She cringed at his words, blinking and darting her eyes to the side.
He pressed his advantage. “I’ve seen you drop into a dream world. Maybe you should get Dr. Murray to evaluate you, too.”
“I always snap out of it,” Clare said. “It’s just my active imagination.”
“Seems like you’re not really there when it happens,” Griffin said. “Maybe you were seeing visions in the Otherworld. You claim you’re Brigid. If you are, you would not lie to me.”
“I’m concerned about you, not lying.” She wrung her hands, encircled the altar, and sat down on a front row pew. “Won’t you do what the doctor said? If you can retain your memory, you would have an easier time knowing what’s true and what’s made up.”
“I liked you better when you made things up.” He couldn’t help a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “Clare or Brigid or Morrigan or changeling. Why are we having this conversation under that wooden cross?”
She avoided his questioning stare and lowered her head over her hands. “I cannot take advantage of a man with a medical condition.”
“You pity me?”
“No, never, but I have a conscience.” She stood and faced him, head lifted and a fierce determination in the set of her jaw. “I will help you restore your family treasure, but no more pretending. We both heard Dr. Murray. Do you want to have no memories left by the time you hit forty? You’ll be like an Alzheimer’s patient. Memory like a sieve. I’ve seen it before. There was a nun at the abbey who would ask me the same question every five minutes. ‘What’s your name, lass? How is the abbess? Is the war over?’ She didn’t even know her own name. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
“But to cut off part of my brain? Why can’t I take medication?”
“You already take medication. The seizures are becoming more frequent. It’s getting harder for you to catch up. Don’t you want to live a complete life without forgetting?”
Zigzagged sparks flashed in back of his eyelids, and he squeezed his eyes shut. “What you’re telling me is to abandon my destiny. You’re saying Brigid isn’t real, and everything written in the annals are fables. I don’t think I can live with that.”
“You won’t be living any kind of story if you can’t remember who you are.” Her voice lowered. “Please, Griffin, if you want me to be your Brigid, to experience a love story, or to do something epic, you have to remember.”
“Why do you care?”
She took his hands and rubbed them warm, looking like she didn’t want to answer. Could she possibly care about a confused creature such as himself? It was better to believe he was a man who lived forever or a time traveler than to have his condition revealed as a disorder.
When she finally spoke, she swallowed and blinked back tears. “I don’t want to care, but I love stories, and there’s something so tragic about yours. I want it to end happily. I want you to find what you’re looking for, and I hope I can be a small part of it. I feel a connection between my story and your story, and I’m a wee bit curious how it will play out.”
She seemed so sincere, and maybe she was a great actress—especially since she had an angle of him funding a movie for her. She was a writer of fiction, a professional liar, and she herself was not entirely psychologically sound. She hallucinated and believed herself to be many people—including a fairy queen, a changeling, and a Morrigan.
“What’s in it for you?” His voice was rough and his throat tight. He wanted to believe his Brigid was out there, but the story he’d lived was much more epic than a movie script.
“You, of course.” She stroked the side of his face. “I want to know the real you.”
He ran his fingers through her lustrous hair. “Is the real you solely your memories? If so, how do you know your memories reflect what really happened to you, or they’re fabricated by the stories you tell yourself?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “But if we’re all living made-up stories, then I want to make up the story alongside of you, and at least our story would be consistent. We can be witnesses for each other.”
The door of the chapel swung open, and another couple stepped in, huddled together, weeping.
Griffin pulled Clare aside, and she glanced at him. A silent message passed between them, and he nodded with understanding.
If a tree fell in the forest and no one observed it, had it truly fallen?
If he lived a life and no one shared it, had he truly lived?
Taking Clare’s hand, he walked out of the chapel with her and left the couple to grieve in privacy.
“Will you submit to the surgery?” Clare asked once they were outside of the Neurological Institute.
“There might be things I want to forget,” he said, wondering if his life of fables and mythology was actually better than the mundane life of the ordinary person.
“True, but the way you are now, you don’t have control of which memories are shot. Waking up must be disorienting. You don’t know which memories are true and which are fed to you.” She pulled his hand as they walked down the street. “Let’s not decide now. Let’s have fun and create a few memories, then you tell me if they’re worth keeping.”
“Let me keep all of my lives, at least for the rest of today.” He winked and caught her eye. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be any fun.”
Chapter 21
Clare and Griffin walked along with a tour group down the stone corridors of the Kilmainham Gaol. It was one of the symbols of Ireland’s bloody and gruesome past, one borne from being invaded and oppressed. During the Irish potato famine, hungry people were dumped in overcrowded conditions for the crime of stealing bread. Irish revolutionary leaders were imprisoned and executed on the prison grounds.
Clare ran her hand over the bleak limestone walls, wondering how the prisoners felt, knowing they might never be free again. Even with the natural light slanting through the narrow, overhead windows, it was like entering the bowels of a dark and dismal dungeon.
“Do you have any memories of being here?” Clare asked Griffin when he peered through the spy hole of a cell door.
He shrugged and pointed to graffiti carved above the door. “Maybe I did that.”
“No surrender,” she read. “That sounds like you. Did you have any hope of getting out?”
He leaned close to her ear and whispered. “Other than death? No, but you know I always live again after I die.”
“You told me that the first time we met.” She smiled at him. When they decided to have fun, they’d also agreed to go back to pretending. It was more fun than thinking about brain surgery and doctor appointments.
“This place still gives me the creeps,” he said as the group walked by a warren of cells where people starving in the potato famine were imprisoned.
Clare shivered and leaned closer to Griffin. “I can’t imagine being crammed in here with no heat and no light.”
“No hope,” Griffin said. “These two cells were the final ones before two brothers were executed. Neither knew his brother was only a few feet away in the cell next door before they were separately brought out to be shot.”
“Why did we Irish have to suffer so much?” Clare asked.
“We were invaded by people who didn’t assimilate into our culture. They didn’t appreciate our fair island, the nature, the dreams, the stories we lived,” he explained. “The British had no interest in being Irish, but only in exploiting us. Our forests were cut down to build British ships, and our people were starved while the British took our grain.”
“Is that why you want to go back to the twelfth century and have a do-over?” She hardly dared to bring up the plan in the Green Notebook, but since he was going to have surgery, it would no longer be in his realm of reality. She should destroy the notebook and everything in it to allow Griffin to start out fresh with a new, innocent life.
“It’s my destiny,” he declared with all the forthrightness of a hero. “If I can bring Brigid back, Ireland would not have to suf
fer centuries of oppression.”
Members of the tour group next to them looked amused at his outburst, and others darted surreptitious glances his direction.
“Éirinn go Brách.” Clare gave him a curt salute, and that gesture seemed to mollify the onlookers.
Griffin seemed oblivious to anyone gawking at him. Instead, he pointed out details of the prison that Clare would not have noticed. When they stepped into the prison yard, he said, “See where that black cross stands? I was shot back there after the Easter Uprising.”
History had the names of the men shot, and Griffin Gallagher was not one of them, but an agreement was an agreement, and one last day of fantasy wouldn’t hurt.
“How did it feel? Did you say your prayers?”
He held his finger over his lips, shushing her as the tour guide pointed to the opposite end of the stonebreaker’s yard where an injured James Connolly was placed in a chair and shot.
After wiping a tear from his eye, he whispered to Clare, “I now know I was reliving someone else’s life after watching a film on the uprising. The men who were the real revolutionaries were the true heroes. I, unfortunately, was only a boy who wished to be great.”
“You are great in your own way,” Clare said. “I’m sure there is a big meaning in your life. We have to discover it, that’s all.”
He turned and saluted the tricolor Irish flag that was flown between the two crosses, and Clare said a prayer under her breath that Griffin would look back on this day as the turning point of his life.
Going for surgery would be the bravest thing he ever did. Facing his truth, even greater.
But what did it mean when she felt like her life was on the edge of a knife? With her heart clenching, and her mouth dry, her throat tight, and her pulse swishing, she blinked back the wetness in her eyes.
Was Griffin about to be freed from the jail of his memory loss, or would reality imprison him into a bleak and difficult future? What if he was better off believing he was the lover of a fairy queen, a man with the ability to save Ireland?
She clasped her hands in front of her beating heart and watched him with another shocking realization.
What did it say about her that she cared?
He was a stranger she met on the airplane, and one she’d thought was pulling her leg. She’d been interested, of course, but she’d never thought he was dangerous until she read his notebook. Except he wasn’t the same man who’d written in the notebook; he was a new man who’d forgotten what he’d planned on doing.
Now, it was up to her to show him a new life, one where he could enjoy and live reasonably normal.
Yes, it meant she cared, and frankly, that was surprising and scary. She was an orphan who hadn’t cared much about anyone. She flitted in and out of people’s lives, but she had no roots, and she’d never entertained the idea of family or permanence. Sorcha and Maeve, of course, were her co-conspirators in fun and games, but caring about an attractive and vulnerable man?
This could only end badly.
The tour ended with the guide dismissing them to the museum section. Griffin took Clare’s hand, and they perused the personal artifacts and letters of the prisoners.
Despite the time that passed, the ghosts of Kilmainham spoke, and Clare felt their presence through the air currents moving between the bleak, stony walls.
The visit to Kilmainham was both draining and uplifting for Griffin. He shouldn’t have bragged about being one of the fourteen revolutionaries and taking their glory, and when Clare caught him out, he wanted to sink into a hole in the ground.
She was right.
He’d been overprotected by his grandfather and the family of servants. He’d read books, seen movies and films, but had never visited many of the historical places in his own country.
Instead, he’d lived in a world of fantasy and imagination. He supposed it was okay when he was a child, but now that he was in his mid-thirties, it was time to put childish things aside.
Except for Clare.
He loved playing games with a woman who thought herself a fairy or changeling. She must have never known her parents and had grown up wondering who she was. The nuns at the abbey had been strict, but the young girls snuck out to the fairy mounds and told each other fantastic stories of mixed identities and promising destinies.
She appeared childish with her wands and wings, but he sensed the compassion in her. The fact she was helping him navigate his life meant she was a good person inside.
He still held her hand, and they walked briskly over the cobbled streets of the Temple Bar district. The daylight alternated between a patchwork quilt of clouds and sunshine. It was the perfect spring day in Ireland, and maybe today, he’d become a new man—not tied up with fairy tales and treasures, old scores to settle, and musty tomes to digest.
With Clare by his side, he had only to look forward, not backward.
Was he actually considering the brain surgery because he wanted her in his life? Or was he so tired of the forgetfulness, of the dying and rebirth, the blank wall of his mind, and the force-feeding of information and facts of the many lives he wasn’t sure he’d actually lived?
“The key is to be in the moment,” she said, her voice breaking into his thoughts. “Do you know how to focus?”
“I am always distracted,” he said. “Too much stimuli, like noise, flashing lights, and movement overload my nervous system.”
“Let me teach you about mindfulness,” she said. “Being present in the moment and paying attention to only what’s in front of you.”
“How can I when I have so many past lives raining down on me and an uncertain future? Obligations and destiny?” He spread his hands at the myriad of sights and sounds.
People, traffic, and birds flying overhead added to the noise and hubbub of the Merchant’s Arch area. Buskers plied their music, and hawkers sold souvenirs. With all the activities going on, it was hard to notice the old archway at the end of an alley covered with storefronts and graffiti.
Clare stopped in front of a roughened white brick patched between regular red ones and pointed her phone camera. “What do you see? What stands out?”
“The one brick that’s different,” he said. “What are you trying to show me?”
“Our eye is drawn to the one that’s different, unique,” she said. “The present moment is the one white brick among a sea of red—the infinite past and future possibilities.”
“Are you trying to tell me my past lives don’t matter?”
“They matter, but the weight of all of those past decisions, whether regrets or rejoicing, clutter your attention. They distract you from the way forward.” She led the way through the arch, and they stepped down to face the Ha’Penny Bridge. “What do you see?”
“A bridge.” He chuckled, not quite sure what she was getting at.
“I see two parallel lines arching up and over, but my eye is drawn to the lamp perched on top of the center. I see the shadows made by the rails, and they are interesting stripes that draw my mind sideways, but my eye returns to the focal point of the lamp.”
“What’s the message?” He stood still and took in the curved lines, finding them surprisingly calming.
“Looking at the way we’re going without being bothered by anxiety and side issues.” She snapped a picture. “Sometimes, I zoom in on a detail—the one pertinent detail, and I just enjoy it. No judgment on whether it’s a good or bad detail. Whether it is out of place or belongs. It’s just there.”
A child’s red balloon emerged from the other side of the bridge, dancing from side to side, lifted alternately by the wind and the swinging of her upraised arm.
Griffin allowed his eye to follow it—in the moment, aware, and without judgment. He didn’t attempt to put in words what he felt. Maybe it didn’t matter.
Standing next to Clare was enough. Right?
The child skipped across the bridge, holding her mother’s hand. Her springy red hair was tied in two ponytails, and she was mi
ssing one of her front teeth.
After she and her balloon disappeared under the Merchant’s Arch, Griffin and Clare walked out onto the center of the bridge.
Clare pointed her camera phone off the side and said, “I love reflections because they look so dreamy. It’s like seeing the other side of our life, or wondering if we’re on the other side right now.”
“Like the Otherworld is our world, and our world is the Otherworld.” Griffin bent over the railing and let the wavering reflection of the bridge float into his consciousness. “Do you think I’ll remember all of this after my surgery?”
She put a hand on him and whispered, “Just be you.”
He inhaled and exhaled, then let everything go, keeping his gaze on the surface, or was it underneath the surface, of the slow-moving river.
It had rained earlier, and now that he was noticing things, streetlamps appeared inside of puddles, and even fire hydrants had their mirror world.
Epilepsy was said to be a shattering of the mind, a frenzy of nervous energy, and vibrations that overcame the orderly working of the brain.
Could it also be a gift? A diving into another world that was more real than the present moment?
He raised his head and looked into the transparently open face of Clare, the would-be fairy, but actual romance writer, and suddenly, he threw out all the labels.
“Clare Hart, you’re you.” He cupped her cheek with one trembling hand. “That’s enough for the moment.”
“It’s always enough for a moment,” she replied, and then her lips crested to meet his hungry ones, and her kiss applied salve to his troubled soul.
He let the kiss go on and on, each moment stretching into the next and the next.
So, this was letting go. No more identity. No past. No future. Was this how a man in the gallows felt? Or was there an expectation of going into another world? Or staying present in this one.
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