“I didn’t talk much.”
Faye looks at her daughters, sees how much of both her and William are in each of them. Maeve definitely takes after her, the way her shoulders square, the slope of her bright eyes, her shiny brown hair. When anyone mentioned how Faye looked nothing like Thomas or Jean, her father had said that she was “the quiet part” of each of them. Molly is the spitting image of William, the thin lips, copper hair, and hazel eyes. This might hurt her more. “When I was a girl, there was an accident. The day before we left Ireland.”
“We know,” Maeve says, that new impatience in her voice. She softens. “A boating accident. It’s why you don’t like boats.”
Of course, they know the story she told William that put them all on this course. “Yes, but—” She can’t figure out where to start.
Thomas sits on the window seat across the room now, holding one of his books open to a worn page. His kind eyes crinkle downward. He’s wearing the black suit he was buried in, the ugly quilt across his lap. She can almost hear his voice, the lilting one he used for reading aloud.
Now that my ladder’s gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
She left Elisabeth sleeping, climbed down a ladder she can never again ascend. She holds out the clipping. “Dad found this in his hoard of newspapers the day ...” She can’t say it. “... the day Molly came home.”
Molly swings her legs around, and she and Maeve scoot in to get a closer look. “See here? These two girls? These are the German girlsin the story about the boat. This is Elisabeth ...” Faye’s throat catches on the name, an odd pill of grief and love and regret lodged there. She points, holding the photo so her daughters can see. “And this girl, she was called Gisela.”
“This girl,” Faye says again.Where all ladders start.“This is me.” Her voice pitches like a boat on a wave. “I am that German girl. That is me and my sister, before we were taken to live in the west of Ireland. See that headline? I was a refugee from war.” She emphasizes the word “refugee.” Had she ever thought of herself that way, as a victim of war? If William had lived, she could have taken him to that bookstore. She could have shown him what she once was. What war had done. He would have understood.Imagine that. We were so close ...
Molly pulls back. Her stomach flips and flops. She can feel every drop of blood in her body. “What are you talking about? You’re not making sense.”
“I know. This is so difficult.” How do you tell your children that your life has been a lie, built on another person’s death, on grief, and that in living that lie, you’ve marked their lives as well? “The accident. With the boat.” Faye shakes her head.
“Let me see that clipping,” Maeve says, snatching it from her mother’s hands. She scans it, lifts her head. “It says here these children were fostered all over Ireland after World War II. So, if this is you, how did you end up here?”
“My parents, your grandparents, Thomas and Jean. They were not my real parents.”
“So, you’re adopted?” Molly asks.
“Adopted? No, not exactly. More like ...” Faye searches for the word. “... switched.”
Maeve stands, though her knees quake. Her thoughts arrange themselves like bullet points. “Were you kidnapped? Did Grandpa and Grandma abduct you?” Maeve puts her hand to her mouth.
“Maeve, please. For once in your life, be patient. It wasn’t that. Not really. They did have a daughter. Fiadh.” Faye is out of her own body now,hearing herself say the thing she’s feared most of her known life. “Fiadh drowned and ... and somehow ... they made the decision to bring me to America instead. Once we were on the ship, your grandmother realized what she’d done. But it was too late.” She makes a mental note to show the letter from Hannie to the girls. “She had a friend back in Ireland, a woman named Hannie, who wrote to her and told her there would be fallout, tragic fallout, if they said anything. She told Thomas and Jean to stay away. And they did. I became Fiadh. And then Faye. And no one here was the wiser. It almost stopped mattering. And then I met your father. And Conor O’Kane showed up, and he knew I wasn’t who I claimed to be.” Her mouth clamps shut on the mention of the name they don’t speak. Silence fills the room while that ghost takes up the seat by the window, his legs crossed, that smirk, as if he can’t wait to hear what comes next.
“That’s just great,” Molly says, in disbelief. She raises her scarred hand as if to pause time. “So, now we get to talk about Conor O’Kane.” She shakes her head. “Un. Real.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I don’t know why it’s taken a lifetime to say these things. I was a quiet girl, after the war. I’d lost my family. My sister. I couldn’t bear losing William or you girls.” She tells them more, as much as she can recall in the moment, as much as she can bear.
“And Dad didn’t know?” Maeve asks finally. “You never told him?”
Faye shakes her head slowly.
“How could you—”
“And what about Maeve and me? It never occurred to you that we had a right to know?” Molly has gone white with rage. “You’re so goddamned selfish. Now I know where I get it from. I don’t even know you!” Disordered thoughts of her grandfather and Leo and Nola Wren muddle with the darkness she’d swallowed and denied and endured since she was as little as the girls in the photograph. Could this revelation have put her own life on a different trajectory if she’d known sooner? How does that make sense? She puts her hand out to Maeve. “Give me that. I want to see it again.”
“I’m trying to make this right!” Faye knows there is more, something deeper. “I—I want to go to Ireland and find out what happened to mysister! I don’t want to wait for this reunion they’re planning. I want to go now. Or as soon as possible.”
Molly’s whole body quivers. There is something about this. She looms over her mother slumped on the couch and drops the clipping on her lap. In her head, two images click together, sure as a buckle. “Let’s go,” she says. “You too, Maeve. Back home.”
“We can’t just leave.” Maeve flares her eyes on the word “leave,” a dig at Molly. “I have to get Nola Wren dressed. And Dylan and Opal have school.” On cue, a toilet flushes upstairs.
“Get your wife to do it, Maeve,” Molly says, her voice slick with contempt. She is sick of that holier-than-thou attitude. “We need to go back to the house. Now. I mean it. Mom, let’s go. You can drive us. And bring that newspaper.”
In an instant, Molly is on the front lawn, hands on her hips, gasping for air.I should never have come back.The sky darkens, and thunder rumbles overhead as Maeve and Faye join her. That ever-present shadow has caught up and is upon her now. She knows what she knows.
