No. This is no good. Not for either of us. She shrank slightly, not so much that he’d think she was afraid or resisting him, just enough to release the connection of their lips.
Why? he responded.
Annie had no answer. There didn’t seem to be a single good reason why she couldn’t stand there forever, folded into Daniel’s arms, protected from the elements, sheltered from reality. But he released her. Perhaps it was she who shifted away from him. Who blinked, who released whom?
As their bodies separated, she readied herself to erect a shaky wall of defense by turning the encounter into a joke. She dreaded the awkwardness that would inevitably follow.
“Annie.” He beat her to the first word, stealing her chance to break the tension with self-deprecation or irony. “What I did, destroying that family, made it impossible for me to believe I’d be allowed to love someone again.”
She realized they were still connected. Her hand clasped his, her fingers lost in his warm grasp. His eyes held a journey of pain that gripped at her heart.
“There’s someone in my life who would call bullshit when he hears it, Daniel.” She felt his fingers tense, and she squeezed hers even harder, refusing to let him go. “My sponsor would tell you right now to cut the crap and stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re not the same person who was behind the wheel of that car. You can’t bring that child back, but you have done good in this world. You have to admit that people need you, and that being needed feels good.”
“But none of it’s necessary. I vowed in prison I’d live only with what’s necessary. I’ve taken too much. I’m trying to tell you that I’ve nothing to give.”
“Listen to yourself. Necessary? How are any of us necessary? We get only one shot at this. You and I have messed it up pretty badly, but we’re hanging in there. Look at you—what you’ve been given. These hands and this brain.” She shook their still-fused fists, and with her right arm she tried to stretch, forgetting the spear of pain that would accompany any motion above her waist. She winced and gasped but continued. “These legs that carry people through the hills and bogs, making them fall in love with this place. Your art shows them why they love the world, in all its terrible beauty. Your family, this peninsula, your art. They’re as necessary to you as food, water, and shelter.”
He pulled his fingers from her grasp and took a step back, but she wouldn’t be deterred. “And what about love? Does love fit your definition of necessary? Or do you plan to spend the rest of your life alone?” She mocked his word, but her tone was gentle.
“Yes.”
His simple answer shut her down. She, who had yet to exist alone in her new, tender skin, who had not been truly alone in years, could offer no further argument. In one word, Daniel said everything about their kiss that she dreaded he’d say: It was a mistake, and it won’t happen again.
“I need to sit,” she said at last, slumping against the Old Woman.
Daniel took her by the elbow and led her to a faint depression in the ground, where she folded herself down to rest her back against the rock. She took a long swallow of water from the bottle tucked in the side pocket of her backpack and accepted a wrapped chocolate from Daniel’s extended hand. He settled in next to her, on her good side, and Annie fought the urge to curl into his arms.
“I’m leaving Ballycaróg. I’ll be gone by the end of the week,” she said and popped the candy into her mouth. In her peripheral vision, she caught Daniel’s eyebrows raised in surprise.
“What about the mine?”
She considered how much to tell him now, knowing Fiana would fill him in later. Annie was so weary of talking about it. And raising the specter of Eire-Evergreen only seemed to sully this sacred space. “I plan to wrap up my part in this before I leave. Eire-Evergreen doesn’t agree that reaching out to the community is all that necessary now, so there doesn’t seem to be much need for my skills.”
“They’re that confident of success? Even with the injunction we’ve filed?”
“It would appear so.”
“Would you consider switching sides?” he asked. “Working to save our little bird?”
Now it was her turn to raise her eyebrows. She flashed Daniel a grin. “I have to admit, I like the sound of that. Our little bird.” Annie folded the crinkly chocolate wrapper into a tiny square and tucked it into a side pocket of her hiking pants. She left it at that, let a silence fall between them that still seemed like an ongoing conversation.
When the quiet became too heavy, she asked aloud, “How long were you in prison?”
“From the time of my arrest, through the trial, and after I was convicted of manslaughter: five years, eight months, and twenty days.”
She watched his profile as she asked her next question. “What is your relationship with the boy’s family?”
His jaw tightened, and a faint pulsing began where his teeth gripped and ground together. He met her eyes. “We have no relationship.” He spat out his answer and bit the final word short. “The boy’s name was Daniel. Isn’t that rich?
“Will you tell me what happened?” Annie prodded gently.
Daniel’s explanation was succinct. He spoke to the sea, not to her, as he recited merciless facts neither time nor punishment could diminish.
Stoned, drunk, behind the wheel of an ancient Volvo and speeding the wrong way down a highway, he had plowed into a car carrying a family named Burke. The young mother and father escaped with broken ribs from the airbag, and the father, Patrick, suffered a crushed left wrist. Their twelve-year-old daughter, Caoimhe, sustained a broken nose and collarbone. Five-year-old Daniel, strapped in his car seat in the back, was pulled unconscious from the wreckage without a scratch on his body. Yet he never woke up. Diffuse axonal injury, the coroner had declared. The boy’s fragile brain had suffered such trauma that his parents were faced with the horror of a son alive but existing in a permanent vegetative state.
Five days later, while Daniel Savage shivered and vomited in a hospital bed with acute alcohol and methamphetamine withdrawal, Daniel Burke died. For his parents, the child’s death was perhaps merciful. For Daniel, it meant the charges against him were amended from assault to vehicular manslaughter. Within weeks, his system was cleared of years of substance abuse, and the cast was removed from his broken arm. It took months for his case to go to trial, but in the end, he was sentenced to five years in Cork Prison, the maximum sentence.
Annie offered no words of comfort or anger, nothing to indicate she could forgive him or reviled him. But she stayed by his side as the sun warmed their skin and the wind whispered. “Have you ever spoken to Daniel’s parents?” she asked.
“Yes.” He continued to stare at the sea; whatever emotion his eyes could convey was hidden from her. “I addressed them at my conviction and apologized for what I’d done. Claire Burke began writing to me during my final two years in prison. They’d given birth to another daughter, and Claire let me know they’d forgiven me for killing their son. She and Patrick and their older daughter, Caoimhe, appeared at my first parole hearing and asked that I be released. Parole was denied, and they appeared again a year later and pleaded on my behalf. But I served my full sentence.”
“You should contact them, tell them what you would be doing and why, and ask how they’d feel about you appearing on television on behalf of Beara, to save the Red-billed Chough. In case your past and their loss are dredged up.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I would never kid about something this serious. But there is nothing wrong with being part of this campaign. Your art is part of this land, and it tells the story of Beara and its creatures. You are a gorgeous, rugged creature yourself.”
Daniel snorted, and Annie was relieved to have made him smile.
“It might never come out. You could simply be Daniel Savage, artist and crusader for the Red-billed Chough. But if it did, and the Burkes have truly forgiven you and give their blessing to put yourself out there, the story would be as compelling as the copper mine.”
“I don’t want to be a compelling story. Goddammit. I don’t want the Burkes to be used like that. I can see why you aren’t too torn up about your job. It’s a nasty business you’re in.”
“My business has always been about telling people’s stories, Daniel. I’ve never done anything I’m ashamed of.”
“Until now?”
“I wouldn’t be ashamed to use you to tell the story of Beara, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m not.” He punched at the dirt with the heel of his boot. “You didn’t come here to sell my story, or the Red-billed Chough’s. You came to tell the story of the copper mine. You never answered my question. Why are you leaving now?”
“I can’t tell you that. Not all of it, anyhow. What I could, I shared with Fiana this morning.”
Daniel worried his lower lip between his teeth, and Annie took his silence as an indication that he understood. He straightened the watch face on his wrist. “I’m expected at the gallery in Kenmare soon. We should probably get back. It’s nearly two.”
“We?”
“You’re not thinking you’ll make it back on your own?”
“I’m not ready to leave here.” She swept her hand across, taking in the scenery. “There are things I’d like to share with this Old Woman. Alone.” Seeing the doubt on his face, she said, “Daniel, please. I’ll be fine.”
“I know you will be.” He opened his pack and dug around. “But here’s an extra bottle of water. And some biscuits.”
Annie accepted the supplies, tucking the bottle in a side pocket of her backpack and dropping the McVitie’s inside. Daniel planted his feet, as if getting ready to stand. “I wasn’t certain I’d see you again,” he said.
“I was certain you didn’t want to.”
A small shake of the head, a breath exhaled. Frustration in, resignation out. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Daniel spoke slowly, evenly. “I hoped you’d find some reason to stay.”
If it were only that easy to listen to her heart. Annie had come up with a multitude of reasons to stay, each more emotional and selfish than the last, each built on a scaffolding of fantasy and longing. And what would be the point of explaining it all now? Caught in her own tongue-tied emotion, she remained silent.
Daniel tried one more time. “I’ll be at the AA meeting in Kenmare this evening, if you fancy a bowl of Irish stew later,” he said.
“I’d like that. I’ll try to make it over,” she lied. “Good luck with the installation.” She’d come to the end of her courage. If she were going to leave, it had to be now.
“Annie.” In that one word, an invitation to remain. How she longed to give in to the forgiveness and grace that might await her if she stayed.
“It just couldn’t be any other way, Daniel. I have to go. There’s just too much work to do.”
He probably thought she meant work on the mine and the chough. Annie thought she probably meant work on herself. But the distinction hardly mattered now.
“I’ll never forget that kiss.” This was as much of a good-bye as she could say.
“I won’t, either. Of course I won’t.”
He rose like a tower above her and slung his pack over one shoulder. There was a moment when the toes of his boots were inches from her hand. She could have stopped him with one touch. As if sensing the same possibility, he hesitated. Then his feet turned in the grass and rocks, the earth trembled slightly with his tread, and she was alone.
Annie folded her arms over her knees and let the tears flow. She cried until she began to laugh in great hiccupping giggles. At last, spent and hungry, she stood and gathered the trekking poles. Damn. Daniel’s poles.
She cautiously put weight on each leg, bending and straightening her knees. Her bruised muscles protested, and Annie leaned into the Old Woman’s solid, silent support. She drained the water from the bottle. “Thank you,” she whispered and kissed the pockmarked stone. The Hag’s face was immutable, her proud chin tilted up slightly as she stared with hard eyes toward the sea, hair streaming behind in her in the permanent wind of stone. Annie pressed her cheek to the Hag’s. “Mise Éire,” she said, and her lips met rock warmed in the sun.
Then she listened. She heard the barks and yips of a sheepdog, the alarmed bleats of its fluffy charges, the growl of an engine, the put-put of a tractor motor. Carried through the short, green grass, whistling over the stones, came the reply: Uaigní mé ná an Chailleach Bhéarra.
I am lonelier than the Old Woman of Beara. Annie had memorized the strange syllables until they’d become fused with the English translation. She listened for more, but the breeze carried no other sounds that didn’t belong to the valley below. She ran a hand along the Old Woman’s ridged spine and stepped away. As she joined the paved road, her stride became more confident, and the trekking poles clicked and tapped against the rocks in playful strokes.
She tossed the poles in the backseat of the car without noticing the eyes like sea glass that watched her from several yards up the road, the only part of the man that didn’t blend into the green, black, and brown turnstile where he sat, making certain she was safe.
~
As she approached Faunkill, every sense ached, urging her to turn the steering wheel left and follow the road to Kenmare, to Daniel. After a few miles, Annie snapped off the Mozart aria trilling from a Cork station and rolled down the window. She pulled off the North Road just outside Castletownbere and popped open the glove box, where she’d stashed her phone before hiking to meet the Old Woman. She hadn’t spoken to Stephen since she’d left for Ireland. Less than two weeks ago, yet her marriage felt like part of another person’s life.
It was early morning in Seattle. The phone rang several times, and her heart fell with disappointment. She’d finally been ready to make this call and wasn’t certain when she’d have the strength again. She waited for the inevitable voice mail. Then she heard Stephen’s muffled, “Annie?”
“Did I wake you?”
“Of course not. It’s after six. I’m running.” She could hear it now, the rhythmic puffs of his words, the distant whoosh of traffic. He must be at Green Lake, headed toward Aurora Avenue.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“In Ireland still. I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Now? Now’s not the greatest time, Annie. I’ve got a training session at eight-thirty, and I’d planned for ten miles this morning.”
“I just wanted to let you know I’m coming back sometime this weekend. I’m finished here.”
“That was quick. You haven’t even been gone a week, have you?”
“Ten days, actually.” As though he’d already dismissed her, the way he dismissed a lost race or a thwarted personal best. Stephen picked up and moved on better than anyone. They were opposites in this regard. She brooded, reliving every sling and arrow until she pricked her hide raw.
“Sorry.” He exhaled in a huff, and Annie imagined him coming to a quick and irritated halt on the trail. “Are you okay?”
Just like that, he tugged at her heart. She got out of the car. She’d parked across the road from a bridge spanning a long canal that fed out to the sea. The water was tranquil, reflecting the bright green tendrils of willows that dripped into the canal and swirled in eddies. A leaden bank of clouds hung over the ocean to the south, but around her the air was still and golden, and the pavement cast a faint warmth.
“It’s just as pretty here as I remembered, Stephen. Maybe prettier. I feel like I’m seeing it for the first time.”
“It sounds like getting away was the right thing to do. I’m glad you went.”
She pictured him running a hand through his damp hair, blond like hers but thinning on top. He would have stopped the timer on his Garmin, calculating how he could still get in the miles he’d planned for this morning’s run. She wouldn’t keep him. But she wouldn’t let him go just yet.
“I’ve had some time to clear my head. I hope we can talk when I get back.”
“Annie.”
We’re not getting back together was what she heard in his cautious tone. She cut off his thought. “I know it’s a cliché, but I want us to be friends. We can’t go on to this next phase of our lives, whatever is in store for us, hating each other.”
His relief that she hadn’t called to beg a place back in his life came through the line as clearly as if she stood next to him, seeing the dread drain from his face. “I never hated you,” he said. “Angry at you? Sad and disappointed? Of course. But I could never hate you.”
“You deserve so much more than what I could give you. That’s why I called. Just to say I’m sorry.”
“We tried. We really did. I think things were over even before your drinking became a problem.”
She didn’t have the heart to argue. At one time, she would have picked him apart, pointing out instance after instance when her efforts exceeded his, when he had clearly given up long before she. “Maybe you’re right. If you want to talk things through when I get home, we can. But if you don’t, if you just want to get on with the legalities, I’m okay with that too. I just want to start over.”
He didn’t respond right away. In Seattle a police siren flew by, and then another. She was right—he was somewhere off Aurora. If it were a clear morning, he’d just be able to see the dome of Mount Rainier to the south, like the rounded top of an ice cream cone.
“I’d like to think we can work things out between us, without lawyers.” His voice softened. Stephen sounded resigned, almost sad. “I’ve gathered the divorce paperwork. It seems pretty simple—just checking the boxes and signing off.”
She nodded her assent, even as her eyes filled with tears. “Okay.” She let a breath out. “That’s good.”
“We can talk about all the rest—the house, whatever—when you get back.”
“Of course. I should let you go.”
“You know this isn’t about not loving you anymore, Annie. I do. I always will.”
There were stones piled up on the ledge of the bridge. As if someone had collected them, intending to return on another day. “I love you, too.” She picked a stone out of the pile and dropped it over the side. It hit the water with a cheerful plop. The ripples shifted a paddling drake, and he squawked at his mate. “I’ll be going back to the Rainier Suites. I’ll call you after I get in.”
She drove to Bantry in silence and pulled into the car park outside the Anglican church. Leaving the car, she walked the half mile back into town, in search of a grocery store where she could buy supplies for a picnic dinner. The AA meeting wasn’t until six-thirty—she had a few hours to kill.
~
The meeting drew to a close, and Annie joined the queue at the refreshments table, hoping for a Styrofoam cup of hot tea before taking to the road to Ballycaróg. She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against her right hip and outer thigh, where the flesh knitted together in tender ridges.
“Well, hello there. I’m Bea Moriarty. Welcome to Bantry.”
An old woman beamed up at her. She was like a wren, tiny and round with spindly limbs, bundled in soft browns. Annie could see her pink scalp, mottled with age spots, through the fleecy curls wound tightly against her head. She wanted to scoop up this tiny creature and tuck her into a pocket.
“Hello, Bea Moriarty. I’m Annie Crowe.” She extended a hand, and the brown sprite pressed a cool, frail claw into her palm.
“Well, now, that’s an Irish name if ever there was one, but yours is an American voice I’m hearing. One never knows if suggesting someone might be American is the right thing to do, just in case you are Canadian.”
Annie laughed out loud, and Bea giggled. Their turn came at the tea and coffee. Annie dunked a Lipton tea bag into a cup of steaming hot water and held up her palm at Bea’s offer of the milk pitcher. “More’s the pity. If my grandfather really had been Irish, I could use that to find a way to stay.”
Bea peered up at her through faded blue eyes. “So, this is just a short visit then. I wasn’t sure, after seeing you here last week. I wondered if you were a friend of Daniel’s. West Cork is a small world,” she finished, responding to Annie’s sharp glance. They’d moved back toward the center of the room, and Bea responded briefly to the many hands pressed to her shoulder with kind but not inclusive greetings. Those who passed gave Annie an inquisitive look but moved on without joining their conversation.
“Some of these souls I’ve known for most of their adult lives,” Bea said. “And some, their parents before them.” She placed a feathery hand on Annie’s wrist. Despite the ridges of blue veins on the back of her hand, her palm was soft as down. “But you’ll be wondering why it is I asked about Daniel.”
“I’ve encountered so many strange things this past week. I’ve learned to stop asking and just wait for the inevitable sign.”
Bea tilted back her head, and laughter warbled forth. “You’re Irish, even if your ancestry says not. Come, let’s sit. My feet are ready to burst out of these cursed shoes.” She wore badly polished brown heels, and her scrawny legs ended in puffy ankles that strained at the tops of her pumps.
Annie took her hand and led her to a pair of folding chairs, the only ones that had not been scooped up as the room was cleared. They sat down, younger woman and old. Bea kept hold of her hand, and Annie felt something like love in the current that ran between the women’s skin.
“Signs. Well, yes. I’ve gone through many years of training to recognize all kinds of signs,” Bea said. “But before I was a counselor, even before I was an alcoholic, I was a woman. Didn’t I have walking them down the lane and knocking on my front door!” She grinned, showing tiny teeth flecked with red lipstick. “I’ve seen lots of women enter this church basement and others just like it across the county and set their sights on our Danny. You’re the first I’ve seen him look at with that same sort of hunger.”
Annie was floored. Perhaps less by Bea’s declaration than by the thrill the words gave her. Oh, Annie, she warned herself.
“I’m no different than any other woman who’s crossed the thresholds of these church basements. I fell madly for Daniel the moment I laid eyes on him.” Annie smiled to indicate she was joking, but her words were the truth. Bea knew it, too. “But I’m leaving Cork in three days. I’m the last person Daniel needs in his life.”
Bea clucked and shook her head. “The Addict doesn’t have to control everything you do. She doesn’t have to define you or decide your life. I know it might seem like that now, when this new world is so raw and unfamiliar, but someday soon, you’ll be in charge of your life again.”
“How did you know?” Annie leaned in, searching the crimpled pink face.
“How did I know what, dearest?”
“How did you know about The Addict?”
Bea touched Annie’s cheek and then pulled her close. Annie smelled the rose lotion her grandmother used to wear and the biscuity scent of ironed linens and something fainter but richer—the scent of peat and brine. Bea kissed the tender skin in front of her ear, whispering, “Mise Éire: Sine mé ná an Chailleach Bhéarra.”
She sat back with her hands cupping Annie’s cheeks. “She lives inside me, too. The Addict. But the Old Woman is stronger. Let her in, Annie. She has enough lives for us all.”
“I feel something here,” Annie said. “Something in West Cork that I’ve never felt anywhere else—a sense of being alive, free, strong. I don’t want to lose this feeling. I’m terrified to go home.”
“Go home you must, dearest,” said Bea.
Annie nodded, and the tears spilled hot from her tired eyes.
“But of course, Ireland’s not going anywhere.”