“Maeve O’Toole is a veritable fountain of information. She knows more than all the rest of us put together. I’m not surprised she knew something about your kin.”
I turned to leave and stopped, realizing I’d heard the name before.
“Maeve’s last name is O’Toole?”
“It was her maiden name. It’s been McCabe and Colbert and O’Brien. She’s outlived three husbands. It got a bit confusing, so most of us just stick with what came first. Why?”
“No reason.” I shrugged. If Maeve’s family had once lived at Garvagh Glebe, she hadn’t mentioned it, and I hadn’t read far enough into the journal to know what became of the O’Tooles Thomas had tried to help.
The lane to Garvagh Glebe was gated, and the gate was closed and padlocked. I could see the house through the trees. The photograph come to life, drenched in color but just as unattainable. I pushed a buzzer to the left of the gate and waited impatiently for a response. None came. I climbed back in the car, but instead of going back the way I’d come, I took the fork, following the lane that ran along the lake, hoping to see the house from another angle. Instead, the narrow road ended in a gravel parking lot overlooking a long dock where a handful of canoes and small boats were tied off. The cottage Deirdre had mentioned, which was gleaming white under blue shutters and matching blue trim, was nearest the dock, and I walked toward it, hoping someone was home. A little sign hung from a nail next to the door and declared the establishment open, and I went inside.
The tiny foyer had been converted to a reception area with a narrow wooden counter and a few folding chairs. A little bell had been placed on the counter, and I tapped it reluctantly. One of the nuns in Catholic school had had one just like it on her desk that she pinged constantly and ferociously. The sound had put my teeth on edge ever since. I didn’t ring it again, though several minutes passed without a response.
“Mr. Donnelly?” I called. “Hello?”
The door opened behind me, and I turned expectantly. A man with watery eyes and a red nose ambled in with tall waders on his feet, a baker boy cap on his head, and suspenders keeping his pants from falling down. I startled him, and he jerked, wiping at his mouth.
“I’m sorry, miss. I didn’t know you were waitin’ on me. I saw your car, but I assumed it was someone takin’ a stroll or throwin’ a line.”
I stuck out my hand, and he took it awkwardly. “I’m Anne Gallagher. I was wondering if I could rent a boat for an hour.”
“Anne Gallagher?” he asked, his brow furrowed, his voice disbelieving.
“Yes?” I said, drawing out the word. “Is there something wrong?”
He shrugged and shook his head. “Nah. It’s nothin’,” he grunted. “I can take you out if you want. There’re clouds rollin’ in, and I don’t like people goin’ out alone.”
I didn’t want to tell him I was throwing ashes into his lake, and I really didn’t want him with me when I said goodbye to Eoin. “I won’t go far. You’ll be able to see me the whole time. I’ll take a paddleboat or one of those small rowboats I saw on the dock. I’ll be fine.”
He stewed, eyeing me and peering out the window to the overcast afternoon and the boats bobbing, empty, at his dock.
“I just need a half hour, Mr. Donnelly. I’ll pay double,” I pressed. Now that I was here, I wanted to be done with the task before me.
“All right. Sign here, then. But stay close and watch the clouds.”
I signed his waiver, plunked forty pounds down on the counter, and followed him to the dock.
The boat he chose for me was sturdy enough, though it had clearly seen better days—or a better decade. Two oars and a life jacket completed the package, and I put one on to allay Mr. Donnelly’s concerns. One of the straps was broken, but I pretended it was perfectly fine. Mr. Donnelly had offered to put my things in a small locker in the foyer, but I declined. The bag held Eoin’s urn, and I wasn’t about to pull it out in front of him.
“Your bag will get wet. And you aren’t dressed for the lake,” he complained, eyeing my clothes and my slim flats. I’d worn a heavy cable-knit sweater, a plain white blouse, and cream slacks. This was the only burial Eoin would receive, and sneakers and jeans were too informal for the occasion.
My thoughts tiptoed back to Ballinagar Cemetery once more, to the stones in the grass I’d visited the day before. I wanted that for Eoin. A monument that he had lived. Something permanent. Something with his name and the span of his life. But that was not what he’d asked for, and leaving a grave in Ballinagar, a grave no one would visit or care about once I returned to the States, seemed wrong too.
I’d made a promise, and with a sigh, I grasped Jim Donnelly’s hand, stepped into the swaying skiff, and took up the oars in determination. Mr. Donnelly looked down at me doubtfully before untying the boat and giving it a good shove with his foot.
I dipped the oar into the water to my left and then to my right, experimenting a little, trying to find a rhythm. The boat cooperated, and I began to inch away from the dock. I would just row a little way out. The skies had grown gray, but the water was placid and peaceful. Mr. Donnelly watched me for a while, making sure I had the hang of it before making his way back up the dock toward the beach and his cheery house with the blue roof and the gorse blooming along the walk.
I was pleased with myself, moving smoothly through the water. The stretch and pull of rowing was new to me, but the lake was as calm as bathwater, lapping softly against the boat, and I found I enjoyed the motion. Sitting for hours at my writing desk was not conducive to good health, and I’d found if I forced myself to exercise, it aided me in my writing. I ran and forced myself to do push-ups to keep my arms from wasting away and my back from growing a hump. The sweat, the motion, and the music that blared in my ears all contributed to getting me out of my head for a blessed hour. It shook off the brain fog and got the synapses firing, and I’d made it part of my daily schedule in the last ten years. I knew I was fit enough to row out a way and have some privacy to talk to Eoin before I gave him to the wind.
My oars slid in and out, pulling and displacing the water with hardly a murmur. I wouldn’t go far. I could see the dock behind me, and beyond that, the manor tucked back against the roll of the hills, its pale roofline stark against the green. I continued rowing, the bag with the urn at my feet, my gaze drifting away from the shore and up into the sky. It was strange, the gray sky melding with the water. All was quiet, almost otherworldly, and I was lulled by the stillness. I ceased rowing for a time and drifted, the shoreline to my right, the sky all around me.
I picked up the urn and cradled it for a heartbeat, then uncorked it, readying myself for the ceremony only I would attend.
“I brought you back, Eoin. We’re here. In Ireland. Dromahair. I’m in the middle of Lough Gill. It’s lovely, just like you described, but I’ll hold you responsible if I get pulled out to sea.” I tried to laugh. We had laughed so much, Eoin and I. What was I going to do without him?
“I’m not ready to let you go, Eoin,” I choked, but I knew I had no choice in the matter. The time had come to say my last goodbyes. I said the words he’d said to me a hundred times growing up, words from a poem by Yeats, words that I would have put on his headstone, had he allowed me to bury him as I wished.
“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the disheveled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”
I clutched the urn to my chest a moment more. Then with a silent prayer to the wind and water to forever keep Eoin’s story on the breeze, I upended it, flinging my arm in a wide arc, gasping as the white ashes melded completely with the wispy tendrils of mist that had begun to settle around me. It was as though the ash became a wall of white fog, billowing and collecting, and suddenly I could not see beyond the end of my boat. There was no shoreline, no sky—even the water was gone.
I put the urn in my bag and sat that way for a while, hidden in the fog and unable to continue. The boat rocked me as Eoin had once done, and I was a child again, cradled in his lap, consumed by grief and loss.
Someone was whistling. I started, the tune instantly recognizable. “Remember Him Still.” Eoin’s favorite. I was out in the middle of the lake, and someone was whistling. The whistling shivered through the mist, a cheerful flute in the eerie white, disembodied and disparate, and I couldn’t tell from which direction it originated. Then the sound waned, as if the whistler moved away, teasing me with his game of hide-and-seek.
“Hello,” I called, lifting my voice into the mist just to make sure I still could. The word didn’t echo but sat flatly in the air, cushioned by moisture and curtailed by my own reluctance to break the stillness. I grasped the oars but didn’t begin rowing, suddenly uncertain of my direction. I didn’t want to come out on the other side of the lake. Best to let the fog lift before attempting to row back to shore.
“Is someone there?” I called. “I think I might be in trouble.”
The bow of a barge slid into view, and I was suddenly staring up at three men, who in turn stared down at me, clearly as shocked by my presence as I was by theirs. They wore the peaked caps of a bygone era, the brims pulled low over their foreheads, over eyes that peered at me with obvious alarm.
I stood slowly, beseeching, suddenly fearful that I would be stuck in the fog forever and that these men would be my only chance at rescue.
It wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done, or maybe it saved my life.
The men stiffened as I rose, as if my standing posed a threat, and the man in the middle, his eyes wide with tension and his lips thin with mistrust, jerked his hand from his pocket and pointed a gun at me. His hand shook, and I swayed. With no warning, no demand, no reason at all, he pulled the trigger. The sound was a muted crack, and the sudden and violent shuddering of my skiff felt wholly separate from his action, as if a great, whistling beast had risen from the depths of Lough Gill beneath my boat and tossed me into the drink.
The frigid water stole my breath and didn’t give it back. I chased it, floundering, and kicked for the surface, sputtering as my face broke free into the heavy white that was almost as wet and thick as the water I’d fallen into.
I couldn’t see anything but white, endless white. No boat. No land. No sky. No men with guns.
I tried to lean back, to force myself to float and stay silent. If I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me, I rationalized. I managed to keep my head above water without a great deal of splashing, listening and peering into the white. Beneath the adrenaline and the clawing cold was a burning fire in my side. I continued treading water, trying to avoid the truth; I’d been shot, and I had to find my boat. If I didn’t find my boat, I was going to drown.
I began swimming furiously this way and that, making a wide circle around the area where I’d fallen, trying to find my boat in the mist.