A strong hand snakes through the window and snatches the key from the ignition, killing the engine. “Hey!” I snarl. But Edith is already walking back to the house.
I run after her and try to get the key from her hand, panicked and urgent and doesn’t she understand that I have to get out of here, I don’t belong here, I’m suffocating here.
“You want to leave, that’s just fine,” she says, “but you don’t get to take my truck.”
I let out a gasp of frustration, tears flooding my throat. “Please.”
“Things don’t always take the shape you want them to, kid, and we gotta learn to endure that with a bit of grace.”
It humiliates me. I hate her.
She goes inside and I sit on the front porch, sobbing. For my Finnegan, my only friend, and for wishing my mother was here. Edith doesn’t care about me. I think the day I got sent here ruined her life. At least I know now why she hates me so much: I’m a reminder of her rotten son.
Hours have passed by the time I head back in. I’ve waited until I’m sure she’s asleep, unable to face her again tonight. But as I’m moving toward my room I hear a soft sound coming from the back door, and I can’t help it, I am compelled to creep to the window and see her there, sitting on the back step in an orb of lamplight, alone and holding the tag from Finnegan’s ear, weeping softly.
I sag against the wall, resting my head.
“Sorry, Grandma,” I whisper, but she can’t hear me through the glass.
* * *
Breakfast is a silent affair, but that isn’t unusual. Edith didn’t reclaim her box of secrets last night, so I locked it and placed it back under her bed, regret heavy upon me. I didn’t touch the photo under my pillow—I couldn’t bring myself to give it back to her even though I can’t imagine ever wanting to look at it again. I’m tired now with a night of tossing and turning behind me. It takes me the entire bowl of porridge to drum up the courage to ask. “Did he really kill someone?”
Edith nods, not looking up from the newspaper.
“Who?”
“Ray Young.”
“Who’s Ray Young?”
“Just a boy who grew up nearby.”
“Do you know why he did it?”
“He never said.”
I stare at her, stunned by the cavalier way she shrugs.
“How did he and my mother meet?”
“No idea. In Ireland, somewhere.”
“You never asked him?”
“None of my business.”
“Did they seem … in love? When he brought her back here?”
Edith looks up from the paper, gazing at me over her reading glasses. “What does that have to do with anything?”
I don’t know.
“It had nothing to do with him killing that man, that’s for damn certain. Or with him getting sentenced the very same day you came screaming out of Iris on that couch over there. I pulled you out and stopped her bleeding. She was crying with loneliness and whatever love there was between them, it didn’t stop her taking you away.”
She folds up her paper and takes her bowl to the sink.
“I’ll need your help digging a hole for Finnegan,” Edith says, and I nod.
“Yes, Grandma.”
As she pulls on her boots I ask, “How did he do it?”
“Strangled him to death,” my grandmother replies.
18
DUBLIN, IRELAND TWELVE YEARS AGO
The raindrops are fat and cold on my face. I don’t have a raincoat or umbrella, so I make my peace with getting wet. Dublin is a dreary place when the sky is gray and yet there’s something moody about it, mysterious, something you could get caught up and lost in. I am headed for the library, which is down near the quay.
Most mornings I wake to a kiss as he leaves for work. This morning it was so early there was barely any dawn light peeking through the shutters and in the dark his lips could have been a dream. I didn’t have a shift today so I was determined to try to make Niall’s apartment feel more like home, with some color, plants, art, anything. But within those walls I felt my feet begin to tap and my fingers begin to fidget and as I ignored those things there came a tightening around my throat.
I remembered then that I have wanted to visit the Dublin Library for some time and so I hopped on a train from Galway and here I am, hurrying to beat the downpour and breathing with ease. I duck inside the large building, over the mosaic floor and beneath the high ceiling, into the dome-like reading room I remember enjoying when I first returned to Ireland. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, maybe something on genealogy, but first I stand a moment and enjoy the space. Then I immerse myself in the pages.
Sometime later I feel a vibration in my bag.
I miss the call, and as I catch sight of my phone screen my heart lurches and I am flooded with the realization of having done the wrong thing, though I’m not quick enough to quite identify what that is. Eight missed calls from Niall. Three text messages asking me where I am. Dark has fallen outside; the entire day has passed while I lost myself in reading. Shit.
I call him immediately.
He answers with, “Are you all right?”
I try to keep my voice light. “I’m fine, sorry I missed your calls, I’m in Dublin.”
There is a long pause. “Why?”
“I wanted to come to the library.”
“Just … randomly?”
“I guess so.”
“And you didn’t think to mention it.”
“I…” The horrible truth is that it didn’t even occur to me. I haven’t done this before, not since we married, haven’t let my feet lead me where they will. I don’t say that this is nothing, that I’m only a couple of hours away, that I could have gone much farther and that I can go where I want because some instinct tells me that would be callous.
“I came home to see you at lunch and you weren’t here, and I’ve come home now to bring you dinner and you still weren’t here. I thought maybe you’d … I just didn’t know where you were.”
Abruptly I’m having trouble breathing again. “I’m sorry. I should have said. I didn’t think.”
Another pause. There is hurt within it. “Do you plan on coming home any time soon?”
“Aye. I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but maybe a night or two?”
“Right. Grand. See you then.” He hangs up.
I stare at my phone. Then I walk back out into the rain, which is really falling now, and I walk all the way to the train station and I buy a ticket for the next train back to Galway.
* * *
The biology faculty is abuzz with life, which is strange for a Tuesday night. Or any night. All the lights are on and there must be at least thirty people in the department kitchen. I edge my way inside, keeping my back to the wall and looking for Niall. He wasn’t at home, which meant he’d be at work, only I didn’t realize I’d be arriving in the middle of a staff party. I have come straight from the train, my shoes squelchy, hair damp.
I spot him in the center of a group of men and women, and edge closer, wanting to know what he’s saying that has them so enthralled. There is a dark cloud over him that I can see from here.