onto my side, too tired to push up to my hands and knees. I peered up at Eamon, a Herculean effort. But it wasn’t Eamon. I stared, trying to orient myself to the face above mine, the face that didn’t match the voice.
“Jaysus wept!” he gasped. “It’s you, lass. Dear God. What the . . . where the hell have you been? W-what . . . w-when,” he stammered, asking questions that I couldn’t process.
“Mr. Donnelly?” I cried, the horror rasping in my throat. Oh no. No, no, no.
“That’s right. You rented the boat from me, miss. I didn’t want you to take that damn boat out. You know I didn’t. Thank Mary, you’re all right. We thought you’d drowned in the lough,” he confessed, horrified.
“What day is it? What year?” I mourned. I couldn’t look around to ascertain for myself. I didn’t want to see. I pushed up to my hands and knees, struggled to my feet, and stumbled back into the water.
“Where’re you goin’?” Jim Donnelly asked. Not Eamon Donnelly. Jim Donnelly, who lived in the cottage by the dock and had rented me a boat. In 2001.
I fell into the lough, desperate to return, even as I refused to admit I’d left.
The man yanked me up. “What are you doing? Are ya out of yer mind?”
“What day is it?” I cried, fighting him.
“It’s July the sixth,” he bellowed, wrapping his arms around my upper body, dragging me back to the shore. “It’s a feckin’ Friday!”
“What year?” I panted. “What year?”
“Huh?” he stammered. “It’s 2001. We’ve been lookin’ for you for more than a week. Ten days. You never came back to shore. The boat, everything, was just gone. The rental company came and took your car when the Gardai were done with it.” He pointed toward the parking lot that didn’t exist when Thomas lived at Garvagh Glebe. When Eoin lived at Garvagh Glebe. When I had lived at Garvagh Glebe.
“No,” I wept. “Oh no.”
“The Gardai have been here. They’ve been over the lake with equipment. They even sent divers down,” he said, shaking his head. “What happened?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t really know what happened. I don’t really know.”
“Is there someone I can call, ma’am? Where the hell did you come from?” he muttered, trying to coax me back to his cottage, to warmth, to the call he was desperate to make. I wanted him to leave. But he kept his arm firmly around my shoulders, leading me away from the lough. I needed to return to the water, to slip beneath the surface and back to the time before, to the place I’d left, to the life I’d lost.
Lost. Gone. Just like that. A breath, a submersion, and I died and was born again. Liam had tried to kill me. And he’d succeeded. He’d taken my life. Taken my love. Taken my family.
“What happened to ya, lass?”
I could only shake my head, too distraught to speak. I’d been through this all before. And this time, Thomas and Eoin weren’t here to help me through it.
26 April 1922
Anne’s gone. She’s been gone for ten days. I returned to Garvagh Glebe late on Sunday, the sixteenth. My home was in chaos. Maggie held Eoin, who was feverish and ill in her arms. His crying made each breath a struggle. Maggie could hardly look at me, she was so distraught, but she murmured one word—lough—and I was out the door, running through the trees to the beach where Robbie and Patrick were scouring the shore for Anne’s body. Robbie, doing his best to explain the unexplainable, wept as he relayed the day’s events.
Liam had tried to force Anne into a boat on the lough at gunpoint, and Robbie had shot him. When Robbie ran into the water to pull Liam off her, she was gone.
Robbie said he searched the water for an hour. All he found were her shoes. He thinks she drowned, but I know what happened. She’s gone, but she’s not dead. I try to console myself with that.
Robbie dragged Liam back to the house where Brigid did her best to tend to him. Liam has a bullet wound in his shoulder, and he lost a lot of blood. But he’ll live.
I want to kill him.
I removed the bullet, cleaned the wound, and sutured it. When he cried in pain, I showed him the morphine, but I didn’t give him any.
“Thomas, please,” he moaned. “I’ll tell you everything. All of it. Please.”