The Lace Makers of Glenmara - By Heather Barbieri Page 0,9

pointing heavenward, whiteness so bleached and pure it hurt the eyes.

The wind blew off the sea, bending blades of grass, snapping the canvas tents. One tore clean away, a man swearing in pursuit as it flapped down the narrow street like a great bird.

“Look! It’s the holy host!” a pair of tottering men, caps askew, cried out. They fell on their knees—prostrated by religious fervor or the effects of Guinness or mirth—as it careened past. “Praise the Lord. Someone get the priest.”

The fugitive tent continued its merry rampage, knocking over a bicycle and snagging on an aerial before taking flight again. The kids hanging around the pub in a cloud of smoke jeered at the scene, which passed all too soon, the long, dull evening returning. Soon night would fall, only the glowing ends of their pilfered cigarettes visible in the failing light, darkness sending them into the fields where someone had hidden a cache of ale, so that those who desired oblivion could find it again. There was little to do in Glenmara, few livings to be made, no matter how much praying to the saints anyone did. “Fecking saints,” one of them said, too young to know better, too belligerent to care. Their faces hadn’t lost their softness yet, though the teens made a show of hardening their edges with black makeup and clothes, indulgence in the bad, denial of the good. They wouldn’t miss their innocence until it was gone.

Kate shivered from the chill, a hint of a smile on her lips, seeing an old version of herself in the kids (though never so rough as that), entertained by the shenanigans of the man and the tarp, entranced by the beauty of the landscape. She wondered if her ancestors had stood on a spot very like this, miles north, in Donegal, looking down on their abandoned crofts. Her mother’s family had few stories of those early days. They were too busy becoming American, forgetting the past. The tale they chose to tell began with laboring in the coalfields of Pennsylvania, then boarding the trains west, to Montana, to wield pickaxes in the copper mines of Butte, Montana, because they were run by an Irishman named Daley, one of their own, who would give them a fair chance, or so they thought. They came in waves, the Irish, the dusty streets ringing with Gaelic, the bars blaring the music of the pipe bands and fiddles, ale flowing freely, the inhabitants drinking disappointment away. As the years passed, their accents weakened to a mere hint of a lilt. Day after day, they disappeared into the earth—some said it was like going into the grave; others, the gates of hell—and, eventually, for good.

What came before, in Ireland, Kate didn’t know. There were gravestones somewhere, she supposed, imprinted with her ancestors’ names, perhaps another headstone that read “Tallulah ‘Lu’ Robinson,” like her mother’s, the letters worn away by the passage of time. Or, more likely, a simple wooden cross, decayed long ago, since there’d probably been no money for formal burials, only a series of small mounds, overgrown with brambles and grass. Kate sifted through what might or might not have been, seeking a reference point, a place to say: This is the beginning. A spot on the map: You are here. Or were here. Or might be here. You belong.

She reached for the golden thimble on the chain around her neck, the only tangible link to her mother she’d brought along, because she treasured the notion, remembered playing with it as a little girl. How precious it had seemed then—now, more than ever.

Her neck was bare. She searched the road, frantically at first, then more slowly, in growing resignation. It would have gleamed, caught the light, if it were there.

Like her mother, the thimble was gone. No amount of searching would bring it back.

Kate set off down the half-cobbled lane again, over stones that had been there since the road’s birth over three hundred years before. She felt the vendors’ eyes on her, the coming attraction. First, she bought fish and chips from a man who greeted her in Gaelic, Dia duit, Hello. She’d learned some of the language when she took Irish dancing lessons as a child, but she’d forgotten all but a few of the steps. Her mother had kept one of the costumes—the green jumper with the Celtic knot embroidered in gold thread on the bodice. Kate took first place at the feis that year. She didn’t