Grace drove. We took the main road a short distance toward town and then turned onto a narrow lane, the lane so obscure that I hadn’t ever paid attention to it when we were driving into town. But now, as we turned, I said, “Back there, I think that’s where Ian was shot.”
I remembered the trees and the hooting owl. The shooting had happened not long after we’d passed that point. “It didn’t register before, but there aren’t many trees along the road. This was definitely the place.”
“Ireland doesn’t have many forests,” Grace said. “There are just a few wooded areas around Thurles.” She gave a bitter little laugh. “Someone like Lucas Riordan will probably buy up these woodlands before long and cut the trees and pour concrete over it all.” She’d come incredibly close to describing what Helen had divulged about Lucas’s planned development.
The lane may have just seemed to wind on and on because we were proceeding so slowly on the uneven dirt surface. Grace said it was less than a mile from the main road to the place we’d have to park and walk the rest of the way.
“What was Alex doing today?” she asked.
“Organizing his notes from our trip to Cashel,” I said. “He likes to write as he goes, while everything’s fresh in his mind. I told him what we were doing. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not at all. I trust you and Alex. I just think it’s best to keep our family secrets from the other guests as long as possible. If Bridget comes home with us—we’ll deal with that if it happens. When it happens, I should say,” she added, on a cheery note that seemed forced; then her level-headedness took over. “I’m trying to be optimistic. I have to hope.” A minute later she pulled the car to the side of the road. There wasn’t much shoulder. I thought she was parking dangerously close to a ditch in which a thin stream of water flowed, but she knew this location far better than I. “Now we walk,” she said.
She took a wicker basket from the back seat, and we headed into the woods on foot.
Red Stag Crossing, they called this place, and I could see it as a habitat for deer. All kinds of woodland creatures might scamper from the underbrush or dance on the branches that hung over our footpath, a somewhat-defined trail but rough, with roots and rocks that might trip up an unsuspecting hiker. The sunlight filtered through the delicate leaves of medium-size trees with gray, spotted bark. What I had imagined as a dense, dark forest when Grace and Colin had talked about Red Stag Crossing was not like that at all. It was airy and luminous.
I remarked to Grace about the purplish air.
She laughed. “It’s the alder trees. Their small, scaly clusters have a purple tinge in the spring. That’s what makes the purple sheen.”
“Alder,” I repeated. I remembered something about the alder tree from Ian’s story.
“From the birch family,” Grace said. “The Irish have all kinds of stories about the alder tree. It’s associated with death, the guardian of travelers to the Otherworld. Legend has it that its branches were used to measure graves. And it’s said that when the alder is cut, the light-colored wood changes to orange and then red, as if it’s bleeding.”
“You’ll have to tell Ian about the alder,” I said. “You may know he’s collecting legends for his book. He’s been talking to old men in the pubs, but he needn’t have left Shepherds.”
“Anyone who lives in Ireland as long as I have is bound to know the legends, whether Irish-born or not,” she said. “There’s another one about a man who cut down a giant alder tree that was inhabited by a tree spirit, and he was cursed by the hag, Famine, with a hunger he couldn’t satisfy. In the end, when food would not relieve his hunger, he devoured himself.”
Grace rearranged her red wool wrap that she wore over a light sweater and shifted the basket to her other arm. I couldn’t help thinking about Red Riding Hood. The woods had the aura of fantasy—magical, but eerie, too. I could almost imagine a leprechaun popping out from one of the thickets.
“Wonder where Dr. Malone’s body was found.” Grace jolted me from my thoughts.
I said, “I don’t suppose anyone knows why he was out this way.”
“Seems the coroner is now saying the doctor’s body was moved—brought out here from somewhere else. That’s what Colin heard. A good thing for Bridget. She couldn’t manage to do that. Oh, I just pray to God it will all be cleared up soon.” Grace directed an anxious gaze at me. I understood. No matter that the old woman, Magdala, gave Bridget an alibi or that Bridget couldn’t have managed to move a man’s body. Grace’s worries would not go away completely until the truth was known, until someone else was charged with the murder.
We walked in silence for a minute longer until Grace said, “There it is.”
The gray stone cottage blended into the trees so that I had to blink twice to make it out. A little “Oh!” escaped me. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but this was something from a fairy tale—Once upon a time. It was the teeny-tiny cottage in the woods depicted on the pages of children’s stories, except that in those illustrations, the cottage was usually colorful. This ancient structure must have been limestone, whitish-gray, similar to the bark of the alder trees. The thatched roof was a shade darker. I wondered if the roof was water-tight. It seemed impossible that anyone lived in this small dwelling.
Grace had drawn her lips together in a tight line. She pulled at her wrap again, readjusting, and I felt a shiver, too. I hugged myself, rubbing my arms through my thick sweater. Had the temperature dropped? The sun was no longer shining through the trees. The cottage sat back twenty yards or so from path we’d followed, a path that continued on into the woods through overgrown scrub—to other neighbors? Colin or Grace had mentioned a neighbor, someone who had contacted Dr. Malone once when Magdala was seriously ill, when Bridget was volunteering at his office. That was how she had met the old woman.
The ground around the cottage was nearly as bare as the chicken-pecked yards of rural Georgia that I remembered growing up, but random clumps of something wild and green were not surprising here in the Emerald Isle. Grace’s steps grew heavier as we approached the cottage. “I hope Magdala doesn’t shoot us,” she said under her breath, just before the door opened.
It was Magdala, no doubt, much as she had been described, a woman with a stoop, dressed in layers of clothes that had not seen soap and water lately. Steel-gray hair that hadn’t seen a comb lately. She’d pulled it back, but loose strands frizzed around her face. She might have had a head of curls as a young woman, many decades ago, judging from her wrinkles.
She didn’t speak as she stood in the doorway, which barely framed her, though she looked to be no more than five feet tall. People were smaller centuries ago when this cottage must have been built. I could not quite make out the old woman’s expression. She looked at us straight on, her right eye veering off slightly, but there was nothing particularly sinister about her. It seemed more likely that her eyesight was poor and she was trying to figure out who we were.
“Hello, Magdala, it’s me, Grace O’Toole.” Grace raised her voice as if she believed the old woman was hard of hearing. “Grace O’Toole. I’ve brought a friend. We’ve come to see Bridget.”
Magdala said nothing. She turned and walked back inside. She’d left the door open so it was likely Bridget was coming out or we were supposed to go in. Bridget did not come out. We waited a moment, and then Grace proceeded to the doorstep. She first peered inside and then went in without further invitation.
I stopped in the doorway, studying the room. No electricity, I remembered, and not much natural light coming in from small, high windows. The cottage had a pungent smell about it, like wild onions.
Magdala was bending over a heap of covers. “Yer mam,” she said.
Grace threw caution aside and hurried to the bed—I would have called it a futon in a more modern setting—even as Bridget’s hoarse moan came from the covers: “No. Go away.”
I could only imagine how Grace’s heart broke, seeing her daughter like this. At first, Bridget turned her face to the wall and drew the covers up to her ears, but in the end she responded to Grace’s soft murmurings—“Bridget, please, please, love”—and the gentle hands that pulled her into her mother’s arms. I could see the girl’s fragile face clearly as Grace embraced her, rocking back and forth, as if she were a child. She looked small enough to pass for a child, but her hollow eyes were older than her twenty years. Her long tangled hair was light, like Grace’s, as far as I could tell in the dim room. She wore a blouse that appeared stylish, maybe expensive, oddly out of character with everything else in this place, but naturally she had brought her own clothing with her.
After a moment, she pulled back from her mother and said in a weak voice, a whine, “Why are you here?”
“I had to see you.” Grace tried to touch her daughter’s face, but Bridget turned away.
Magdala, who had taken only a couple of steps away from Bridget as Grace had moved in, spoke to Grace for the first time, pointing to the wicker basket that sat on the floor. “What’d you bring?”
“Cheese and bread, apples, peanut butter and jam. It’s for both of you.” To Bridget, Grace said, “Are you hungry?” Bridget shook her head.
Magdala picked up the basket. Her attention had finally shifted. She set the basket on what was apparently the kitchen table, square, rough-hewn. The sparse furnishings consisted of the table and two chairs, a rocking chair, a tall cabinet, and a smaller cabinet with a pan of water sitting on it. And a fireplace. Though not large by American standards, the stone fireplace seemed out of proportion with everything else in the cottage. Magdala could at least make a roaring fire that would warm this small space. I could see into another room to what must have been Magdala’s bed, neatly made up with a patchwork quilt on it. It was then that I noticed the other accessories in the main room, a hooked rug on which Grace was kneeling and an afghan draped over the back of the rocking chair. A faded picture of Mary and Baby hung over Bridget’s bed. In the other room, over the other bed, a crucifix adorned the wall. Large brown water stains on the walls confirmed my initial impression that the thatched roof was deteriorating.
Magdala emptied the basket, setting the jam and peanut butter on one of the shelves above the table, alongside other jars—canned fruits, vegetables, soups? Had Dr. Malone or neighbors brought these to her? A kerosene lamp sat on the other shelf, with cans of soft drinks that someone had to have supplied. Grace had brought a large plastic bottle of water. Magdala set it on the shelf, too. She had already bitten into one of the apples. The others she placed in a bowl that she took from the tall cabinet, which contained other dishes as well. I was beginning to see something about Magdala that had not been immediately apparent: vestiges of domesticity that made it seem the old woman might be simply hanging onto ways of the long-ago past. Maybe there was not as much wrong with her mind as people surmised. Something here had drawn a twenty-year-old woman who was accustomed to a comfortable home and nice things.
“You remember how we talked about Jordan and her uncle,” Grace was saying, “how they were coming to Shepherds. And they did. They arrived this past week. See, I brought Jordan with me. She has four daughters, and a son, too.” As she spoke, she moved from her kneeling position beside the bed to sitting on it. “Come, Jordan, meet my daughter.”
Bridget straightened up until she was sitting. I said, “Hello, Bridget.”
I had visited the sick under many different conditions, but what did one say in a situation like this? Bridget managed a trace of a smile that hinted of how happy, healthy, and lovely she might have once been. Maybe Grace had made a smart move, bringing me with her. Maybe she’d thought that in front of her mother’s friend, Bridget would be on her best behavior and be more likely to go home with us. But there was something to all of this besides stubbornness. I wasn’t sure Bridget was strong enough to make the trek to the car.
“I’ve been so anxious to meet you. Grace and Colin are friends from a long time ago—so I hope it’s all right.” The words tumbled out. I stopped short of saying all right that I’m visiting you when you’re like this. How incredibly awkward the situation was.
Bridget’s voice was still soft, but polite, no longer complaining. “It’s all right.”
“Are you sure you won’t eat something?” Grace said. “Peanut butter and jam sandwich?”
Another weak smile, this time directed at Grace. Apparently Grace had hit upon one of her daughter’s favorites.
I jumped on the opportunity. “Let me make a sandwich for you.”
“Lots of jam,” Grace said.
I looked for a place to wash my hands, forgetting for a moment that there was no indoor plumbing, no kitchen sink. The pan of water did not entice me. Magdala took down the jars of peanut butter and jam that she had just put on the shelf and produced a plate and a knife. I made the sandwich while Grace and Bridget talked—mostly Grace, but Bridget did ask about Jimmie. Grace reported that he was healthy, active, and “growing like a weed.” She sounded like her younger Southern self as she used the phrase. She told of ordering summer clothes online, but she planned to take him into town in a few days to buy new shoes. Grace spoke as if Bridget hadn’t seen the child in weeks, when, in fact, it had been just a few days ago that Bridget snatched Jimmie from the backyard of Shepherds. Maybe when Bridget had those erratic episodes, she didn’t remember later, or maybe Grace was just trying to block out that memory for both of them.
“Here’s your sandwich. I hope it’s how you like it,” I said. Three steps from the table to the low, narrow bed, where Bridget was changing her position, curling her legs under her. She might have been more comfortable sitting at the table, I thought, but it wasn’t my place to suggest it. I noticed for the first time a paper bag with paper handles sitting on the floor at the head of her bed. Full of pill bottles, from what I could tell.
Bridget took a small bite of her sandwich. Unlike Magdala, who chewed noisily on her apple, Bridget showed no pleasure in eating. She put the sandwich down after a couple of bites and handed her mother the plate. “I’ll finish later,” she said, and she lay back down, burrowing into the covers.
“I was hoping you’d come home with me,” Grace said.
Bridget didn’t say no. Maybe that was a good sign. “I’m tired,” she said.
I took the plate from Grace and set it on the table. I peered into the picnic basket, on the chance that Grace had thought to bring plastic wrap, but the basket was empty.
“We need to get you to a doctor,” Grace said. Bridget began the snuffling sound that children make when they’re starting to cry. “It’s an awful thing,” Grace went on, “what happened to Dr. Malone, but you know he’d want you to find another doctor.” Bridget buried her face in the covers and continued to whimper and sniffle. Grace said, “Little Jimmie needs you. He needs his mother to be healthy. That’s what we all want. We want you to get your health back.”
Bridget dabbed at her eyes with the quilt. Still sniffling, she said, “I’m no good to Jimmie.”
“Oh, Bridget, love, you mustn’t think that,” Grace said, near tears herself.
It seemed a good time for me to go outside, to give them some privacy. I was surprised that Magdala followed, but when we were outdoors, she walked away from me, to a tree. From a pocket somewhere in her layers of clothing, she retrieved a pack of cigarettes, tapped out one for herself, and struck a match from a matchbook. She began to smoke, taking heavy draws on the cigarette that she held between her thumb and forefinger.
On the chance that she’d talk to me, I took a few steps toward her. She cast a suspicious look at me—or in my direction, the best I could tell, given her wandering eye—but I spoke anyway. “Does anyone live close by?”
She took another drag on her cigarette. After a moment, she grunted something that sounded like “Owen” and swung her thumb toward the path that continued on past her cottage.
Perhaps the same person who brought her cigarettes. It didn’t seem likely that Dr. Malone would provide cigarettes for her.
I noticed wood stacked against the house, not much, but it was May now. “Does Owen keep you in firewood through the winter?” Her nod was almost imperceptible.
So much for small talk. I stepped closer and said in a confidential voice, “Bridget needs a doctor.”
“He’s dead,” Magdala said.
“Dr. Malone is dead, but Grace and Colin can find another doctor,” I said.
A bird twittered in the tree above Magdala. We both looked up. Magdala said, “She has the medicine.”
“It won’t last,” I said. “She’ll have to find a doctor to give her more, and to give her the right kind of medicine. She needs to go home with Grace so she can get medical care. You’ve been kind to her. She trusts you. You might be able to persuade her.”
Magdala frowned at me again, and I wondered if she’d followed all of that. “The spirits watch her,” she said. She tossed her cigarette on the ground and stamped it out with her heavy shoe. “We have what we need.”
“Maybe you do, but Bridget is very sick. She needs medical attention, and she needs her family—her child.”
I had said too much. But it didn’t matter because Grace appeared in the doorway, wiping her eyes. The empty wicker basket swung on her arm as she stepped into the yard. “Let’s go,” she said to me. She looked at Magdala as if she wanted to say something, but Magdala turned toward the cottage. Grace and I went to the footpath.