Ma’s eyes widen.
I pull the check and the legal papers out of my bag and hand them to Ma. “Once I started putting the pieces together, I needed to make sure you’d never have to depend on anyone. You can use the money to start over. Here or anywhere.”
Ma whispers, “He did this for me?”
I scowl. “He did it because we threatened to expose him. Part of the agreement is that he can’t have any contact with you. If he does, he’ll pay more.”
“I don’t have to see him or talk to him again?” Ma asks.
“No,” I say. “Only if you feel a need. You’re in control.”
Staring at the check and papers, Ma says, “I’ve never had anything of my own.”
“Now you’ll have plenty. Da can manage the cottages unless you want to sell them. Whatever. It’s your choice. But, it’s not something you have to decide right away. Granda’s paying me and Da, too. He’ll not bother any of us again.”
There’s a long pause.
Ma lowers her voice. “Does Seamus know about…?”
I shake my head. “When I was trying to sort things out—before I found the pictures that Granda took—Da agreed to DNA testing. But he never read the results. He burned them. I didn’t tell him that I know he’s not my father.” I lean forward, resting my weight against the table, and it tilts. I lean back, cross my arms over my chest, and say, “I guess that’s one secret I’m okay keeping. He’s my da. He raised me.”
Ma’s shoulders relax, and she smiles. “He’s a good man.”
“I know that now.” I pause. “Ma, I also know about Paddy. He agreed to the paternity test, too.”
Beneath the dumpy, worn sweater, Ma’s wearing the smart clothes Da bought her. She bites her lip, then says, “Seamus doesn’t think I remember what happened with Paddy, but I do. I already suspected I might be pregnant when I got drunk that night.” She laughs, but it’s low and forced. “Paddy was a big talker, but he couldn’t pull it off.”
“But Da said he found you half naked in a pasture.”
“I passed out from the drink after we tried. When Seamus found me, he thought Paddy had, well, done it because he found Paddy’s car keys there.”
“You let Da think that?”
Ma nods. “It wasn’t easy for me to seduce Seamus, but I managed one night, not too long after he found me. When I told him I was pregnant, he offered to marry me. It was my chance to get away from home and give you a proper father. We never talked about whether he or Paddy was the father.”
“Did you know about Da and Paddy being…close…when you married Da?”
For a moment Ma stares at me open-mouthed, then turns her head toward the empty moss-colored wall. “I just thought that he was trying to protect his mate.” Shifting in her chair, she bumps the table and it wobbles. “At one point, he said he would try to end the relationship. He loved you. I think he loved me, too. Just not in that way.”
For the first time I notice that the bulging veins on Ma’s hands look a little like Grandma’s. I look down at the flat, mostly concealed veins on my hand. Her fingernails have a light polish on them while mine are unpolished.
I say, “I take it Da didn’t know about your affair with Mr. Walters.”
Ma looks like she’s been slapped. She recoils and hugs herself. Instantly, my stomach knots. I look anxiously at Dr. Kilkenny, who says to Ma, “Annie, I insist we continue this visit another time. It’s been too much.” She stands and motions for me to do the same.
Ma covers her eyes with the palms of her hands. “You know that too?”
I say, “Mr. Walters told me about the two of you. And then I found your letters to him. He said he thought for years that he might be my father.”
Ma doesn’t move. Dr. Kilkenny purses her lips and sits back down.
Ma’s voice is low. “When he could see that I was pregnant, he asked me if he was the father. Even though I didn’t think so, I let him believe that he was.”
“He said you loved him,” I tell her.
Ma stares at the dingy wall. Her voice is flat as she says, “I thought I did. No one had ever shown me such affection. Willie gave me money to help you go to university. He knew your da and I couldn’t afford to send you, and I was never going to ask my parents.”
“The money in the baby book?” I said, remembering. “That was for me, for school?”
Ma nods.
I say, “He—Mr. Walters—took a DNA test, too.”
Ma’s shoulders droop. “Does he know?”
“Only that he’s not my biological father.”
Ma says, “I should give Willie the money back.”
I lean forward. “Why the hell should you do that? Do you have any idea how many other girls Mr. Walters was involved with over the years?”
Ma shakes her head and looks away. “Linda tried to tell me there were others, but I didn’t want to believe her.”
A sour taste rises in my mouth. “It was wrong what he did. Keep the bloody money.”
“You keep it. Do what you like with it,” Ma says. “I don’t want anything from him.”
In the family lounge, a child wails. Voices cajole the child to settle down, and after a few minutes it’s quiet again. A doctor is paged over the intercom. Dr. Kilkenny looks down at her folded hands.
Teary-eyed, Ma says, “It turns out that the people who were supposed to love me, hurt me. People I thought I could trust betrayed me. Only the people who didn’t really love me never left me.”
My family. Broken, but whole. Distant, but close.
Ma reaches for my hands across the table and straightens her spine. “I want to live the rest of my life the way I want to. I don’t want to take care of anyone but me right now. That doesn’t mean that I don’t love you. I do, more than you know.”
“You just don’t need me anymore,” I say and wipe my face with my sleeve.
With her gaze intense, Ma squeezes my hand. Her hands are warm and moist. She says, “You need to live your own life. Don’t live it for me or anyone else. You have to choose now what you want to do. Not to please anyone. Not to take care of anyone.” I push away from the table and go over and hug Ma. Our tears mingle when she presses her cheek against mine. As we hold each other, Ma says, “Live without regret. I know I’m going to from now on.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
As the engines whine and the flight attendant talks through the usual emergency procedures, I take out my cell phone. There’s a new text from Ryan. “I will miss you. Let me know when you land.” I stare at it for a moment and then shut off the phone, stuff it into my bag, and rest my head against the window.
Next to me, in the middle seat, a woman bottle-feeds an infant. “For her ears, so they don’t pop,” she explains. The man on the aisle, wearing a business suit, buries his nose in a newspaper. I smile and take out my earphones to listen to the music that Ryan loaded onto my iPod for the trip, but hold the wires in my hand instead and look out the window just as the plane separates from the runway.
As the plane ascends, Dublin shrinks to a miniature city. Buildings and cars look like toys. The September sun slices through the clouds and ricochets off the surface of the Irish Sea.
“Are you going to visit family in New York?” asks my seatmate as she slips a pacifier into her baby’s mouth.
“No,” I say. “I’ve just always wanted to go to America. I’ll travel, maybe visit some people I’ve met over the years. My family owns a bed-and-breakfast, and the American guests always invite us to come over.”
“Lovely. Will you be gone long?” the woman asks.
“Hard to say.” I reach down, yank my bag out from under the seat and I stuff the boarding pass of my one-way ticket inside it.
The plane barks steeply, making a u-turn to the west. Below, the sun shimmers off the water. As we pass over the coast, wispy clouds blanket the lush, green countryside and the rocky shoreline rimmed by white surf.
Then it is gone.
I settle i
nto my seat, close my eyes, and try to envision a new future while committing to memory every detail of the home I’m leaving.
Acknowledgments
This book could not have been written or published without the love and support of my husband, David Graham. He has passionately encouraged my writing, spent countless hours reading and editing it, and cheered me to the finish line. It is his book as much as mine.
I am grateful to my family for their encouragement: my children, Andrew, Connor and Kate; my mother, Elizabeth Jane Pautz; and my sister, Liz Christopherson, who read the first draft with a keen eye and made invaluable suggestions.
Many friends have supported and assisted me on this journey: Jeanne Cotter; Janet DesLauriers Morris; Laura Braafladt; Judy Walker; Paula Baker; Char Mason; Joan O’Neill; Maggie Kirkpatrick; Sonia Cairns; Terrie Wheeler; Pat Hoven; Beth LaBreche; Terri Shepherd; Andrea Grazzini; Don McNeil; William Studer; and Anne Nicolai.
Finally, thank you to Mary Carroll Moore (writing instructor extraordinaire), the countless writers I’ve been privileged to know and learn from through classes at the Loft Literary Center and Madeline Island School of the Arts, and Ryan Scheife at Mayfly Design.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Acknowledgments
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