“What?”
“You know.” Maeve waves around them, raises her eyebrows to the bartender, who Molly was able to hail with a glance. “It. The neon sign on your forehead that only guys can see.” Maeve peers at Molly dramatically. “Nope. Couldn’t tell you what it says, but it’s there.”
Molly takes a gulp of beer, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Ah. Yeah. Maybe, Open for Business or Kick Me, I Like It or Will Fuck for Attention.” She dots the last one with her hand like lights on a marquee.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Maeve says. “I don’t have it, is all.”
“Trust me. You don’t want it.” Molly clinks Maeve’s glass. “I love Guinness. And it’s even better here. I kind of think of it as the drink of my birthright. Like how we never thought we had to wear green on Saint Patrick’s Day.”
“Yeah, nothing to prove,” Maeve adds.
“Well, I sure have something to prove now,” Molly says. She drains her beer into her mouth like she’s watering a shriveled plant. She knows it’s the wrong time and the wrong place, but she says it anyway. “I’m really sorry, Maeve, for what I put you and Wendy through. I have this selfish, nasty, cruel streak, and I want to blame Mom for it. But that’s not fair. We drew shit cards, is all. But I hope you can see that I’m better—that I’mgettingbetter.”
“We love her, you know. Nola Wren. Wendy and I love her. We think of her—”
“I honestly don’t know how to repay you guys for taking care of her. But I won’t give you my child. I know you understand that.”
The lads in the corner strike up the music, and there’s no more air for conversation. Maeve welcomes the interruption. She’s not ready to hear what else Molly might have to say. “Let’s finish our beers. Mom’ll kill us if she wakes up and we’re gone.”
Nola Wren, alone in the next bed, cries out. The spot beside Faye is cool. Faye pushes the coverlet back, breaches the space between the beds, and climbs in with her granddaughter. “Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh.” How could they leave like that? Didn’t they think about how frightened Nola Wren would be? She’s only a little girl. A little girl in a strange place. Faye cuddles her, remembers shivering with Elisabeth in beds they shared.How could you leave her? Didn’t you know she would be scared?
The hotel room door creaks open, and light from the hallway fills the room for a moment, then disappears. Faye stirs at the girls whispering.
The movement wakes Nola Wren from shallow sleep, and she cries out again. Maeve sets her purse on a chair, steps into the bathroom, and closes the door. Faye returns to her own bed while Molly lies down with her child, wrapping her up in her arms. “Mama’s here,” she says. “Mama’s here.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
1996: County Wicklow, Ireland
The Irish countryside moves past in a green current, narrow roads twisting higher into the Wicklow Mountains. They left noisy central Dublin early in the morning, drove through the suburbs and past the harbor and docks of Dún Loaghaire. Faye remembers little of it. Oranges. Chocolates. Children vomiting. A lifetime feigning this Irishness, donning it like a costume. She can’t bring up O’Kane and risk sending everyone into another tizzy. But he is on her mind. Corrupter, meddler, pot-stirrer. His final breaths held no truth for her at all. In a way, he’d won out, upending them all.
Faye checks the map, gives Maeve turning instructions. They’re close now, and the roads narrow even more. A tourist bus squeezes past, sending their little car into hedges trimmed within inches of the car door. “I think our transport bus was in an accident,” Faye says, shaking her head. “Yes! When we arrived at the barracks, the bus had a gash in its side!” She feels the jolt, the fear they will slide down a mountain and die. Death always so close.
“We’re here,” Maeve says, pointing to a utilitarian sign that reads “The Glencree Center for Peace and Reconciliation.”
They wind their way along the edge of a small cemetery, through granite block walls and open iron gates, past a stone church. A hardenedbarracks looms. Time folds over on itself, and though Faye wears jeans and a sweater, she feels the scratchy wool of an ill-fitting dress. Maeve parks the car, and Nola Wren clamors over the seat and out the passenger door with Faye. How strange, Nola Wren’s hand in hers. The last time Faye was here, she was the child, her hand the one held by an adult. They walk to the church, and Faye stares up, tries to conjure the people who took her from here. They were kind, she knows that. Nola Wren tugs her hand. “Hold on, honey.” Faye glances over her shoulder. She knows there is a lush fern grove and an emerald creek down the embankment. She half expects a passel of children to scurry over at the ringing of a bell. They are all around her.
Inside the church, Maeve gasps. “Wow.” She gestures to a vestibule where a life-size statue of a seated and distraught Mary cradles the body of her crucified son. Jesus is plastered in brightly colored squares of paper, Post-It notes with prayers and confessions from visitors.
“Oh. Okay,” Molly says, leaning in closer to read the requests. “Here’s a good one: ‘Please help Rosie to stop losing things.’” They each tilt their heads, read others out loud.
“Help John understand his sins and come back to me and the kids.”
“Forgive me, Jesus and Mary and Our Father in Heaven.”
Prayers for Maile and Tristan and Paula and Linda. Prayers from Heather and Grace and Kathleen and Aoife. A special request sticks an inch below a painted wound dripping with painted blood. “May my arthritis be cured and my health restored.”
“I wonder what’s in that one,” Maeve says, pointing to a piece of wadded-up blue paper tucked into the hand of Jesus.
“Extra private,” Molly says. “We probably don’t want to know.”
Nola Wren gives Molly a pink paper square with what appears to be a bunny drawn on it. “Put it on the man,” she says.
Molly bares her teeth and stretches out her arm carefully, as if mother or son might grab her sinning wrist. “Here good?”
Nola Wren tucks her chin to her chest and smiles. “Yes.”
Faye shakes her head. “If this was here, I sure don’t remember it. But, then again, when were Post-It notes invented?” She sighs. “I’m old.”
