Beatrice and Fiona both froze.
A warm wind stirred around us. It was so strong, I had to keep a hand on my hat to keep it from flying off. My heart thundered in my chest. I was anxious about their reactions, but I had to know why Cian was who he was.
Beatrice moved first, setting her spare basket down, sighing into the wind. She stared at Fiona until Fiona blinked and met her eyes. Beatrice nodded, and Fiona looked at me through the black netting.
“He’s not going to tell her, Fiona.”
Fiona took a seat and looked off into the distance, aimlessly picking grass while she seemed to be thinking. After a minute or two, she whispered, “He can’t.”
Beatrice nodded. “But you can. She should know. She’s his wife. And he took her to the hill. He trusts her.”
Another minute or two passed, and I didn’t think Fiona was going to move. But, finally, she did. She got to her feet and nodded toward the hill, beckoning me to follow her. Beatrice stopped me by taking my hand. She squeezed, hard and fast, then let me go and looked away.
I hurried behind Fiona, trying to keep up with her steps. I didn’t realize until halfway up the hill that she was moving so fast because she didn’t want Cian to follow.
Halfway up the hill, I couldn’t control the impulse to look down. He was staring up at me. I was about to go down when he held a hand up and nodded to Fiona. He took a seat on the ground, grabbing for a long blade of grass, looking away from me.
Fiona was already over the stone fence when I climbed to the top. She lifted the netting and set it over the hat, making her look like a widow in mourning. Her eyes were hard to meet, so I started to pick wildflowers to leave for Cian’s parents and Baby O'Callaghan. It felt right to leave them.
Fiona must have approved. She seemed to relax some, taking a seat in front of the crosses. “Mona was the odd one out. The three of us, Keenan, Conor, and me, were orphans, you can say. Henry’s father, Robin, used to visit us, and we became friends with Henry. Robin had been an orphan at the home before us. He’d give back and that sort of thing. We all found each other in the home. Conor used to say we were the ‘no phone gang.’ We had no one to tell us to phone whenever we got where we were going—no one worried about us like that.”
I took a seat next to her, bending over some to leave the flowers in front of Mona and Conor’s markers.
“I would have killed her.”
My eyes snapped back to Fiona. She met them straight on.
“If I hadn’t felt Mona was right for Conor, I would have. But she was. Sometimes we would give her a hard time, call her Moanin’ Mona because she would go on somethin’ terrible if she didn’t get her way, but she was what Conor needed, ya know? She pushed him when she had to and was gentle when she needed to be. She loved their wee boy more than life. Used to call him Cillian, ya know? He decided on Cian after, wrote it down for us. I think he did it to spite this place.” She waved a bug away from her face.
“I would have killed you too, but you fit with us—even more than Mona.” She gave me a semblance of a smile, which on her was more like a grimace, and turned to face Mona’s grave. “You know it’s true, Mona. Don’t even try to deny it. She’s not much of a complainer.” She looked at me. “You’re not.”
I shrugged.
“Before you came, Mona came to me in dreams, always cryin’ about her lad. She stopped after you found him. She found peace.” She looked back at Mona’s spot. “Haven’t ye, Mona?” She closed her eyes for a second, then nodded and whispered, “You have.”
“What about Cian?” I whispered. “He hasn’t found peace.”
“Life has found him—you. Life isnotpeace. Life is a storm, and in the eye, we get momentary glimpses and touches of all the good things. But peace? Peace is somethin’ good folks dream about, hopin’ to find it when they die.”
Fiona turned her face and looked over the hill, toward where the lough would be. “If you don’t know it by now, Conor made a deal with the devil. You might know him as Oran Craig. Mona didn’t like it. She missed Ireland, and she was unhappy with the way things were goin’. Oran would use Conor for his ideas, tell him he’d give him a certain percentage, and then give him barely nothin’. Conor got sick of it. He had Mona in his ear, a new babe on the way, and this castle on his mind…he wanted it. He’d always wanted it. He was the bastard son of Cian O'Callaghan, and his entire life, the family rubbed their riches in his face.
“When Conor found out the family was losin’ the castle, he found a way to buy it. That was why he was so hellbent on gettin’ the gold. Conor had found out that a man had found plenty of it in the sea, like sunken treasure, and if he could get his hands on it, even some of it, it would set us up for life. He involved Keenan and me, but he didn’t let Oran know it. Ah, but the castle. It was important to buy it on his own name. He was driven by it. He wanted the family to know he’d bought it from underneath them. And the gold was goin’ to be his last go with Craig so he could.”
She wiped her hands, like she was done.
“This time, though, Conor was smart. He had plans in play if Oran tried to renege. We had the real gold. The bags Oran had was fool’s gold. HA!” She barked out a laugh. “Conor made a fool out ofhim, all right. Oran had one of his men hold a gun to Conor’s head as they loaded up the bricks of gold-plated shit and whisked them all away.
“Musta been a sight when Oran went to sell and they told him he was full of shit, aye?” She winked at me, then sighed. “After that, though, Conor couldn’t put the castle in his name. Some people run from the law. Conor would spend the rest of his life on the run from Oran. Because where the law brings you in in handcuffs, Oran would make slices all over your body, tie shackles to your feet and legs, then dump you in shark infested waters. We all thought Conor and Mona, along with their wee family, would be safe here, though.”
She grew quiet, and the wind whistled softly between us.
“I didn’t want to leave that night, but Conor was up in arms about his father’s wife puttin’ a curse on the castle. She’s gone now, and back then she was a bag of rattlin’ bones, but everyone around here knew she could cast a good curse. Conor didn’t believe in such things, but the bastard part of her tirade got to him. Perhaps he just wanted a normal night with his family. Time to heal wounds that this place had caused for him growin’ up. Here stood all this richness, and not far from here, a boy wore tattered rags and had no one, all because he was the bastard son of Cian O'Callaghan.”
She turned toward me. “Oran’s men found them that night. Slit both of their throats in front of Cian. Then chased him up the hill here.” She nodded toward the cross markers. “His Da had dug out a piece of land for him to hide under. For play, you know? He was goin’ to wedge a stick underneath it so Cian could play military. I don’t think he could remember anywhere else to go when it was time to run. If it was day, the men would have found him. Seein’ as it was night, though, they probably didn’t notice.
“We found him three days later, still hidin’ underneath the patch. He was breathin’ in dirt, but slowly, like he was timin’ his breaths. Barely takin’ any. He was a child zombie after. Smart as a whip, like Conor, but all the life had drained out of him.”
That fourth spot. Where he’d stood the night he’d brought me up here. He wasn’t planning on the spot being his grave. It had been. And it kept pulling him back because…it was his safe spot.
