“She’s gone, Mick. She was worried about you, and she’d written out a warning and tucked it away. I think she intended to give it to me or Joe, hoping we’d be able to keep you safe. But Brigid found it. She thought she was plotting against you. Brigid told Liam, and he dragged Anne out to the lough. Robbie thinks he intended to kill her and hide her body in the marsh. Robbie tried to stop him. He shot him, but it was too late.” I didn’t bother with the whole truth, with all of Liam’s sins. I couldn’t condemn myself or Anne to Mick’s disbelief or burden him with distrust.
He stayed with me until the following day, and we drank ourselves into a stupor. Neither of us was comforted, but for a while I forgot, and when they left, Fergus at the wheel, Joe beside him, and Mick hungover in the backseat, I slept for fifteen hours. He gave me that, and I was grateful for the brief reprieve.
I don’t know if Mick put out a hit on him, or if Fergus carried it out on his own because he was worried about Liam’s volatility, but Liam Gallagher’s body washed up on the strand in Sligo three days after Mick came to Garvagh Glebe. Mick was always pragmatic and principled in the terror he unleashed. I saw him scream in the faces of his squad and threaten them with discharge if they even hinted at a revenge hit. His tactics had always been about bringing Great Britain to her knees, not reprisals. The only time I’d suspected Mick of retaliation was when the Irishman who pointed out Seán Mac Diarmada to British soldiers after the Rising was found dead. Mick had seen the man do it, and he’d never forgotten the betrayal.
We haven’t spoken of Liam Gallagher’s death. We haven’t spoken of many things. Brigid said Anne wrote about an assassination attempt—she remembers something about August and flowers and a trip to Cork—but the pages disintegrated in the lough. It’s not much to go on, and Mick doesn’t want to hear it. He feels responsible for Anne’s death, just another weight he carries, and I cannot relieve him of it, try as I might. Robbie feels responsible too. We are all convinced we could have saved her, and I am devastated that I have lost her. We are united in our self-loathing.
Last week, while setting traps, Eamon found a small red boat in the bog. It had been washed up onto a muddy shelf, and he dragged it home. He found an odd satchel pushed up under the seat, a corked urn and a leather journal inside. Both had been protected from the worst of the elements. He read the first page of the journal and realised right away that the book was mine. The urn and the satchel were Anne’s; I have no doubt. I put the boat in the barn, tying it to the rafters to keep Eoin out of it, and gave Eamon a finder’s fee for bringing his treasures to me.
I puzzled over the journal, trying to ascertain how it could have been inside a bag in the marsh when it already sat high on the shelf in my library. I was convinced my copy would not be there. But it was. The pages of my book weren’t yellowed, and the leather was suppler, but it was there. I held the aged journal in my left hand and the newer one in my right, confounded, my mind tripping and tumbling, trying to formulate a plausible explanation. There wasn’t one. I set them side by side on the shelf, almost expecting one to dissolve into the other, restoring balance and oneness to the universe. But they lay against each other, past and present, today and tomorrow, unaffected and unaltered by my limited understanding. Perhaps at some point, the two books will become one again, each existing in their own moment, just like Anne’s ring.
I walk along the beach every day, watching for her. I can’t help myself. Eoin walks with me, his gaze continually returning to the glassy surface. He asked me if his mother is in the lough. I told him no. He asked me if she had crossed the lough into another place, like he did in his adventures. I said that I believed she had, and it seemed