That she completely skips over the worst of the years unglues Molly. Brave with wine, she clinks her glass with a fork. “Hang on, Mom,” she says. “Before we go into how perfect Dylan and Opal are and what a great mother Maeve is—maybe we should tell your new family about ourothersecret.”
“Pix!” Maeve hisses.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not talking about the fact that you’re gay and all of that.” Molly flicks her wrist and takes a quick sip of wine.
Maeve scoffs in disbelief, sits back in her chair.
“Stop it, Molly,” Faye says, adding apologies to the table.
“No, you stop. Look. I like you both. And your house? This place? Wow. It’s a faery tale. So magical. And look at Nola Wren. She’s in there asleep on the floor next to a cat! Do you have any idea how hard it is to get her to sleep? She loves it here. But it’s like everyone is under a spell.” Molly breathes through her mouth, hot as a dragon. She can’t stop the eruption.
“Pix,” Maeve warns. “Stop being an asshole.” She grimaces a fake smile for the table.
Molly’s eyes roll like flicked marbles. “First. Stop calling me Pix. I hate it. I’m not a pixie, and I haven’t been since—well ...” She sits upproper, shakes off years of pretending. She tastes guilt in her mouth as the words form there.
“I’m sorry,” Faye says, knowing that the time is now.
“Jem. Mr. O’Kane,” Molly says emphatically, the wine speaking volumes. “Your brother Conor was, well, something of a friend to my parents. But I don’t think he was a very nice man. I didn’t know him because I was little the night he died.” She was wearing a red nightgown, with white rickrack around the cuffs and collar. She touches her wrist where the elastic dug in. “He came into our house and ran up the stairs and yelled at Maeve and my mom. And what I did, Mr. O’Kane ...” Molly pulls her lips in and out of her mouth, wetting them to keep them from gluing shut. “What I did, was I got between him and Maeve, and Ishovedhim. As hard as I could.” Molly gulps for air, and Faye is by her side, kneeling, telling her to breathe, rubbing her arm, but she is back there watching as he flies through the air, the bottom of his boots pointing at her, that look on his face. They are out of her, the words she was told to never speak. Molly sucks in air through her nose, inflates herself like a balloon, floats above the table. “I killed your brother. Sir.” Trembling, she splashes wine into her glass then stands with a flourish. “I need air. You all, talk among yourselves.”
Outside, a full moon turns the garden blue. Molly sinks onto an iron bench that faces it perfectly. She pushes up the sleeves of her sweater, admires the way her skin looks pasted in moon dust, more film than flesh. Leo said she was a goddess in the moonlight the night they broke into the garden pool. Some goddess you are, Molly Sullivan. Vengeful fury, more like it. She hears footsteps on the pebble path.
“May I?” Sela asks.
Rage shoots off Molly like heat vapors. Still, she makes room.
Sela sucks air in through her nose, holds it, lets it out loudly. “You know,” she says. “It’s in our nature to put our best foot forward. We doit in job interviews, when we go on dates, when we make new friends. We’re so certain other people are judging us. Especially women. We’re the worst.” She pauses, like she’s taking Molly’s temperature, then tilts her head at the cottage. “I suppose Jem’s telling them the story now about Con and what happened. You were right. He wasn’t a nice person. Even when he was younger. He was a shit. The kind of kid who dropped boulders on frogs and pulled wings off butterflies. You know the type?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he needed to be dead.”
“Molly, think about it. You were a very little girl. And you pushed a very grown man. He must have been plenty drunk if a tiny thing like you pushed him over. You probably could have blown on him, and he would have fallen. He’d been in a bad way for a long time. Trust me.
“He and his brother Denis ran around with a rough crowd. Con tried to rope Jem into their business—hijacking trucks—but Jem would have none of it. Denis was a bit slow. When we first came to live here, your mom thought Denis was the scary one, but he was a big lug, a bit short tempered like Conor, sure, but mostly just gullible. When the two of them got arrested, Conor put it all on Denis, and he went to jail. Got in a fistfight in there and took a bad blow to the head. Died in the cell. Theresa—that was their mother—she threw Conor out over it. Told him she never wanted to lay eyes on him again and never did. We heard he’d died in America. A letter came from some woman that said he fell down a flight of stairs. We never doubted he’d come to a bad end. You can’t live the way he did—careless mouth, reckless behavior—and expect to die of old age. Con drew the short string a long time back. I know this doesn’t take away your memory of what happened. But I hope it might give you some peace. What a terrible thing to go through, and at such a tender age.”
“I see him sometimes.”
“I bet you do.”
“Falling. Sometimes he doesn’t make it to the ground. Other times he crashes through.”
The night is quiet in the pause, save for a sawing band of crickets. Sela sighs. “When your mom was taken away, I wasn’t much older than you were when Con died. Your mom never talked much. And I talked enough for both of us, even before we came to Ireland. It might be in her nature not to dwell on hard things. Maybe you’re a little like me. I play things over and over in my head, burn it in.
“I remember waking up that morning, and your mom was gone. I flew out of that house like I had no feet. I screamed for her and Hannie. I ran to Fiadh’s house, but everything was gone. The bags, Thomas and Jean, and worst of all, my sister. I fell into the dirt, couldn’t get up, couldn’t move or talk. Hugh—he was the man who fostered us and eventually became my permanent guardian—he tried to pick me up, but I flailed and flailed. I knocked my head into the dirt until I bled. I yanked at my hair. I must have looked like a monster, growling and clawing. Everything bad was wrapped up inside me in a tight ball. I bet you know that feeling. She and I had lost so much, and I had been trying so hard to keep us together. I told myself we would be okay if we stayed together. I thought that would be enough. But the wheel was in motion.”
Molly stays silent, so Sela continues.
“I thought I was dying. I think I wanted to die. It was days before I’d calmed down enough to even eat. The worst thing was feeling powerless. And you know what Hannie told me? She said I was protecting Gisela by letting her go, by giving her a mother who would love her. She said Jean had suffered so much and that losing Fiadh would kill her. She told me that Gisela—my sister, mind you—was a gift from God to Jean and Thomas. And that I was God’s gift to her, that she and Hugh would love me and keep me if I wanted to stay here in Ireland.
“You know what I told her? I told her that was a load of horse shite. I said she and Batty Jean were kidnappers. I told her that if she didn’t get Gisela back that I would tell the nuns at Glencree what they’d done, and God would have it in for them. Hannie slapped my face good and hard and told me what’s between her and God was none of my businessand to be grateful that Gisela didn’t drown right there in the bay with Fiadh. She told me life isn’t fair and that terrible things happen. She said—I’ll never forget it: ‘Suit yourself. Imagine her at the bottom of the ocean or the top of the Empire State Building. But she is gone, and that is that.’ Then she slammed down the supper she’d brought me. It splashed all over the floor in a terrible mess. Took me another day before I cleaned it up and went downstairs.”
“Hannie sounds like a jerk.”
Sela laughs. “She was actually very kind and generous. No nonsense, for sure. She had a giant bosom. Jem loved hugs from Hannie Flanagan. All the boys did. What was best about her and what she taught me without trying was that there’s no sense in looking backward. When I stopped beating myself up, I used my crazy imagination to make up stories about Fiadh Beatty of America and the adventures she would have. In my mind, my sister went to America and had a wonderful life. And look! I was right!”
Molly empties the last drops of wine into her mouth. “Didn’t you want to find her?”
“I’ve wondered about that, why I never made it my mission, especially since I was so bound and determined that we stay together. When we were girls in Germany, the building we lived in collapsed, and your mom and I were trapped in the rubble. I thought the slightest movement would make a beam fall and crush us. I didn’t move or speak. I didn’t even want to blink so I kept my eyes closed. And I think there was a point when I realized—after my sister was taken to America—that our lives had always been precarious. One wrong move from me might get her killed. So, I kind of get her not wanting to tell your dad or you girls the truth. It’s probably hard for you and Maeve to understand, though maybe you will someday. I had Jem and my life here, and he knew everything there was to know about me. That was a luxury, I see now. I gave up your mother’s ghost a long time ago. I was not one for being haunted.”
“Nola Wren was right. You sure do talk.”
