A Bittersweet Garden

by Caren J. Werlinger

  “Nora? Shannon!” She went to the front window, accidentally stepping on what felt like Nora’s flowers, and peered inside.

  There, she made out Shannon’s still form, lying on her side in the middle of the floor.

  Panicking now, she returned to the door and pounded. “Nora! Nora, answer me!” When there was no answer, she stumbled to the back, tripping on flagstones she couldn’t see. The kitchen door was also locked.

  Going around to the front of the cottage again, she knelt down, fumbling about until she found a fist-sized rock.

  “I owe you a window, Farmer McCarthy.” She cocked her arm and heaved the stone at the glass. A split-second later, the stone rebounded, hitting her in the shoulder when it ricocheted off the window without breaking it.

  “What the hell?” She rubbed her shoulder.

  Overhead, she heard an upstairs window open.

  “Nora!”

  She strained to see through the fog, but she couldn’t make anything out in the thick gray haze.

  “Go away, Briana.”

  “Eve? Eve, what is going on? Let me in!”

  “I can’t do that. Did you think I didn’t know you were following us last night? I can’t let you interfere. I’ve waited too long.”

  Briana stepped back, waving a hand to try and clear the fog obscuring her view. “Waited for what?”

  Goosebumps erupted all over Briana’s body as Eve laughed, sounding slightly maniacal.

  “Waited for what?” she echoed. “Waited for everything. I’ve been waiting my entire life. Nearly two centuries. My past, my future, my death. It has all come down to this.”

  Bri stood there, half-tempted to scoff at the impossible absurdity of what she was hearing, but she became aware of tendrils of mist wrapping about her legs like hands, reaching inside the legs of her jeans, sending a deep chill stealing into her bones. Her heart raced, and she became more afraid, imagining all kinds of horrible things happening inside that cottage. The silence was more frightening than screams.

  “What have you done to them?”

  “They’ve not been harmed.” Briana thought she heard a note of sorrow in Eve’s voice. “But I haven’t much time. I need to know. Go away.”

  The window slid shut.

  Briana scrabbled on the ground for her rock, ready to heave it at the window again to break in, but she hesitated for a moment.

  “Think, think, think,” she muttered aloud. “They’ve never wanted to hurt her. She’s probably safe.”

  She dropped the rock and made her way to where she’d left the car. When she found it, she turned around carefully, having to creep down the lane until she drove into sunshine and warmth. She tried to tamp down her panic as she drove. When she got to the McCarthy farm, she saw Orlagh in her garden.

  “Well, Briana,” said Orlagh, setting down her bucket of green beans. “What brings you this way?”

  “Nora asked me to come,” Briana fibbed. “She’s too embarrassed to tell you she locked herself out of the cottage and asked me to see if you’ve an extra key.”

  Orlagh chuckled. “Himself did that with his truck just the other day. ‘Keep a spare key hidden,’ says I, but does he listen? He does not.”

  Bri followed her into the kitchen, where several keys were hanging from a board screwed to the wall. Briana tried not to shout impatiently as Orlagh sifted through them, continuing to chatter before finally choosing one.

  “Here ’tis. Just bring it back whenever you’ve a moment.”

  “I will.” Briana pocketed the key. “Thank you.”

  At the end of their lane, she paused a minute, then turned the opposite way of Sióg Cottage.

  “I need reinforcements.”

  Chapter 17

  There were more. Rowan was there. And Móirín. But there were others—Donall and the other children—just as they had been in Nora’s vision. All happy, laughing together. Móirín held a baby, sleeping in her arms. Nora basked in the warmth of the family gathered round the hearth.

  But some part of her didn’t want to be there. Knew she shouldn’t be there. She fought, and a hand settled on her brow. Whispered words in Irish tickled her ear. She sank back into the warmth, but it had shifted. There was a girl with white-blonde hair and striking green eyes, standing apart from the others, watching them with an intensity that was almost greedy, but a moment later, she was gone.

  The words in Nora’s ear changed. They might have been in Irish still, but she understood them now.

  “Daughters. Sisters who should have been. A mother to one, but not both. An old woman who has never been mother, never been sister to that one.”

  Nora struggled to open her eyes, and the scene around the hearth dissolved. Eve— Aoibheann—leaned over her as she lay in her bed.

  “I need you, Nora McNeill,” Aoibheann murmured. “Nearly three lifetimes have I waited for you.”

  Nora tried to speak, to ask what was happening, but her mouth wouldn’t work.

  “Why?” Aoibheann asked for her. “Because I need to know. Need to know why my mother mourned my sister so deeply that she died of her grief. I need to know why she couldn’t have stayed alive for me. I must know what my mother never did—what happened to the sister I never knew. I cannot die without knowing what robbed me of the family—of the life—I should have had.”

  Heartache, a bottomless pain and grief—it all seeped into Nora’s mind along with the words, and she understood. She felt the weight of Aoibheann’s despair, the depth of her longing. A sob ripped from Nora’s throat, and tears streamed from her eyes into her hair and pillow.

  Aoibheann took her by the hands. “Come now. We haven’t much time. They are coming. This time, we cannot fail. We must know.”

  She guided Nora to her feet and reached for her lantern. Nora moved without the power to resist. Móirín waited for her, pale and beautiful as ever, smiling sadly. When they descended the stairs, Rowan was there—her yellow dress, the scarlet ribbon in her hair, her laughter.

  Nora’s gaze went to the still, shaggy form of Shannon, lying on the floor.

  “She’s not harmed, I promise you,” Aoibheann said.

  She waved her hand, and the door opened. She led Nora outside. Nora shivered, her skin cold and damp, as if she walked through fog, but ahead of her, Rowan stood in sunshine and beckoned to her.

  “Follow,” Aoibheann said in Nora’s ear. “Follow her this last time.”

  Briana recognized a familiar car in the nursery’s lot, near the house. There was no sign of Sheila in the greenhouse or the shop, so she went on through into the kitchen.

  There she found Sheila at the table with Fiona.

  “Briana!”

  They both looked up from the papers covering the entire table.

  “Wait till you see—”

  “Nora’s in trouble,” Bri cut in. “We need to go get her now.”

  Sheila pushed to her feet. “What do you mean?”

  Briana swung her arm in the direction from which she’d come. “Eve has her trapped in that blasted cottage. Shannon is—” But her voice failed her. She couldn’t say the words. “We have to get to them.”

  Sheila wrapped an arm around Briana’s shoulders, guiding her to the table. “We will. I’ll text Quinn now, but the information Gran found will help us to know what we’re dealing with. Please, sit down.”

  She sent a quick text and poured a mug of tea, pushing it into Briana’s trembling hands before sitting back down beside her.

  Fiona reached across the table to pat Briana’s arm. “Eve won’t hurt Nora. She needs her, more than we realized. And I don’t think she’s harmed Shannon. She probably gave her a sleeping draught.”

  She scooted her chair around the table so they could examine the images and charts on the papers together. “Brigid and Tommy—Nora’s grandparents—took a wee trip to Massachusetts to see what they could find. They sent it all to Nora, but never heard back and got worried, so they sent it to me. I forwarded it all to Sheila.”r />
  “And I found it in the deleted file in my email,” Sheila said.

  Briana frowned. “Nora deleted it?”

  “It would seem.”

  “What is it?”

  Fiona slid an old photo to her. “Look familiar?”

  The black and white image was of a smithy. “Clinton?” Briana asked in confusion.

  “That’s the town in Massachusetts where the O’Haras went after they left Cong,” Fiona said.

  Briana bent over the photo again. Standing in front of the building, holding the halter of a horse was— She looked up. “Is that…? It can’t be Eve.”

  She leaned nearer. The white hair, unusual on a young girl, was odd enough, but the eyes. Even in gray tones, they were hypnotic.

  “There’s more.” Fiona laid out more forms with lists of names. “When we found the first batch of these, we only focused on Donall O’Hara and the five children. But on the same ship manifest, there were these names: Keith and Neve Mulcahy, traveling with their children.”

  Sheila shoved another paper near. “This is that 1850 U.S. census form. Remember, we wondered why Donall went from five children on the ship to only four on the census. Again, we were looking for the O’Hara family, but the Mulcahys were here, too.”

  She indicated a few lines above Donall O’Hara and his four children. There again were Keith and Neve Mulcahy, with a five-year-old son named Hugh, a three-year-old daughter named Aileen. And a two-year-old girl named Eve.

  “So?” Briana asked impatiently. “What does any of this—”

  “Wait,” Sheila said. “Gran went back to St. Mary’s and went deeper into the records. To Donall and Móirín’s birth and baptism records. Donall had a sister. Niamh.”

  Fiona slid another faded document over top. “Niamh—with the Irish spelling—married Keith O’Mheolchatha.”

  Briana stared at her with an open mouth. “That’s Eve’s name. Aoibheann Ní Mheolchatha.”

  “Exactly.” Fiona grinned triumphantly. “And we found these as well.”

  She splayed out photos of children standing in front of the Clinton Public School, with names penned in underneath. There, sure enough, along with Callum O’Hara and other O’Haras were Hugh, Aileen, and Eve Mulcahy.

  “But—”

  “What if,” Sheila said, glancing at her grandmother, “Eve was so tiny when Móirín died that she still needed to be suckled. And what if Donall’s sister and brother-in-law took her as their own. We think they raised her and she took their name.”

  Fiona leaned forward. “We’re only guessing, but what if her need to know turned into an obsession, driving her to do whatever she had to to find out what happened to her mother and sister.”

  Briana sat back. “This is crazy, but if you’re right, that cottage has had nearly two centuries of people in and out of it. Why Nora? Why now?”

  “That’s what we wondered,” said Sheila. She nodded at Fiona. “Show her.”

  Fiona slid one more paper near. “This, as completely as we can reconstruct it, is the family tree of Donall and Móirín’s children. Follow this line.”

  She pointed to Una O’Hara, who married a Bernard Fogarty. Briana followed their line down to a fifth-great-granddaughter, Mary Kate Ellis who married a Patrick Michael McNeill.

  She gaped at Sheila and Fiona. “That can’t be—”

  They both nodded, beaming.

  “Nora’s parents.” Fiona’s eyes shimmered with angry tears. “This is why Eve needs her. She closes the loop between our family and Móirín’s. Brigid and I thought, all those years ago when Eve told us one who came from us would make a fateful choice, that we only needed to think about our line. It never occurred to us that there could be someone who comes from both.”

  Outside, a truck engine rumbled and tires sprayed to a hard stop in the gravel. A moment later, Quinn wrenched open the kitchen door.

  “What’s wrong?”

  This time, rather than running ahead as if playing a game, Rowan seemed to wait, beckoning Nora to follow. Though dusk was falling, Rowan was clearly visible as she skipped through the woods, into the circle of stones, and beyond—past the oak.

  Nora trotted to catch up. This had always been where she lost sight of Rowan, but just beyond, a flash of yellow led her onward.

  Somewhere behind her, she was aware that Aoibheann followed, but she was concentrating on Rowan.

  She fought her way through a tangle of brush. When she was free, there was no sign of Rowan.

  “Rowan! Where are you?”

  The air was unexpectedly filled with the lilac-like fragrance of bird cherry. A faint sound of crying came as if from a great distance. Nora followed the scent, pushing deeper into the woods, slipping on mossy rocks and roots until…

  “There.” Nora stopped.

  A large bird cherry tree stood under a grove of oaks, a few white blossoms still clinging to its branches.

  Nora hurried forward, but suddenly the ground gave way and her feet slipped out from under her. Scrambling madly, she scratched and grabbed to stop herself falling into a rocky hole, but everything she touched was mossy, slimy, slippery. Roots reached like claws, clutching at her hair, scratching her face. Her shirt rode up as she slid downward, leaving her ribs exposed to scrape painfully over the rocks. Her head hit something hard enough to make her see stars. She landed feet-first in a pool of icy water up to her chest. The cold was so sharp, it took her breath. Her head throbbed, but no matter how hard she blinked to clear her vision, it was absolutely black. No light at all penetrated this place.

  She called out, “Help!” but her lungs couldn’t take in air. What came out was barely a whisper, swallowed by the dark.

  She tried to climb back up into the rocky chute down which she’d fallen, but she couldn’t gain purchase on the slimy rocks. Her feet scrabbled to push her up and out of the water. A current pushed against her, but she didn’t dare allow it to shift her, or she’d never find this opening again. She stuck her arms up into the shaft, trying to keep a grip on those rocks. Dimly, she knew that she wouldn’t survive long in this intense cold. She was already shivering uncontrollably.

  A soft light glowed as Rowan appeared, floating beside her for a moment.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want this to happen to you.”

  “Is this…” Nora tried to speak through her chattering teeth. “Is this where you died?”

  “Yes. And my mother never knew. You must not die here. Who will tell them?”

  And then she was gone, leaving Nora alone in the darkness.

  Nora tried again. “Eve! Eve, help me.”

  But the only sound was the endless, eternal trickling of water running deep under the earth.

  The wisps of fog that remained around the cottage were torn, ripped as if a wind had come through. Briana and the others tumbled from Quinn’s truck to find the front door now standing ajar.

  She rushed inside where Shannon still lay on her side, panting. Bri dropped to her knees, cradling Shannon’s head.

  “What did she do to you?”

  Sheila went straight to the kitchen and returned with a bowl of water. Briana helped Shannon onto her belly so she could drink. By the time she’d lapped up half the water, Quinn was clomping back down the stairs.

  “Nothing. All the rooms are empty.”

  Briana was crying as much from relief that Shannon was alive as frustration that Nora and Eve had left.

  “Where to now?” Sheila asked.

  In answer to that question, Shannon got to her feet, wobbling unsteadily. Briana supported her for a moment, but then Shannon tugged free and went outside, her nose to the ground.

  “Wait,” Fiona said.

  Briana stopped impatiently. They’d already wasted too much precious time.

  “We need torches,” Fiona said sensibly. “It’s getting dark. If we find them, we won’t be able to see what the devil they’re doing.”

  Quinn dug around in his glove box while Sheila rifled through the dr
awers in the kitchen. Between them, they came up with three torches.

  Briana hurried after Shannon, with the others in her wake. They followed the wolfhound, who was still sniffing her way along in the general direction of the stones. When they arrived there, she seemed to lose the scent.

  “Nora!” Briana called. “Nora, where are you?”

  Shannon picked up the scent again and ran, barking, through the circle into the woods beyond. In the deep shadows of the trees, they needed torchlight to see.

  “Here!” called a voice from somewhere up ahead.

  Briana sprinted in that direction. Eve was standing with her arms spread wide, her face tilted to the heavens as she mouthed a chant while the lantern at her feet cast an eerie glow.

  “What did you do to her?” Briana demanded, clutching Eve by the arm.

  “Easy, Bri,” Quinn said. “Eve, what in the world is going on?”

  “’Tis what’s not of this world that we need worry about,” she said cryptically. “Have a care, all of you. This area has underground caverns. Nora slid down one. Over here.”

  She led them to the base of a spreading tree where Shannon was sniffing, her entire head shoved into a hole in the ground.

  “Bird cherry,” Sheila said. “This is what Nora has been smelling, every time the ghosts appear.”

  Eve nodded.

  In between the splayed roots of the tree were ferns and mosses. Fiona slipped on a hidden root and nearly went down. Quinn caught her and steadied her.

  “Where?” Briana asked, reaching for Shannon’s collar and pulling her away so she could see. She remembered only too well how holes could open unexpectedly.

  “Just there,” said Eve. “I couldn’t reach her.”

  Bri saw it, when she parted the ferns, a gaping hole in a little ditch filled with trickling water. Fresh scrapes in the slime indicated where Nora lost her footing. She lay down on her belly, her face at the opening to the chute.

  “Nora! Nora, can you hear me?”

  They all stood silently, listening for a response. Nothing.