Page 34

colcannon, and her bouts of weepiness for no apparent reason. Mum had hauled her off to the midwife’s for a test.

And then it was away to the Clare Street laundry with her, where the Sisters of the Good Shepherd would help her wash away

her shame. She took up residence in a hulking, joyless place where she was forced to work, punished and humiliated by the

nuns and supervisors.

And that wasn’t even the worst thing that had happened to Deirdre. The worst occurred after the baby came—a perfect little

angel of an infant with lovely round cheeks and the softest bow-shaped lips she’d ever seen. The worst occurred when he was

taken from her.

When they took the baby from her arms, she tried to hold on, but the infant whimpered, and she didn’t want to hurt him. He

was whisked away. She had looked down at her hand. In it was a tiny knit bootie, made of local wool, white as new-fallen snow.

The nuns made her go to the church and light a candle and say a prayer of farewell. She didn’t light a candle that day. She

slipped the unlit votive into her pocket along with the snow-white bootie, and she’d kept both tokens ever since. She just

wanted some kind of reminder that she never willingly gave her baby away. That she would never say farewell.

The Justice Minister of Fianna Fáil had a policy that favored the sending of children to America for adoption in suitable homes.

This was deemed a far kinder alternative to life in an institution in Ireland.

Deir dre was told nothing except that Catholic Charities had given her son to a prosperous couple in a city called Buffalo in America.

The grief that had descended on Deirdre was a kind of madness. She had wailed for weeks until the sadness nearly killed her.

She knew it would kill her entirely if she didn’t find her child. She seized on the mad notion that she must reclaim him and

keep him forever.

Driven by that singular impulse, she had raised money by doing the things she’d learned at Clare Street—laundry and mending.

The moment she’d saved enough to buy a one-way ticket to Buffalo, New York, in America, she had secured a travel passport

and went without her parents’ consent. They wouldn’t miss her. Ever since she’d had the baby, they treated her like a leper.

Back then, Deirdre had known nothing about the world. She knew only that her baby had been sent to the Archdiocese of Buffalo.

She’d memorized the information on the papers she’d been forced to sign. For the sake of her child, she had endured a frightening,

bumpy flight to America, and then an endless ride by coach from New York City to Buffalo, a frigid, windswept city by a lake

that was as vast as the sea.

She never found him, of course. The records were sealed. No one at the archdiocese would speak to her, and when she persisted,

they even threatened to bar her from the offices, which were adjacent to the huge church of St. Joseph. She would never know

the name of the couple who had taken her baby. The adoption was shrouded in secrecy.

To make things worse, Deirdre’s pocketbook was as empty as her heart. She had no way of getting back to Ireland, not that

her family would welcome her home after what she had done. Swamped by failure, she had stood at the river’s edge above Niagara

Falls, mesmerized by the power of the raging water cascading between the two Great Lakes. One step was all it would take.

One step and she would be gone forever. Just. One. Step.

She had swayed toward the surging, foaming water, weirdly drawn to the unending motion of the current.

In that moment, she felt a gentle touch on her arm and turned to see a young man next to her.

Later she would learn that the reason he had been so gentle with her was that he didn’t want to startle her and send her plunging into the river.

But his unseen fist was firmly clutching the belt of her coat just in case.

One day, he would tell Deirdre that he had sensed exactly what she was contemplating, as if he could read her thoughts.

“You look like you could use a bite to eat,” he said in an affable American voice. “Ever try a beef on weck?”

The young man had brilliant red hair and kind, soft eyes. He was wearing a shirt with a power company badge on it. “I’m Patrick

O’Hara,” he said. “I’d like to buy you a beef on weck.”

“Sorry, what?” Deirdre asked, blinking as though his face were the sun. “And why?”

“It’s a local specialty—roast beef on a kummelweck roll, with salt and caraway seeds. And it’s delicious. I bet they don’t

have such a thing in Ireland.” He grinned at her expression. “I knew you were Irish,” he said. “Not just because of the red

hair.” He gestured at her travel case, which still bore the tags and stickers of her journey. “Come on. There’s a diner over

on Ferry Ave. My treat.”

Patrick O’Hara saved her, and not just because of his good timing. He saved her by giving her something to live for. He told

her she was pretty, and he courted her with respect and unwavering devotion. He told her he loved her, and when she broke

down and confessed about the lost baby, he said it made him love her even more because of the ordeal she’d gone through to

try to find her child, her own flesh and blood.

He said that when the moment came, she would love their own precious babies with that same devotion. In almost no time at

all he won her heart, and she married him, and that was what had saved her altogether.

They did have two kids, three years apart, first Liam and then Mairin. Only two, because Patrick was a second generation American,

and he practiced birth control just like the Protestants did. At first, Deirdre had been certain that using birth control

would brand her a sinner. But she couldn’t deny feeling relieved that there was a way to avoid having baby after baby, year

after year, like so many of the harried women in her club.

Deirdre and Patrick had thirteen hard, joyous years together, building a life in their snug little house on Peach Street. They should have had decades more, but the accident at the Falls took him, and it sucked all the joy from her life.

Deirdre was left to raise two kids on her own meager earnings gleaned from a commercial laundry where she worked eight hours

a day. She was terrified that she would lose the house she and Patrick had bought with the bright, soaring hope that at last,

they were achieving the American dream.

Colm Davis worked at the power plant, too. He was supposed to save her the way Patrick had. But he didn’t save her, and by

the time Deirdre realized her mistake, it was too late. She was naive, and had sunk into a deep hole of grief, and she was

desperate for someone, anyone, to hold out a hand to her.

That hand happened to belong to Colm, and she had held on tight. What she hadn’t understood was that just because he worked

at the plant didn’t mean he was the man Patrick had been. She hadn’t seen that at first. All she’d seen was a big, broad-shouldered,

good-looking guy who talked with confidence and went around with a swagger as if he owned the world. Terrified of falling

destitute, she’d put her trust in him. Before long, she learned that all jobs at the plant were not equal, and all men who

worked there were not equal. Colm was a maintenance specialist, which Deirdre later learned was just a janitor making an hourly

wage. And the wages tended to shrink dramatically thanks to Colm’s frequent stops at the corner bar after work. He had a fondness

for playing the lottery, which never did him a lick of good, but he still kept trying, certain that easy street was just around

the next corner. When Colm got in trouble for taking money from the Eagles Lodge, the only thing that kept him from jail was

that he agreed to have his wages garnished until he paid them back.

They tried for more kids—Colm wanted to match his brother’s six—but it was not to be. As the years passed and she failed to

conceive, Colm was convinced there was something wrong with her. She even saw her doctor about it, and the doctor suggested

the trouble might be with Colm. That simply made him furious, and he refused to see a doctor himself. With a sense of relief,

Deirdre contented herself with Liam and Mairin, who both had their father’s fiery red hair and adventurous spirit.

Now Deirdre grieved every day over Liam, who had gone into the army and was stationed in Texas, waiting to be shipped out to a place she couldn’t even fathom, it was that foreign. He almost never sent letters home. Her son was mad at her for sending Mairin to the nuns.

Deirdre felt guilty about making her daughter live with the harsh, humorless nuns over on Best Street, but she felt she had

no choice. As Mairin grew from coltish little girl into a willowy young woman, Deirdre had noticed Colm eyeing her like a

lamb chop. At first, Deirdre hoped Colm would obey his better angels, but after the incident last fall, she couldn’t ignore

it. Mairin was safer with the nuns.

Deirdre truly believed that. She had to believe that. And she prayed her daughter might forgive her one day.

She looked out the window over the kitchen sink in time to see poor little Fiona turn the corner toward St. Wilda’s. There

were many ways to lose a child, Deirdre thought with a shudder of sadness. Far too many ways to lose a child. She let out

a sigh that turned into a sob.

“What are you on about, then?” Colm demanded, glancing up from the sports pages.

“Ah, I just... It was a wave of sadness. Seeing Fiona reminds me of how much I miss Mairin.” She twisted her hands nervously

together. She’d underestimated how much she would miss her lovely sprite of a daughter. Perhaps she could bring Mairin home

and still manage to keep her safe. Yes, she could find a way to make sure her daughter never found herself alone with Colm.

“Hasn’t she been gone long enough?”

Colm gave a snort of contempt. “She’s not welcome in this house, not after what she did. She’ll stay her full term, and make

her own way in the world once she turns eighteen. I won’t have it any other way.”

The ache in Deirdre’s heart was unbearable, each painful beat a reminder of the impossible choice she’d had to make. It wasn’t

fair—none of it. Mairin was only fifteen, her childhood innocence turning into vibrant beauty. It wasn’t her fault that she’d

become a dangerous magnet for her stepfather’s gaze.

Resentment boiled inside Deirdre, not toward Mairin but toward the man they had once trusted. She’d hated sending Mairin away

from the familiarity of home, yet a fierce sense of protectiveness had demanded it, even if it meant breaking her own heart

in the process.