The Herald Angels Sing

by Roxanne St Claire

  “Gramma, can you do this?” she asked in a hushed whisper. “’Cause there’s no telling what this man will do if his Queenie dies.”

  “A woman can do what a woman has to do,” she said.

  “Old Irish proverb?”

  “No, I saw it on Twitter.” She shook her well-rinsed hands in the sink. “Let’s do this.”

  “Oh, Gramma.” Pru reached for her, careful not to touch her with sterilized hands, but so needing to hug this tiny creature who defied everyone and everything and every expectation. “I love you so much. I would be lost without you. You are the most amazing, wonderful woman I’ve ever known and…” She leaned back and smiled through tears. “I’ve known quite a few for someone only fourteen years old.”

  Gramma’s eyes grew moist at the little speech. “Aye, Prudence Anne Kilcannon, so have I. And I wouldn’t want anyone else next to me in times of good or bad.”

  They stared at each other for a long time, eye to eye, heart to heart, separated by more than seven decades, but as close as two women could be.

  “And I really don’t think he’s going to kill us,” Pru added. “Since we’re angels and all.”

  “But you’re right. There’s no tellin’ what he’ll do if something happens to that dog.”

  Pru swallowed. “Then let’s save her and her baby.”

  Together, they went back into the dining room-turned-Nativity set where Cutter was opening a large and extremely well-stocked first aid kit. Pru almost hooted in joy at the sight of packaged sterile surgical gloves, antibacterial ointment, and thick, clean gauze.

  Gramma slipped on the gloves and knelt on the pillow Cutter had left for her. “The puppies aren’t crying as much,” she whispered.

  “I stoked the fire.” Cutter came to stand next to her and watch. “Will they eat?”

  One worked its way toward its mama’s belly to suckle a nipple, but Blue’s focus seemed to be on the one that couldn’t come out. “Soon,” Gramma said. “Maybe after the last one’s born.”

  “Why is she bleeding so much?” Cutter asked.

  “I think she’s torn some skin,” Pru told him. “But if you have any kind of cell service, I can have my mom here soon, and she could save the dog and the puppy.”

  He just stared at her. “I don’t use phones.”

  “Internet?”

  He shook his head.

  “You have six thousand Christmas lights, but no phone and no computer?” The question came out laden with frustration, and Pru almost wished she hadn’t said it, remembering that the groomer mentioned he suffered from agoraphobia. But he didn’t seem angered by her question. In fact, his expression softened.

  “Queenie likes Christmas,” he said. “It’s her favorite time of year. That’s how I know you’re angels.”

  Oh boy. No one at Waterford was even going to believe this when she told them.

  Pru looked up at him. “Don’t set the bar so high. We’re just people.”

  He hesitated a moment, his time-worn complexion deepening in color. For a minute, Pru thought he was going to explode, but then his eyes welled up. “I prayed for angels to find Queenie and bring her home,” he whispered. “And you came.”

  “Yes, we did,” Gramma said, inching him away. “Now you have to let us concentrate and do the job. Tell me how she got lost if you want to talk, but sit over there, lad, on the sofa.”

  Lad? The guy was definitely in his seventies. But he followed the instructions and took a seat. “I don’t like to talk,” he muttered.

  We noticed.

  Pru leaned over the whelping box, and Gramma Finnie got settled and started working on Blue’s breech pup. For a long time, she didn’t say anything but cooed and coaxed Blue along.

  Behind them, Cutter sighed in abject misery. “How long?”

  “A little while,” Pru said, her heart breaking for him. “Can I make you some tea?” she offered.

  If the idea that one of his guests offered him something to drink seemed strange, ol’ Bill Cutter didn’t let on. “No.” He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. “I just…can’t live without her. I’d have no reason. No reason at all.”

  A little piece of Pru’s heart broke as she settled on the floor next to the whelping box.

  “Donchya be thinkin’ about that, lad,” Gramma said. “I can’t turn it.”

  “You can’t?” Pru and Cutter asked at the same time.

  “I’ve fixed his feet, I think, so his legs won’t be broken when he’s born.” She rested on her haunches, her gloved hands hanging in the box. “Now we just have to wait for Blue to be ready to give it a go.”

  “How long?” he asked again.

  “It may be a while now,” Gramma said vaguely. “She’s very tired and we need to let her rest for the big finale. Try and think about other things until she’s ready.”

  “There are no other things,” he whispered sadly.

  “How ’bout we sing you some Christmas carols?” Gramma suggested, adding her brightest smile.

  He glared at her.

  “A nice story?”

  Pru bit her lip, almost laughing at Gramma’s determination to calm the man down. Five more minutes and she’d be reciting ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, which was really pretty with her brogue.

  “Finish the story you were telling me,” Pru suggested. “It was Ireland in the 1940’s.”

  Bill Cutter didn’t even lift his head from his hands. That’s how little interest he had in that idea.

  “Aye, I could,” Gramma said. “I had a beau that my father didn’t like at all,” she added, as if Bill Cutter actually cared.

  At his silence, Gramma sighed, giving up too soon.

  “Tell him, Gramma. Tell him about the pin we took to town and how you got it.” Pru added a look she knew Gramma would understand. This could be a while, and Cutter is losing it.

  She looked unsure, but slowly Gramma talked, giving a shorter, but no less colorful, recount of the sister who went off to be a nurse in the war, the boy who needed help, and how he’d found Finnie to return the pin.

  Somewhere, during the story, Bill Cutter lifted his head. His eyes cleared, and he trained them on Finnie while she described running away from her farm to meet Seamus Kilcannon. When she stopped just short of that first kiss, he leaned forward.

  “Don’t tell me. He left and never showed again.”

  Gramma hooted softly. “What kind of a story would that be, lad?”

  “A real one,” he replied, his gruff voice thick with emotion and, Pru suspected, experience.

  “Well, mine’s real enough. It all happened in a place called Ballinaboola.”

  He choked a response. “Sounds like a fairy tale.”

  Gramma closed her eyes. “In some respects, it was. In others…a nightmare.” She cleared her throat in a way that Pru recognized as the sound of Gramma Finnie about to tell a story.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ballinaboola, Ireland 1949

  Seamus was late.

  Finnie pressed against the stone wall outside of the upholstery factory to ward off the cold, her empty stomach gnawing with hunger as she eyed the slate sky. There’d be more snow tonight, for sure. Fine. She could stick her poor swollen fingers in it and freeze off some of the pain.

  She’d spent that day, like she’d spent six of them every week, turning stitches on pillows into words, each one meant to make the Irishman fortunate enough to lay his head on the cushion feel better.

  Today, she’d stitched the same phrase twenty-two times.

  There’s nothing so bad it couldn’t be worse.

  She embroidered those words until her needle blister bled and the quittin’ bell finally rang.

  Well, yes, she thought as she stomped her thin leather boots against the creeping cold. Something could be worse than Seamus being late to meet her on a Saturday night. He could not show at all.

  Of course, it was her greatest fear, but so far, it hadn’t been realized. In fact, in the nearl
y three years since Seamus had come back from England, he’d never once shown any indication that there wouldn’t be a next time. For months, it was only once a week, sometimes even fewer times than that. They’d meet when he was able to steal away from his family business and somehow get out to The Deeps, where they would walk, in rain, snow, or sun, away from everyone to their private world of Seamus and Finola.

  They’d dream about a better life, a family of their own, a time without hunger and poverty. His father passed away, and Seamus took over the glassblowing business, and slowly, his fortunes began to change for the better. But the Brennan farm fell deeper into the rut that was common for rural Irish folk.

  Then summer slipped into fall, and the harvest was slim that year. Come winter, Mammy’s brother died of influenza, and they took in his wife and three children. Although her cousin Donal was another strapping lad to work the pastures, it still meant four more mouths to feed. When Finnie turned sixteen, Da came home and announced he’d found her a job in an upholstery factory in Ballinaboola.

  She’d live in a parish house with a dozen other country girls, he told her, all working to help support their families.

  Her family had all looked at her that day, expecting tears or a plea for a different plan, but Finnie had had to work hard to keep the smile off her face. Ballinaboola was a stone’s throw from the Kilcannon glassblowing business, and that meant…Seamus. All the time, any time she wasn’t working.

  She accepted her “fate” with grace that was applauded by Mammy and appreciated by Da. Edward called her a saint, and Patrick hugged her three extra times the day she left. Only Jack, her younger brother, who’d once caught Finnie and Seamus kissing under the alder tree, suspected she was not saintly at all. She’d spent the last year paying him off with all her biscuits, and that seemed to keep him quiet enough.

  While the rest of Ireland battled a wretched winter and celebrated the fact that Ireland would soon be a republic, Finola Brennan perfected her stitching. With fingers as fast and nimble as any in the factory, she was soon moved to the specialty pillow department, where she and four other lassies were charged with memorizing Irish songs and proverbs in old books and turning them into cross-stitched pillows that sold at vendors all over the county.

  It was grueling labor, but most evenings she could meet Seamus for half an hour, sometimes more. It was enough for the young couple to fall deeply, crazily, completely in love. She’d even met his family, and they liked her.

  She’d never had the nerve to tell hers about him, though. When she was home, Da talked without end about one thing and one thing only—leaving the misery of Ireland and going to Amer—

  “Finnie! Finnie! Hurry, lass. We must go!”

  At the sound of a lad’s voice and the clatter of cart wheels, she whipped around, ready to see the handsome face of the one she loved, but she sucked in a shocked breath at the sight of her eldest brother, Patrick.

  “What are you doing here?” Panic made her voice rise. Seamus couldn’t be far away now, maybe around any corner. What would—

  “In the cart, lass.” He brought Alphonsus to a stop and reached his hand down, closing his fingers around her wrist to yank. “No time to waste.”

  “I can’t leave now. I can’t—”

  “Yer leavin’ now and yer leavin’ forever.” Strong as an ox, Patrick easily lifted her off the ground, her feet dangling for one wild second before he planted her next to him. “Da got passage, Finnie! For all of us. He’s waiting at the port, and we leave in an hour for America!”

  “America?” She choked the word. She couldn’t go to America!

  “Mam’s at the parish right now collecting your stuff. I just got your last pay.” He grinned as if she should welcome this intrusion into her life. “Off we go!” He gave a good flip of the reins to Alphonsus. “We’re giving the horse to Aunt Bridget, and she’s taking over the farm. Donal can run it well enough.”

  Finnie put both hands on her head as if that could stop its spinnin’. “We’re leaving the farm? Leaving County Wexford?” It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.

  Patrick let out a hearty laugh and easily guided the horse back onto the road, the big wooden cart wheels rocking over the mud and ruts. “We’re going to America, Finola. A whole new world and a whole new life. You should be celebrating, Sister, not looking back.”

  But she was looking back, her whole body turned to peer past another horse and a group of men to the corner that Seamus should be turning any minute.

  And there he was, right where she’d been one minute ago, staring at her with the same look she had to be wearing on her face. Shock. Horror. Disbelief. And the sickening sensation that they were losing everything.

  “Seamus.” She mouthed his name.

  He just stared, hands in his pockets, confusion on his face.

  She pressed her fingers to her mouth to keep from screaming out. Would Patrick help her? Would he let her stay?

  Not a chance. He was firmly in Da’s lane on every decision the family made. The eldest Brennan would never go against their father, the very man he was named after.

  “Seamus,” she whispered. His figure became smaller as distance, noise, horses, and people separated them. She lowered her hands and tried to get the message to him. “America,” she said, knowing he couldn’t possibly hear her. “America.”

  Had he heard? Would he know where to go?

  “America!” She screamed it at the top of her lungs, making Patrick throw an arm around her in a rare display of affection and good humor.

  “’Tis right, Finnie. We are going to a place called Ellis Island, and everything will change. Everything.”

  As she lost sight of Seamus, Finnie finally turned in her seat. “Everything.” Her whisper caught on the sob in her throat. How would he ever find her? How could she live without him?

  “There’s Mammy and Edward.” Patrick pointed across the slushy street where her mother stood next to her brother, each holding a bundle of clothes and her bedding. “Go help,” he said, giving her a nudge out of the cart. “And move quick, Finnie! That ship won’t wait for us!”

  Maybe they could miss it. Maybe she could delay this nightmare. Fall and twist her ankle or faint dead away—either was likely, considering how dizzy she was as she narrowly missed a wagon full of chickens.

  “Did ya hear, lass?” her mother called, lifting her pile of wool like it was absolute proof of the news. “’Tis happening! ’Tis truly happening.”

  Finnie slowed her step and pressed a hand to her heart. When was the last time she’d seen her mother’s smile? When was the last time Mary Margaret Brennan let out a trill of a laugh that sounded just like…just like Vi’s?

  That was the last time. The night before Vi broke every heart in their family and went to war. Six months later, a letter came…and Mammy hadn’t smiled, laughed, or even walked with a straight back since.

  Vi’s death had crushed her, and America gave her hope. A future. A plan for security, if not prosperity.

  She reached her mother, who actually tried to hug her with her armload of stuff. “I don’t need help, lass. Get the sheets and blankets from Edward, and we’ll wrap it all up in the cart. We must hurry. The ship leaves in an hour.”

  Finnie blinked at her. “Do I have to go?”

  Mammy’s smile disappeared instantly. “Did I hear you right, Finola?”

  There it was again. All the hurt, all the grief, all the loss that Vi caused darkened her mother’s aging features. Could Finnie do the same thing to this poor woman? What kind of daughter would that make her?

  “I mean…do I go without checking my bed and drawer?” she said quickly. “Did you get everything?”

  “Aye, all that matters.” She dipped her head. “Including that pin. I know what it means to ya.”

  Her heart tripped. Mammy didn’t really know what it meant. She thought it was a memory of Vi, and Da had removed nearly every reminder of the eldest Brennan from the farm, so as to protect his heart
. But Mammy let Finnie keep the broken pin, maybe not even knowing it had been returned by Seamus.

  Her father had never mentioned the visit from the lad who had brought something for Finnie.

  “What are you standin’ there for?” Patrick called as he rounded the group with Alphonsus kicking up filthy, melting snow. “Climb in and let’s go, Brennans! We’re off to America!”

  Mammy’s joy returned, and Edward started singing, and Patrick helped them all in with ease and efficiency. In a matter of minutes, Ballinaboola was far behind them.

  Along with Seamus, the man Finnie loved and meant to marry.

  With a shaky breath, she looked up at her mother. “Mammy,” she whispered.

  “Not now, Finnie.” Her mother leaned closer to Patrick. “Watch that turn ahead, lad. The road’s washed out up here. The last thing we need is a delay.”

  Patrick just laughed, his confidence at an all-time high. “Donchya be worryin’, Mam. I’ll get us there. I’ll get us to America.”

  “Please, Mammy. I need—”

  “Here you go.” Her mother reached into her pocket and pulled out a familiar lace kerchief, wrapped tight around her most treasured belonging. “I wouldn’t lie to you, lass. You hold it for luck now. We’re going to need it.”

  Luck that somehow, someday, somewhere, Seamus Kilcannon would find her yet again.

  Edward kept singing like a loon, and Mammy inched closer to Patrick as if that could help him get them there faster, while Finnie just sank deeper into the seat and strangling ache for her loss. All she could do was run her finger over the horseshoe at the center of the pin.

  They never even said goodbye.

  She closed her eyes and tried to imagine how impossible that would have been anyway. When she finally opened them, they were right at Wexford Port, the very place where she’d first met Seamus Kilcannon.

  She turned to see the docks, which hadn’t changed, and realized that Patrick was going to leave the cart and horse at the same stone wall where she had parked it the day she’d brought Vi here. How was that for the fates laughing at her? What were the chances?