If not for his carelessness, he would have been. A fragment of charred gossamer floated past him. He chased after it, thinking it was a piece of her shirt, but it was only ash, carried away on a blast of wind.
For days, he heard the rumble of the trains. The doctor gave him pills to drive them away, but they found him in dreams, even now, in Ireland. Some people said that when you pressed your ear to the ground, you could hear the pounding of hooves, of the horses of the invaders, from years ago, soldiers on the march, that the earth held the memory of their passing, of spilled blood. And he heard them, he did, the trains, the Danes, the Vikings, Cromwell’s men, the IRA, the Proddies, al-Qaeda, and Ekaterina’s voice too, louder than the rest, calling him: Sullivan, Sullivan.
He opened his eyes to the tarred sky.
It wasn’t her, and he had to face, once more, that she was gone. It was the other foreign girl, her name encompassed by the first: Ekaterina.
Kate.
“What’s the matter?” Kate asked, her voice filled with worry. He’d been lying facedown, he realized then, tearing at the grass. When she touched his shoulder, he jerked away. She dabbed at his cheek, blood on her sleeve. He hadn’t realized he’d cut himself on a stone. “Sullivan?”
He shook his head. The dream was a figment of another life, one he’d tried to leave behind. “It was just a bad dream,” he told her, because to speak of it would have made it real all over again.
Chapter 21
Of Bobbins and Pins
The next morning, Kate helped Bernie pin clothes on the line. The weather was fickle, the sky edged with clouds. The women seemed to stand in the only circle of light in the county, a place where the sun had managed to break through, if only for a short while. Kate’s head felt heavy, not so much from the late night as from her bewilderment over how distant Sullivan had seemed when he dropped her off at Bernie’s house. This was a side of him she hadn’t seen before, and she didn’t know what to make of it. “Do you think it’s going to rain?” she asked.
“Hard to say.” Bernie squinted at the sky. “The clouds seem to be having a hard time making up their minds.”
Kate fingered the faint stain on the cuff of her shirt, a reminder of the unsettling scene on the cliffs; it wouldn’t come out, despite numerous rinsings in the sink, the mark a shadow along the seam.
“At least that stain won’t set,” Bernie said, “not as it would have if we used a dryer.” Bernie had told her she couldn’t abide the machines. They ruined clothes, and since it was only her and John—and now, her alone—she had little use for them. “He cut his head, did he? Is he all right? How did it happen?”
Kate told her, adding, “He said he didn’t need stitches.”
“Even the smallest head wounds tend to bleed excessively.” Bernie nodded. “Will he be by today?”
“I don’t think so. He said he’s busy. He was acting kind of strange when he dropped me off.” She paused, then added, as if to convince herself, “But sleeping on the ground all night would make anyone irritable.” She rubbed her back. “I know I’m feeling where some pebbles pressed on my spine this morning.”
“You slept outside? In this weather?”
“He knew a place near the cliffs; there was some shelter, and he had a blanket in the van—”
“Kept you warm, did he?” Bernie teased.
“In a manner of speaking.” Kate’s smile faded as she touched the spot on her shirt again, the memory of trying to help him, help he didn’t seem to want, returning. She pinned the garment on the line. The fabric stirred listlessly in the breeze. “He seemed to be having a bad dream. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about.”
Bernie didn’t say anything, directing an inordinate amount of attention to the clothespins she was attaching to the line.
Kate touched her arm. “Do you know something?”
“I guess since everyone’s aware of it, there’s no harm in my saying…” She hesitated.
“Everyone except me.”
“I’m sure he’d tell you, in time,” she said.
“I hope so. I want him to feel that he can trust me—”
“You see, his girlfriend died in the London tube blast last year,” Bernie said finally, “and I think he felt he should have been with her. That’s why he moved back here. There’s been the