.”
“What did you do?” The words were a rasp in my throat.
“I shot her. I didn’t mean to. I just reacted. I shot her several times. I knelt beside her, and her eyes were open. She was staring at me, and I said her name. But she was dead. Then I shot her again, Thomas. Just to make sure she was real.”
I couldn’t look at him. I was afraid I would do to him what he’d done to Declan’s Anne. To Eoin’s mother. To my friend. I remembered the madness of that night. The exhaustion. The strain. And I understood how it had happened. I would have understood then. I would have forgiven him then. But he’d lied to me for six years, and he’d tried to cover his sins by killing again.
“I took her shawl—she’d been holding it—it was too hot in the GPO to wear it. It didn’t have a single drop of blood on it.” He was obviously still awed by the fact. I grimaced, imagining the blood that must have pooled beneath her bullet-ridden body.
“And her ring?” It was all so clear to me now.
“I took it off her finger. I didn’t want anyone to know it was her. I knew if I left her in the GPO, her body would burn, and no one would ever have to know what I’d done.”
“Except for you. You knew.”
Liam nodded, but his face was blank, as though he’d suffered so long with the sharp edge of guilt it had carved him into an empty shell.
“Then I walked out. I walked to Henry Place, Anne’s shawl in my hands, her ring in my pocket. I felt the bullets whizzing past me. I wanted to die. But I didn’t. Kavanagh pulled me into a tenement on Moore Street, and I spent the rest of the night burrowing through the walls, from one tenement to the next, working my way towards Sackville Lane with some of the others. I left the shawl in a pile of rubble, and I kept the ring. I’ve carried it in my pocket ever since. I don’t know why.”
“Ever since?” I asked, disbelieving. How was that possible? Anne had been wearing the ring when I’d seen her last. My Anne. My Anne. My legs buckled, and for a moment I thought I would fall.
“Surely you noticed that Anne was wearing the same ring,” I moaned, covering my face with my hands.
“Those English bastards thought of everything, didn’t they? Feckin’ spies. But they didn’t count on me. I knew it wasn’t her all along. I told you, Doc. But you wouldn’t listen, remember?”
I stood abruptly, knocking over my stool in my haste and moving away from him so I wouldn’t strangle the righteous indignation from his face.
Anne told me her grandfather—Eoin—gave her the ring along with my diary and several pictures. They were the pieces of the life he had wanted her to reclaim. Oh, Eoin, my precious boy, my poor little boy. He would have to wait so long to see her again.
“Where’s her ring now?” I asked, overcome.
Liam pulled it from his pocket and held it towards me, seemingly relieved to be rid of it. I took it from him, reeling with the knowledge that someday I would give it to Eoin. Eoin would eventually give it to Anne, his granddaughter, and she would wear it back to Ireland.
But that chapter had already been read, and my part in the rippled progression of future and past had already been played. My Anne had crossed the lough and gone home again.
“Last July, when you were moving guns on the lough, why did you shoot Anne when you saw her? I don’t understand,” I asked, seeking the final piece of the puzzle.
“I didn’t think she was real,” Liam murmured. “I see her everywhere I go. I keep killing her, and she keeps coming back.”
Oh God. If only she would come back. If only she would.
The next morning, I told Liam to go. To never come back. I promised him if he did, I would kill him myself. I gave Brigid the choice to go with him. She stayed behind, but she and I both know I wish she was gone. I can’t bring myself to forgive her. Not yet.
I don’t know how I will go on. Breathing hurts. Speaking hurts. Waking is agony. I cannot comfort myself. I cannot comfort Eoin, who does not understand any of this. He keeps asking me where his mother is, and I have no idea what to tell him. The O’Tooles are insisting we have a service for her, even without a body. Father Darby said it would help us move on. But I will never move on.
T. S.
24
WHAT WAS LOST
I sing what was lost and dread what was won,
I walk in a battle fought over again,
My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;
Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,
They always beat on the same small stone.
—W. B. Yeats
Jim Donnelly was Eamon Donnelly’s grandson, and he was kind. He brought me a blanket and some wool socks and threw my wet dress in his dryer. Then he called the police—the Gardai—and waited with me, making me drink a glass of water while he patted my back and guarded the door. He thought I was going to run. And I would have.
I couldn’t hold on to a thought, couldn’t stop shuddering, and when he asked me questions, I could only shake my head. He began talking to me instead, keeping his voice low as he checked his watch every few minutes.
“You called me Eamon. That was my grandfather’s name,” he said, trying to distract me. “He lived here on the lough too. We Donnellys have lived here for generations.”
I tried to sip my water, and it slipped from my hand and crashed to the floor. He jumped to his feet and brought me a towel.
“Can I bring you some coffee?” he asked as I took the towel from his hand.
My stomach roiled at the mere mention of coffee, and I shook my head and tried to whisper my thanks. I sounded like a shuddering snake.
He cleared his throat and tried again, his voice conversational. “There was a woman who drowned in that lough a long time ago. A woman named Anne Gallagher. My grandfather knew her, and he told me the story when I was a boy. It’s a small place, and she was a bit of a mystery. Over the years, the story’s taken on a life of its own. The police thought I was pulling a wee joke when I called them and told them your name. It took me a while to convince them that I wasn’t kidding.” He grimaced and fell silent.
“They never knew what happened to her?” I asked, the tears streaming down my face.
“No . . . not really. They never found her body, which was where the mystery started. She lived at Garvagh Glebe—the manor there, behind the trees,” he said, his face reflecting my distress. He rose and came back with a box of tissues.
“And her family?” I whispered. “What happened to them?”
“I don’t know, miss. It was a long time ago. It’s just an old story. Probably half true. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
When the police arrived, Jim Donnelly leapt from his chair in relief, ushering them in, and the questions began again. I was taken to a hospital and admitted for observation. My pregnancy was confirmed, my mental health questioned, and numerous calls were made to ascertain whether I was a threat to myself or others. I grasped very quickly that my freedom and independence relied on my ability to reassure everyone I was all right. I wasn’t. I was destroyed. Devastated. Reeling. But I wasn’t deranged or dangerous. Deny, deflect, refute, Michael Collins had said, and that’s what I did. In the end, I was released.
It hadn’t taken the police long to ascertain where I was staying and collect my suitcases from the Great Southern Hotel in Sligo. They had jimmied the locked door on my rental car and found my purse beneath the seats. My possessions had been combed through but were readily handed over when the investigation was closed. I paid my hospital bill, made a donation to the county search-and-rescue services, and quietly checked back in to the hotel. The desk clerk didn’t flinch when she saw my name; the police had been discreet. I had my purse, my passport, and my clothing, but I needed to rent another car. I bought one instead. I had no intention of leaving Ireland.
I’d left Manhattan one week after Eoin died. I left his clothes in his drawers, his coffee cup in the sink, and his toothbrush in the bathroom. I locked his brownstone in Brooklyn, put off the calls from his lawyer about his estate, and told my assistant and my agent to tell everyone I would deal with what was left of Eoin’s life and mine when I returned from Ireland.
His death had sent me running away. His request to have his ashes brought back to his birthplace had been a blessing. It had given me something to focus on besides the fact that he was gone. And I wasn’t in any state to go back and deal with it now.