by Diane Noble
My spirits lifted as I let myself through the gate. I circled the house to find a small shed filled with pots, spades, and rakes. On a potting table a pair of work gloves lay beside a copper watering can. I smiled to see the tools spread out, likely just as my grandmother had left them.
With my tools beside me, I knelt in Grandmother Welsie’s garden, slipped on the gardening gloves, and set about pulling weeds. The soil was drier than I expected, since moist loamy Tennessee and damp, red clay North Carolina soils were all I knew. I brushed off my hands and stood to work the hoe.
The sun was rising now and beat down on my shoulders and head. I lifted my face to it and closed my eyes, aware only of birdsong, sea air, and the warm sun. Here, in a place so very different from Sycamore Creek or Oak Hill, I could pretend my old life did not exist. Then I laughed, though without mirth. If this were true—this pretending my old life was over—then why did it wait like an enemy at the dark edges of my mind?
I stopped and knelt again to pull some brush I had just loosened with the hoe and considered how the simple act of gardening seemed to also weed heartaches and ill thoughts from my mind. I had been too long riding trains, walking sand dunes, and wading in the waves. It was time to get to work.
I reached for a stubborn milkweed and gave it a hard yank, smiling as it gave way, roots and all.
“ ’Tis a happy thought you must be having,” said a voice behind me.
I looked up to see Micheil standing at the garden gate. The early morning sun slanted into his face, erasing the shadows beneath his eyes. He looked younger, the weary lines in his face less pronounced.
I stood and brushed off my hands. He took in the small pile of weeds beside me and smiled. “You’ve wasted no time taking over where Welsie True left off.”
“It was the first thought in my head this morning. I knew how it would please my … my grandmother to have her garden put in order.”
He laughed, that deep rumbling sound that caused me to smile again. He scanned the bed I was working in and rolled up his sleeves. “Could you use some help then, lass?”
“Aye,” I said, and he laughed.
I knelt beside him, and for several minutes we worked in silence. Only an occasional burst of birdsong broke into the quiet of the morning. That and the soft sounds of metal slicing into the soil.
“Damp ground might make our task easier,” he said while tugging a stubborn, thick-stemmed milkweed. The stalk broke, oozing thick white milk into his hands. “Aye, ’Tis water we need.” He rose and went to the water well, almost hidden behind the thick cascade of bougainvillea hanging from the side of the cottage roof. I followed with the watering can.
He drew water with the well’s oak bucket, washed his hands with a portion, then poured the rest into the watering can. I carried it to the garden and sprinkled the contents across the ground. We fetched and watered until the flower bed was moist.
For an hour we weeded and dug and transplanted clumps of flowers from one bed to another. And without thought, I’d begun to hum, then sing …
Go tell Aunt Rhody, go tell Aunt Rhody,
Go tell Aunt Rhody, the old gray goose is dead …
Micheil glanced over at me with a grin. “ ’Tis the loveliest voice I’ve heard since leaving Ireland.” Then he held up a hand and shook his head. “I correct myself. ’Tis lovelier even than that. You, dear Fairwyn March, put even the finest of my homeland’s voices to shame.”
My grin widened. “ ’Tis a fact?”
“ ’Tis,” he said, walking closer. “Please, keep singing.”
The one that she’s been a savin’
To make a feather bed …
He threw back his head and laughed out loud, a sound that seemed to roll through the garden, bringing life and light in its wake. It was contagious, and I laughed with him.
“How about you?” I gave him a teasing look. “If Ireland has such fine voices, surely you’re one of them.”
“Aye, my lass,” he said while watching me with merry eyes, “you have no idea what you’ve just asked. Askin’ an Irishman to sing is like askin’ him to breathe. ’Tis my nature.”
I knew his meaning. “Teach me your songs, and we’ll sing together while we work.”
In less than a heartbeat he began to sing in a heavy brogue,
By Killarney’s lakes and fells,
Emerald Isles and winding bays,
I stopped working, rocked back on my heels, and watched as he pulled out a patch of dried grass, singing all the while. He seemed unaware of anything but his music. I understood that about him.
He grinned at me suddenly, eyebrows lifted. “Join me now, will you?”
He started the same verse again, and I hummed along. By the time he got to “Angels fold their wings and rest,” I was carrying on word for word.
His booming voice took wing again on the second verse, and I fell quiet, letting him sing alone. His expression softened when he reached the final words.
Beauty’s home, Killarney,
Ever fair Killarney.
“Killarney is your home?” I asked when he was finished.
“How did you know?” he said with a sad laugh.
“Your voice caught a wee bit when you got to ‘beauty’s home.’ ”
“Aye.” He yanked on another milkweed, sat back on his haunches, and shaded his eyes as he looked across at me. “Micheil Grady Gilvarry from Killarney.”
I had never thought to ask Welsie for Micheil’s family name. “Gilvarry,” I mused. “Micheil Gilvarry.”
“And Fairwyn March,” he mused. “ ’Tis not your mountains I think of when I hear it, but the mists and lights across the hills and valleys of Wales.”
I smiled then. “Fairlight is its meaning. Taken from a village in Wales.”
“I have heard of it.”
I pulled out a handful of dried grass beneath a woody-stemmed rosebush. He started singing about Killarney again, and I joined him, picking up the words as I could.
The sun was high when Micheil finally stood, grinned down at me, and reached for my hand to help me up. With an exaggerated groan I stood and leaned against the hoe handle, rubbing my side. My backed ached, but I felt better than I had in weeks.
“Welsie True loved this garden,” Micheil said. I followed his gaze, noticing the play of light on the adobe walls beneath the wide spread of the pepper tree. The wall shadows danced in its breeze.
“It’s almost as if she’s here.” I laughed. “The joy of her spirit, I think, spills across this place. Its color, the birdsong, the sound of the surf in the distance.” I drew in a deep breath, closing my eyes, imagining her here, just as I had a dozen times during the morning. “Where is she buried?” It hadn’t occurred to me to ask until now. “I would like to visit her grave.”
“She is buried behind a small chapel near the mission grounds.” He studied my face. “I’ll take you there. Now, if you’d like.”
“Thank you, but not today.” I tired too easily it seemed these days, and after the morning’s work, I knew I must rest. “I noticed some chairs in the back. Out near the gazebo. I would like to sit there for a spell, watch the ocean, rest a bit.”
He nodded, carefully studying my face. “And how about some tea while you’re resting?” I must have looked puzzled, because he laughed lightly and added, “You sit, lass. I know where my friend kept her tea. I’ll brew you a hot cup of Irish tea. It will fix whatever ails you.”
“Nothing ails me,” I said too quickly, and then I blushed. “Absolutely nothing.”
“I only meant if you were tired, lass, ‘twould give you a pick-me-up. That’s all.”
As I made myself cozy in the shade beneath the gazebo, I heard Micheil whistling as he worked in my grandmother’s kitchen. Pots and pans banged, the handle on the water pump squeaked, and the damper on the woodstove clanged as he lit a fire. I couldn’t stop smiling at the trouble he was going to just to fix me a cup of tea.
A half-hour later he emerged, looking
stricken.
“Whatever is the matter?” I imagined the kitchen was on fire.
“I made you a lovely spot of tea, lass. But any good Irishman knows tea must have cream. There’s not a cow within a half-mile.”
I reached for the mug of dark steaming liquid. “Did you find sugar … or honey?”
“Oh yes. Plenty.”
“Then that’s all I require. Truly, that’s how I like it best.”
“I’ll be happy to search for a cow … or even a goat,” he said, sitting down beside me. “For certain I’ll be bringing you some from Saddleback tomorrow.”
I took a sip. “Truly the best tea I’ve ever had,” I said, meaning it. I couldn’t remember when someone had offered me such a selfless gift of caring. Quick tears stung my eyes, and I looked out to the surf so that he wouldn’t notice.
“Thank you for your friendship,” I said after a few minutes. “I have need of a friend.”
“Aye, lass. I understand better than you think.”
I wanted to tell him the truth about me. I needed to tell him. Perhaps I just needed to tell anyone at all. He took a sip of tea from his own cup, and I stared at his careworn profile for a moment, wondering if I dared to tell him what I’d done. He must have felt my intense gaze, for he turned, looking puzzled.
“I am considered dead,” I blurted. I waited for his expression to turn to alarm. But the alarm didn’t come. “I am living a lie,” I added, still watching him intently. I might have just told him the day was lovely, for all the reaction I got. “I let everyone at home believe I was killed in a train wreck.”
His face was a portrait of strength. Still he didn’t speak.
“I ran away from my troubles,” I said. When he didn’t answer, I stumbled on. “I found my husband with—” My eyes filled, and I looked away, unable to finish. I drew in a breath and closed my eyes to regain my composure. “With a friend,” I finally managed.
Micheil frowned, a glow of anger slowly replacing the compassion. “He did such a thing to you.”
“We had problems. But I thought … oh, I don’t know what I thought, maybe that we might grow to love each other again.” Fresh tears welled. I swiped at them, but they spilled down my cheeks. “I’m not even certain that’s what I wanted.”
Micheil handed me his handkerchief. My spilled tears were becoming a pattern. I blew my nose. “Maybe it was my fault. My dark spells, my unhappiness. Maybe I drove him away.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. And now I don’t care.”
His voice was kind. “He once loved you, lass?”
I bit my lip and looked down at my shoes. “He swore he always did … has,” I finally whispered. “He swears it even now.”
“Fairwyn?”
I looked up.
“ ’Tis feelings of guilt that rack you so?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have run off, but I’m glad I did. Maybe I shouldn’t have let everyone believe me dead, but I’m glad I did that, too. I wouldn’t change any of it even if I could. No feelings of guilt,” I insisted, my cheeks warming with the lie.
“Tell me what happened.” He leaned back into the corner of the bench, his arms folded across his chest, his legs stretched out, one ankle hooked over the other. He seemed to have all the time in the world to listen.
“There was a terrible storm the day I left. The train to Dover Town derailed over a bridge. Many died. Others were swept downstream and listed as missing. By now, presumed dead.”
“You’re still considered one of them?” He watched me with that same look of understanding I’d seen earlier.
I leaned forward, my voice dropping. “My husband once took me to an asylum.” I paused, trying to stop my tears. “It was right after my grandfather died, and a darkness had settled into my heart. I feared my husband didn’t love me, and I knew I didn’t love him. I … was afraid he would put me away.” I halted, realizing I was telling too much of my heartache. “All of this … all the ugliness, I’d planned to tell Wel—my grandmother. To seek her help, her counsel.”
“You said you need a friend,” he said gently. “I’m here. You can tell me.” His expression urged me to go on.
“My greatest fear is facing my own darkness. And if I entered that place inside where the darkness lives, it might hold me prisoner forever.”
“Oh, lass, how sorry I am for your deep sorrow,” he said, leaning forward. I thought he might touch my hand, but he did not. “For the pain you’ve endured.”
“I can’t ever go home again. If I am found out, my husband will have me committed.”
He studied the sea, took a sip of tea, and kept his eyes on the horizon. For a moment I thought he hadn’t heard me, and I started to speak again. “I can’t—”
“You must,” he said, turning to me again. “You must go back and face him,” he said.
“I cannot.” To make my point clearer, I added, “Any more than you can return to Ireland.”
He gave me a sharp look, then smiled. “For some time now I’ve known I will return someday.”
“You will face murder charges. Imprisonment … or death.”
“Aye. Just as you will face the possibility of life in an asylum.”
“Then neither of us can go,” I said decisively. I stood and brushed off my hands. “That’s all there is to it. The cost is too great.”
He stood with me. “The cost might be greater if we don’t get rid of our demons.”
“It can’t be.”
“ ‘Tis, lass. For I know about the darkness that plagues you in the night.”
I thought I might not breathe. “You know?”
“ ’Tis the truth that will set us both free.”
“Mine began long before I left Zeb, long before I lied about dying in the river.”
He looked thoughtful. “You said you don’t love your husband. Is that the source of the darkness?”
“I thought I loved him,” I argued. “When he asked to marry me, I was the happiest woman on this earth. But through the years … I came to see that maybe what I felt for him wasn’t love at all.”
“Yours is a greater betrayal than his then?”
“He’s told me as much.”
“Love ebbs and flows, lass. Sometimes it’s a great passion. Other times it’s calm, like a lake on a sunny day. Don’t be judging yourself too harshly or even figuring you can’t go home again.”
I stared at him. “I cannot,” I said, my voice little more than a breath. “I will not.”
There was no condemnation in his face, only deep caring borne on the wings of understanding and new friendship. “How about you, Micheil,” I said. “When did your darkness start?”
“The day I left the priesthood,” he said. He stood with a weary smile. “Would you care for more tea, lass?”
“Please,” I said. I watched him return to the house, noticing again the sad slope of his shoulders.
Twenty-Five
Micheil drove me to the inn to collect my things, and I moved into the cottage as the late afternoon shadows stretched across the landscape. The sun hung like a brilliant ball over the ocean, now and then dipping beneath a bank of summer clouds and turning them orange and red and pink, the choppy waves reflecting the same hues.
After Micheil left, I strolled around to the gazebo where we’d earlier taken our tea. A cool wind whipped from the ocean as I stepped closer to the weathered picket fence that bordered my grandmother’s land and protected walkers from the sheer drop on the other side.
I pictured Grandmother Welsie sitting in the gazebo, writing paper in her lap, pen in her hand, as she wrote to me. I thought of her longing to know me, her only granddaughter, her only connection with the son she adored. I walked to the heavy weathered chair and settled into it, looking out at the same view she must have gazed upon hundreds of times through the years.
How I longed to know her. Again I bowed my head, letting sorrow flow through me like the waves below. I thought of the sorrow she’d carried through the years, her son’s lo
ss, and her need to keep me a continent away.
Yet Welsie True had never once written of her bitterness or loss. How easily she could have nursed deep anger toward Poppy for bringing about the events that killed her son, for keeping me, her only granddaughter, at a distance.
My fingertips moved to my stomach and rested there, thinking of Welsie separated from the ones she loved.
I sat forward in alarm then, my hands still lightly touching my stomach. I was keeping Zeb from knowing his child and my child from knowing its father. As surely as Poppy kept the secrets of my parentage from me—so was I about to keep them from this precious life I carried.
Zeb would never know about the baby he’d desperately wanted for four years. I almost softened toward him, then I pictured him kissing Jeannie, and my heart turned again to stone.
He didn’t deserve to know. But the child … our child? Didn’t she, or he, deserve the truth? I bit my lip and refused to think about it any longer.
That night I woke with a start, my heart pounding. The familiar black fear had returned. I sat up in bed—in my grandmother’s bed—and looked around, squinting into the dim light. Everything was as it had been when I had lain down to sleep: Grandmother Welsie’s spool-backed chair in the corner, the mirrored dressing table near the window, the lace curtains hanging without motion to the floor.
Holding the counterpane to my chest, I shivered, feeling desperately alone. Only the ticking pendulum of the kitchen clock carried through the house toward me.
I swallowed hard. “You come to me in times of trouble and darkness,” I said out loud. “Where are you now?
“Where were you,” I said, my voice stronger, “when my da and my momma died? Why didn’t you protect them? I wanted to know them all these years, yet they were taken from me. I wanted to know Welsie True … and now she is gone too.”
I stared up at the ceiling, blinking as tears rolled from my lids to my earlobes and pooled on my pillow. “Who is left?” The thought terrified me. Zeb’s face came unbidden to my mind.