Chapter Thirty-Seven #2
“We were trying to survive! All of it weighed on me! I was afraid to go back to Germany. And I couldn’t stay here either.
I felt so guilty. Fiadh’s drowning. I could feel her on my hands!
” Faye gasps then, Molly’s words coming out of her own mouth, the burden of a death that they both carried.
“We were only children. Too young for war.”
“But didn’t you wonder what leaving would do to me?”
“I knew you would never stop fighting. Yes, that I knew.” Faye closes her eyes.
“I’m sure I thought I was doing what was right, giving everyone some glimmer of hope in a hopeless, desperate situation.
And I was drawn to Jean and her sadness, if you want to know the truth.
Even before Fiadh died. Something in me needed to feel all her pain.
” Faye flashes on Molly, that leather jacket, and the day Thomas died.
How like her Molly turned out to be. If only Faye had seen it sooner.
“And I saw Thomas . . .” Faye’s voice cracks then.
“The way he held Fiadh that day, the gentleness in him, like our own father. I missed him so much. Vati was never cut out for such a brutal war.”
“I was heartbroken without you,” Sela says. “And this breaks my heart again. I did everything I could think of to keep us safe. Did you mean to betray me?”
“No! No! I know what you were trying to do. But that wasn’t your job.
I tried to make you understand. About Mutti.
About our cousin and how he was hurting me.
I was impulsive and selfish. But you were na?ve.
” Faye takes the worn photograph out of her pocket.
She’s told Sela the story already, how all their secrets came to light.
“Look at this again. We look so much alike. We still do. But we’re not the same.
You can see it in our expressions. Even then we looked at the world through different lenses.
We had different survivor instincts. You wanted to fight.
I wanted wings.” She thinks of that war book again, the one with the children.
“It was war that made these girls who they were, who we’ve become.
I’m so sorry. Please, Elisabeth. Sela. Please forgive me. ”
Sela steps back from the edge and onto the path they’d walked. Her chest rises and falls, her breaths purposeful and deep. “Ask me again if my childhood was fun,” she says.
Faye takes two steps toward her. “Was your childhood fun?” she whispers.
Sela’s chin quivers as she struggles to speak.
“I do not want to talk about this! I don’t.
I never did. This is not me. But the truth is that without you, I was not constantly reminded of Germany.
Without you, I could stop pretending Mutti was alive.
I know what you saw. I saw it, too, sister.
I saw Mutti run toward us. I saw the truck hit her. ”
“But you said—”
“You were constantly telling me she was dead. I was trying to keep her alive for both of us, don’t you understand?
And, by the way, I knew what Herbert was doing to you.
It was me who told Uncle to send us to the orphanage.
I thought we would be safer there. I thought it was my job to be hopeful for you.
That was stupid of me. But you made everything so hard!
I’ve always looked for the bright side.”
“And I’ve always lived in fear.”
“Yes, and so because we were separated, I did have a good childhood. And I am a happy woman now, despite the sadness in my life. As I play things out in my head, I never would have forgiven the Beattys if they’d taken me, like I never forgave them for taking you.
But it’s what happened, isn’t it? Us girls were not meant to stay together after all.
Was it a boating accident or was it war that came between us?
I don’t know. I let you go a long time ago. ”
“If only Conor had told me the truth.” Faye shakes her head, the disgust surfacing with a sudden image of Conor O’Kane splayed out on the floor.
“If he’d told you the truth, who knows if you would have had your life with William, if you’d have your girls and grandchildren.
And from your telling it, your relationship with Thomas Beatty, your father, was quite lovely.
How lucky for you, Faye! No, this is the way it went. There was no other way.”
“Can you ever forgive me?” Faye asks.
Even in her floppy boots, Sela scrambles lithely onto the stone wall, tosses her hat onto the ground. “Forgive yourself,” Sela replies. “Sister. Forgive yourself.” Arms out for balance, she places her feet like a tightrope walker and takes off in a prance.
Faye watches as her sister transforms into the child she was—barefoot, hair thick and brown, flax skirt flapping in the westerly wind. Faye hops on the wall, too, splays her arms, sets herself free. “Wait for me, Bit! Wait for me!”
The pub is full of locals who all know Jem and Sela, regulars for darts and games, good for a pint or two.
Francis sits on his stool, tells familiar fishing tales.
Sela and Faye arrive late, and Maeve waves them over, relief on her face.
A band of brothers—one on accordion, two on guitar—performs songs everyone in the bar knows. The mood is playful and light.
When introductions were in order, before Sela and Faye even made it off the beach with their pockets full of shells, Jem had hesitated.
How to retrace steps, untangle stories, dig up the dead and switch the bodies around?
Wasn’t his wife his wife? Sela would not want to start being someone else now.
And Faye left behind that other name long ago, a name for an Irish girl who threw herself into Dunmanus Bay to save a drowning orphan.
Who is anyone if not themselves?
“This is Maeve and Molly and Nola Wren. Long-lost family from America!”
Hats and glasses tipped, hands rested on shoulders, brown beer flowed. By the time Faye walked in with Sela, friends were waiting for her.
“You must be Faye Sullivan!”
“You must be Faye Sullivan!”
“You must be Faye Sullivan!”
And she was. Of course, she was. She was Faye Sullivan and no one else.
Now, Nola Wren, belly full of fish and chips, dances with another child in front of the band in that wild way children do, no rhythm, all joy.
“She’s been like this all day,” Molly yells to Faye over the music. “She’s so happy.”
Faye holds Molly’s face in her hands. Her little girl. William’s pixie. Thomas’s faithful one. She says each word plainly, speaks them with her eyes and touch as well. “I’m sorry for all the ways I hurt you.” It’s a start.
Molly tilts her head into her mother’s hand, rests there. “It’s all right, Mom. It is.”
Back at the house, in a bed that is too small, on an ancient and sagging mattress, after deep conversation with Jem, Sela rests her hand on his heart until he falls asleep. She slips out of bed and walks down the hall.
In the guest bedroom under a heavy crocheted quilt, its needlework exquisite, Faye dreams of green pastures and William. She stirs as the cover lifts and a warm body curls into hers. A voice in her ear. Du bist aber mutig. Ich verzeihe dir. It is her sister. You are very brave. I forgive you.
Faye exhales. Her war is over.
Down the moonlit path, the vixen carries a limp rabbit to her kits. Beyond, in the guest cottage, up the stairs in the sleeping loft, Maeve snores on her right side, and Molly curls on her left. Between them, Nola Wren is wide awake, staring out the skylight at the moon like it’s talking to her.
In the morning, Molly wakes before the alarm goes off. The spot between her and her sister is empty. She climbs out of bed, checks the cot where Nola Wren is supposed to sleep but never did. She is not there.
Molly rushes down the stairs into the empty sitting room.
She runs out the door barefoot, heart racing.
She thinks about her grandfather’s stories of leprechauns and faeries stealing children away to the land of heart’s desire where nobody gets old and grave and bitter of tongue or something like that.
But his voice tells her all is well. The door is unlocked, the house quiet, though it smells of bread in the oven, which is heavenly.
On a fringed rug near the simmering wood stove, the gray cat purrs on a pillow, and a little girl sleeps next to him, her eyelids fluttering as if she’s whisked the cat away on a magic carpet.
Molly’s heart stops pounding. Outside the sliding doors, she spots Jem watering flowerpots, the sweeping spout of his brass can catching the first sunbeam.
She slides the door open, closes it gently.
“Good morning,” she says.
An hour later, Maeve comes into the cottage fully dressed, sad to leave but eager to start the journey home.
She misses Dylan and Opal. She misses Wendy.
She misses Sam. She misses the cove house and the farmhouse and beers in her rocker on the porch with Wendy when the sun goes down.
She doesn’t miss the mosquitoes or the black flies or the way winter socks them in, but she also knows that no place is perfect.
Sela and Faye assemble trays for their final breakfast together, their movements paired and fluid, an ease about them both.
Molly and Jem sit on a bench outside the sliding glass door, watching Nola Wren circle the apple tree, laughing as if faeries dance with her.
Sela says that the little girl has already helped feed the gray cat and that she and Jem checked on the barn swallows tucked in the rafters of the tool shed.
Jem gestures off in the distance. Molly follows his glance and nods.
Maeve checks her watch, assures Faye that they’re on time as long as they leave right after breakfast. It’s a long drive back to Dublin, and Maeve doesn’t want to get stuck in traffic or darkness.
Molly is the one most likely to make them late, and Maeve doesn’t want to be late. She slides the glass door open.
“Pix,” she says, immediately regretting it. “Sorry. Molly. Ready to go after breakfast?”
The coffee in Molly’s cup has gone cold, but that doesn’t matter.
She goes to Maeve, who has stepped out onto the patio, and squeezes her around the belly like she did when they were kids.
Molly has been thinking about peace and reconciliation, about resilience and destruction, about the women who stuck prayers on Post-It Note Jesus, about confessionals and tribunals, and about whether a sin needs to be aired to be forgiven.
She’s been thinking about her mom and dad, about silence and the Silent Generation, and about her grandfather and Yeats and the Morrigan and shapeshifting and fate and Fates.
“You’re a really good mom, Maeve. And a really good sister. I’m sorry I’ve been so ugly. I hope you’ll forgive me. I can’t imagine where I would be without you.”
“You hug like Dad,” Maeve says, and it sounds like forgiveness.
“Thanks, Maeve.” Molly lets her sister go. “Can you get Mom and Sela?”
Maeve retreats into the cottage, returns with Sela and Faye, the gray cat sashaying wistfully behind them. Jackdaws quarrel with two magpies beyond the stone wall. The gray cat perks her ears then curls at Jem’s feet.
“So?” Maeve asks. “What’s up?”
“Bear with me,” Molly says. She tells them again about her hands, how she has felt a dead man’s body against them since she was a child.
She tells them about fear and shame and that she doesn’t want to live with either anymore.
“I feel like I’ve been trying to one-up everyone on trauma, like mine’s bigger, deeper, worse in every way.
” She rubs her hands down her arms, tugging at her own skin.
“I apply my anger in coats—literally, sometimes,” she says with a self-deprecating laugh.
“I’ve lathered it on so thick I haven’t been able to feel anything else.
Over the last couple of months, coming home, losing Dad, being here now—” Molly stops, takes in the expressions on the faces around her, the sweep of the valley as the mist clears, the waning moon in the light of day.
“Yeah. That’s it. Being. Here. Now. I swear I’m not trying to hurt any of you.
Really, I’m following Nola Wren’s lead. I want to do what’s best for her. ”
As if on cue, Nola Wren runs to Molly, turns to face the others. Molly places her hands on her daughter’s tiny shoulders. She knows she’s the passenger now, and the magic carpet has brought her and Nola Wren to this green place.
“I called Leo last night, and I talked to Sela and Jem too. What I’m trying to say is I’m staying here.
We’re staying here, me and Nola Wren. Not forever.
But for now. Kind of our own Operation Shamrock.
The two of us need to recover in a place away from where all the bombs were dropped.
And, Mom, I think Dad and Grandpa would be really happy about this.
I know it’s a big deal, but I’m asking you to trust me.
I just want us all to be ourselves again. ”
The jackdaws flush and take to the sky.