“You were right, Yank.” Angie’s eyes fluttered and finally closed. “I have a little girl. Named Dana.”
Sarah scanned the camp. It was still smoking in spots from where the cairn had exploded.
Angie coughed again. “I was just trying to give her a chance to grow up, same as you and your lad.”
“Angie, I…” Sarah stopped talking when she realized Angie had had the last word. She touched the woman’s no longer tortured brow. “Sleep now, Angie,” she said. “It’s over.”
* * *
Mike sat on the top porch step and surveyed the cleanup while Fiona wrapped a clean bandage around his head. It still hurt like bloody blazes, but his eyesight had at least returned to normal and he could only hope the pain—if it was just a concussion—would soon abate.
“You sure you’re okay, Fi?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”
“Okay, very funny. Just trying to be brotherly.”
“Well, at least you can feel a little less guilty about young John not being anywhere near all of this.”
“That thought did run through my mind,” he admitted, “in my ever-ongoing quest to think on the bright side of things while people are trying to kill me and mine.”
“Speaking of which, you seen Caitlin recently?”
He winced as she tied the knot to secure the bandage. “I’ll deal with it, Fi.”
“You know it had to be her told them all our secrets.”
“I said I’d deal with it.”
“Well, you’d best get ready to do it because here she comes as bold as chalk, and with one of ‘em!”
Mike looked up to see Caitlin walking down the center path of the camp, hanging on the arm of a large man with an ugly cut across his forehead. It was the man who’d attacked him in the woods.
She must have been waiting in the woods until the battle was over, Mike thought as she and the English wanker stood in front of him.
“I’ll be needing Fiona to tend to the injuries that your bowsies gave me Aidan. He’ll be staying with me in me tent.”
Had the daft bitch gone mental? Maybe Fi was right and she really was insane.
Mike stood up, feeling the sky sway just a bit. “Take this piece of shite and piss off, Caitlin. You’re not welcome here. Be glad I don’t dip you in tar first.”
Her mouth fell open in astonishment. “You can’t throw me out! I’m your kin!”
“You’re nothing to me. Now bugger off. Don’t make me lay hands on you.”
Aidan snarled at him. “I’d like to see you try, you big Irish bastard.”
Before Mike could respond, Sarah, who he’d last seen sitting with the woman Declan had shot, stepped forward. She must have come over as soon as she saw Caitlin return to camp.
“A word, Mike,” Sarah said turning to stare at Caitlin and Aidan. “Do we have laws in Donovan’s Lot?”
He frowned. “Aye. We do.”
Sarah pointed to Aidan. “This man aided in the murder of my husband, David Woodson.”
Aidan dropped Caitlin’s arm. “She lies!”
Sarah stepped up to him and put her face into his. “I saw you.”
Mike jumped down from the porch and pulled Sarah back as he bellowed out, “Jimmy! Patrick!”
Aidan whirled and ran four steps before two men standing nearby tackled him.
“Tie him up,” Mike said. “Throw him in the granary. I’ll deal with him later.”
Caitlin flew at Mike, her fists pounding his chest until he pushed her away and she fell in the dirt. “You can’t do this!” she cried as Aidan was dragged away cursing and fighting.
“I can. And you’ve got two minutes to leave on your own steam, Caitlin. After that I’ll lock you up so you can answer for your hand in today’s events.”
Caitlin looked at him, disbelieving, then climbed to her feet. She gave Sarah a look of loathing.
“Sixty seconds,” Mike said.
“I’ll see you in Hell, Mike Donovan! You and your Yankee whore!”
Sarah watched until Caitlin disappeared into the woods and then she turned to Mike. “What will you do with him?”
“There’s no traveling magistrate to hear the case, Sarah, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said wearily. “I’m the law here. He abetted in David’s murder.” He sat down heavily on the porch, as if standing were suddenly too taxing, and looked into her face, his expression stern and unrelenting. “So he dies.”
Suddenly, Fiona jumped down from the porch. “It’s Gavin!” she called. “He’s safe, Mike. Thank the Lord.”
Mike looked up to see the miraculous sight of his only child loping into the center of camp on Sarah’s horse, beaming and looking very much like he had something to do with today’s victory. A wave of relief cascaded over him. Now he could relax. Now he could finally rest.
Fiona ran up to Gavin when he dismounted and he picked her up and swung her in a wide arc. She squealed.
“We did it, Auntie!” he said. “I just wished I coulda seen the expressions on those bastards’ faces.”
Fiona laughed. “Was that you made all those explosions and saved our lives you big gobshite?”
Gavin walked over to where Mike and Sarah waited on the porch steps, both of them smiling to see him unharmed and well. “You know,” he said, grinning, “much as I’d love to take the credit, I reckon that mostly it was all John.” He looked at Sarah and grinned even more broadly.
Mike watched as Sarah looked at Gavin and then, her hand covering her mouth to stifle a gasp. Immediately over Gavin’s shoulder, jogging up the main center of camp, was twelve-year-old John Woodson, grinning from ear to ear.
35
Sarah knew that no matter how long she lived she would literally never get her fill of looking at him. She gazed at her son as he sat at the dinner table, laughing and shoving with Mike’s boy, Gavin, and she knew she hadn’t stopped smiling since the moment she had seen him trot down the center aisle of camp, his face filthy, his hair wild around his head, straight for her. For the time it took for her to see him coming toward her—unharmed and jubilant—and then feel him in her arms again, Sarah knew she would never ask for more in this lifetime.
Like most miracles, how it all came about was as thrilling a story of luck and happenstance combined with the stubbornness of the human spirit as there could ever be.
“When the pilot told me they had news of a VIP they needed to stop for in Limerick, I could see by the way he was looking at me that if I wanted to wander off from a bathroom break when we stopped they wouldn’t look too hard for me.” John bit into his third sandwich as he told his tale.
Sarah kept one hand on his arm the whole time, as if to confirm to herself that he was really there, flesh and blood.
“Who was the VIP?’ Gavin asked.
Fiona slapped him playfully on the back of the head. “What does it matter? Let him tell the story!”
“Oh, no, Aunt, Fi,” John said. “That’s the cool part.” He looked at his mother. “It was Prince William. He was on a fishing trip in Ireland and was in a hurry to get back to London.”
“Mercy,” Fiona said. “You gave your seat up for the future King of England? Well done, lad!”
“Yeah, well, I would’ve given it up for a French poodle if it meant I could get back home.”
“So you walked all the way from Limerick?” Declan asked. He sat beside Mike as the two smoked and sipped whiskey. Sarah was delighted, but not surprised, to see the obvious beginning of a strong friendship.
John shook his head. “The pilot put me down nearer to Adare. It’s only twenty miles or so and the weather was fine.”
“You just slipped away?” Mike was shaking his head, either at the simplicity of it all or the grotesque priorities of the pilot choosing a celebrity over the young American who had been his first responsibility.
“Yeah, and when I got nearly to camp I ran into Gavin who told me what was happening.”
Mike looked at his son. “Is that wh
y you weren’t where you were supposed to be?” he asked pointedly.
“Sorry, Da,” Gavin said, and there was something about the way he answered that told Sarah that Gavin had grown up since she’d last seen him. “It’s true I wasn’t where you told me to be, but I reckon I was exactly where I was supposed to be.”
“What riddle is this?” Mike growled.
“It’s on account of me, sir,” John said, looking at Mike. “And I’m sorry for making Gav disobey you. But I had to.”
“Go on.”
“Well,” John said, reaching for a small sugar cake from the plate Fiona extended to him. “I figured I knew better ‘coz I had intel that you didn’t.”
Mike snorted but didn’t respond.
“So why did you not want Gavin in the tree his da told him to be in?” Fiona asked.
John put the cake down and wiped his fingers on his sleeve. Sarah could see that, although he was still the same size since she last saw him, his eyes seemed to belong to a much older boy.
“Uncle Mike wanted him in a certain tree as a sniper, but I needed him in a different tree so he could detonate the landmines.”
“You replanted the landmines after I told your father to dig them up and remove them?” Mike spoke evenly, but Sarah could tell there was no heat in his voice.
“Yes sir, I did,” John said, meeting his eyes. “My dad was right about needing those mines to defend the community. You must’ve thought the same thing when you found out we were under attack, ‘coz my mom said you went looking for them.”
Sarah stole a glance at Mike. He didn’t say anything.
“The weeks you were gone, Mom, I did a lot of thinking about a lot of things. I figured Dad was right about us needing the explosives, but Uncle Mike was right, too, about not wanting people to accidentally walk on ‘em. I figured, since they could be detonated by any mechanism that could activate their blasting caps, we didn’t have to use them as somebody stepping on ‘em.”
“A bullet would work,” Gavin said.
“Right. So I buried ‘em in the cairn where nobody goes and under the stonewall by the eastern pasture.”
“And then forgot to tell anyone about it,” Gavin said, elbowing John good-naturedly.
John grinned. “Yeah. I meant to tell Gav, but next thing I know I’m on a helicopter and nobody knows but me that the whole place is rigged to blow with two well-placed hits.”
“How did you know when to time the explosions?” Declan asked.
John shrugged. “I didn’t. The first one, we just let ‘er rip. We didn’t have a plan at all. The second time, though…” John stopped speaking and Sarah found herself holding her breath.
The second time, Sarah knew, John had seen the three men exit the camp and saw that they would walk right by the cairn where the explosive was planted.
What he didn’t know, she thought as she watched him struggle with the thought of what he had done, was that he had given the signal that killed the man who murdered his father. She didn’t know if she would ever tell him that.
“Well,” Mike said, finishing off his whiskey. “I’d like to raise a toast to young John, here, and Declan and his family, without whose help in defending Donovan’s Lot we’d none of us be here to give a toast.”
Everyone seconded the toast and drank. Sarah’s eyes stung with tears as she watched her son.
“And I’d also like to raise a glass to the memory of David Woodson,” Mike said. Sarah picked up her glass again and felt the tears streak down her face. “Who was right, when I was wrong. And being right helped save us all on this day.”
“Hear, hear,” the room chorused as everyone drank.
Sarah saw Mike exchange a look with John over the cheers and conversation of the group. She saw Mike nod and John smile in response.
* * *
That night, as Sarah sat next to John on his bed in Fiona’s cottage, she felt a warmth radiating throughout her body that left her tingling with joy. To touch him again, to watch his expressions, to hold him just by reaching out…she couldn’t remember a time when she felt more grace than she felt right now. It had been a long day and they were both exhausted, but still she hesitated to leave him to go to her bed, even as weary as she was. And so she sat near him as he talked, his eyelids growing heavier and heavier.
“I knew you weren’t dead, Mom. I mean, if you were dead, I know I’d have felt it.” He yawned and rubbed his eyes. “I just knew you were somewhere in the world. You know what I mean?”
Sarah leaned over and kissed him, a vision of dear Evvie coming to mind and prompting an exhausted smile though her tears. “I do, sweetie,” she said as she watched her boy fall into sleep before her eyes. “I know exactly what you mean.”
36
Dear Mom and Dad,
As I write this, I have in front of me a letter that was delivered to me from you a month ago. As far as I can tell, it was written a month before that. I can’t tell you of the joy and relief I felt when I saw your handwriting again, Mom! Knowing that you and Dad are alive and well, and that Jacksonville was not even touched by this international incident has given me more strength and hope than I can say.
John and I are both fine and I tell you that straightaway because I have some devastatingly bad news and I need you to brace yourselves. A little over two months ago, the cottage where David and John and I lived was attacked by raiders and David was killed. Even writing the words I have to stop and have a good cry. Maybe it’ll always be that way.
It’s hard for me to believe, even two months later, that David didn’t survive this ordeal of ours. It’s especially painful when I see signs every day that John and I may be able to go home soon—and yet David won’t be coming with us. I don’t know whom else you might notify about David. His parents, as you know, are both gone and he had no siblings.
In the interim two months, many things have happened, and not all of them bad. After David was killed, I travelled to a small town somewhere in the Cotswolds. In the column of “not all bad,” is the fact that I met many good people as I made my way back across the UK and Wales. One of them was a young gypsy girl who did everything she could to sacrifice her life so that I could get back to John in Ireland. She was more than just a brave, heroic girl, though. While we traveled together I found her funny, optimistic, affectionate and incredibly resilient. If I were to tell you what her childhood was like, you’d be amazed that she could even laugh, let alone be the plucky, lovely girl she was.
* * *
Sarah stared out the window, the tears gathering in her eyes once more at the thought of Papin. She forced herself to turn away from the sounds of the children’s laughter out her window to concentrate on her letter.
* * *
Well, folks, the sun is starting to dip, which actually begins the busiest part of my day because it means dinner preparation. Sometimes I long for the days of a frozen peel-back carton and a microwave oven. Ha ha. Just kidding. What do I mean “sometimes?”
Anyway, love to you both. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to get your letter and to know that all is well with you both at home. The helicopter the came for us last month gave me confidence that one day our trial here will be done and John and I will both be back home again.
In the meantime, please know that we are both well and we are happy.
Love,
Your daughter,
Sarah
PS - I forgot to mention, in case you were worried about where I’m living, that Mike Donovan, who runs the big community here, has moved me and John into a very sweet little cottage right in the middle of the community boundaries—in fact very near his own hut. So we are safe and snug amidst our friends and dear ones.
Until I see you again….
* * *
Sarah set her pen down and carefully folded up the letter. She placed it inside the large wooden box that Mike had brought from the cottage she’d shared with David. The box had belonged to Deirdre.
Out the window, she
could see John on his pony. He looked like he was giving riding lessons to some of the smaller children. It hadn’t been that long ago—not quite a year—when he had climbed onto the back of a horse for the first time himself. She saw Mike join the group. He held a piece of a plough in his hands and she guessed he was on his way to the work shed with it.
Seeing him unexpectedly sent a tiny thrill through her that she had come to expect whenever she saw him. She didn’t know what her life going forward in Donovan’s Lot would be like, but she had a feeling it would always be strongly affected by the undeniable pull she felt in the big Irishman’s direction.
While it had only been a week since she and Mike had made their way back to the camp, it had taken every ounce of self-restraint she had not to harangue him on a daily basis about going back to Wales to look for Papin.
Tonight was the night, she knew. After everything she had been through, the time for waiting was through. She straightened her back to physically steel her resolve.
A head popped up in the window outside Sarah’s writing table making her jump, and then laugh when she realized it was John still sitting on his pony.
“Hey, Mom, Aunt Fi wants to know if we’re eating communal tonight again. She’s got a big lamb stew and I told her you baked today.”
“Yes, sweetie, of course,” Sarah said. “Go ahead and feed Star and put him up for the night. I’ll be there directly.”
“Uncle Mike’s coming, too, Mom. He’s gonna show me and Gav how to do that disappearing card trick thing.”
Sarah was amazed that she could find such pleasure after so many weeks of horror. The days and weeks of living like an animal—ready to kill at any moment, ready to distrust any kind face or motive—had disappeared after just a few days of being back in the loving embrace of her friends and family. As she looked around the dinner table she thought that tonight was a perfect example of that.
Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games Page 26
