he was coming back for you.”
I released my held breath. “What?”
“Did you not hear me? I wanted you to wonder how you would change your life if you knew he was coming back for you. Would you fill your life with all you have now if you knew, really knew he’d return?”
I had no answer to this question—one I had never dared ask myself. What, if anything, would I change if I knew he’d come for me?
I closed my eyes, but Maeve’s voice continued. “I never thought of this, I just merely believed that he was gone. I believed he would never return, and so I filled my life with other people. I wanted to give you the chance to at least think about it, no matter what you decided.
“When you’re old, you too will see and know things you do not know now. I saw myself in you. I am old. I saw your pain and I did what I’ve done my whole life—I told you a story. How this story works in you is how it was meant to work in you. The same story has a different meaning for and effect on each person—this story was yours.”
“Do you wish you’d waited, Maeve, or gone off to find him?” I placed my hand on top of hers.
“Yes, I do. But I lived a full and beautiful life, Kara. No regrets, only a passing on of wisdom. But I believed he was gone. You think it is so different because you live here in this time, in this place, because I’m from the far side of the sea. But we are attached by the water between us. It is the same tide and moon, the same sea, love, fear, losing, and death. Love does not change with time. The love that fills us and empties us, that clips our wings so that we must decide whether to learn to fly after that. To love or to fear.” Maeve squeezed my hand, belying the weakness in her face and body.
“Love,” I said.
“I waited. I’d stand on the edge of the water while children played on the Big Grass, while the men fixed their nets. It was a terrible time in the village then—they were tearing down houses, building new and better ones. The young men had left for World War One. Some had come home, but many had died, and others had emigrated. I stood at the edges of the quay and waited for his hooker to return. Then they, my parents and the people of the village, told me to stop living in a dream, that he would never come, that he’d married and had children and lived in Scotland. They told me they’d learned this from his relatives in Connemara. I believed them.
“I finally married the boy from down the lane, the one my parents had chosen for me since birth—a descendant of the Claddagh kings. He was a good man and the right man for me and my family. I loved him in faithfulness that lasted through seven children and numerous grandchildren. A love that may not have been born of passion, but that endured nonetheless. But, Kara.” She leaned forward. “Richard came back for me.”
A free-fall feeling overcame me; I wanted to grab on to something to keep from descending into this truth—he came back and she hadn’t waited.
“He came back.” Maeve’s expression became placid as the morning sea. “It was in August during the Blessing of the Bay.” She looked back at me now, but somehow seemed to be still there, in Claddagh at the bay. “Someday you must go . . . you must go see the Blessing of the Bay. It is the most magical, beautiful event you will witness beyond marriage or baptism. It marks the beginning of herring season. The altar boys and choir flow down from St. Mary’s on the Hill. Oh, Kara, they ring the bell and the boats form a grand circle. The priest reads from St. John—you know the story, about the Sea of Galilee, when the apostles cast their nets on the right side of the ship. Then all of creation is called upon, from angels to the fish, to give glory to God. We sing and pray.”
Tears fell unguarded down her face. “Then a single hooker comes from ’round the bend of the quay. My body understands long before my mind does. I tremble when I see the brown sails; my limbs are weak, my