The big man’s face fell, the stoic expression collapsing in a nanosecond. “Oh, Jaysus. God, Rosaria. Please don’t cry, please don’t cry.”
Fergus whimpered more loudly and put his head between the two front seats, worriedly nosing the side of Rosaria’s head.
“I’m sorry, Rosaria. I was only trying to help. I thought you couldn’t see.”
“I can see. I can see.” She knew she was blubbering and this enraged her more. She hit the dashboard with her hand. Fergus jumped back, this time emitting a sharp, high bark.
“I just didn’t want you to get hurt. I...” Mossie started to say. She thought he might start blubbering in a minute too. “Shut up.” She brought herself under control and just then saw the shadow of a figure at the driver’s side window.
“Everything all right here?” Sergeant Gerard Conneely asked, clearly seeing that everything was not all right at all.
“Yes, yes, Gerard. Just a little misunderstanding,” Mossie stammered.
“Miss O’Reilly?”
“No problem, Officer Conneely. I was just upset about something.” She almost shouted the something part of the sentence as she gave Mossie a resentful stare.
Garda Conneely didn’t respond for a moment while he looked at them both carefully. Then, he stood back and directed himself to Mossie.
“Mossie, you know your car is not registered this year?”
“Oh no, Gerard. Did I forget that?” Flustered, Mossie reached for the glove compartment and rustled around among his papers until he found what was indeed an outdated registration for the car. “You’re not going to pull me off the road, are you, Gerard?” he pleaded. “I can go get my insurance papers, my inspection from Frank Acton and everything I need to just fix this right up.”
Conneely didn’t respond immediately, but then said, “I won’t pull you off right now, Mossie, but I will if next time I see you, you haven’t fixed this up.”
He leaned down in the window close to Mossie’s face. “Jesus, man, you earn your living with your car—whatever kind of a living that might be—at least keep the old thing legal.”
“I will, Gerard, I will.”
After Gerard Conneely had driven away, giving one last warning look at Mossie, Rosaria said, “Okay, that’s enough. Pick me up after you’ve done all that. I need to calm down.”
“Okay,” Mossie said, his voice pained now. “Okay, Rosaria.” She pushed to open the door.
“Wait, Rosaria,” Mossie said. “Would you ever want to take a ride back to my cabin with me while I get my insurance papers and the like?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“My little place is up in the Inagh Pass—between the Bens and the Maanturk Mountains. Very pretty. It might make you feel better.” When she didn’t respond immediately, he said, “It would be a mercy to me, Rosaria. It would make me feel better.”
When she still didn’t respond, he added, “I won’t say a word the whole way. You can just look out the window at the beauty and calm down.” Rosaria nodded wordlessly and closed the door.
◆◆◆
The van was infinitesimal against the landscape as they rode along Loch Inagh through the Pass. Like a small insect, it inched along the lonesome road through the hugeness, the vastness of uninhabited moorlands, bogs, lakes, and mountains. The mountains lay resting around them like gigantic tawny creatures reclined against an endless sky. Rosaria had never felt so inconsequential, such a small part of the natural world.
Mossie’s cabin was a speck on the side of one of those tawny creature mountains. The road up to it was one step above a sheep path. The old van gamely took on its familiar and challenging route up the rutted, rocky path to the cabin. After much jostling and bumping of its passengers, it pulled beside a small shack.
“My humble abode,” Mossie said. “Come in for a cup of tea, while I look for my damned insurance papers.”
Rosaria stood for a moment beside the van and took in the immenseness around them before walking to Mossie’s front door. She craned her neck to see if it was really possible to see the Atlantic beyond the mountains. Her confrontation with Solly and her argument with Mossie seemed suddenly trivial against this expanse.
Mossie led the way into his cabin—more of well-worn shepherd’s hut—but apparently sufficient to Mossie O’Toole’s needs. A crusted kettle sat atop of a small peat-fired stove in the center of the single room, a sleeping cot in one side. On the other side, a table with two mismatched chairs next to the stove.
“What was it your Henry David Thoreau said about chairs?” Mossie asked. “One chair for solitude, two for friendship and three for company?
Or something like that.” He chuckled. “I don’t get much company.”
Mossie started the peat fire and poured water into the kettle from a plastic water jug near a wash basin. No running water, of course, and no electricity. A long way from Adams corner in Dorchester back in Boston.
From the cupboard, he took down a box of Barry’s tea and a tin of Boland’s fig rolls. “There, we’ll be set in no time,” he said. With a flourish, he flicked a worn flowered tea towel in the air and watched it drift softly onto the table. “Just be a moment now.”
While the water for tea boiled, Mossie knelt beside his sleeping cot and pulled out a plastic storage container. Rosaria could see in it sheaves of paper— all the documents of Mossie O’Toole’s unique life. He sat on the cot, opened the lid of the box and then looked up. “Will you ever forgive me, Rosaria? I was out of line” His face looked stricken, his eyes wet.
“Yes, you were out of line, Mossie.”
Rosaria wanted to continue being furious, but her heart wasn’t in it anymore. Maybe she’d been furious because Mossie was right about Hugh. Mossie was way out of line in calling Solly. But. Maybe he was just...right. Dammit.
She looked at the peat fire in full sweet smolder and glanced out the crude window over the vast, untreed, and lonely landscape. This land had seen so much hardship—like the lonely and good-hearted man before her now.
Rosaria sighed and looked over at Mossie. “But I forgive you.”
CHAPTER 29
The next day, Rosaria was to have lunch with Bridie and Nora Keenan, but called to cancel so that Mossie could drive her to the home of the late Thomas Martin. Rosaria explained to Nora that Thomas Martin was a man who’d shared a long-ago secret with Patrick one night in a Clifden pub.
“Now, I can’t tell you if this is related to Patrick’s murder, Nora,” Rosaria said. “But I feel a need to follow up on it. It may be nothing, not connected at all.”
“I don’t know what’s connected to anything anymore,” Nora commented, “But you’ll tell me about it afterward?”
Rosaria was amused at the way Nora gave orders. As if one had a choice.
“Yes, when I get a sense of things, I’ll fill you in, Nora,” Rosaria promised.
◆◆◆
The Martin cottage nestled on a side street in Clifden, across from the Owenglin River running to Clifden Bay. Window boxes were filled with trailing geraniums and busy-lizzies. The iron gate in a privet hedge stood open.
Rosaria had called ahead to introduce herself as a friend of the Keenan family. The family wanted to know more about Patrick’s activities in Ireland before he went to Boston. They were trying to put pieces of the puzzle together. Perhaps the Martin family had a moment to talk to Rosaria since the Keenans knew that Patrick had met with Thomas Martin some weeks before going to Boston.
“I know this is such a hard time for you, Mrs. Martin, with Thomas having died so recently, but the Keenans would be very grateful if you could spare the time to let me ask you a few questions.”
After listening to Rosaria’s introduction and explanation on the phone, Thomas Martin’s wife Eleanor had hesitated. “One moment, please,” she said, and seemed to put her hand over the phone while she consulted with someone in the kitchen, as Rosaria could hear muffled conversation.
Sarah had mention
ed a daughter named Theresa, so perhaps that was who she was talking to. Mrs. Martin was saying something like, “It’s that American woman. What would she be wanting now at such a time?” and then a plaintive, tear-filled, “I can’t. I just can’t, Theresa.”
Rosaria could feel her stomach clench in disappointment. Then, Theresa got on the phone, calmly authoritative.
“Yes, this is Thomas Martin’s daughter, Theresa.”
Rosaria explained her mission again, praying the daughter would be willing to talk.
Theresa listened. A long pause and then said in a kindly voice that Rosaria suspected may have come from her father, “How are the Keenans doing now? Such a loss for them. So young.”
“Not well, Theresa. They’re devastated, of course, but it’s made the worse to have so many questions about what happened and why.”
“We’re in the same place here, Ms. O’Reilly. We’re in the same place here. Though, of course, my father had a long life and Patrick Keenan didn’t. Yes, certainly, you can come over and we can talk.”
Now, Rosaria rang the small ship’s bell beside a blue door, bright against the white of the Martin’s cottage. Theresa came to the door. Young, slim, and tall, with soft brown eyes and a mass of dark curls. Behind Theresa, her mother— smaller, rounder—stood by a dormant electric fireplace, holding her elbows as if making a tight defensive package of herself.
Rosaria thought she saw the shadow of a scapular under the woman’s rose-colored polyester blouse. She didn’t realize that they made scapulars anymore—the small rectangular pieces of cloth with religious images worn around the neck. She hadn’t seen one since she was a child in Catholic school with the nuns. But then, this was Ireland and Mrs. Martin was apparently devout. Perhaps of a different personality profile than her daughter.
When she spoke, Mrs. Martin’s was the hard voice of a shy person who’d gathered the courage to confront and say her piece. “Now, I’m sorry, Miss O’Reilly, but I can’t talk about anything related to Thomas. It’s too much for me.” She took a breath. “And I’m not sure what you think you’d be finding out anyway going into all that with my poor Thomas. He had nothing to do with any of that.”
With this, she started to cry softly. Theresa came to her mother and leaned down to put her arm around the smaller woman. “It’s okay, Ma. You don’t have to talk about anything. I’ll talk to Ms. O’Reilly.” Her mother nodded, staring ahead and taking a tissue from her skirt pocket.
“For the Keenans. For their loss,” said Theresa. Her mother nodded again.
“Well,” Mrs. Martin straightened her back and turned to the hallway door, looking back over her shoulder at the two of them. “I’ll leave you to it then, Theresa. Forgive me, Miss O’Reilly, I am having a hard time.”
And then she was gone even as Rosaria was responding, “Oh, I really do understand, Mrs. Martin.”
Theresa stood gazing after her mother for a few moments, then pressed her hands together and looked at Rosaria. “Well, then, a cup of tea to start?”
“Yes, that would be lovely, thanks.” Rosaria had never said lovely until recently. She had picked it up here, usually in connection with accepting the required cup of tea and some biscuits in a small parlor like this one. Parlors filled with a breath-taking collection of china knick-knacks and holy pictures.
The tea arrived with a plate of cream biscuits. Another habit Rosaria was picking up—how had she lived without these afternoon breaks of properly-made tea and sweet biscuits? Replenishing for the spirit and, unfortunately, also for the waistline.
“So,” said Theresa, after preparing the tea and refreshments and making small talk with Rosaria from the kitchen. She took a sip of tea before putting her cup down. Rosaria was not surprised to see Theresa Martin get directly to the point. “So, you be wanting to know about a conversation with this young man my father might have had before he died? The student from the University at Galway?”
“Yes, he may not have mentioned this to you or your mother, but I thought I’d see if you might have some idea.” Rosaria could hear Mrs. Martin moving about in the kitchen, no doubt listening closely.
“No, I don’t recall his saying anything like that. What do you suppose they would have been talking about?”
“Patrick was a journalism student working on an independent project about the ties between American sympathizers and the activities in the North in the seventies.”
Theresa Martin sat very still and Rosaria could hear the movements in the kitchen freeze.
“I see,” Theresa said carefully. “Has he published this study?”
“Sadly, no. Patrick was murdered in Boston shortly before your father died.”
“Mother of God. I knew he died, but murdered, you say?”
Rosaria nodded.
“How old was he now?”
“Just turned twenty.”
Theresa glanced toward the kitchen and ran her fingers through her hair. “You know, we wonder about my father’s death, too.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
A long silence followed, broken only by the ticking of a china clock on the mantel above the electric fire. Theresa got up slowly and closed the door to the kitchen. She walked to one of the windows looking over the Owenglin and pulled back the laced curtain. “My father had a secret in him.”
Rosaria did not respond. Secrets. Always the secrets. They never stay buried.
Still looking out at the river, Theresa spoke now in a quiet, flat voice. “Maybe with his mind going, he felt that he had to let it out.” Her eyes were filled when she sat again and faced Rosaria. “And, so, I expect he did and maybe he died for it.”
“I thought he died from a fall in the care home, Theresa.”
Theresa let out a long, wet sigh. “Well, yes. He did. A fall in the garden there. Hit his head on a rock. ‘He slipped’ they said.” She smoothed the tea cloth in her hands before speaking again. “But the orderly with him was new and disappeared right after my father died.” She looked at Rosaria and with a hardness to her voice said, “Me, I think there’s a good chance it was not an accident, no matter what they say at the home. But I haven’t said anything— that would just be too much for my mother. She’s not that strong.”
Theresa bowed her head and rubbed her forehead with her hand before raising her eyes. “He started to do the odd thing or two, letting the water run in the kitchen till the floor was covered and things like that. Then, he’d get up at two o’clock in the morning and get dressed for church. He went up to Saint Joe’s for Mass every day, you know. But getting up in the middle of the night for it? My mother would say, ‘Where are you going, Thomas?’ and he’d say, ‘To church.’ She started locking the door on him, but he got out sometimes and they would find him wandering up the Market Street in the dark toward the church.”
She lowered her hands to her lap and straightened her back. “We felt we had no choice but to put him in the care home, you know. My mother’s old. It was hard for her, always watching, always on edge. He was starting to be a danger to himself and others.”
“How did he feel about going to the care home, Theresa?”
“Well, we told him he had to be there for some time while they adjusted his blood pressure to a healthy level. He had very high blood pressure, you see. And once he was there, he was content.”
Rosaria marveled at the Irish way of making things happen sometimes. Thomas Martin’s family misrepresented to him both the why and the how long parts of moving into a care home so that he would go without complaint—and with some pride. Rosaria was sure Mr. Martin was well aware of the why and the how long of the situation, and accepted it with dignity.
Her thought process was interrupted when she heard Theresa speaking.
“But, you know, perhaps they did him a mercy. He had other health problems besides the dementia—the bad cancer—and he didn’t have that much longer. It would have been awful toward the end. Yes, perhaps they did him a mercy. I just didn’t know why they cou
ldn’t wait.”
“Who’s they, Theresa?”
“Oh, I can’t say who I mean or even if I know—never mind—I don’t know what I’m saying.” Theresa waved her hand in the air as if hitting away a small bird.
Rosaria didn’t respond, waiting Theresa out. Finally, Theresa spoke.
“There was something—something big and dark—that my father knew. He told me a little about it. Not all about it, but enough. It was dangerous to know. It’s why he never told anyone before. And I still don’t know how it all fits together.”
She sat quietly for a few moments, staring at the patterned rug as if it might offer an answer, a way forward. Rosaria let the silence do its work.
“But what I do know from what my father told me is this.” There was long pause. The clock still ticking on the mantel, the sounds of the river and the occasional car outside. What she said then came out in a rush. “A man was murdered out here by the IRA.”
“You mean here in Connemara?”
Theresa nodded. “It was by the old famine burial vault at the Mother and Baby Home—Saint Mary of Egypt. Derrygimlah on the way to Ballyconneely. They used the vault to bury the babies that didn’t make it. Such a terribly sad place.” She shook her head. “Anyway, the home’s closed now.”
“Really? At the mother and baby home that the nuns ran?”
“Right, that very one,” Theresa answered. “An IRA sympathizer, a local man, worked there and he had some kind of operation going on with them. I don’t know what it was, way down here.” She stopped again to take a few deep breaths, “A man was executed during the operation. He was not a local man. One of theirs from the north. This sympathizer helped them drop the body in one of the bogs.” Theresa embraced herself and stroked her upper arms as she continued. “My father said to never tell anyone.”
“But he told you.”
“Yes, he did. It was on the way back from the University Hospital in Galway, the day the doctor told him how bad the cancer was. I went with him. My mother couldn’t handle taking him, you know. It was just him and me.”
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