I could only stroke her hair and rock back and forth, desperate to forget everything she’d just said. She didn’t take it back or laugh it off, but her tension slowly ebbed the longer we sat, lulled by the movement and lost in our private thoughts.
“I’ve crossed the lough, and I can’t go back, can I?” she murmured, and her meaning was all too clear. Words spoken could not be unheard.
“I stopped believing in fairies long ago, Anne.” My voice was heavy, like a death knell in the quiet.
She was still curled in my lap, but she pushed herself up from my chest so she could look me in the eyes, the waving strands of her hair creating a soft riot around her beautiful face. I wanted to sink my hands into that hair and pull her mouth to mine to kiss away the madness and the misery, the doubt and the disillusionment.
“I don’t expect you to believe in fairies, Thomas.”
“No?” My voice was sharper than I intended, but I had to get away from her before I ignored the howling in my heart and the warning in my veins. I could not kiss her. Not now. Not after all that had been said. I rose and set her gently on her feet. Her eyes were steady as she gazed up at me, their green warming to gold in the firelight.
“No,” she answered softly. “But will you try to believe . . . in me?”
I touched her cheek, unable to lie but unwilling to wound. But my silence was answer enough. She turned and walked up the stairs, bidding me a soft good night. And now I sit, staring at the fire, writing it all down in this book. Anne has confessed all . . . and still, I know nothing.
T. S.
16
TOM THE LUNATIC
Sang old Tom the lunatic
That sleeps under the canopy:
What change has put my thoughts astray
And eyes that had so keen a sight:
What has turned to smoking wick
Nature’s pure unchanging light.
—W. B. Yeats
I read somewhere that a person will never know who they really are unless they prioritize what they love. I had always loved two things above everything else, and from those two things, I had formed my identity. One identity grew from what my grandfather had taught me. It was wrapped around his love for me, our love for each other, and the life we’d had together. My other identity was formed from my love of storytelling. I became an author, obsessed with earning money, making bestseller lists, and coming up with the next novel. I had lost one identity when I’d lost my grandfather, and now I’d lost the other. I was no longer Anne Gallagher, New York Times bestselling author. I was Anne Gallagher, born in Dublin, widowed wife of Declan, mother of Eoin, friend of Thomas. I had assumed several identities that were not my own, and they had begun to chafe and rub, even when I did my best to wear them well.
In the weeks after Dublin, Thomas kept his distance, avoiding me when it was possible, remaining politely aloof when it was not. He treated me like Declan’s Anne again, though he knew I was not. I’d told him a truth he could not accept, so he wrapped me tightly in her role, refusing to cast me in another. Sometimes I caught him staring at me like I was dying from an incurable illness, his countenance stricken and sad.
Thomas returned to Dublin and brought a healing Robbie O’Toole back to Garvagh Glebe. He had a jaunty patch over his missing eye, an angry scar on the side of his head, and a mild weakness on his left side. He moved slowly, a young man grown old, his days of smuggling arms and ambushing Tans behind him.
No one spoke of Liam or the missing guns, but the foal was finally born, making honest men of us all. Thankfully, the Auxiliary captain did not return to Garvagh Glebe either, and whatever suspicions and accusations had been leveled against me were quietly shelved. Still, I slept with a knife beneath my pillow and asked Daniel O’Toole to put a lock on my bedroom door. Liam Gallagher might feel safe from me, but I didn’t feel safe from him. There would be a point of reckoning, I had no doubt. The worry made me weary, and the wondering stole my sleep.
I thought about the lough relentlessly, pictured myself pushing a boat out