“My goodness, Mrs. Mitchell,” said Abraham in wonder as he looked the house over, “you’ve worked miracles here. And it’s only been a few weeks.”
Elizabeth had been steadily painting the house, one room at a time, so that gradually, the house was losing its musty, unlived-in smell.
“Thank you, Mr. Greene,” she said, smiling proudly. “With a little more help from you, I think we’ll make it through the winter.” Her expression clouded at the realization that as May was coming to an end, she was planning – having to plan – to be here long-term. Maybe permanently.
“Anyway,” she said brusquely, “there are a few things I still need your assistance with.”
Conn and Will were delighted to have Abraham back with them. They helped him mix the mortar as he re-pointed the chimney stones where the ivy had worked its tendrils in between the stones, loosening some of them. He would not allow them to climb the ladder.
“It’s too high,” he said. But he did talk to them while he worked. The children lay on their backs in the grass, watching him high above them as they talked about books and stories they had been reading.
“Did your family read this much in New Mexico?” Abraham asked curiously.
“No,” said Will. “We had television. But we don’t get any channels here. Just radio.”
Abraham laughed. “That is true, William. Our mountains block the television signals, I guess. And we’re too far away from any large cities with television stations.”
“Well, I always read a lot,” Conn said with a superior air.
Abraham smiled. As he moved higher, it became more difficult to talk. He asked, “Are you sure there’s nothing your mother could use some help with?”
Guiltily, Conn sat up and looked around. She wasn’t sure why, but it wasn’t as much fun helping Mom as Mr. Greene. They went to find her. She was on her hands and knees, her hair tied back with a bandana, scrubbing the wainscoting in the dining room. A thick layer of dust and grime had built up on the mouldings, and it all needed to be wiped down before it could receive a fresh coat of paint.
“Can we help?” Will asked.
Elizabeth looked up in surprise. “Wow,” she said, dabbing some sweat off her brow with her forearm, “that’s the nicest offer I’ve had in weeks.”
She helped them fill buckets with clean soapy water. Will stayed downstairs with her while Conn went up to the second-floor hallway. She began working on the wainscot next to her mother’s room, the spot she leaned against each night. Her mother had cried less frequently the last few nights. She never cried during the day, Conn realized as she scrubbed. Last night, Conn had stayed for only a few minutes and then crept back to bed.
She moved to the opposite bit of wall adjacent to the stairs. As she rubbed her wet rag along one vertical moulding, she heard a soft metallic click, and she realized that the inner panel of the wainscot had popped out toward her just a bit.
Glancing quickly down the stairs to make sure no one was coming up, she gently prized the door open and was startled to see, not a cupboard as she had expected, but a very narrow staircase built alongside the regular stairs, except it was hidden inside the walls. She crawled to her mother’s room and looked. She had never realized that the wall in that room was inset more than the wall of the stairwell. She pushed the panel closed and heard it click shut. She clicked it again just to make sure the mechanism wasn’t a fluke.
Her heart was pounding with excitement as she continued to clean her way down the hall. She kept pressing the mouldings, on the lookout for any other secret passages and wondering if her mother knew about the one she’d found.
She heard her mother moving around downstairs. “How are you doing up there?” Elizabeth called.
“Almost done,” Conn called back. She finished cleaning the last few feet of wainscoting with no further discoveries, and carried her bucket downstairs.
Elizabeth frowned. “Are you okay? Your face is all red.”
“I’m fine,” Conn protested as her mother laid a hand on her forehead to see if she was running a temperature.
“Hmmm,” said Elizabeth. “You don’t feel warm.
“It’s just the scrubbing,” Conn insisted.
“Well, thank you both so much,” Elizabeth said appreciatively. “That would have taken me the rest of today and tomorrow by myself.”
“That’s okay,” Conn said, resolving to try and help her mother more often.
“Mrs. Mitchell?” came Abraham’s voice through the back screen door.
“Come in, Mr. Greene,” Elizabeth called. “Please, you don’t ever have to knock or wait to be invited in.”
He nodded deferentially as he entered the kitchen. “There’s a storm blowing up, so I’m going to stop for today. The new mortar I already put in should set up before the weather gets here. I’ll be back tomorrow if the storm passes.”
***
The storm did indeed blow in with so much thunder and lightning that they couldn’t get a clear radio signal. The air became close and damp with the increased humidity.
“Just in case,” Elizabeth said as she gathered candles and flashlights, along with a couple of old oil lamps.
“I’m sure glad we have a bathroom now,” Will said as he and Conn brushed their teeth, listening to the downpour outside.
Lying in bed a little while later, Conn tossed restlessly, trying to find a cool spot on her sheets. She could smell the damp metallic air coming in through the screens as a steady rain fell, punctuated by continued intermittent flashes of lightning and low, long rumbles of thunder.
Elizabeth came in to kiss her goodnight. “Nana always told me it’s cooler down here,” she said, moving Conn’s pillow to the foot of the bed. She laughed as Conn frowned at her skeptically. “Just try it.”
Conn couldn’t say it was any cooler with her head at the foot of the bed, but at last she fell asleep. She didn’t know what time it was when she was startled awake. At least she thought she was awake. Someone had called her name. She lay quietly, listening in the dark for any sounds other than the rain and thunder. Just as she started to drift off again, she heard it.
“Connemara.”
It was scarcely more than a whisper in the dark. Conn couldn’t tell where it came from.
“Mom?” she whispered, her heart pounding a little faster. There was no answer. “Who’s there?”
For a long moment, there was only the sound of the falling rain, then, “You must speak my name,” came the whisper.
“But who are you?” Conn’s heart was beating a more rapid tattoo in her chest now.
“You know me.”
Conn frowned.
“You must speak my name,” the whisper insisted again.
Conn thought. “Nana?” Silence. “Fiona?” she tried again, using her great-grandmother’s name this time.
“Fiona knew me,” said the voice. “And Méav. Elizabeth knew me as a girl, but not now.”
Conn held her breath and then whispered, “Caitríona Ní Faolain.” This time it wasn’t a question. She knew.
A figure, misty and shapeless at first, appeared near the bed. Slowly, its form became more defined, more solid. As it did, the room’s air became chilled.
“I know you! I’ve seen you in my dreams,” Conn said as she recognized the wild curls, only faintly reddish now as if Conn were seeing her through fog.
“Yes,” said Caitríona. “I’ve been coming to you in your dreams.”
“Are you really Caitríona Ní Faolain?” Conn asked in awe.
“I am, child.”
“Are you a ghost, then?”
“I am… a shadow,” said Caitríona sadly.
Conn stared transfixed at Caitríona’s image. “Why do you come to me?” she asked.
“I need your help,” Caitríona responded.
Conn drew back a little. “What kind of help?”
Caitríona sighed and said, “Ah, Connemara, ‘tis a terrible shame my father and I brought upon our family, and a curse as well.”
“A curse?” Conn gasped. “What kind of curse?”
“A curse of deepest sorrow,” said Caitríona. “Punishment for our sins.” She closed her eyes and began, “Ill-fated shall your progeny be…”
Conn joined in, the words coming of their own accord, her mind filled with flashes of memory: an angry row in a little stone cottage, a feeling of terrible despair, an old woman’s face, lit by a peat fire….
“… A child, ne’er soiled by hate or greed could
Bring forgiveness and healing to those long gone.
With the dead laid to rest, the living move on,
Freed at last by a soul blessed with light.”
Conn looked at Caitríona as silence fell again. Caitríona opened her eyes and stared back.
“You are the one we have been waiting for, Connemara Ní Faolain.”
***
Conn awakened to a crystal clear morning, washed clean of all heat and humidity. She sat up and looked around her room, confused. That… that dream, if that’s what it was, had felt so real, as real as the other dreams she’d been having, as if she’d really had that conversation with Caitríona Ní Faolain. She dressed slowly and went downstairs to the kitchen where her mother was already making coffee.
“How about cereal this morning?” Elizabeth asked. “I don’t feel like heating the kitchen up with the stove, it’s such a lovely, cool morning.”
Conn sat, unanswering, as if she hadn’t heard.
“Connemara?”
Conn looked up. “Oh, um, cereal is fine. I can get it.”
“Are you all right?” Elizabeth asked. “Are you coming down with something?”
Conn shook her head. “I’m fine.” Instinctively, she felt she should not tell her mother about the previous night. She went to get a cereal bowl from the cupboard. As she poured milk over her cornflakes, she asked, “What ever happened to Caitríona Ní Faolain?”
“Why would you ask that?” Elizabeth asked.
Conn looked around. “This used to be her house. I know parts of her story, but what happened after she got here?” she asked, trying to sound no more than curious.
Elizabeth’s gaze lost focus as she tried to remember. “She disappeared,” she recalled.
Conn sat up straighter. “What do you mean she disappeared?” she demanded.
“Well, she came here with her daughter and a few freed slaves from the plantation. But a few years after they got here, she disappeared. No one knows what happened to her.”
Conn gaped. “But what happened to her daughter, then?”
“Deirdre? She was raised by the colored people who came with Caitríona. And then when she got older, she married a man named McEwan. They stayed here and farmed this land.”
“And they had Nana?” Conn asked.
Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, Nana – Fiona – was the only child who lived. I’m not sure how many other children they had. There’s a cemetery somewhere nearby.” She stirred her coffee absently. “Nana was born in 1893.”
“And then Nana had your mother?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, now frowning a little at Conn. “And my mother, Méav, was again the only one who lived to grow up. I think there were a couple of children who died as babies, but I know Mom had an older brother who died in a farm accident when he was thirteen. Then it was just Mom.”
“Only one girl child shall survive,” Conn breathed.
“What?” Elizabeth asked distractedly.
“And you never knew your father?” Conn asked.
“No,” said Elizabeth. “Edward Cuthbert. My mother married him just before he was shipped overseas during the second World War. He was killed in action before I was born.”
“And your mother?” Conn asked, though she knew this part of the story.
Elizabeth took a sip from her coffee cup. “She died of polio when I was five. And I came here to live with Nana.”
“And then you met Daddy when you were in college?” Conn asked, never tiring of hearing this story.
“Yes,” Elizabeth remembered with a misty smile. “I went to a women’s college, Longwood, in Virginia. And my roommate had a boyfriend at the Naval Academy – one of many boyfriends, it turned out. Anyway, she talked me into going with her to a dance at the Academy to meet her boyfriend’s roommate.”
“And that was Daddy?”
Elizabeth nodded. “And that was Daddy. I think I fell in love with him before the first dance was over.”
“And now…” Conn began, but stopped. “Our family has had a lot of sadness, hasn’t it?” she asked quietly, the weight of her family’s history settling around her like a mantle, linking her to all the previous generations who had lived in this house. If her conversation with Caitríona was real, all the sadness was down to this curse, whatever it was – the curse she was supposed to break somehow.
Elizabeth looked into her daughter’s clear blue eyes. “Yes,” she said, “I guess we have.”
They stared at each other mutely for a long time, until Will made a sleepy entrance. Elizabeth took the opportunity to change the subject.
“What kind of birthday cake would you like?” she asked.
Conn’s eyes lit up. She’d almost forgotten she would be eleven in, she counted quickly, ten days’ time. June sixth. “Does it have to be a cake?”
“No,” Elizabeth laughed. “Whatever you want. It’s your birthday.”
Will looked up from his cereal. “We could have chocolate pudding,” he suggested.
Conn rolled her eyes. “You can have pudding on your birthday. I want cherry pie!”
“Cherry pie you shall have,” Elizabeth said, getting a pencil and pad to make a list. “What about for dinner? Anything special you would like?”
Conn thought for a minute. “Barbequed chicken and corn on the cob?”
Elizabeth wrote. “It may be too early for corn, but I’ll see.”
“Can we invite Mr. Greene?” Conn asked.
Elizabeth looked up in surprise. “I think that would be very nice, but –” she said firmly, “you must tell him no present. We just want the pleasure of his company for dinner.”
When Abraham returned later that morning to resume work on the chimney, Conn invited him to dinner.
“I would be honored, Connemara,” he said, looking pleased. He mixed up a fresh bucket of mortar and was setting up his ladder when he asked, “Have you been fishing recently?”
“Yes,” Conn said. “Fishing hooks work much better than a safety pin.”
He chuckled. “Yes, I imagine they do. I haven’t forgotten my promise to take you and William fishing one day, but it will have to wait until I have a little time off.”