“Miss Gallagher?” Robbie called from the foyer. Not Robbie. Kevin. It was Kevin. I tried to answer him, to tell him where I was, but my voice shook and broke. I wiped desperately at my eyes, trying to find my composure, but I was unsuccessful. When Kevin found me in the library, I pointed up at the picture, overcome.
“Uh . . . well, that’s a picture of the Lady of the Lough,” he explained, trying not to look at me and call attention to my tears. “She’s famous around here. As famous as an eighty-year-old ghost can be, I suppose. The story goes that she only lived at Garvagh Glebe for a little while. She drowned in Lough Gill. Her husband was devastated and spent years painting pictures of her. This is the one he kept. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? She was a lovely woman.” He hadn’t noticed the resemblance, proof that people weren’t very observant. Or maybe I wasn’t especially lovely now.
“She never returned?” I whimpered, my voice a childlike cry. Jim Donnelly had said the same thing.
“No, ma’am. She, uh, she drowned. So she never returned,” he stammered, handing me a handkerchief. I grabbed it, desperate to stem my tears.
“Ma’am, are you all right?”
“It’s just sad,” I whispered. I turned my back on the picture. She never returned. I never returned. God help me.
“Yes. But it was a long time ago, miss.”
I couldn’t tell him it was only a week and a handful of days.
“Mr. Cohen told me you lost someone recently. I’m sorry, ma’am,” he added softly. Kindly.
I nodded, and he hovered nearby until I regained control.
“I know what Mr. Cohen said, Robbie. But I’m not selling Garvagh Glebe. I’m going to be staying here. Living here. I still want you to remain on as caretaker. I will raise your salary for any inconvenience that causes, but we won’t be renting out the rooms. Not for a while . . . all right?”
He nodded enthusiastically.
“I’m a writer. The quiet will be good for me, but I can’t take care of this place by myself. I am also expecting . . . a child . . . and will need someone to come in and clean and occasionally cook. I tend to get lost in my work.”
“I already have someone who cooks and cleans when we have guests. I’m sure she would be glad to have regular employment.”
I nodded and turned away.
“Miss? You called me Robbie. It’s . . . Kevin, ma’am,” he said gently.
“Kevin,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, Kevin. I won’t forget again. And please, call me Anne. Anne Smith is my married name.”
I forgot again. I kept calling Kevin Robbie. He always quietly corrected me, but it never seemed to bother him too much. I was a guest that slowly became a ghost, flitting through the halls, not disturbing anyone or anything. Kevin was patient with me and stayed out of my way for the most part. The barn behind the house had been converted into living quarters, and when he wasn’t working, he was there, letting me haunt the big house alone. He checked on me every day and made sure the girl from town—Jemma—kept the house clean and the fridge stocked. When my things arrived from the States, he unloaded boxes and assisted me in setting up a new office in my old room. He marveled at the books I’d written, the languages they’d been translated into, the framed bestseller lists, and the random awards, and I was thankful for him, even though I know he thought I was a little crazy.
I waded out into the lough at least once a day, reciting Yeats and pleading with the fates to send me back. I sent Kevin to buy a boat from Jim Donnelly—I didn’t dare approach him—and rowed it out into the middle of the lake. I stayed all day, trying to recreate the moment I’d fallen through time. I willed the mist to roll in, but the August sun did not cooperate. The beautiful days played dumb, and the wind and the water were silent, pretending innocence, and no matter how much I recited and raged, the lough denied me. I started plotting ways to get my hands on human ashes, but even clouded by desperate grief, I recognized that if the ashes had played a role, it was most likely because they were Eoin’s.
About six weeks after I’d moved into Garvagh Glebe, a car rolled through the gates that were erected sometime in the last eighty years and proceeded up the lane, shuddering to a stop in front of the house. I sat in my office, pretending to work but staring out the window, and I watched as two women climbed from the car, one young and one old, and approached the front door.
“Robbie!” I yelled, and then caught myself. His name was Kevin. And he was mowing the acres of grass behind the house. Jemma had already come and gone. The door chimed. I considered ignoring the visitors. I didn’t need to answer the door.
But I knew them.
It was Maeve O’Toole, old again, and Deirdre Fallon from the library in Dromahair. For whatever reason, they’d come to call, and they’d made time for me once, when I’d needed help. I should return the favor. I smoothed my hair and thanked heaven that I had found the will to shower and dress that morning, something I didn’t always do.
Then I answered the door.
16 July 1922
Anne was right. The Free State Army fired on the Four Courts building in the early morning hours of 28 June, placing field guns at strategic locations and shooting high-explosive shells into the buildings where the anti-Treaty republicans were hunkered down. An ultimatum had been sent to the Four Courts and was ignored, and Mick had no choice but to attack. The British government was threatening to send troops to handle it if he didn’t, and no one wanted Free State troops and British troops fighting alongside each other against the republicans. The buildings occupied by republicans on O’Connell Street and elsewhere in the city were also blockaded to prevent anti-Treaty forces from running to assist the besieged Four Courts. The hope was that when the republicans saw that actual artillery was being used, they would give in and give up.
The siege lasted three days and ended with an explosion in the Four Courts that destroyed precious documents and brought the whole debacle to an end. Good men died, just like Anne predicted. Cathal Brugha wouldn’t surrender. Mick wept when he told me. He and Brugha didn’t see eye to eye much of the time, but Cathal was a patriot, and there is little Mick respects more than that.
I stood in front of the burned-out shell of the Four Courts today. The stolen munitions kept exploding, making it impossible for the firemen to put out the blaze. They had to let it burn itself out. I wonder if all of Ireland will have to burn itself out as well. The copper dome is gone, the building destroyed, and what the hell for?
An agreement was forged in May between the republicans and the Free State leaders to defer the final decision on the Treaty until after the election and after the Free State Constitution had been published. But the compromise devolved before it could gain any traction; Mick says Whitehall got wind of it and didn’t like the sound of a delayed decision on the Treaty. Too much was at stake, too much money had been spent, too much ground covered. The six counties in Northern Ireland not included in the Treaty have descended into bloodshed and chaos. The sectarian violence is unfathomable. Catholics are being slaughtered and run from their homes, and new orphans are being made every day.
My heart is numb to it all. I have an orphan of my own to worry about. Eoin sleeps in my bed and shadows me wherever I go. Brigid has tried to console him, but he refuses to be alone with her. Brigid’s health is failing. Stress and loss have made us all phantoms of ourselves. Mrs. O’Toole has stepped in to watch him when I cannot take him with me.
Mick called two Sundays after Anne disappeared, asking about her health, seeking her counsel, and I had to tell him she was gone. He shouted into the phone like I had lost my mind and showed up four hours later in an armoured car, Fergus and Joe with him, ready to do war. I am no longer equipped to do war, and when he demanded answers, I found myself weeping in his arms, telling him what Liam had done.
“Oh, Tommy, no,” he wailed. “Oh no.”
“She’s gone, Mick. She was worried about you, and she’d written out a warning and tucked it away. I think she intended to give it to me or Joe, hoping we’d be able to keep you safe. But Brigid found it. She thought she was plotting against you. Brigid told Liam, and he dragged Anne out to the lough. Robbie thinks he intended to kill her and hide her body in the marsh. Robbie tried to stop him. He shot him, but it was too late.” I didn’t bother with the whole truth, with all of Liam’s sins. I couldn’t condemn myself or Anne to Mick’s disbelief or burden him with distrust.
He stayed with me until the following day, and we drank ourselves into a stupor. Neither of us was comforted, but for a while I forgot, and when they left, Fergus at the wheel, Joe beside him, and Mick hungover in the backseat, I slept for fifteen hours. He gave me that, and I was grateful for the brief reprieve.
I don’t know if Mick put out a hit on him, or if Fergus carried it out on his own because he was worried about Liam’s volatility, but Liam Gallagher’s body washed up on the strand in Sligo three days after Mick came to Garvagh Glebe. Mick was always pragmatic and principled in the terror he unleashed. I saw him scream in the faces of his squad and threaten them with discharge if they even hinted at a revenge hit. His tactics had always been about bringing Great Britain to her knees, not reprisals. The only time I’d suspected Mick of retaliation was when the Irishman who pointed out Seán Mac Diarmada to British soldiers after the Rising was found dead. Mick had seen the man do it, and he’d never forgotten the betrayal.