admiring it through the window when the contractions began. “It’s starting.”
“It’s too early.”
“I know.”
“It’s probably false labor.”
“Yes.”
They let themselves believe that as they drove to the hospital, miles away, the pains worsening. The midwife in the next village told them they had to go, that it was beyond her skill. John had never driven so fast.
Bare rooms. Drapes. Lino. Metal instruments. Serious faces. They put her in a gown, legs in stirrups. She had a corn on her toe. She didn’t know why she noticed that. It was the last thing she remembered before she went under. All it took was a shot in her arm and she felt woozy, as if she were drowning. Voices came and went. John was there. They wanted him to go, but he wouldn’t leave her.
“She mustn’t see,” a nurse said.
John tried to shield her. She never told him she’d glimpsed their child through the haze of drugs, perfectly formed. A girl, her skin the palest shade of blue. She let him think he’d protected her.
A girl, Saoirse, who would have been the same age as Kate, if she’d lived.
Bernie nearly called her Saoirse when she found Kate in the lane, as if she were losing her child all over again, Kate too distracted to notice. Bernie’s lips formed the word. She thought she heard her baby girl cry at last, would have cried herself, the tears coming again, if Kate hadn’t needed her.
“Sometimes I think there’s too much history here,” Bernie said as they sat in front of the fire later, holding mugs of tea with a shot of brandy. “That the land won’t let us forget what pains us. It’s not a bad thing, the remembering, it’s an important part of who we are, the suffering that shapes us, that reminds us how strong we can be.”
“I don’t feel strong.” Kate’s teeth chattered as she talked and talked, the words spilling in a torrent.
“You are.” Bernie watched her carefully, half wondering if she should have taken her to the hospital. “More than you know. I sensed that the moment I met you.”
“I was a mess.” Kate pulled the wool throw more tightly around her. Bernie had swaddled her in blankets as if she were a newborn child.
“No, you weren’t. Though we wouldn’t be very interesting without our messes, would we?” Bernie nudged a log that had tumbled toward the hearth into place with a poker.
Kate stared at the flames. “The voice sounded so real.”
“The living are close to the dead there,” Bernie replied. “It’s one of the thin places, where the past and present touch.”
“What was I supposed to learn? I was meant to learn something from it, wasn’t I?”
Bernie didn’t reply right away. “Perhaps to let yourself feel the pain, forgive yourself, as best you can, then try to let it go,” she said finally. “That even though we lose the ones we’ve loved, they aren’t gone from us forever, that they are with us, still, but in a different way.” Saoirse, too. Bernie had thought the lanes were meant to run with children, with pitched battles and cycle races. And they did: other people’s children. She embraced them, as if they belonged to her, part of the village, each and every one of them. It was only sometimes in the evenings that she felt an echo of what might have been, looking out on the quiet lane, the bare fields, the windows catching what light remained at the end of the day. “But I’ve wondered, if I went out there, if I would hear the crying.”
“And did you?”
“Yes,” Bernie said, adding, “The losses don’t go away, not completely, but it doesn’t hurt so much after a while.”
The fire crackled, the clocked ticked. Fergus twitched in his sleep, exhausted after the search.
“Do you ever get lonely?” Kate asked.
“Now and then. I lead a full life—though I wouldn’t mind having someone to show off my lacy drawers to some day.”
“Perhaps you should try a personal ad.” Kate managed a smile.
“‘Woman with fancy knickers seeks a bit of fun.’ That would give Father Byrne new material, wouldn’t it?”
“He nearly ran me off the road today,” Kate told her. “It’s clear he doesn’t want me to stay. He might use what happened tonight against me. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“Of course not.”
The flames snapped in a volcanic burst of sparks before disappearing into the ashes below.
“Do you want me to call Sullivan?” Bernie asked. “He was glad to hear I’d found you.”
“Was he?”
“I