You still loved Elizabeth, of course you did. Love does not always disappear; we merely make choices. Together, you and Elizabeth quickly married and packed to move to Watersend, South Carolina, swearing the small family to silence, and there you began again. You returned for your daughter, Colleen, so she could have a beautiful life. It was for your daughter that you didn’t shut down. It was for your daughter that you pushed through grief and embraced a new beginning.
But you, Gavin Donohue, you carried those two years in Ireland within you as a force so divine and so life affirming that you opened a pub and named it after the song Colleen played that evening; the song that was sung on your wedding day, the song you see in your daughter’s eyes. You honored your first wife, Colleen, in your heart while also honoring those with whom you chose to build your life, those you also loved deeply—our family: your wife, Elizabeth; your daughter, Colleen, called Lena; your second daughter, Hallie; and your son, Shane.
And that is the story of your Irish love, the one who molded your soul into the shape your family sees—a soul of the divine and the profane, of loyalty and betrayal, of life and death.
Chapter Twenty-six
Memory is the scribe of the soul.
Attributed to Aristotle
“She’s always been my half sister, at least by blood. She’s always been all mine in truth and family, but not by blood.” Colleen ran her fingers through her hair and leaned into Beckett’s chest. They lay reclined on his couch in his small apartment across from the pub. He pulled her closer, and he listened, making soft sounds of assent. Only hours had passed since she’d returned from the boat trip; only hours since she’d discovered that the world wasn’t exactly as she’d believed. She didn’t look at Beckett while she told the story, but kept her eyes closed. “She died while giving me life; I was born in Ireland; someone who owed my grandfather a favor in Virginia forged my birth certificate here. And all of this was hidden to keep my mother safe, to preserve intact her reputation and the love she shared with Dad in the way she had always imagined it should have been.”
“Oh, Colleen.”
Colleen sat straighter and stared out the window at the inky night, the soft glow of the streetlights seeping into the liminal space between one day and the next, between this life and the next, between the story she’d been told while growing up and the truth she’d learned that day. “Yes, but we can’t just make things up so we don’t have to live with the truth. We don’t get to do that.”
“Many people do. And many people survive that way. It’s not always so bad.”
Colleen stood then, freeing herself from Beckett’s arms. “I believe we have to live life as it is, not as we want it to be. Acceptance, right? Isn’t that what you told me? Isn’t that the way to an honest life?”
“Not everyone chooses an honest life, Colleen. And you can’t blame them. Sometimes the truth is too much to bear. Go easy on your mother and dad.”
Colleen sat again, slumped against him in what felt like defeat. “She changed my story so her story could look and feel better. I don’t feel much like being easy on her right now.”
“Then don’t.” He kissed her forehead and pulled her closer.
“The first Colleen died while giving me life. She died and I never knew she existed. Can it be true that somewhere inside I knew? Because now everything in the past takes on a new light—it makes sense—and it seems like I knew.”
She didn’t know how to explain this to Beckett, but all the times when their mother looked at Hallie with a certain eye and looked at Colleen with another, she’d known. When their mother told Dad that she was trying, my God, she was trying, she’d known. It was a different kind of trying than Colleen could have ever guessed. She wasn’t making some meager attempt to be a good mother. She wasn’t trying to survive motherhood. She was trying to love Colleen, who was the child of another woman.
“Are you okay?” Beckett asked.
“I’m not sure.” Colleen sat and pressed her forehead to his, kissed him and then sat straight. “It wasn’t my fault she couldn’t love me the way she wanted.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not my fault that Mother couldn’t love me as I wanted; it wasn’t my fault that Walter cheated on me.”
“How could it have been?”
“That’s the thing. I always thought there was something wrong with me. Sure, there are loads of things wrong with me, but nothing that would keep a mother or fiancé from loving me. It was their hearts, not mine, that kept them far from me. I represented my dad’s other love. Walter is and always has been a cheater, a liar and a manipulator—I wasn’t so special. Just one in a long line.”
She turned to Beckett as she felt something breaking open inside her chest, a fragile eggshell, flooding her breath with truth. “Do you know how very, very long I’ve tried to figure out what is so stinking wrong that my mother and my fiancé couldn’t love me fully? I’ve made lists. I’ve tried to find the broken part of me that made them turn away from me. I have . . .”
Colleen fell back on the couch, lifting her face to the ceiling, where the whirling fan swirled the dust motes into a dance inside the evening light. “It was never about me at all.”
“She just wanted to protect her life and love with your dad.”
“Yes,” Colleen said. “And maybe that’s all she knew to do. I don’t blame her. Or at least I think I don’t blame her, but I’m glad I know now.”
“Does it change anything?” he asked. “Anything at all? Or is it just something you now know about your dad?”
Colleen closed her eyes, felt the information moving around inside her belly as a living thing. “Oh, yes, it changes things.” She opened her eyes and glanced at Beckett. “I just don’t know how yet. I just don’t know how.”
“I need to ask you something else . . .” He touched her hand and traced a circle on her wrist.
“What is it?” She took his hand.
“Do you still love Walter? Still want him back?” He averted his eyes, looking beyond her shoulder.
A noise that sounded much like a cough but was meant to be a laugh erupted from Colleen and she released his hand and leaned back, ran her hand through her hair and shook her head. “Hell no. The wounded part of me that wanted him has healed. There is nothing about him, even the good memories I hoarded for years, that I want anymore.” She leaned closer. “If you’d asked me that question even a month ago, my answer might have been different. I might have thought I still cared deep down. But the minute I saw him, I knew that the scraped places of my heart had healed over and he held no allure for me. I waited for it—after I saw him—I waited for the shame and the sorrow to wash over me and discovered that the only thing that arrived was disgust. Absolute and pure disgust.”
Beckett nodded and the smile she had already come to anticipate lifted his lips, the lips she suddenly and clearly wanted to kiss.
“And I’ve been wanting to tell you this, too . . . I’ve been asked to write a travel memoir with essays about my life and trips. And this new piece of information—it changes even that because if I didn’t know this about myself, how could I possibly write about my life?”
“We live and write what we know when we know it, Colleen. You don’t have to understand everything at once. Give yourself and all of this some time.”
“I already feel like I’ve wasted so much of it, so much of time. I could have been here for my dad, could have . . .”
“Stop.” He kissed her to stop the flow of would-haves and could-haves.
Colleen moved closer to him, allowing the comfort and ignoring the lying pinging messages inside, the long-held false belief that told her it was safer to run, to turn away.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.
Dylan Thomas, “And Death Shall Have No Dom
inion”
FOUR DAYS UNTIL THE PARTY . . .
She swept her nieces away to a lunchtime matinee the next day. Still, not one of the Donohue siblings had discussed what their dad had told them. Instead they all seemed to glance sideways at each other, waiting for one or the other to speak about it first. There were other things to attend to, other concerns. For now, Colleen was babysitting her nieces while Hallie met with a divorce attorney.
Movie theaters always made time stand still for Colleen. The hushed voices and soft seats, the bucket of popcorn with gooey butter, or what passed as butter, and the music of the opening credits enveloping the space. This old theater had been here when she was a child and then had closed down for a while, but had reopened to great fanfare during the premiere of a movie that had been filmed in Watersend. Colleen had missed all the action, but Shane had sent pictures—one more hint that she was missing all the fun at home. Colleen was glad it was open and had air-conditioning and that she could try to be an aunt to her nieces.
It had only been the evening before when Colleen had learned about her Irish mother, when the world had tilted on its Donohue axis, and Colleen still hadn’t found her balance. She sat between her nieces.
“What are you wearing to Grandy’s party?” Rosie asked.
“I don’t know yet. I haven’t even thought about it.”
Sadie’s eyebrows rose in disbelief. “We decided a long, long time ago. We’re wearing sister dresses. They’re green with white bows and we’re both going to braid our hair.”
“Then maybe I’ll get a green dress,” Colleen said. “And a white bow. But you know it’s a secret, right?”
“Uh-huh.” Sadie kicked her feet back and forth an inch above the sticky floor. “We know how to keep a secret. Don’t we, Rosie?”
“Yes, we do. Like we never told you that Mom said not to tell you that she cries because she misses you. We kept that a secret.”
“Rosie!” Sadie kicked her sister. “You just told her.”
“Oh.” Rosie dropped her face into a prayerful bow. “I’m so bad. Don’t tell Mom, please.”
“You aren’t bad.” Colleen put her arm around Rosie and drew her close. “I won’t say a word. And I cannot wait to see your green dress.”
“And I can’t wait to see yours.” Rosie balanced the popcorn bucket on her lap, attempting to keep it from her sister.
“Guess I better get shopping.” Colleen eased the bucket from Rosie’s lap, took a handful for herself and handed the bucket to Sadie for sharing.
The lights dimmed and Colleen settled back into her seat, ready to escape her swirling thoughts. She’d been thinking of her mother who wasn’t her mother, at least not by blood. Of her birth mother, gone before they even met. Of her dad loving someone else and losing her and still—and still!—living a life of beauty and kindness. And of her mother forgiving the betrayal. This right here had been why Dad had spoken of his understanding of betrayal, of the need to forgive. If Mother hadn’t forgiven, if she had held and remembered in bitterness, their family would not exist. It was all too much to absorb or understand completely and immediately. This family. Colleen reached over and took the hand of each of her nieces, gave them a squeeze.
And Dad, too, had been able, somehow able, to love again. He’d had every reason in the world to shut down, to hide under some thatched roof in Ireland, bitter and full of whiskey, isolated from his family and those who loved him. But he hadn’t. He’d said this to Colleen: “It was for you I was able to come back. For you I was able to keep my heart open to whatever might wait for me here. It was for you . . .”
For her. For Colleen Marie Donohue.
She wanted to take this knowledge and apply it like a salve to the past, to heal it and change it.
“Aunt Lena,” Rosie whispered close to Colleen’s ear.
“Yes?” Colleen shook herself free of her thoughts and looked at the screen. She’d been watching, but she hadn’t seen a thing. It was still the previews.
“I have to go pee-pee.”
“Okay, sweetie, let’s go.” Colleen took the little girl’s hand. “You, too, Sadie.”
Sadie popped up, the bucket of popcorn tumbling to the ground, yellow puffs scattering across the sticky floor to the row in front of them.
“I’m sorry!” Sadie dropped to her seat and bowed her head.
“What?” Colleen looked at Rosie. “It’s just popcorn. No big deal.” Smiling, Colleen stomped on a few kernels to make her point.
And then, as if someone had pushed a pause button, both girls looked at Colleen in relief.
Colleen first took them to the ladies’ room and made sure they washed their hands, and then she bought a new bucket of popcorn. She bent over, hands on her knees, and told them, “I am the clumsiest person you’ll ever know. I trip over my own feet. Your mom made the cheerleading team and since they felt so bad for me, they let me be the mascot. I can’t dance. I drop things. So if you’re spilling things, then you’re just like me.” Colleen wasn’t sure how to speak to little girls, but truth seemed best.
“Grandy said you were nice. He was right.” That was Sadie and she said it with a smile.
Rosie popped out her hip and placed her hand on it, so sure of herself. “And we’re moving in with him. Did you know that, Aunt Lena? Now we’ll live on the river just like you and Mom did when you were little.”
“Yes, I knew that.” Colleen kissed Rosie’s forehead. “Now let’s go enjoy this movie about . . . what is it?”
The girls responded in a chorus. “The Jungle Book!”
All during the film, Colleen thought of little but her dad. Mowgli danced through the jungle with monkeys and tigers and wolves, but Colleen saw a montage of her dad’s life. Each and every memory now had a new color; a filter had been placed over them. Things made sense that never had before.
Either something is wrong with me or something is wrong with Mother. Colleen had said this to Hallie one afternoon on the swing set when they were probably ten years old. She heard her own voice saying it, a single thought that splashed into the afternoon.
“That’s so silly.” Hallie swung next to her, their legs pumping in unison, like everything they did in those days.
“It’s true, though.”
“Nothing is wrong with you.” Hallie dug her feet into the earth to stop her swing. “You’re just being all melodramatic.” She mispronounced “melodramatic,” making it sound like “mee-lo dramatic,” copying the word she’d heard their mother use every time Colleen felt something too deeply or was “too sensitive.”
“Maybe,” Colleen said and pumped higher and higher, wanting to make the swing wrap around the upper metal pole and back down again, the chain clanging as it flung her through the air. It never went that far, but she never quit trying.
In the movie theater, with the memory as bright and alive as King Louie on the screen, Colleen knew now: Mother had been trying to love another woman’s child. She had been trying to make her heart do something, and one cannot ever convince a heart to love out of necessity.
She closed her eyes, the sound of “The Bare Necessities” filling the theater.
Colleen wasn’t just her dad’s child; to Elizabeth she represented the fact that Gavin had loved another woman, loved her enough to stay in a faraway land and start a new life. Colleen was more than just a newborn her dad had carried home. For Elizabeth, Colleen was a constant reminder of Gavin’s betrayal.
It would take her a lifetime, Colleen knew, to understand what it all meant. But with the clock running out on her dad’s memory, she felt she was losing the chance to fill in the missing pieces of her earliest beginnings.
* * *
• • •
After returning home, Colleen relieved Bob of “watching” Dad and took her turn to sit with him on the wooden Adirondack chairs set in the grass in the yard, facing
the river.
“Hey, Dad.” Colleen patted his hand. “What are you doing?”
He looked up from a magazine and laughed. “Your sister gave me some puzzles to do. But it’s made of numbers, not words, and it might as well be in Greek.”
“Sudoku.” Colleen took the pages from her dad and set them on the ground. “How are you feeling?”
“That’s the worst of it, right? I feel fine until I realize I’m lost. Soon, I know, I won’t know I’m lost, but for right now I do know.” His voice was weak. “I have some things I want to say. Do you mind?”
“Dad, please. Say anything.”
“It must have come as a shock, finding out about your Irish mother.”
“Yes, and no. I always knew there was something . . . askew.”
“Maybe.” He stopped short and placed his hands on his knees, leaned forward to take in a long breath. “Maybe I should have told you sooner. But I promised your mother I would not.”
“Dad, I understand all of that, and I understand your promises to her, and I know it was great pain for her. But why did she let you . . . keep my name?”
He flinched as if she’d slapped him, closed his eyes. “That was never up for discussion. It was your name. It was your mother’s name.” He opened his eyes and there was a flash of Ireland and fire and resoluteness. “I made my amends. I moved and I changed our life and I kept our secret. But your name belonged to you.”
He stood and walked to the river’s edge. Colleen followed, her heart in her throat, danger now seeming to lurk everywhere. It must be like having young children, always aware that the water was as much a danger as a comfort.
“We must stay on the water, my Lena. It is how we are connected to the place you came from, the place where you were born. That’s why New York doesn’t feel right to you.”
The Favorite Daughter Page 24