Assumpta turned back over her shoulder as Fionn tugged at the lead, eager to stretch his stiff legs in this unfamiliar town. The man who opened the door couldn't be anyone but Ossian Egan. He still resembled Ambrose in every way Imelda never had: spare, cautious, cool in the colouring.
Assumpta thought of her own parents now as Fionn pulled her on down the road. She had always been told she was Maureen's face with Jack's colouring; Maureen's temper and Jack's absentmindedness; both their hope and charity, neither one's faith.
All their mortal flesh and blood, now. Last of the line.
None of their honesty. At least she wouldn't have to face them.
She looked behind her once more.
Good luck, Ambrose.
Ambrose felt his feet settle into the dense pile of the big oval rug as the loveseat helped him sit upright. No furious nun, no criminal in the back of the squad car, no irate television prank victim had ever made him this nervous.
His father poured him a cup of green tea. "Bit of an odd glimpse through the looking glass."
Ambrose nodded numbly.
Ossian went on: "I'm reminded of an advert I saw when I was hiding out in America about fifteen years ago. The father confronts the son after finding drugs in his bedroom, and the son says, 'I learned it by watching you!'"
Ambrose allowed a sad smile. "Only I kept thinking of that Harry Nilson song."
Ossian nodded through his grimace. "Guilt notwithstanding, it's a happy surprise."
"Likewise." Ambrose stared into his teacup. "Are you well?"
Ossian gave a soft laugh. "Where to start with that one! You first."
BALLYKISSANGEL
The gathering cloud cover belied the harsh yellow light on the ground at the old Quigley place.
It was difficult to look at it in any light.
Niamh looked into the old empty hot tub, filled now with stagnant rain, mouldering in the grout between the Turkish tiles. Trying to peer in a kitchen window, she supposed the old cobwebs had long since won the battle. She imagined the wood warped and brittle in the sauna.
Daddy's pride and joy, she thought behind a glum face.
Could a person ever really go home again?
She looked at the numbers on the leaflet in her hand.
Well, maybe.
Doc Ryan arrived home at the working day's end, too tired to be enthusiastic about what was to come.
I have to do this, he reminded himself as he loosened his tie. He poured a cognac, swearing it was in the interest of cultural relevance.
He drummed his fingers as he waited at the computer for a stable connection, then drummed them again as the RealAudio stream took its sweet time to buffer.
Finally, the familiar creamy voice of the newsreader filled his study, and the French Language Immersion portion of the evening was underway.
He was getting better. He could make out more and more of each story.
Tonight, just as he had hoped, a correspondent was covering the real news of the day: that at the end of this week, a surgeon in New York would attempt the world's first transatlantic surgery - using telecommunication technology to pilot a robot and perform a cholecystectomy on a patient in Strousbourg.
Operation Lindbergh.
Gallbladders removed from halfway around the world. Ambrose and Assumpta stepping back into the light.
Michael closed his eyes and settled back in his chair, imagining an osmosis of this beautiful and irrational language through his own pores, becoming him.
Preparing him for what he knew he had to do.
OMAGH
"We thought at the time it was the right thing to do."
Ambrose watched his father's hands grip the teacup, cold and half-empty as it now was. The blue web of veins on the backs of them, he realised, carried angry blood from a kind heart.
Ossian continued. "She wanted a family; I wanted to want it meself. When you arrived...you were the most magnificent thing I'd seen, Ambrose."
Ambrose nodded, choking back a memory of Kieran's birth.
Ossian blinked. "But I couldn't make myself feel that way for your mother - for any woman. It broke her heart. She wept about feeling ugly on the phone with her mother. It was so much beyond anything she deserved.
"Father Mac took my confession one afternoon, told me the evil within me could only be cleansed with faith and devotion. I said I hoped Imelda could find true love, hoped we both could. He reminded me about the 'moral gravity of divorce.' The smallness of the town." He pulled a woven blanket over his lap. "One afternoon I was running errands on the Cilldargan road and smoke began pouring into my car. Then flames began peeking out from the bonnet. I drove into a ravine, got out, and walked."
Ambrose's mouth had gone dry. "And Doc Ryan?"
"He was my last phone call. I said I'd just seen a car in flames running off the road. Never been sure if he knew it was me. Off I ran. Found myself in Dublin, but it didn't please. Neither did London. Took it as an excuse and ran away to San Francisco - sure everyone told me it was our Shangri-La," he grimaced. "Never knew of a town with so many fond songs written about it."
"Did you not like it?"
"No. I found it cold and dirty and full of broke, oppressed people who all blamed each other."
Ambrose tried to tread carefully: "Was that where you...got sick?"
Ossian shrugged. "Only it's where I learned I was. And then quickly learned that America was an expensive place to fall ill. Still is, I'm told..."
The older Egan paused, ran a shaky thumb along the lip of his cup. "Ambrose, truly I believed in my heart that a vanished husband was better than a divorce; that a gay father was worse than no father at all."
"Might've been a time I would've agreed," said the son. "Now, though, I've met a few fellow actors down in Cheltenham...well, they're finer fathers than I've been."
Ossian looked surprised.
Ambrose sank back into the chair. "Do you think the Church pushes us all too hard?"
"What, marrying, having kids?"
A nod. "Never divorcing." The word was sour in Ambrose's mouth.
Ossian stretched his legs out on an ottoman, readjusting the balance of his cup and saucer. He took one more contemplative sip. "Ambrose, I used to say your mother and I were never meant to be. Never meant to marry at all, only made messes of each other's lives trying." He shook his head.
"Da..." The syllable fell from his lips clumsy, shapeless, soft from disuse.
"For years I blamed the Church for pushing us to put on an act. Easy to do. Certainly had Her share of sins across the centuries. Has them still."
Ossian inhaled. He looked tired now. "Christy was negative, you know. Tested every six months, like clockwork. When the bombing happened, he bled out in the street. A first responder who knew him was terrified of catching AIDS, just froze up on the spot. Knew no better.
"The person who held me as I wept for the man I loved, who promised me Christy was in God's hands...that person was a very brave Catholic priest. For all my grievances, I'll never forget it." He looked his son in the eye now. "Ambrose, you're my living proof that there was a good enough reason for everything your mammy and I put each other through. You're here. It's all that matters.
"You're doing right to go back to the family now. Take them any way they'll have you."
Ambrose nodded.
Assumpta brought Fionn to heel at the corner of High and Market - a long enough walk from Ossian's neighbourhood, and as close to the heart of things as she dared to get.
She recalled now the way the scene had looked on the television, three years ago on her birthday - a dust cloud, bodies in the street, the skeleton of an ill-fated stolen car whose abductors hadn't planned for inadequate street parking. Her own guilt was so fresh then, she'd found she felt almost responsible. Wasn't the God of her youth said to be vengeful that way?
Today was bright and clear and people were moving about normally, smiling, laughing. Still every once in a while someone would slow their pace, looking too long in a corner where something cruel had once happened.
She had never fully been able to give up on the notion of ghosts, especially when sudden and violent deaths were concerned. She tried to figure if the gooseflesh on her arms was the presence of lives cut short for no good reason, or only the thought of them.
Oh, the things superstition can do, she thought. Fionn began to whinge, pulling at the lead to turn back.
Sorry for the delay in updating and for the utter dearth of Peter in this installment! So much is going on...I hope everyone had a lovely Easter.
Like I said, you'll find my fingerprints and agendas everywhere, and it'll only get worse from here.