“You’ve got to be shitting me,” said Patrick.
“I’m inclined to say the same thing,” said Mary Louise.
“Look at me,” said Anna. “I’m missing teeth, I’ve got a scar on my leg that you can see from across the street. And look at Joseph.”
She hadn’t meant to say the last part. Patrick was still in bed, but was able to get up with a walker. He’d lost muscle tone in his arms and his hands looked uncharacteristically smooth. Patrick swung his legs over the edge of the bed and painfully pulled himself up, pushed into the walker and took halting steps toward Joseph.
“I thought I’d lost you, Joey,” said Patrick. His chin quivered. The walker clattered over and Joseph reached out to steady his father.
“I’ve got you now, Dad.”
The room vibrated with newness and miracle. Anna didn’t want to talk more. She wanted to go to her mother’s house and pull the drapes and unplug everything electrical. She sank quietly to the floor.
Mary Louise squatted next to Anna. “You’re coming home with me, both of you.”
“Madigan too,” said Joseph.
Anna noted the lack of question, the firmness in his voice.
“Yes. When we leave here, we’ll go straight to Alice’s house and pick up Madigan. I only hope my car is large enough,” said Mary Louise.
Anna’s mother refused to leave their side and took a leave of absence from the school.
Chapter 40
Three months later
Patrick’s left foot still lagged slightly when he walked. The doctors said with brain injuries, you never knew how things would turn out. Still, they hadn’t expected him to live, never mind walk unassisted seven months later.
Anna, Joseph, Patrick, and Madigan walked single file through the double doors of the long-term care facility, code name for the Alzheimer’s ward. Madigan, who loved Science Diet, now weighed one hundred and forty pounds. He had adapted to the twenty-first century with surprising grace—with the exception of cars, which he loathed but would tolerate if Joseph insisted.
“I told the nurse supervisor that we were coming today. She said they’d have him dressed and up. There’s nothing wrong with him physically. I mean all his body parts work. Alzheimer’s is selective,” said Anna.
“We know what Alzheimer’s is,” said Patrick.
Joseph had refused to go back to school. His grandmother arranged for a combination of home schooling balanced with the promise of classes at Greenfield Community College in the fall.
“I want to be a stone mason. I want to work with my father,” he’d said.” The name of our company has to be Quoin Stone.”
Negotiations were in progress.
Oscar’s grandmother had long since dropped charges when she realized that her grandson Oscar had taken her car. Oscar spent four weeks in drug rehab. All other charges had been dropped.
Anna had looked everywhere for evidence that the curse had been lifted. And indeed, Joseph and Patrick were learning to get along better. But she decided on the unthinkable—a visit to their violent, brilliant father who had nearly killed Patrick and then abandoned them. When their mother had learned that her ex-husband had Alzheimer’s, she had him moved to Massachusetts.
Joseph stopped at the receptionist’s desk. Madigan stopped with him, the dog’s tail thumping loudly along the side of the desk.
“This is as far as I go. I’ve never met my grandfather. He won’t know me anyhow. You two go ahead,” he said.
Anna and Patrick followed the social worker down the corridor to a yellow room with vinyl-covered chairs and a piano.
“I’ll go get him,” said the social worker. She had short gray hair and clear blue eyes.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” said Patrick.
Anna heard the boy in him, the terror in his voice that he had tried to hide for their entire childhood.
The squeaking wheels along the linoleum announced Charles’s arrival. Only one wheel of the chair needed oil to still the one bit of friction that shrilled with each rotation. Anna had stopped breathing and she wasn’t sure if she could start again. The wild father of their youth was slumped over in a wheelchair; his thick Irish hair was gray and severely cut. He wore a Red Sox sweatshirt.
The social worker stopped near the coffee table and set the brake.
“Charles, you have visitors,” she said, touching their father on his shoulder to get his attention.
Someone had just shaved him and his cheeks had the shine of soap and blade. Anna sucked in a breath. She couldn’t move. This was a mistake. She couldn’t do this.
Patrick stepped forward, his left foot taking one half second longer than the other. Charles O’Shea looked up and focused hard on Patrick. Their father’s face began to contort into open fear.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I won’t do it again,” said Charles, gripping the handrails of the chair.
The social worker said quietly, “They often see their children as their parents or someone else from that generation.”
Patrick came close to the wheelchair and knelt down on one knee. Anna put her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. Patrick eased his hand near his father’s hand. Both hands were trembling.
“You’re a good boy, Charlie, a very good boy. I’m sorry if I scared you. You are the best son a father could hope for. I’m so proud of you.”
The terror melted from the older man’s face. Madigan, who had slipped past a group of adoring elders, pressed into Anna’s side.
“And that is how you make a blessing, you great hound. Come meet another lost Irishman.”
Madigan walked lightly to Patrick’s side and looked directly at Charles O’Shea, politely sniffing his hand. Madigan’s head was slightly higher than Charles. Even from behind, Anna saw that the dog was offering his goofiest look, head tilted, one ear up, jaw relaxed and open.
Charles brightened and said, “He’s a big dog. Can we keep him?”
Patrick reached out to scratch the hound behind his ears. “He’s part of the package now. We’re keeping him and he’s keeping us.”
Chapter 41
Anna sat in the first-class section of Aer Lingus, the flight a gift from her mother, who said it might be the only time Anna ever rode in first class, so enjoy. She ran her tongue along the two newly implanted teeth. She missed the gap, the canyon where her tongue explored for months.
Anna was more terrified to return to Ireland than she had been having teeth pulled out by a blacksmith, or going toe-to-toe with the governor of New Cork Prison. This time she had to find out if love mattered.
Joseph had said, “You’re not going without me. I’ve got to know what happened to Taleen. I know she must have married Con. But I’ve got to find out if she was happy.”
Even his desperate plea had not dissuaded her. “Next trip. Take your father when he’s up to it. You two can become our genealogists.”
The plane landed at Shannon Airport. Anna rented a car just as the sun was rising on Ireland.
She looked at the map for the one hundredth time as she sat on a side road outside the airport. Where should she go? Back to Bunratty Castle, Skibbereen, Kinsale? It was April and the trees along the side road had buds that threatened to burst open any second. Two hoodie crows landed on a branch, caught their balance, and turned in unison to look her way. One tilted his head.
“Of course,” she said to them, with the certainty of it coursing through her. “Tramore.”
She drove south to Cork, considered touring the New Cork Prison and thought better of it. It had not been used as prison since the 1920s, but she could not have faced it. She drove east to Waterford, skipping the scenic coastal route. She cut south to Tramore. How would she know where to look? Should she start with church records or a cemetery?
The beach along Tramore was still long and magnificent. Later she would walk along it, imagining a boy tossed out by the ocean, imagining a man she had loved and thought of every day.
The part of
town that used to be the busy port had been turned into a vast amusement park, just waking up from the winter, with fun houses and Ferris wheels. She walked uphill, into the heart of the old town, where no building was newer than the nineteenth century. The tiny streets remained the same. Anna wondered if she had turned into a ghost.
She walked up two streets, then over for one. This should be it, the old book bindery would be right here. The sign read FITZGERALD BOOK SHOP. Her spine tingled and her hands shook when she pressed the door open.
A young girl behind the counter thumbed through a box of books. She was not classically bookish. Her black hair was cropped short in a ragged cut that emphasized her heart-shaped face.
“I’m looking for something,” said Anna. “Something old.”
“The shop’s been in our family for over two hundred years. If old is what you want, you’ve come to the right place. What sort of old thing are you after? I do hope it’s books.”
“I’m not sure…” started Anna. She turned toward a door when she heard the clatter of claws along the floor. A wolfhound peered around the corner and caught Anna in his sights. The amber eyes startled her.
“Oh, don’t be alarmed by Fergus. He’s a gentle giant. The worst thing about him today is that he doesn’t smell good a’tal. He rolled in a dead fish along the beach.”
“It’s not his size,” said Anna. “It’s their eyes. I’m never used to their eyes.”
The wolfhound loped past the shopgirl and came straight for Anna with a relaxed and easy mouth. With a wet grip, he took Anna’s forearm in his massive jaw. She placed her other hand reflexively to her abdomen. She was four months pregnant and the gentle swell of her uterus felt huge to her but she knew it was only now truly showing.
“Here now! Let go of the woman, Fergus,” she scolded.
“I’m quite used to this. He’s no bother.”
“He only does this with the people of the village. Truth be told, he only does it with the Irish.”
The dog wagged his firm, nearly hairless tail and released her soggy arm. Fergus pressed his head into Anna halfway up her rib cage and she automatically stroked the dog, noting that his fur was coarser than Madigan’s. She wrinkled her nose at the powerful scent coming from the happy dog.
“You’ll want to wash your hands now. There’s a sink in the back room,” said the girl as she pointed to the far end of the shop.
Anna saw it above the girl’s head, the walking stick held horizontally on a rack, the letter A carved dark and heavy near the top knob. Anna froze.
“Oh, that is quite old and not for sale, I’m sorry to say.”
The wood had darkened over the years.
“Would you care to see it? Fergus here has given you a good recommendation. The carving along the length of it is worth a look. And I’ve a soft spot for women who are pregnant.” She was the first person outside the family to say the word.
The girl used a broom to nudge the walking stick from its rack. She caught the top knob and passed it to Anna.
“Look carefully and you’ll see it’s a map. See, it starts here up by the letter A, then keep turning it slowly, that’s right, and the map travels on. The topmost is Glengariff, then all around Beara Peninsula. Keep turning it. Can you see Skibbereen? If you’re not familiar with the southern coastline, it will seem a jumble to you. But it keeps on going, all the coves and inlets, and ends here at Tramore. There are some who say the entire thing is truly a woman, her body with all the nooks and crannies. Now who would take such time today to do all this?”
Anna turned the stick over and over, hope and love spinning forward and back in her hands.
“A cartographer,” she said and pressed the darkened wood to her cheek.
Acknowledgments
Time travel explodes the complexity of plot and the need for information in multiple realms. The following people were generous with their time and expertise. Cheryl McGraw and Pam Murphy allowed me to spend time with their gorgeous Irish wolfhounds. Justin Mooney, an Irish stonemason in Connecticut, and Joel Strate, an American stonemason in Massachusetts, shared their love of stonework and the intricate history. Ted and Eilis O’Sullivan of Cork, Ireland, opened their home to me and led me down the right paths of nineteenth-century Irish history. Cathal Cavanagh, an Irish historian, did his best to inject a fresh take on the political shenanigans of the time period. Brian Cahillane, Esq., and Thomas E. Maloney, Esq., gave me insights into law school and the laws of New Jersey. Martha Sheehan graciously traveled with me along the routes of my characters in Ireland, no matter how tiny the roads became. Charles MacInerney, a superb yoga teacher from Austin, Texas, gave me all his high school wrestling secrets. Lisa Drnec Kerr allowed me to write in Owl Cottage. Diana Gordon expanded my equestrian knowledge.
My life is infinitely better due to my membership in The Great Darkness Writing Group. They are: Marianne Banks, Jeanne Borfitz, Jennifer Jacobson, Celia Jeffries, Lisa Drnec Kerr, Alan & Edie Lipp, Patricia Lee Lewis, Christine Menard, Patricia Riggs, and Marion VanArsdell. My Manuscript Group provided good cheer and insightful critiques. They are: Anne Kornblatt, Rita Marks, Brenda Marsian, Elli Meeropol, Lydia Nettler, and Dori Ostermiller. Morgan Sheehan-Bubla was an enthusiastic and skilled editor from start to finish.
The team at Avon/HarperCollins is made up of people who love books, and I am grateful for their expertise. The team includes Carrie Feron, editor, and Tessa Woodward, assistant editor. And lastly, I thank my agent, Jenny Bent, for being the best.
About the Author
Jacqueline Sheehan
I grew up in Connecticut and live in Massachusetts today, where I divide my time between writing, teaching writing workshops and yoga, and running a small psychotherapy practice. But I spent twenty years living in western states: California, Oregon, and New Mexico. For most of my childhood, I lived in a single-parent home, after the early death of my father left my mother with five kids. My siblings were 8 to 13 years older than I was at the time, so they really had a different childhood, complete with two parents. My mother was a nurse by day, but she had the spirit of an artist. My first memory of her was watching her paint at her easel on her day off. She was one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met and even as a child, I was aware of my good fortune to have landed in her nest.
Which is not to say that childhood or my teen years were easy. They were not. I was impulsive and wild, slipping out of my bedroom window at night to meet friends, smoke Newport cigarettes, and drive with boys in fast cars. After unsuccessfully attempting to rein me in, she wisely took another approach and gave me a very long leash, which was what I needed. At the end of my second year of college, a girlfriend and I hitchhiked across the country and to her amazing credit, my mother actually drove us to our first highway entrance and dropped us off.
At college in Colorado, I studied anthropology and art, preparing me for few jobs. During the summer I worked at an institution in Connecticut for people with mental retardation. This was truly the Dark Ages in how we regarded people with developmental delays and we clumped them all together under the umbrella of mental retardation. People of all ages were warehoused in large buildings in awful conditions. College students who worked there in the summer were acutely aware of the injustices done to residents and we plotted many small and not so small rebellions on behalf of the residents.
My career path after college did not lead straight to writing, but instead took a sometimes dizzying route. Among my more illustrious job choices were: director of a traveling puppet troupe, roofer, waitress, recreation worker and lifeguard for handicapped kids, health-food clerk, freelance photographer (the low point was taking pictures of kids with Santa, the high point was photographing births), substance-abuse counselor with street kids in Chicago, freelance newspaper writer, and something about baiting sewers for rats in Oregon, but that one is always too hard to explain. After the birth of my daughter, I returned to graduate school to study psychology, eventually earning my Ph.D. and working
at university counseling centers.
As soon as I settled in with psychology, I began to write fiction. Short stories, long stories, novellas, novels, essays. I woke at five A.M. to write before I left for work, spent part of every weekend writing, most holidays, and parts of every vacation that I could squeeze out of my very full life. I have now switched the balance; writing is my primary occupation and private practice is my part-time job.
When people ask me how I find time to write, I am always puzzled, because finding time is not a huge problem. Pat Schneider, a wise writing teacher, once said, “You would find time for a lover, wouldn’t you? That is how you find time for writing.” And possibly the image of my mother, happily painting at her easel on her day off made an imprint on me that said, here is what you do with your life, do those things you love.
I have a backlog of stories and novels that are yammering to come out and I am doing my best to keep them in an orderly line.
www.jacquelinesheehan.com
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Also by Jacqueline Sheehan
LOST & FOUND
TRUTH
Credits
Cover photograph © Fabiola Benda
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
NOW & THEN. Copyright © 2009 by Jacqueline Sheehan. “At Sea” by Wendy Mnookin on frontmatter from The Moon Makes Its Own Plea. © BOA Editions, 2008. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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