Gliding from Oileán Beag to the main island, the slender shape radiated light and gave the impression of a figure cloaked in mist, or a woman in a long gray dress. Whoever it was, if it was anyone at all, was only visible a moment, but the glow remained, weaker and more dispersed than a flashlight, growing smaller and dimmer until it was entirely lost within the fog.

  Intent on spotting it again if she could, Meg ignored her cold feet and stepped over the low stone wall at the edge of the patio to run through the damp grass that descended to the cliff. Even in that short time, the fog had thickened, overflowing the island to collect just above the surface of the ocean as if the water was fighting to push it back.

  Meg stood motionless, watching, her heart drumming like the beat of Brian Sheehan’s bodhrán that still echoed in her mind. Finally, realizing that her teeth were chattering, she huddled deeper into her blanket and crept back to her mother’s room. She eased the door shut, the way she had as a teenager the few times she’d dared to challenge Ailsa’s iron rules. But if her mother heard her, she said nothing, and there was no movement from the bed.

  For a long time after she had settled herself on the chaise beneath the window, Meg lay shivering, thinking. Eventually, though, she slept.

  

  Niall woke, disoriented in the unfamiliar bed, to the sound of Adam breathing and the mobile phone vibrating on the nightstand. It was scarcely five o’clock, and Niall’s heart thudded as he groped to answer. No good news ever came this early in the morning.

  “I’ve been thinking over what you said,” Graeme O’Neill told him without preamble.

  “You must have been if you’re phoning at this hour.”

  “It usually takes seven calls to connect, so,” Graeme snapped, and then he sighed. “Go ahead and speak to Kieran if you feel you must, but make sure you have those reports in your hand before you do.”

  Niall sat up, thoroughly awake now. “I’d planned on that, but I’d prefer to have a face-saving alternative to offer him. Carrot and stick. It’s the only way we’re likely to avoid a nasty fight.”

  “I couldn’t think of anything, but if I know you, you wouldn’t have suggested it unless you already had something in mind.”

  “I do, but hold on a moment.” Glancing over at Adam beside him in the bed, Niall padded to the sliding door, let himself out onto the patio, and stood shivering in the wind. “It occurred to me that you might be willing to teach a course on the modern reinterpretation of the Pacata Hibernia . If, that is, you had someone like Kieran who could prepare the material for you.”

  “Are you mad? If his father is made taoiseach —and now that he’s head of the party nothing short of a miracle will stop it—the last thing he’d want is some reporter dredging up the atrocities and decisions from the Pacification of Ireland . If you think Kieran’s delaying the excavation of the massacre to save his father embarrassment, imagine what he’d do to explain all that away. The Pacata is only starting to be reexamined, and I won’t put my name to biased research.”

  “You wouldn’t need to.” Niall tipped back his head and looked out toward Dursey Island. “You could present the Irish perspective against the English, and if that doesn’t work, you could delay publication—indefinitely. One way or the other, you’d also need to find a course or two he could teach.”

  “ Can he teach?”

  “He can be charming when he likes. He’s good, Graeme. On paper, he’s excellent or I’d never have hired him. I think he could benefit from your guidance.”

  “Bollocks.” Graeme paused, then something scraped on the other end of the line, and he swallowed audibly as though he’d taken a large sip of coffee. “And where am I meant to find the budget?”

  “I have it on good authority his father wrote the university a rather large check recently. Maybe you could get some of that.”

  The fog that had come in thick the night before had dissipated, leaving behind wisps of mist that clung to edges around the cliffs, pale pink and gold in the imminent sunrise like the interior shells of muscles from Bantry Bay. A strong wind set the tide racing in the sound, sending plumes of white froth high against the cliffs, and further out, something dark bobbed in the water, some bit of jetsam from one of the several passing fishing vessels that were churning their way out into deeper water.

  “All right,” said Graeme eventually. “But you’ll need to get him to agree, and don’t be surprised if you find yourself with less funding before all this is over. Or out of a job altogether.”

  He disconnected and Niall leaned back against the sliding glass door, waiting for the hushed moment when the sun would break the horizon, the moment when the world paused to take a breath and the secrets carried on the wind echoed back from far away. A gull cried, soaring in the distance, and as the morning lightened and the sky and sea caught fire, Niall would have loved to knock on Meg’s window and pull her out, to have that moment of peace and possibility of daybreak with her beside him. He would have liked to kiss her again and see if a second kiss between them could be as good, or whether it had been some alchemy of relief and happiness and music that had made it feel different from other kisses.

  But even at breakfast, between Adam and her mother’s disapproving presence, being alone for so much as a minute or two wasn’t possible. Then there was a spate of finds throughout the morning that kept him scrambling, finds ranging from the carcass of a seventeenth-century sheep to a hammer from a broken musket.

  In between, he spoke to Gemma, Liam, and James and got them each to write out a statement—though not an official complaint, not yet—and with those in hand, he waited for Kieran to show his face. Kieran was sulking, though, and by lunch when he still hadn’t appeared, Niall decided not to bother trying to phone him. Mobile reception being what it was, he left Adam with Gemma cleaning sheep bones, and he walked to the cottage that Kieran was sharing with James, Liam, and Gemma on the far end of the village. Getting no answer when he’d knocked several times, he wandered around to the back, but Kieran wasn’t on the patio, either, so he opened the kitchen door and poked his head inside.

  “Kieran? You here?”

  He edged inside and stood listening, but the cottage had the empty feeling that houses took on when there was nothing living within. Niall walked through, calling out again as he reached the bottom of the stairs, then climbed to the loft that Kieran and James shared.

  He had no trouble discerning which side was which. James’ half was compulsively neat—the bed made without a wrinkle, the nightstand next to it devoid of anything but a lamp and a copy of Donal Ryan’s All We Shall Know marked by an actual bookmark instead of the scraps of paper or ticket stubs Niall tended toward himself. The other part of the room looked as though a suitcase had exploded, or rather two suitcases, because both were propped, half-empty, open on the floor, their contents stirred around and spilling over onto the unmade bed, the back of the desk chair, and in piles along the floor. In the bathroom, a used towel hung over the sink beside a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste with the cap left unscrewed. The bathmat, still damp, lay crumpled in the corner.

  Irritated, Niall descended the stairs and exited, and as he was walking back to the dig site, Brian Sheehan emerged from a shed near the road. “You all right there, Niall?” Brian asked. “You look like you’ve the cares of the world pressing on you.”

  “You didn’t happen to see Kieran around anywhere, did you?” Niall asked.

  “Is he the surly one?”

  Niall allowed himself a grin. “Most of the time.”

  “Not today. But then I was late coming in this morning.”

  Niall’s grin widened. “I saw you were busy last night. Good job, too.”

  “I hope you’re meaning the drum.”

  “What else?”

  They smiled at each other, and if Niall was thinking he couldn’t begin to see what there was in Ailsa Cameron to interest Brian, he didn’t say so. Odd taste in women aside, he liked Brian, and he wondered if he’d have had the courage himself to leave teaching primary school after a lifetime in Galway to start farming on Dursey at the age of sixty-two.

  Heading back to the dig, he found his irritation with Kieran had only grown, and since Gemma was still working with the sheep bones in the lab, he asked Liam and James to the tent as well. “Did Kieran say anything about going to the university today?” he queried. “Or when he’s expected back?”

  “Didn’t know he’d gone anywhere,” Gemma said, looking up from where she was working dirt away from the bones with a chopstick that she’d whittled down into a point. “I assumed he was sulking at the house all day.”

  “Good riddance, too,” James said, then his features, always sharp as a fox’s, sharpened even further. “Will you be speaking to him about the reports?”

  He’d looked pale since writing out his statement, and Niall imagined it had to be hard for a grown man to admit—in writing, no less—to being bullied and almost knocked over. But James had always been a prodigy, young going to university and graduate school, inevitably a bit too smart for his own good. He’d probably been a target his entire life. The thought made Niall furious with Kieran all over again, and he wondered if he was being soft talking Graeme into giving him another chance, kicking the can farther down the road, or whether he was only being pragmatic and doing the logical thing.

  “We’ll have to see what happens,” he said in response to James’ question. “In the meantime, send him my way when you do see him. I’d like to get all this settled today so I can try to find someone else in case Kieran decides he’d rather not stay on.”

  Liam, who’d been staring at the yellowed grass inside the tent, looked up. “I was thinking about that. Aileen Donovan might be free. Remember her from two years ago? She’s still working on her doctorate at Trinity, but she had a broken leg that won’t be coming out of the cast until next week. She didn’t have any work lined up for the summer because of it, and she’s like a dog with a bone tracking down research, if you’re wanting someone to follow up on things like the pendant, household accounts, and so on. And she’s good with volunteers.”

  “Brilliant,” Niall said, his mood lifting. “We can try to get in touch once Kieran and I have had a chance to speak.”

  The day wore on, however, and Kieran never came back to the dig. Niall sought out the rare spots of mobile coverage now and then to leave more messages, but if Kieran had, in turn, left voicemail for him, it didn’t come through. Toward the end of the day, Niall checked the rental cottage again, but it was still quiet and empty.

  He decided, by the time Meg and her mother were preparing to head back to the bed-and-breakfast, to go across with them. Apart from the fact that he’d barely had a chance to see Meg the entire day, he didn’t like the idea of having to offer Kieran an ultimatum based on the reports by his coworkers and then send him straight to the house with the others with no chance to cool off in between. Altogether, it would be far safer for everyone concerned if he caught Kieran on the mainland and offered to gather up Kieran’s things himself or at least made sure he was with Kieran when he went back to the cottage.

  Admissions

  “Memories are killing.

  So you must not think of certain things . . . ”

  Samuel Beckett

  Stories and Texts for Nothing

  

  The wind snarled, lashing at the cable car as it swayed above Dursey Sound. It was worse than any crossing they’d made before, and Meg’s mother was pale as she stared down at the hands clasped in her lap. Pressed tightly together, those hands seemed vulnerable and weak to Meg, in a way that her mother had never seemed. They were soft hands, crossed with blue veins across the backs, the careful manicure of her French-polished nails preserved by the gloves she wore when she worked in the trench. It struck Meg in that moment that preservation of appearances was her mother’s lodestar, and the tragedy of her life. Instead of striving for happiness, Ailsa had settled for the appearance of it. And she’d wanted nothing more than to have her daughters validate her choices. Maybe all parents wanted that.

  Meg leaned forward and clasped Ailsa’s fingers. “We’re almost there.”

  “Don’t start worrying about me,” her mother said, flinching away.

  With a small, hollow ache, Meg pulled back. She glanced at Niall, but he was squinting out the window at the sky. Where, earlier, the wind had scoured even the smallest clouds away, now it was ushering in a dark, roiling bank of thunderheads that advanced from the horizon like an army gathering.

  “It’ll be a hard storm, this,” he said.

  Meg told herself it was absurd to feel happy about that. “So no boats crossing over later, I guess? Does that mean you’ll want to stay here again tonight?”

  His gaze drifted toward Ailsa, who had gone even stiffer in her seat. “Probably better to eat our fish and chips and head back on the last cable car. I’d hate to put you out two nights in a row.”

  “I wouldn’t mind. If you want to,” Adam said from beside him.

  Ailsa gave a soft huff, barely audible above the wind, and pursed her lips.

  “Maybe not tonight, Adam,” Niall responded. “You were up half the night getting your fix of mindless television, and Meg might not be thrilled if we turf her out of her room again.”

  Another glance at her mother decided Meg against repeating the invitation, and as soon as the cable car had disgorged them, along with the three German tourists who’d shared it with them on the way over, Ailsa pulled her aside.

  Slinging the lavender daypack across her narrow shoulders, Ailsa braced herself against the wind and clutched her windbreaker around herself. “What’s this about fish and chips?” she asked Meg, her voice petulant. “I thought you were coming back with me for dinner.”

  “Why don’t you come with us? Eamon’s fish is worth trying, and Niall wants to talk to Kieran as soon as he gets here. I’d like to keep him company.”

  “Fergal told me this morning they were making a special spiced beef and more of that soda bread you loved. And rhubarb tart for dessert. You love rhubarb.”

  Meg hated rhubarb—it was Katharine who loved it—but her mouth did water at the memory of the warm brown soda bread that had tasted of buttermilk, slathered with fresh, salted butter as thick as cheese. She glanced over at Niall, who was frowning down at his phone. His dark hair was wild in the wind and a score of lines etched out his irritation between his brows. And then Adam, who’d walked on ahead of them all, stopped abruptly.

  “I thought Kieran had gone to the university or somewhere, Uncle Niall.”

  “I assumed he did.”

  “He can’t have if his car’s still here.”

  Niall peered across the parking lot to where a screaming red Porsche 911 stood beside his own white Peugeot that had been washed clean by the recent rains. Frowning, he said to Meg, “Will you wait here a minute?”

  “Of course,” Meg said.

  He strode toward the Porsche, tucking his phone into his pocket, with Adam jogging along beside him.

  “You do realize you’re being stupid?” Ailsa asked as Meg watch them go. “But it’s not only your heart I’m worried about. That boy’s not stable—the way he’s always staring at people. The way he’s angry one minute and normal the next. He’s hurt you once already.”

  “He’s a child.”

  “He’s a teenage boy. You don’t know what they’re like or what they’re capable of doing. They can hurt you in ways you can’t imagine.”

  Something in her voice, a small tremble, made Meg’s attention sharpen, and the rest of the world fell away. “Did someone hurt you?”

  Ailsa’s shoulders stiffened. “Why would you ask me that?”

  But Meg knew her, and even before her mother’s hand rose to pull at the thick silver necklace she wore as if it was strangling her, she recognized the tension. “I’m right, aren’t I?” Meg asked. “Is that why you needed to get away from Balwhither?”

  Ailsa shook her head. “Of course not. Don’t be so melodramatic. I meant in general.”

  Meg studied her mother’s face, the eyes that had darkened with worry and the lines around them that had deepened. It was fear, she realized, that expression her mother wore, but she couldn’t tell if it was the memory of fear—or fear that Meg would ask more questions.

  There were two types of people in the world, Meg had decided long since: those for whom a secret lost its power over time and those for whom secrets only loomed larger and more dangerous with every passing day. She’d thought her mother’s vault of deceit had finally been emptied with the revelation of the pregnancy, with the slip of Ailsa’s tongue made in the heat of an argument in which she’d admitted getting pregnant on purpose during that excavation in the Hebrides. Now Meg realized there was more.

  “Did John MacLaren hurt you?” she asked Ailsa quietly. “Is that why you wanted to get away from him?”

  Ailsa clutched the windbreaker tighter around herself as the wind battered them both. “Stop it, Margaret. You’re my daughter. Just because you think of a question doesn’t give you the right to ask it. You’re not entitled to know everything.”

  “Don’t you think knowing that would make a difference?”

  “Well, it shouldn’t. What do you care about my reasons? What right do you have to judge? All I did was build a better life for myself. For you and Katharine and Anna. For your father. And maybe it wasn’t the love of a lifetime between us—but not everyone has that.”

  That was hopeless and sad, and Meg felt for her mother, but it was also an excuse. Yet another excuse. “Aunt Elspeth could have, though,” she said. “She and Daddy could have had it.”

  “You don’t know that! They don’t know that!” Ailsa’s face grew molten beneath the smooth skin, her eyes threatening to boil over. “We all want what we can’t have. That’s all it was. Do you honestly believe I never noticed how they avoided looking at each other all these years? How different he was whenever she came to visit? You don’t think that hurt me, too? You all assume it was easy for me, growing up in Breagh House, looking the way I did. You think my whole life was cake and roses, but there are people who’ll punish you for being beautiful. For having the wrong address and the wrong blood running through your veins. I had to get away.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26