the end, intertwined and indistinguishable. We are ancient. Prehistoric and predestined.
I laugh at myself and my romantic musings, grateful no one will read these words. I am a man besotted, looking at his slumbering wife, who is soft and naked and well loved, and it’s made me silly and sentimental. I reach out and stroke her skin, drawing a finger down the slope of her arm from her shoulder to the top of her hand. Goose bumps rise, but she doesn’t stir, and I watch, mesmerized, as her skin becomes smooth once more, my touch forgotten. I’ve left a smudge in the crook of her arm. There is ink on my fingers. I like the way it looks, my thumbprint on her skin. If I were a better artist, I would paint her in thumbprints, leaving my mark in all my favourite places, a testament to my devotion.
She opens her eyes and smiles at me, heavy lidded and pink lipped, and I am panting and pathetic all over again. Useless. But completely convinced.
No one has ever loved the way I love Anne.
“Come to bed, Thomas,” she whispers, and I no longer want to write or paint or even wash my hands.
T. S.
21
PARTING
Dear, I must be gone
While night shuts the eyes
Of the household spies;
That song announces dawn.
—W. B. Yeats
The Treaty debates in the Dáil resumed in early January, and Thomas and I planned to travel to Dublin to attend the public sessions. I wanted to bring Brigid and Eoin with us, but Brigid urged us to go alone.
“It might be the only honeymoon you get,” she pressed. “And Eoin and I will be fine here with the O’Tooles.”
I’d begged him not to tell her that Liam had shot me—the details were too complicated, and making that accusation would require us to explain my presence on the lough, something I couldn’t do. The relationship was already so fraught with tension and turmoil, I couldn’t see how telling her would help matters.
“Do you trust her to protect you from them?” he’d asked, incredulous.
“I trust her to keep Eoin safe,” I argued. “That is my only concern.”
“That is your only concern?” Thomas cried, his volume rising with every word. “Well, it isn’t mine! Good God, Anne. Liam tried to kill you. For all I know, Ben tried to kill you too. I’m bloody relieved that poor Martin Carrigan and the unfortunate Brody are dead because now I only have the feckin’ Gallagher brothers to worry about.”
Thomas never yelled, and his vehemence surprised me. When I stared at him, dumbstruck, he gripped my shoulders, pressed his forehead to mine, and groaned my name.
“Anne, you have to listen to me. I know you care about Brigid, but you feel a loyalty to her that she does not return. Her loyalty is to her sons, and I don’t trust her where they are concerned.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“She has to know that I will no longer allow them anywhere near you or Eoin.”
“She will blame me,” I mourned. “She will think she has to choose between us.”
“She does have to choose, Countess. Ben and Liam have always been trouble. Declan was the youngest, but of the three, he had the best head on his shoulders and the biggest heart in his chest.”
“Did Declan ever strike Anne?” I asked softly.
Thomas reared back in surprise. “Why do you ask?”
“Brigid told me that she understood why I—why Anne—left when she had the chance. She insinuated that Declan wasn’t always gentle, that he and his brothers had inherited their father’s temper.”
Thomas gaped at me. “Declan never raised his hand to Anne. She would have hit him right back. She slapped his brothers around enough. I know Liam bloodied her lip once, but that was after she’d hit him over the head with a shovel, and he went in swinging, trying to take it away.”
“So why would Brigid think Declan was violent?”
“Declan was always covering for Ben and Liam. I know he took the blame, more than once, for things they’d done. He paid their debts, smoothed things over when they got into trouble, and helped them find work.”
“And you think Brigid will try to cover for them now.” I sighed.
“I know she will.”
And with that belief, Thomas sat Brigid down soon after we were married and questioned her on the whereabouts and the activities of her sons. When she’d been reticent to speak about them at all, he told her, in no uncertain terms, that Liam and Ben were