Annie entered the Ballycaróg Bayview Hotel lobby just before lunch to find James and Colm sitting on adjacent sofas in front of a low coffee table, papers spread out before them, matching laptops open.
Colm stood and greeted her with a peck on the cheek. Much preferable to the bone-crushing handshake he’d offered when they were introduced at dinner four nights before. “You look like the cat that ate the canary,” he said. In his corduroy suit jacket and shirt in shades of mustard and olive green, with a brown oilskin coat draped over the back of the sofa, Colm looked more suited to a barnyard than an office tower. His wispy blond hair held memories of red. Red bloomed in his nose and cheeks as well, and in the tiny veins of his pale green eyes—signs of the heavy drinker Annie recognized him to be the moment they’d met.
“I think I was the canary,” Annie replied. “The one who went down into the copper mine.” Before offering an explanation to the puzzled men, she looked around for listening ears. The front desk was unstaffed, and she could hear the hum of a vacuum cleaner down one long hallway.
“I went to the Beara Chough Coalition meeting last night.” She perched on the edge of the sofa across from Colm and James. “The village has organized, and they have valid concerns. They’re aware that if the mining remains an offshore operation only, they won’t see much benefit in the way of jobs or a bounce to the local economy. So, that’s got to be addressed.”
James nodded and waved her on.
“They’re serious about this bird, the Red-billed Chough,” she said. “Have you been down to see its nesting grounds?” The men shook their heads. “Well, we should go.”
“It makes me think of the controversy in your part of the world several years ago,” Colm said. “Something about logging and an owl?”
“The spotted owl. It was more than a controversy. It was a federal lawsuit. The spotted owl became the symbol of all that is wrong with development and industry. If we aren’t careful, that little crow could become the spotted owl of the Beara Peninsula.”
James dismissed her with a huff. “Ireland isn’t the United States.”
“I wouldn’t say that with such confidence. Ireland is part of the European Union, and I’ll bet the EU environmental regulations are tighter than they are in the States.” The men exchanged looks, and the certainty they were withholding something rippled through Annie like a cold current.
“The upshot is this,” she continued. “There are some pretty strong pro-mine sentiments in town. I don’t think people felt completely free to speak their minds last night, seeing as it was a meeting of the anti-mine coalition, but when I spoke to them—”
“What do you mean, you spoke to them?” James interrupted.
“I introduced myself. I introduced us. I told them we were as committed to keeping this peninsula beautiful and protected as they were.”
He flexed and released his fingers, then pressed his palms together. “Annie.”
“Why does this surprise you? I thought winning them over was exactly why you brought me on board. You can’t just come in here waving euros around and start drilling.” She repeated Fiana’s words, shocking herself that she’d absorbed them, believed them.
“No one said we were.” James’s tone was conciliatory. Condescending, Annie thought fleetingly. “But the stronger message would be that this is a business the Irish government supports, rather than worrying ourselves with cozying up to the locals.”
“What is it exactly you’d like me to do?” Annie asked, keeping her voice low and measured. “Look pretty and keep my mouth shut?”
James exhaled through his nose, a soft hiss of annoyance.
“So, there is good news that should make all our jobs easier.” Colm inserted himself into their tension. “We secured the State Mining Lease.” He made the announcement under his breath while scanning the otherwise empty lobby. “The paperwork is being processed, and the lease hasn’t been announced officially, so let’s keep it under wraps. But we spoke with the DM of Exploration and Mining yesterday, and it’s green lights all the way.”
The news shook her. Annie looked to James for confirmation, and he shrugged his shoulders in an offhand acknowledgment of their success. She sank back into the sofa. “You’ve had the prospecting license for only six months. I thought these things took years to put into place. The Environmental Impact Statement and the Pollution Prevention and Control license—what about those?”
Again, a meaningful look flashed between the men. Colm—leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs, hands clasped—spoke first. “Of course those will need to be completed. This is why we must keep quiet about the lease. The deputy minister is on our side, ready to do what it takes to make this project succeed.”
James coughed into his fist and punched a couple of keys on his laptop. “Colm, you make it sound like a conspiracy.” He tried to make light of it, but Annie caught the flicker of narrowed eyes. “We’ve still got a long road ahead of us before mining operations can begin. The DM isn’t taking sides or slicing through the red tape.”
Her internal alarm pinged quietly. Why mention this if it wasn’t precisely what was happening in Dublin? “Who’s the DM?” she asked.
“Hugh Doyle,” Colm replied, without hesitation. “A Cork man. He’s got a particular interest in what happens here.”
Annie filed the name away. “So, now that you’ve secured the lease, to hell with public opinion? Isn’t this exactly how Eire-Evergreen bungled things in the first place—muscling into the community, throwing around promises without taking its pulse?”
James snapped shut the lid of his laptop and turned his full attention to her. “I think if we took a pulse, we’d see the patient is failing. There are, what, six thousand people on this peninsula? How many were at last night’s meeting? Fifty? A hundred? I don’t think we’re going to see a tidal wave of resistance, Annie.”
“I’ve been in the strategic communications business a long time, James,” she volleyed back. “As you have noted, I’m very good at my job. I know that one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to underestimate public opinion. If this community gets wind that you are taking their support for granted, expect a tsunami of resistance. As your strategist, I advise you not to wait for the peons to fall at your feet, thanking you for the jobs. I advise you to show your faces as supporters of Beara and its environment. You should make plans to save this little bird before the rest of the world learns it’s in danger.”
“Bravo. Nice speech.” James tapped his hands together in mock applause. “It sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“Indeed.” She turned his sarcasm into a challenge. “Our next step is to initiate a community meeting of our own. Glossy brochures and a slick video might work in Dublin, but you’ll only alienate the residents here. Of course I’ll coordinate this meeting, and I assume I will have your full support, that you will provide me the resources I need, and you’ll be there, ready to face the people who will be behind the increase in your company’s share prices.” She sat with her back ramrod straight, her words pouring forth in a low and even tone. It felt like achieving her perfect stride in a race, when her whole body clicked into one seamless, coordinated flow of breath and muscle.
Colm broke into the tension again. “Annie, you’re right. I think Beara will respond best to the human touch. Fine work you did last night. James and I are returning to Dublin this afternoon, but you can count on us for whatever you need. Just ring.”
James opened his laptop again, and as his fingers flew across the keyboard, a lift of his chin indicated his grudging consent. His cell phone rang, followed half a heartbeat later by Colm’s. Just beyond the hotel doors, a large white van with tinted windows disgorged several men. The lobby filled with commotion as the men burst in with loud voices and American accents and golf bags. James and Colm turned away, palms pressed to their exposed ears.
Annie took the opportunity to leave. She’d said enough, and she had work to do. As she walked through the now-chaotic lobby, she angled her scowl and the hard green chips of her eyes toward the flirtatious hellos the golfers tossed in her direction. One face made her pause. Sunglasses hid his eyes, but she felt she was being watched behind dark lenses. The tilt of his head, the angle of his body, directed at her. Something familiar that sent a tremor of anxiety through her. The same she’d felt when she first heard James’s voice.
The whisper of recognition was ephemeral. Then it was gone.
~
The car steered right instead of left, pulling Annie away from Ballycaróg. She turned at the Old Iron Forge, merging onto the R571 toward Eyeries and Ardgroom. She needed to breathe, to get some perspective.
As the green and blue scenery slipped past her, she wondered for the first time how she could continue to work on a campaign she was losing a grasp on, one she’d never held firmly except as a lifeline to sobriety, a purpose to get out of bed every morning. It wasn’t enough. It hadn’t been, not for a long time. She should quit now and go home.
“Home,” Annie said aloud. The word fell flat, sucked away by the whump-slap of tires on tarmac. She scanned the passing scenery, looking for meaning in the simple, complicated word. Ireland’s blue-green was so much like the Northwest’s; if she squinted, she could be on the Olympic Peninsula, rounding Discovery Bay toward Sequim.
The adrenaline from her confrontation with James had seeped away, taking her bravado with it. In its place was the black hole of uncertainty. She’d thought she could hang on to her sobriety as long as she had her marriage and her job. After Stephen asked her to move out, she figured she could limp along with the crutch of work holding her up. Now her job dangled on a thread. The full force of her life disintegrating and blowing away like flakes of soot discharged from a chimney hit her on that sweet stretch of country road.
She braked into a turnout and stepped out of the car, working to calm herself. Breathe. She was past Ardgroom, and the farms were sparse, hidden behind tall hedges of fuchsia, lilac, and gorse. Kenmare Bay winked in the distance; clouds drew shadows across the brown skin of the eastern hills. A sagging clump of palm trees on a distant knoll looked as lost as she felt. Annie leaned against the hood of the car, drawing the curiosity of a few sheep pulling up grass near the fence. They paused and watched her with wide-set eyes.
A flicker of black against the green grass beyond the sheep: two crows hopping in tandem toward a small mound of earth. Small, delicate things. No, they couldn’t be crows. Swallows, swift, sparrows—Annie hardly knew the difference. It was their pas de deux that held her, bobbing as though attached to the same string, their bodies dipping toward each other and away in a waltz of instinct. Then one called a questioning chi, and the other echoed with a descending ach. They turned to show their profile, and Annie stopped breathing. The light broke against the birds, illuminating the flaming orange-red of their beaks and feet. She extended a hand as if to preen their glossy black feathers and then looked around, wanting to share her discovery. Red-billed Choughs, a pair stepping to a pattern of mating, or perhaps already bound and now seeking out fodder for their nest.
The tightness in her chest and the racing of her heart had eased, but the anxiety was replaced by an ache like homesickness, a longing to belong to someplace, to know her place, to whom she might belong. Yet, as she put herself back into the bungalow she and Stephen had so carefully renovated in that shining, lovely city, it wasn’t the waters and mountains of the Pacific Northwest she craved, or the market full of flowers and fish, the cafés smoky-rich with coffee steam, the bookstores, or her running routes. All that seemed to belong to a life far more distant than the one week she’d been away. The dreams she and Stephen had built in that house in Green Lake were over.
She craved this. This blue-and-green peace, this sense of hovering above it all, never landing, never touching ground, never having to return to the Annie Who Was. She wanted to remain here, in the Annie Who Is. Without a past. Clean.