The Crow of Connemara (8 page)

“I'm sorry,” she said. “You never quite managed to get along with either Mom or Dad. I've had my issues with Mom, too, but I was always close to Dad. I'm going to miss him so much, and the thought that he's going to die, that we're going to
let
him die . . .” She choked back a sob. “I wasn't ready for this. Any of it.”

“We never are,” he told her, his own eyes tearing up in sympathy. “We think they're going to be there forever . . .”

Things can be forever. 'Tis possible.
The voice that spoke was a woman's, a rich alto with a strong, lilting Irish accent, though it seemed that he heard other voices, both male and female, echoing the words—resonating inside his head.
We need you.
The statement sounded so clearly and so strongly that he gasped.

Jen mistook the sound. Her right hand left the steering wheel and found his. “We'll get through this,” she told him. “We'll manage it together, little brother. I'm glad you're here. I really am.” Her hand left his as she wiped at her eyes again. “Even if you are still a hopeless romantic.”

He knew she tried to say it as a joke, but it sounded more like an accusation.

7

A
S MAEVE WALKED DOWN Market Street in Ballemór toward the grocery on Bridge Street, she halted, causing Keara, Niall, and Aiden to stop as well. “There,” she said, pointing just ahead to the intersection, where the gargoyle-laden spire of St. Joseph's Church strained to reach the gray clouds overhead. A gleaming black hearse was just pulling up to the front of the church, followed by a short line of cars, as a small group of mourners waited on the steps. “That's Darcy Fitzgerald's body in the box,” she said. The undertakers had opened the rear of the hearse, and six men shuffled forward to lift the coffin onto their shoulders and carry it into the church.

An older woman in mourning tweed stepped from the sedan just behind the hearse. She watched as the coffin was raised, but then her gaze snagged on Maeve, across the street. Her eyes widened, then narrowed; the stare was long and assessing, as if the woman were trying to remember where she'd seen Maeve before. Maeve favored her with a smile.

The old woman crossed herself, then spat on the ground toward the group. With a nearly audible huff, the woman deliberately turned away. She followed the coffin into the church, as the priest and his servers opened the doors for the funeral Mass.

“Well, that was nice,” Niall said. “The old hag. Yeh should'nah been so accommodating to her when yeh went to gather the man's soul, Maeve.”

“It's not entirely her fault. The leamh have mostly forgotten the old ways,” Maeve said. “There's too few left to teach them anymore.”

“Aye,” Aiden agreed. His arm was around Keara's waist. “They do'nah even stop the clocks, turn the mirrors, or open a window when one of their own passes, or if they do, it's for the show of it. They send the body to the undertaker immediately rather than have it properly washed and prepared and left at home for the wake. They use their damned vehicles to carry the body instead of carrying it themselves.”

“Piss on the feckin' leamh,” Niall grunted. “Just like they piss on us.”

“Niall . . .” Keara began, but Niall scowled at her, slicing through her reply with a hand through the air.

“Nah,” he said. “Yeh need nah say a t'ing. The Old Ones were right to abandon this world an' go through to Talamh an Ghlas when they did. I only wish my ancestor woulda had the sense then to follow 'em.” Maeve saw his glance go accusingly toward her.

“We'll follow soon enough,” she told them. Niall started to protest, but Aiden nudged him in the side with an elbow, shaking his head.

“Let's get what we need done here and get back to the island,” Aiden said.

“Agreed,” Maeve answered. “I'll leave the three of yeh to get the supplies we need; I'll go talk to the garda about their little letter. Keara, please make sure everyone else stays out of trouble.”

Across the street, the mourners had filed in behind the casket and the doors to the church had closed behind them. Faintly, they could hear an organ's asthmatic wheeze and warbling voices plodding through a song. “G'wan,” Maeve said. “I'll meet yeh all back at the boat in an hour or two.”

The garda station was on Galway Road. Maeve walked across Bridge Street and onto Low Road, then followed the curve until it met Galway Road—the station was down to the right, another ten-minute walk away: an unimposing, brick-faced edifice with an array of silver cars emblazoned with fluorescent blue and yellow parked in front and a placard proclaiming
An Garda Síochána
in front. A pair of uniformed gardai held the door open for Maeve, then walked out toward the cruisers as Maeve went to the sergeant at the front desk. “I'm here to see Superintendent Dunn.”

The sergeant glanced up from the papers in front of him. A finger the size of a sausage tapped the paper as if the sheets were likely to escape if ignored. His florid, heavy gaze traveled from her face, down her body, and back again. He smiled with his mouth, but the folds around his eyes were untouched. “Yeh are now, are yeh? Well, who should I tell him has come calling?”

“Maeve Gallagher, from Inishcorr. I've come about the notice that was delivered to us two days ago.”

Thick eyebrows raised slightly. He picked up a phone handset from his desk and pressed a button on it while still looking at Maeve. “Superintendent, I have one of the Oileánach here who wants to see yeh. Maeve Gallagher.” Maeve could hear the faint scratch of a reply from the phone, and the sergeant nodded. “I'll send her in, then.” He replaced the phone on its cradle and pointed to a hallway to his left. “Down there, missus. Third door on yer left.”

Maeve nodded to him and followed where he'd pointed.
Superintendent Cedric Dunn
was painted in black letters on the frosted glass of the third door in plain block letters. She knocked on the glass once, and a voice boomed, “Come in” from the room beyond. Maeve twisted the door handle and pushed the door open.

Cedric Dunn had the build of a former athlete who had seen the inside of a gym only infrequently in the last decade. He rose from his chair as Maeve entered the office. His suit had been tailored for a body twenty pounds lighter; his pants fit tightly under a small shelf of stomach. But the torso was still muscular and retained the general v-shape it had evidently once had. He gestured toward a chair in front of his desk, where a laptop sat surrounded by small hillocks of files and paper, then ran the hand through short, graying hair. He didn't smile, but his blue-gray eyes seemed sympathetic enough as he sat down on his own creaking office chair. Some of the anger she'd brought with her dissipated, seeing him. She'd expected someone harder and harsher, a bureaucrat composed of nothing but laws and regulations, and that didn't seem to match Dunn.

“So, Miss Gallagher,” he said, and his voice was a warm baritone. “Are you the person designated to speak for the Oileánach?”

“I can speak for the islanders, aye,” she told him. “I led them to Inishcorr.”

He nodded. He ignored the laptop sitting on his desk, and instead opened a drawer and took out a notebook. He flipped it open, found a pencil amid the clutter on his desk, and scratched a few notes on the paper. Maeve found that she liked that. “Were you aware that you had no right to establish residence there?”

“The island's been abandoned since the '30s, Superintendent.”

“That may be, but the NPWS took title to the island in the 1990s.”

Maeve shrugged. “'Tis nah a park, and none were living there when we came. We've been there for over five years now, and we've cleaned up all the tumbledown houses there and made it a better place. No NPWS person ever seemed to take an interest or visit the island a'tall until now.” She paused and gave him a tight-lipped frown. “Nah until some a'the superstitious and frightened people in Ballemór decided to complain about us.”

Dunn's lips twitched in what might have been an attempt at a smile. “That may be, but it doesn't change the legalities, I'm afraid. The NPWS says they want you off the island; I'm obligated to carry out that request.” He put the pencil down on the notebook and leaned forward on his elbows. “Miss Gallagher, I went out there meself to serve that notice, and I'm not unsympathetic to what yeh've said. I saw the village and yer people, and yeh've taken a wrecked and wretched place and made it habitable again. I can appreciate that. But m'hands, as they say, are tied here.”

He spread out his hands, palm up, as if to show her.

“I see no ties, Superintendent, only a piece of meaningless paper.” She reached into her pocket and put the notice on his desk, unfolding it in front of him. He didn't look at it, but at her as she rose from her chair. “Inishcorr is our home,” she told. “It's where we
need
to be. I came to tell yeh that we will nah be leaving.”

He blinked once. “They've given yeh thirty days,” he told her. “Look, it's not for me to tell yeh this, but yeh can probably stretch that out some if yeh take this to court. Find yerselves a friendly barrister and see what he can do. He could probably buy you another few months. Maybe longer if he's good at it.”

Maeve was already shaking her head. “We're not leaving, Superintendent. 'Tis where we need to be, as I told yeh. We care nah for yer laws and regulations and such. We'll be staying, no matter what papers yeh show us.”

“Miss Gallagher, I have my duties and responsibilities. If yeh won't leave, I'll be forced . . .”

She held up a hand to stop him. “Yeh can do whatever yeh need do,” she told him. She pointed at the notice on his desk. “That may mean something to yeh, but it means nothing a'tall to us, and that's all I wanted to tell yeh. I'm wishing yeh a good day, Superintendent.”

With that, Maeve turned and left the office. She heard Dunn give an exasperated huff behind her, but he didn't call out to stop her.

She could feel the eyes of the sergeant at the desk on her back as she left the station.

8

I
N HIS ROOM THAT NIGHT, as he undressed and put his glasses on the bedside table, Colin slid his Gibson from the gig bag. He sat on the edge of the bed, holding the guitar and slipping the pick out from the front pocket of his jeans. The wear-polished neck felt slick and comfortable in his grip, and he touched the strings lightly: an “E” in a high, open position. The B string was a little flat; he turned the tuning peg, strumming the top three strings with the pick until the tuning fell into place. Faintly, through the closed door, he heard Jen talking to Aaron, then the bathroom door closing. He hit the chord again, quietly, thinking that he'd play for a few minutes until Jen or Aaron came out of the bathroom, then he'd go in and use it himself.

He put the pick back in his pocket, and began fingerpicking quietly: “The Lover's Ghost,” one of the oldest of the Irish folk tunes he knew. As he played softly with his eyes closed against the fatigue of the day, his fingers seemed to move across the strings of their accord; he heard the tune shifting, changing slightly, the melody becoming more minor and urgent, as if he were calling up some ancient ghost from which the tune he knew had descended.

“Colin?”

He heard his name called faintly: that strange woman's voice again, with its Irish lilt. He stopped playing and opened his eyes. The room was entirely dark, but the bedside lamp had been on only a few moments ago. He wondered if Jen had come in and turned off the lamp, if he'd been sleeping with his guitar in his hands, but that didn't seem possible. “Jen?” he called out.

A laugh answered him. “Nah,” came the answer from the darkness, in a familiar accent. “Yeh should keep playing. 'Tis a lovely tune, that.”

There was a faint glow near the foot of the bed, almost like a campfire glimpsed through evening fog. He thought of reaching for his glasses, to try to see more clearly, but he found that he didn't want to move. He could smell briny water and the distinct herbal scent of burning peat. A figure moved in front of the fire, a long skirt swaying, the woman's face hidden in shadow and long, dark hair.

“Yer wondering if I'm real,” she told him. “I might be, or yeh might be dreaming and imagining it all. 'Tis difficult to tell. Mayhap a bit o' both.” She didn't come nearer, nor could he see her clearly. Her figure hovered against the light, enticing, but he couldn't seem to make his legs swing over the edge of the bed to go to her. He clutched the neck of the guitar, harder.

“I'm waiting for yeh, Colin,” she said. “I need what yeh have to give. It hurts, the mistakes I've made. Yeh have no idea how much it hurts.” The pain in the woman's voice made him ache, but still he couldn't force himself to move. He lay there, stricken. In a rush of peat-laden wind, she was alongside the bed, her features faint and indistinct in the firelight and smoke and the weakness of his eyes, and she smiled wanly at him as she leaned into him fully. He could feel her breasts, her hips against his body. “Come to me,” she whispered in his ear, her tongue dancing along his earlobe. “It's time. Come to me.”

The weight of her lifted from him and the firelight in the room faded. He reached for her one-handed, to put his arm around her and bring her body back to his, but there was nothing above him and the room had gone dark again.

He blinked, as if to clear his vision. There was light from the street outside leaking through the blinds: a true light, a solid light, and the bedside lamp was on again. Colin started; there was no one else in the bedroom, and in his hand he was still holding the guitar, clutching it so tightly that his fingers ached as he released it. Faintly, he could hear Jen and Aaron conversing in the other room, and he wondered whether they had heard him talking to the apparition. Seeing her, talking to her—it was all fading in his head, like the wisp of a dream collapsing in the morning.

“Goddamn it,” he said quietly. Then, even more softly: “Only crazy people are supposed to hear voices.”

He put the guitar back over his lap and sounded the first notes of the song again, but this time he played only the tune that he knew. That older tune, that strange forefather of it, seemed to be gone, the changed melody teasing him from memory but too elusive to catch and hold.

“Damn it,” he said, and put the guitar down.

It was Aunt Patty who called Jen's apartment early the next morning.

Colin heard Jen's cell phone ring through the closed door of his bedroom; Jen was in the kitchen. He heard Jen's “Hi, Aunt Patty . . .” then several uh-huhs, and finally “Sure, we'll meet you at the hospital then. Give us an hour.” He heard Aaron's voice, though he couldn't quite understand what he was saying. “I have to get Colin up,” Jen said, and he heard her footsteps approaching down the hallway, followed by a soft knock on the door. “Colin?”

“Come on in. I'm awake.”

The knob turned and Jen's head—in soft focus since his glasses were still on the nightstand—peered around the edge. “Aunt Patty just called.”

“I heard. What's up?”

“Mom's made the decision; she's told them to do whatever tests are needed so they can take him off the vent. If . . .” She stopped, clamping her jaw shut. “If we want to say good-bye before they take him, we need to be at the hospital in an hour.”

“You okay, Jen?”

Her voice shivered and tears threatened her eyes. “As much as I'm going to be.”

“Let me get dressed and I'll be out.”

“We've already showered. The bathroom's yours if you want it.”

“Thanks,” he told her.

“I'm going to fix some toast and coffee. It'll be ready when you get out.”

“Sounds good.”

All the mundane, everyday words dammed the emotional chaos underneath. The door closed.

Fifteen minutes later, showered and shaved, he went into the kitchen, where Jen and Aaron were sitting at the small table, coffee mugs steaming in front of them. He poured himself coffee and sat across from them. A plate of buttered toast sat untouched on the table. Colin wrapped his hands around the mug, just feeling the pleasant warmth but not drinking; his stomach was in an uproar and he was afraid the coffee would only make it worse. Jen looked at him and shook her head mutely. “God, I'm so scared,” she said. Aaron silently put his arm around her.

“I know,” Colin told her. “I am, too. Our grandparents . . . Mom and Dad only told me about their deaths afterward; I wasn't there to see them on their deathbeds. This . . . this is different, and yeah, scary. I agree. Part of me doesn't want to be there; the rest of me feels like it's my responsibility. This is too sudden. I never had the chance to reconcile with Dad. I really wish I could have talked with him, or at least had a chance to try to explain to him, one more time, who I am and what I'm doing. Now . . . At least we don't have to watch him die. We don't have to see them take him off the vent. I guess that's good.”

From the corner of his eye, Colin saw a darkness fluttering at the window of the kitchen. He glanced that way: a crow, its feathers blue-black and glinting iridescently in the sun, had landed there. The creature seemed to be staring in at them, its satiny black bill nearly tapping at the glass.

“Your mom's made the right decision, though,” Aaron said as Colin stared at the crow. “Who knows whose life your dad might save with his kidneys, his liver? Or maybe his corneas might give someone back their sight. You have to remember that—his death will potentially help others.”

“Colin?” he heard Jen say, then she gasped as she followed his stare and glanced at the window herself. “Shit! What the fuck?”

The crow opened its beak; they all heard a faint
caw
through the glass, then the bird extended its wings and let itself fall away. The bird's shadow slid over the glass and was suddenly gone. “Okay, that was too weird,” Jen said. “What the hell was a damn crow doing on my windowsill?”

Aaron shrugged; Colin sat silent. The crow, the raven, figured often in Celtic mythology—he knew that from his studies of the subject in school.
That wasn't a coincidence,
Colin wanted to say. He remembered the dream—or at least what he assumed was a dream—the night before.
The Irish woman . . . She wanted me to come to her . . .

Jen's gaze was on him. He wondered whether she knew that the crow was also considered to be a harbinger of the
bean shee
, the “banshee” whose cry foretold a death. Colin took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose—at least he could no longer see Jen's face except as a blur. That helped; he could pretend that he didn't know what she was thinking.

“I guess we should get going,” he said. “Knowing Mom, she'll be there early.”

He would mostly remember the smells afterward: the scent of his mother's perfume and Aunt Patty's when he hugged them; the antiseptic tang of the hospital air, the freshly-dry-cleaned scent of Tommy's suit. They gathered around his father's bed in the ICU, standing around him. His mother stood on the right side at the head of the bed, brushing his father's short, gray hair with her fingers; Doctor Pearse—a nurse behind her—stood across the bed from his mother. Colin, Jen, Tommy, and Aunt Patty were arrayed around his father, with Aaron standing behind Jen and Harris sitting on one of the chairs against the wall. Father Frank stood next to Harris in his surplice and stole, his Bible open in his hand. Doctor Pearse addressed her words mostly to Colin's mother.

“A colleague and I performed the tests independently last night, and again this morning, and we both agree. All the criteria for declaring brain death are there.” The doctor kept talking, going on about apnea tests, cerebral motor responses, corneal and tracheal reflexes, and more. Colin heard the technical details without really listening, the phrases just empty syllables in his ears. Dr. Pearse's professionally sympathetic gaze swept over each of them. “What all that tells us,” she said finally, “is that we have a definitive diagnosis of brain death, which means—legally—he's already passed on. With the DNR release you've signed, Mrs. Doyle, we're ready to go ahead and take your husband's body to the transplant surgical team. I just want to make certain that's still what you want.”