Sarah knew that no matter how long she lived she would literally never get her fill of looking at him. She gazed at her son as he sat at the dinner table, laughing and shoving with Mike’s boy, Gavin, and she knew she hadn’t stopped smiling since the moment she had seen him trot down the center aisle of camp, his face filthy, his hair wild around his head, straight for her. For the time it took for her to see him coming toward her—unharmed and jubilant—and then feel him in her arms again, Sarah knew she would never ask for more in this lifetime.
Like most miracles, how it all came about was as thrilling a story of luck and happenstance combined with the stubbornness of the human spirit as there could ever be.
“When the pilot told me they had news of a VIP they needed to stop for in Limerick, I could see by the way he was looking at me that if I wanted to wander off from a bathroom break when we stopped they wouldn’t look too hard for me.” John bit into his third sandwich as he told his tale.
Sarah kept one hand on his arm the whole time, as if to confirm to herself that he was really there, flesh and blood.
“Who was the VIP?’ Gavin asked.
Fiona slapped him playfully on the back of the head. “What does it matter? Let him tell the story!”
“Oh, no, Aunt, Fi,” John said. “That’s the cool part.” He looked at his mother. “It was Prince William. He was on a fishing trip in Ireland and was in a hurry to get back to London.”
“Mercy,” Fiona said. “You gave your seat up for the future King of England? Well done, lad!”
“Yeah, well, I would’ve given it up for a French poodle if it meant I could get back home.”
“So you walked all the way from Limerick?” Declan asked. He sat beside Mike as the two smoked and sipped whiskey. Sarah was delighted, but not surprised, to see the obvious beginning of a strong friendship.
John shook his head. “The pilot put me down nearer to Adare. It’s only twenty miles or so and the weather was fine.”
“You just slipped away?” Mike was shaking his head, either at the simplicity of it all or the grotesque priorities of the pilot choosing a celebrity over the young American who had been his first responsibility.
“Yeah, and when I got nearly to camp I ran into Gavin who told me what was happening.”
Mike looked at his son. “Is that why you weren’t where you were supposed to be?” he asked pointedly.
“Sorry, Da,” Gavin said, and there was something about the way he answered that told Sarah that Gavin had grown up since she’d last seen him. “It’s true I wasn’t where you told me to be, but I reckon I was exactly where I was supposed to be.”
“What riddle is this?” Mike growled.
“It’s on account of me, sir,” John said, looking at Mike. “And I’m sorry for making Gav disobey you. But I had to.”
“Go on.”
“Well,” John said, reaching for a small sugar cake from the plate Fiona extended to him. “I figured I knew better ‘coz I had intel that you didn’t.”
Mike snorted but didn’t respond.
“So why did you not want Gavin in the tree his da told him to be in?” Fiona asked.
John put the cake down and wiped his fingers on his sleeve. Sarah could see that, although he was still the same size since she last saw him, his eyes seemed to belong to a much older boy.
“Uncle Mike wanted him in a certain tree as a sniper, but I needed him in a different tree so he could detonate the landmines.”
“You replanted the landmines after I told your father to dig them up and remove them?” Mike spoke evenly, but Sarah could tell there was no heat in his voice.
“Yes sir, I did,” John said, meeting his eyes. “My dad was right about needing those mines to defend the community. You must’ve thought the same thing when you found out we were under attack, ‘coz my mom said you went looking for them.”
Sarah stole a glance at Mike. He didn’t say anything.
“The weeks you were gone, Mom, I did a lot of thinking about a lot of things. I figured Dad was right about us needing the explosives, but Uncle Mike was right, too, about not wanting people to accidentally walk on ‘em. I figured, since they could be detonated by any mechanism that could activate their blasting caps, we didn’t have to use them as somebody stepping on ‘em.”
“A bullet would work,” Gavin said.
“Right. So I buried ‘em in the cairn where nobody goes and under the stonewall by the eastern pasture.”
“And then forgot to tell anyone about it,” Gavin said, elbowing John good-naturedly.
John grinned. “Yeah. I meant to tell Gav, but next thing I know I’m on a helicopter and nobody knows but me that the whole place is rigged to blow with two well-placed hits.”
“How did you know when to time the explosions?” Declan asked.
John shrugged. “I didn’t. The first one, we just let ‘er rip. We didn’t have a plan at all. The second time, though…” John stopped speaking and Sarah found herself holding her breath.
The second time, Sarah knew, John had seen the three men exit the camp and saw that they would walk right by the cairn where the explosive was planted.
What he didn’t know, she thought as she watched him struggle with the thought of what he had done, was that he had given the signal that killed the man who murdered his father. She didn’t know if she would ever tell him that.
“Well,” Mike said, finishing off his whiskey. “I’d like to raise a toast to young John, here, and Declan and his family, without whose help in defending Donovan’s Lot we’d none of us be here to give a toast.”
Everyone seconded the toast and drank. Sarah’s eyes stung with tears as she watched her son.
“And I’d also like to raise a glass to the memory of David Woodson,” Mike said. Sarah picked up her glass again and felt the tears streak down her face. “Who was right, when I was wrong. And being right helped save us all on this day.”
“Hear, hear,” the room chorused as everyone drank.
Sarah saw Mike exchange a look with John over the cheers and conversation of the group. She saw Mike nod and John smile in response.
That night, as Sarah sat next to John on his bed in Fiona’s cottage, she felt a warmth radiating throughout her body that left her tingling with joy. To touch him again, to watch his expressions, to hold him just by reaching out…she couldn’t remember a time when she felt more grace than she felt right now. It had been a long day and they were both exhausted, but still she hesitated to leave him to go to her bed, even as weary as she was. And so she sat near him as he talked, his eyelids growing heavier and heavier.
“I knew you weren’t dead, Mom. I mean, if you were dead, I know I’d have felt it.” He yawned and rubbed his eyes. “I just knew you were somewhere in the world. You know what I mean?”
Sarah leaned over and kissed him, a vision of dear Evvie coming to mind and prompting an exhausted smile though her tears. “I do, sweetie,” she said as she watched her boy fall into sleep before her eyes. “I know exactly what you mean.”