“If we’re doing introductions, I go by Faye now.”So much to tell.“Faye Sullivan. These are my daughters, Maeve and Molly. And you’ve met Molly’s daughter Nola Wren. Girls.” Faye shakes her head. There is no denying it anymore. “This is my sister. My sister.”
“Sela O’Kane. What an absolute delight to meet you all. Like a dream.”
Molly’s heart skips. “Did you say O’Kane?”
“Yes, that was my husband’s father you saw in the pub today. You probably don’t remember him. He fished us out of the drink. Can you believe it? I married Jem O’Kane.”
Faye wills the girls not to react, to stand unmoving like ancient stones. “You’ve been here the whole time? You never left,” Faye stammers. “I had no idea. I swear. And such incredible news. Jem O’Kane. He was the best of them for sure. If I’d known ...” She curses the memory of Conor O’Kane. They have endured too much for it to end over that dead body.
For Molly, seeing Jem O’Kane up close is to imagine what her life might have been if it had gone another way. A dead man alive after all. Her mother and Maeve seem equally shocked by the resemblance to his brother, given the way they eyeball each other and her. A shock of white hair under the cap he wears, summer-blue eyes, all lines in his face drawn up from grinning, dark lips visible through a ring of whiskers. He embraces each of them, saving Faye for last when his eyes fill with tears that could be an ocean. “Look at you! I see why my Da here made the call. I remember clear as day when you two urchins showed up.”
Molly rubs her arms while the conversation whips between the past and loss and the all-too-present shock of reunion. Nola Wren pulls on her pant leg, begging to see the donkey braying in the pasture across the road. What Molly needs so desperately is quiet, to sort this out in a way and place that feels less ... just less. That old urge to bolt. She would fly away if she could. A farmer rolls by on a green tractor, lifts a finger in greeting. She could jump behind him, tap his shoulder, tell him, “Drive, buddy!” Anywhere but here. “I don’t want this to end, but Nola Wren needs some food and rest.” She puts on her best smile, taps dry the last bit of kindness in her.
Maeve sees Molly losing her cool and awkwardly comes to her rescue. “Maybe everyone needs a little time to process what’s happened here. I know I do. Mom ...?”
“Yes,” Faye agrees. “I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do next ...”
“I can’t let you go!” Sela says. “Not again!” She insists they all come back to her cottage if they don’t have other accommodations arranged. “While we get to know each other. Jem and I will drop Francis back at the pub, and you’ll follow us.”
“Best not bother arguing,” Jem adds. “Sela always wins.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
1996: West Cork, Ireland
Jem warned Maeve to watch for chickens and dogs and sheep, especially after they turn from the highway onto the two-track dirt road. Sure enough, as they approach the cottage, a tabby cat darts from a clutch of bluebells. Maeve slams on the brakes.
“Can you imagine if I killed one of their animals?”
“Just what we need, considering,” Molly replies. It has taken her the bulk of the ride to calm down, to agree there will be time to bring up Conor O’Kane, but that the time is not now. “How you doing, Mom?”
Faye can hardly catch her breath. “Okay,” she replies uncertainly. What would she have done if Conor had told her the truth? Faye briefly loses sight of the other car and fears that her sister might be the one to leave this time.
When Maeve rounds the last bend, Jem is out of the car waving his mitt hands like he’s bringing in a plane. He is tall and broad with a head full of glowing hair and a belly ribbed like a pony keg. A spotted farm dog runs circles around him then jumps on Sela. Faye feels it again, that sense that she is not alive or, at the very least, that she is not awake. She tingles at the sight of her sister, this version of herself who became a true Irish woman. Her tongue goes numb.
“What a pleasure to have you here!” Jem says as they emerge from the car, faces red and puffed with emotion. A gray-and-white cat slinks out of the vine-cloaked shed and lumbers past their feet and around the corner. Nola Wren chases after it. “Go in, get settled. I can look after the little one. Nola Wren, right?”
Molly nods.
“Lovely name, lovely child.”
Jem ambles away, a lightness about him despite his size.
“You think she’ll listen to him?” Maeve asks.
Myrtle and hydrangeas and prickly heath bloom in a bobbled skirt around a peach-colored cottage tucked neatly in a dell between rolling hills. Gray stone faeries peek out from beneath massive rhubarb leaves, mischief-makers playing freeze tag. Nola Wren’s laughter reaches around the corner, taps Molly playfully. “Yes. I think she will.”
There is pot roast for dinner, carrots and potatoes, and the conversation turns from Jem’s love of cooking to Faye and her life in Maine with William.
“You never told him the truth?” Sela asks. There is judgment in the way she says it, and Faye’s hackles go up.
“I believed I was protecting him. And Thomas and Jean. They were my parents, and I’d grown to love ...” Even now, Faye finds it hard to say she’d loved Jean. But Thomas. In that moment she wishes he was sitting next to her at this table. He could make them all understand. “Wouldn’t you agree that some secrets are kept to protect the people you love? I don’t think I should be judged for that. You lived your own sort of lie here, didn’t you?”
Sela smiles tightly, forks a carrot into her mouth. “It’s not judgment. And yes, we kept the truth about that girl in the grave hidden. I have no guilt about it.”
Under the table Molly gives Maeve an I-can’t-believe-this kick, and Maeve responds with a quick I-know tap on Molly’s thigh. Wine flows, and Molly is quick to refill. Something about the conversation, the way her mother glosses over the most difficult parts of their lives, with still no mention of Conor O’Kane dying in their foyer. She swills more wine, shakes her head as events tick by, stories casually laced with facts about Germany and war that Molly and Maeve have only recently learned, things kept from their father. Maeve shoots her a warning glance as if she can see that Molly’s fuse has been lit. It’s the way Faye sugarcoats it that galls Molly.
“Did I tell you Maeve has two kids, Dylan and Opal?” Faye asks, clearly eager to change the subject.
