The Parting Glass (51 page)

The other was Niall.

“Stop!” She stepped outside, as clear about what she had to do now as she was about who and what she loved most. Niall turned, and for a moment she was looking directly into his eyes. He swung his gun around and aimed at her. She didn’t flinch.

“You’re going to die, Cassidy,” Liam shouted. Then there was gunfire, three quick shots.

She had not realized what a good friend Liam had become to her. He had stayed behind to protect her, suspecting that Cassidy might find them. For the barest fraction of a moment she felt gratitude.

Then she felt nothing. Not pain, not surprise. Just the slow crumpling of her legs as she fell to the ground.

“Clare!”

She heard more gunfire, but it seemed as if it was coming from a different universe. She heard running, and shouting, and then Glen’s voice. “Clare. Clare!”

She drifted until she felt him lift her in his arms. With all the strength left to her, she opened her eyes. “Glen…”

“We’ll get a doctor. We’ll save you. Hold on.”

She felt another set of arms beneath her and with great effort moved her eyes to see Liam helping Glen. For a moment they seemed bound together, closer than brothers, united. It didn’t seem strange to her. Good men, both of them.

“Niall?” she whispered.

“I’ll find him. He won’t get away with this.”

She was beginning to realize how little that mattered. Niall had gotten what he came for. He would turn his attentions to other things now.

They were moving through the tunnel, but when she gave a soft cry, they lowered her to the floor, still yards from the door. She could not feel the ground beneath her, but she could see Glen’s face.

“Marry—”

“Don’t talk. I’ll marry you just as soon as you’re well and the doctors say we can.”

“No, marry…another.”

He was crying. This was something she had never expected to see. She wanted to tell him not to be sad, that he had given her more love in their brief moments together than she had ever hoped for. He had given her a family, too. She had belonged here. Too short…But right.

“Don’t go, Clare.” He was chafing her hands. She heard Liam retreating up the stairs, shouting as he went.

“I…love you. Don’t be sad,” she whispered.

It was odd. She was wearing her mother’s wedding gown, but as her eyes closed she thought she saw her mother, dressed as she had been on the day she was married.

Clare smiled to welcome her.

chapter 33

O
nly rarely did Peggy rise before Nora’s arrival. This morning she got up before the sun, and slipped on jeans and a sweatshirt to greet the day alone. Megan was sleeping soundly on the other side of the double bed, and Kieran was making soft little mewing noises, as if dreaming of something that pleased him.

What did please her son? She was no closer to knowing that than she had been on their arrival. In the most important ways, Kieran was a stranger. She had not unlocked the doors behind which he hid from the world. She had not solved the mysteries of how best to reach him. She could count improvements on the fingers of one hand. Now some of the time he ate with a spoon and recognized colors. He had formed an attachment of sorts to Bridie. Like a fiddler crab, he scurried sideways out of his own private hole, making forays in Bridie’s direction, getting ever closer before he scurried home again.

In just a few more weeks Kieran would have his second birthday. His delays were still easy enough to pass off, his odd behavior might be the natural idiosyncracies of a sensitive child. But what would happen when he turned three, then four? The more he fell behind and refused to interact, the more he rocked or followed his hand or sat enraptured as light flickered on the wall, the more he would become an outcast.

She had not expected the Irish fairies to kidnap Kieran and leave a changeling in his crib. She had expected progress to be slow, but she had hoped that someday, with enough intervention, Kieran might attend a regular class in public school, join a Cub Scout pack, sing in a church choir. She no longer understood what it meant to be “normal,” but she knew she wanted for her son what other mothers took for granted. The simplest things that might well be denied him.

Outside, a soft rain fell. She had seen entirely too much rain during her stay here, too much wind, too many dark skies. Yet she loved the way the morning mist drifted over Clare Island, the way the vistas changed with each blink, the cool, fresh feel of the air, the way Irish rain melted into her skin. The west of Ireland was not green. It was infinite shades of brown and gray, jutting rocks and tossing waves, a wild place.

She took the path that ran farther up the hillside, where Clare Island was visible and the neighbor’s sheep could be counted. She thought that if she really lived here, she would raise sheep, too, not for food but for wool. She would learn to spin and dye, and when she wasn’t prescribing antibiotics or performing minor surgery…

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out at Clare, the sight of which must be like salt in the wound that was Finn’s battered heart. Dreams died hard. His had perished in a storm. Surely with grace and with courage she could let go of her own childhood dream of becoming a doctor. She didn’t know where Kieran’s future lay, but she knew that she had to be right there, walking beside him. Not from duty, but from a mother’s love.

Megan showered and dressed. Kieran was still sleeping restlessly, and she tiptoed out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, where Nora was making coffee. She said her good morning, then asked the obvious question. “Peggy’s out?”

“I saw her walking up the hill when I arrived.”

“Isn’t it raining?”

Nora looked puzzled, as if that connection was difficult to establish. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

“She’s walking in the rain?”

Nora shook her head. “And you say you’re a hundred percent Irish?”

“Make that ninety-nine percent. The one percent that’s something else likes to be warm and dry.”

“A pity. It’s a particularly soft rain, and the views through the mist are perfect. Like peeking through to heaven.”

Megan wondered if her sister wanted company. There was rain gear on pegs in what passed for a mudroom.

“I’ll listen for the lad,” Nora said. “If you can gather your courage.”

Megan knew Kieran would probably sleep at least another half hour. “You’re sure you don’t need some help?” Megan said.

“I’m sure I don’t.”

“Then I’ll go find her.”

Megan donned a slicker and hat, but forsook the Wellingtons that looked to be her size. Her sneakers were up to the task.

Outside, she had to admit that Nora was right. And it wasn’t as if she had never walked in the rain. Cleveland wasn’t known as the Sunshine City. She thrived on gloom, and she would put Cleveland rain up against Irish rain any day. Niccolo, with his own roots planted deeply in soggy Western Pennsylvania, often said that their children would toddle on webbed feet and breathe through gills. Niccolo, who she missed the way she would miss the beating of her heart.

By now Peggy had started back down the hill, and Megan started up to meet her. Megan saw that her sister wasn’t even wearing a jacket. She would be wet, and oblivious to it. Megan had spent her adolescence trying to keep little Peggy dry.

Peggy got within shouting distance. “This isn’t like you, Megan. Have you noticed it’s wet out here?”

Megan waited until her sister was closer. “I was afraid you’d slide right down that hill on your butt. I’m here to catch you.”

“Come up and see the view.”

Reluctantly, Megan climbed. She could not understand why people hiked or climbed for the fun of it. She was on her feet all day at the Whiskey Island Saloon, and “fun” seemed a contradiction in terms.

“Okay, what am I supposed to see?” she grumbled, when she reached Peggy’s side.

“Look out there.” Peggy pointed to Clare Island. As they watched, the mist off the water and the clouds above seemed to change places, weaving, dodging, entwining like lovers. “I could never grow tired of this view.”

“You’ve got it bad. Irish fever. This is the third day in a row that it’s rained, and you’re soaking wet. That would cure most people.”

“Aren’t you having a good time?”

She wasn’t, but that wasn’t Ireland’s fault. She was pleased to have met Irene, glad to have seen the village and countryside where her ancestors had lived, humbled to sleep in their cottage—although a far different cottage it was these days. But as glad as she was to be spending time with her youngest sister and nephew, she was all too aware that Niccolo should be here, too. They should be sharing these experiences, making memories, compiling stories to tell their own children on snowy winter nights.

She had left Cleveland, but she had not left her problems behind.

“You miss him, don’t you?” Peggy continued to stare at the ocean and give her sister a semblance of privacy.

“I miss him.” Megan was sorry she did.

“You’ve only told me a little about what’s wrong. Did you actually fight?”

Megan had not told Peggy many details. Now, standing in the rain, she tried. “In a way. I told you he was gone too many nights, and even when he was home, he wasn’t really there. I called him on it. It wasn’t very pretty, but he’s probably already forgotten. I wonder if he even notices I’m gone.”

“What’s the problem really about? Do you know?”

Megan was glad Peggy hadn’t tried to defend or explain Niccolo’s behavior. “I’m not sure. He loves me. He claims he’s glad we’re married.”

“He is glad.” Peggy sounded sure.

“Have you noticed that men are confusing, frustrating creatures?”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Take your Finn, for instance.”

Peggy turned to look at her sister. “My, that was quick.”

“Quick?”

“A real hit-and-run. Here’s my problem, now let’s talk about you, Peggy.”

Megan chewed her bottom lip. “I don’t know what to say. I came to sort things out, only I feel a little like Kieran with his shape box.”

“Come again?”

“I was working with him yesterday. That little devil’s really bright, Peggy, I know he is, but he just can’t get everything working together to put the shapes in the right places.”

“In other words, you have the pieces you need to put your relationship with Nick in perspective, but you can’t be sure where they go.”

“You got it.”

“When Kieran gets tired, he starts trying to stuff shapes in the wrong places, just to get rid of them.”

“He did that yesterday.”

“And that’s like you, too, isn’t it? Even when you know where the pieces of your life with Nick should go, you’re too frustrated to put them where they belong. You just want them out of the way.”

Peggy had taken the metaphor a step further than Megan had planned. She stopped chewing her lip and frowned. “I don’t know about that.”

“Are any pieces missing?”

“Well, he dreams he’s a priest again.” Megan forged on. “I want him to dream about me.”

“Sure you do.”

Admitting her selfishness, her neediness, had been hard. That Peggy had understood and automatically accepted it as natural and right was a relief. “You think?”

“I
know.
Megan, you have every right to want to be first. You just got married, and Nick’s busy with everything and everybody except you. It has to be frustrating. What happens when you tell him how you feel?”

“When I get angry with him?”

“Are you angry?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s all you feel?” Peggy waited, brow cocked in question.

After a moment Megan sighed. “I feel hurt and rejected. Like I’m not good enough somehow to keep his attention. Like I’ve failed before I could even start.”

“And you’ve told him this?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Is this something he should just figure out, do you think?”

“I’d like it if he would.”

“Wouldn’t that be a perfect world.”

Once again Megan was aware of a major role reversal. Peggy no longer needed an older sister to keep her dry or pick her up when she fell, but Megan needed a friend. And here was one all ready-made. What a system.

Megan decided to venture a step further into intimacy. “I’m afraid if I tell him how I’m feeling, he’ll blow that off the way he’s blown off everything else I’ve said since the wedding. If I tell him and he ignores me, that’s not something I could live with.”

“So by not talking to him, you’re trying to save your marriage?”

“Peggy, you’re making this sound easy.”

“Trust me, I know from personal experience how hard it is to talk about the things that really matter with the man you love.”

“And you’re not talking about Phil.”

Peggy looked back out to Clare. “Not Phil. Never Phil.”

“Finn?”

“There are so many wonderful things about him that you haven’t seen.”

“Just tell me this. Do you want to love him? Or do you want to save him?”

“Megan, don’t you think I have my hands full already? I’m not looking for another project.”

“But he is a project, isn’t he? He’s still mourning what he lost. Is he ready to find a new love?”

“Love just happens sometimes, even when the timing is wrong. We didn’t want to find each other, but somehow we did.”

“And the future?”

Peggy turned back to her. “Megan, I’m lucky to get through one day at a time, and so is he. We have that much in common.”

“You’ll want more someday, Peggy. Do you want it with a temperamental Irishman who is punishing himself for something he couldn’t help?”

“No, I don’t. But I might want Finn O’Malley. Only time will tell.”

Kieran awoke with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, but Peggy, with a mother’s instincts, suspected more than good spirits. She felt his forehead as she lifted him from his crib. He was warm, and he slumped against her, letting her cuddle him, which was a sign in itself that something was wrong.

She took his temperature as she changed his diaper and wasn’t surprised when it registered just over 100 degrees. His nose was stopped up, and his eyes red, although he hadn’t been crying. She wondered if he’d caught the cold that Tippy’s daughter Maeve had been incubating at their play date last week.