“Thanks for the help.” Faye takes Nola Wren’s hand and follows Maeve out the door. Molly, last to leave, stops suddenly, turns. “Do you know any O’Kanes by chance?”
The men at the table look at each other, then to the bar. The bartender’s mouth opens, and he scratches his cheek with three fingers. The man in the sweater moves his head to the left, like a weathervane catching the slightest wind.
Faye pokes her head back in. “Pix ...”
Molly’s eyes widen, and she flashes a toothy smile. “Top of the morning to you then,” she says wryly and heads out to the street with Faye.
“I thought the Irish were supposed to be all nice and friendly. That was the twilight zone. And what about Darby O’Gill in there? The way he stared was creepy.”
“Maybe they’re not used to strangers.” Faye says, though her gut tells her it’s something else. “Why’d you go back?”
“I asked about the O’Kanes,” Molly says. “They all clammed up.”
They pass through town and turn onto a narrower road. “Stay left,” Molly says, checking the map against the directions they were given. Dew drips from branches shrouded in white mist.
The windows are down, and Faye undoes Nola Wren’s seatbelt so she can spy the bubbling creek lined with tall grass. Sheep and shrubs dot the sloping countryside sectioned by stone walls. Ferns and vines form a thick border at the edge of the asphalt. “The plants are eating the road,” Nola Wren whispers.
Faye has to agree. It seems it would take no time at all for signs of humans to be consumed by the wild greenness around them. They drive beneath a canopy of trees, past windowless stone farm buildings until the wall next to the road becomes more refined. The sea and a patch of blue sky appear. “This must be it.”
“It’s a burial ground, all right,” Molly says. Maeve stops the car, and she and Molly turn in their seats. Beyond the iron gate is a tidy path that leads past limestone crosses and headstones to lichen-covered ruins of an oldcílland the white-blue bay beyond.
An eeriness sets in. Faye feels like she’s passed into another realm, that it’s possible she’s dead. She wants to ask, “Is this goodbye?” She pushes the iron gate open and walks into the graveyard. If she is Fiadh Beatty, the bay where she drowned spreads out in front of her. Faye wanders along graves haunted by ground mist that moves with new life as the breeze picks up. Ancient letters and dates, names as familiar as home since so many families made their way to America. Coughlans and Dalys, Driscolls and McCarthys and Donovans and, yes, Sullivans. She looks around at the sea of stones. Where in this earth would they bury a German child?
“Mom! Come here!” Maeve shouts, waving her over.
Faye goes to where the girls stand. The stone is low and white, the engraving difficult to read. But the surname is clear. Beatty.
Maeve reads slowly, tracing each letter with her fingertips. “Erected by Thomas and Jean Beatty and daughter Fiadh ... Oh, Mom! Okay.In memory of sons ... sons and brothers who departed this earth ... John and ... is that Patrick? I can’t read the dates.”
“She went crazy when they died, your grandmother. That was the story. They called her Batty Jean.” Clumps of memory rise like peat. “Those O’Kane boys teased Fiadh with it. Taunted her until she threw rocks at them. I hardly talked then and didn’t understand what anyone was saying half the time. I don’t think your grandmother ever recovered from losing them. And then Fiadh. I wish I’d thought to bring flowers. Maybe we can come back later.”
“It all makes me so sad,” Molly says. “Just being here.”
“I’m sad too,” Nola Wren says, hugging Faye’s leg.
“At least the fog is lifting,” Maeve says. “See?”
In the distance, Carbery Island appears, a breaching whale. Faye exhales and time slips backward. She sees girls frolicking there before all was lost.We foot it all the night, weaving olden dances, mingling hands and mingling glances, till the moon has taken flight.She shakes her head in disbelief, the way her father’s Yeats rings in her ears. She points toward the island. “I’m heading that way. Let me know if you see anything.”
Before Molly can grab her, Nola Wren steals a handful of tiny yellow wildflowers from a nearby grave and chases after Faye. “Mom!”
Faye turns, waving that it’s okay for the little girl to accompany her. She bends at the waist to accept the stolen flowers. “Careful,” Faye says, showing Nola Wren how to tiptoe. “We’re not meant to step on graves.” Wind whistles through the headstones.
“What do you think’s going through Mom’s head right now?” Maeve asks. “I mean, it keeps hitting me. I try to imagine Mom as a little girl on a ship crossing the Atlantic with strangers who’ve basically kidnapped her. I still can’t get my head around it.”
“Yeah, imagine how hard that had to be, knowing that you asked to be taken and then your sister died. I mean, trust me, I get that she felt damned either way. A million times I thought I’d ruined Nola Wren by leaving her. But, honestly, Maeve. If I hadn’t ... I didn’t know what else to do. Maybe that little German girl didn’t either.”
The sound of tires on gravel breaks the moment. Another car pulls up next to theirs. From the passenger seat, an old man emerges.
Molly’s face twists with confusion. “Is that Darby O’Gill from the pub?”
The man scans the graveyard, then bends to talk to someone in the car before standing again. This time he closes the door and puts his hands on the roof. Another man emerges, and the two of them talk over the top.
“Was that guy in the pub too?” Maeve asks.
“I don’t think so?”
“Are we trespassing or something?”
