recited and raged, the lough denied me. I started plotting ways to get my hands on human ashes, but even clouded by desperate grief, I recognized that if the ashes had played a role, it was most likely because they were Eoin’s.
About six weeks after I’d moved into Garvagh Glebe, a car rolled through the gates that were erected sometime in the last eighty years and proceeded up the lane, shuddering to a stop in front of the house. I sat in my office, pretending to work but staring out the window, and I watched as two women climbed from the car, one young and one old, and approached the front door.
“Robbie!” I yelled, and then caught myself. His name was Kevin. And he was mowing the acres of grass behind the house. Jemma had already come and gone. The door chimed. I considered ignoring the visitors. I didn’t need to answer the door.
But I knew them.
It was Maeve O’Toole, old again, and Deirdre Fallon from the library in Dromahair. For whatever reason, they’d come to call, and they’d made time for me once, when I’d needed help. I should return the favor. I smoothed my hair and thanked heaven that I had found the will to shower and dress that morning, something I didn’t always do.
Then I answered the door.
16 July 1922
Anne was right. The Free State Army fired on the Four Courts building in the early morning hours of 28 June, placing field guns at strategic locations and shooting high-explosive shells into the buildings where the anti-Treaty republicans were hunkered down. An ultimatum had been sent to the Four Courts and was ignored, and Mick had no choice but to attack. The British government was threatening to send troops to handle it if he didn’t, and no one wanted Free State troops and British troops fighting alongside each other against the republicans. The buildings occupied by republicans on O’Connell Street and elsewhere in the city were also blockaded to prevent anti-Treaty forces from running to assist the besieged Four Courts. The hope was that when the republicans saw that actual artillery was being used, they would give in and give up.
The siege lasted three days and ended with an explosion in the Four Courts that destroyed precious documents and brought the whole debacle to an end. Good men died, just like Anne predicted. Cathal Brugha wouldn’t surrender. Mick wept when he told me. He and Brugha didn’t see eye to eye much of the time, but Cathal was a patriot, and there is little Mick respects more than that.
I stood in front of the burned-out shell of the Four Courts today. The stolen munitions kept exploding, making it impossible for the firemen to put out the blaze. They had to let it burn itself out. I wonder if all of Ireland will have to burn itself out as well. The copper dome is gone, the building destroyed, and what the hell for?
An agreement was forged in May between the republicans and the Free State leaders to defer the final decision on the Treaty until after the election and after the Free State Constitution had been published. But the compromise devolved before it could gain any traction; Mick says Whitehall got wind of it and didn’t like the sound of a delayed decision on the Treaty. Too much was at stake, too much money had been spent, too much ground covered. The six counties in Northern Ireland not included in the Treaty have descended into bloodshed and chaos. The sectarian violence is unfathomable. Catholics are being slaughtered and run from their homes, and new orphans are being made every day.
My heart is numb to it all. I have an orphan of my own to worry about. Eoin sleeps in my bed and shadows me wherever I go. Brigid has tried to console him, but he refuses to be alone with her. Brigid’s health is failing. Stress and loss have made us all phantoms of ourselves. Mrs. O’Toole has stepped in to watch him when I cannot take him with me.
Mick called two Sundays after Anne disappeared, asking about her health, seeking her counsel, and I had to tell him she was gone. He shouted into the phone like I had lost my mind and showed up four hours later in an armoured car, Fergus and Joe with him, ready to do war. I am no longer equipped to do war, and when he demanded answers, I found myself weeping