Chapter 7 - The Stars Over Kildare
The lane to Ballymore Eustace was narrow, bounded on both sides by drystone walls that were covered in a thick pelt of wet green moss and wild blackberry brambles. The morning mist was not like the mist in Ohio; it was saltier, heavier, carrying the smell of burning peat from the hearths of three stone cottages scattered along the ridge like sheep that had lain down for the night and forgotten to stand up.
The house Erin rented was a long, low cottage with whitewashed walls that were three feet thick at the embrasures. The windows were painted a dark, hunter green that had begun to flake around the sills, showing the gray oak underneath.
In the second bedroom, the ceiling was low enough that a tall man would have had to tilt his head to avoid the exposed rafters.
Above the two narrow twin beds, suspended from the rough pine beams by pieces of butcher’s twine, hung twelve paper stars. They had been cut from old magazines—pages of garden catalogs showing pictures of yellow primroses, blue hydrangeas, and green ferns—and their edges were slightly curled from the dampness of the Irish air.
Maddie was sleeping on her stomach, her legs tangled in a thick wool blanket that smelled of lanolin and lavender soap. Her thumb was tucked firmly into the corner of her mouth, and her nose was pressed against Barnaby’s remaining ear.
Ellie was sitting on the edge of the other bed, her bare feet dangling four inches above the wide floorboards. She was wearing a pair of thick gray woolen socks that Erin had knitted from scrap yarn, and she was watching through the small square window as seven black-faced sheep moved slowly through the gorse on the hillside, their wool yellowed by the morning dew.
"Mom?" Ellie whispered.
I was sitting in an old willow armchair by the cold hearth, wearing Erin’s oversized cable-knit cardigan over my flannel shirt. My hands were wrapped around a mug of strong, dark tea that was so hot the steam curled against my eyelashes like warm silk.
"Yes, Ellie?"
"Are the sheep loud?" she asked.
"Not very," I said. "Just a little baaa now and then when they lose track of their lambs."
"Like you and me?"
I set the mug down on the slate hearth. I stood up, the old floorboards creaking with a soft, friendly groan beneath my slippers, and walked over to the bed. I sat down beside her, pulling the rough wool blanket around her narrow shoulders until she leaned her head against my collarbone.
"I’m never going to lose track of you, Ellie," I said. "Not here. Not anywhere."
"Daddy’s house had a lot of rooms," she said, her fingers picking at a loose strand of gray yarn on her sock. "Sometimes I couldn't find him even when his car was in the driveway. He’d be in the basement with the door locked, looking at the computer."
"I know," I said.
"And Aunt Tessa smelled like the department store," Ellie continued, her voice very small, barely louder than the kettle that was beginning to sing on the gas ring in the kitchen downstairs. "She didn't like it when Maddie touched her bag. She told Maddie that leather costs money."
"Well," I said, kissing the place where her hair parted over her temple. "Aunt Erin doesn't have any leather bags. She has two canvas sacks that smell like flour and oats, and she says you can put whatever you want in them, as long as it isn't frogs."
Ellie gave a tiny, snuffling giggle that hitched in her chest. "Can we find frogs?"
"In the ditch by the bridge," I said. "Erin says there are thousands of them. Little green ones that can jump clean over your knee."
The kitchen door below opened with a soft clack, and Erin’s boots sounded on the stone flags of the scullery. A moment later, my sister appeared at the top of the narrow stairs, carrying a loaf of soda bread wrapped in a checkered tea towel and a crock of yellow butter that had been churned two miles down the road at the creamery in Blessington.
Erin was two years younger than me, with the same gray eyes and the same stubborn chin that our father had carried into the union meetings thirty years ago. Her hair was cut short, tucked behind her ears, and she wore an old blue smock that had smears of linseed oil and yellow ochre across the front from the landscape panels she painted for the tourist shops in Naas.
"The post came," Erin said, setting the bread on the small pine dresser beside the washbasin.
I looked at her hands. She was holding a single airmail envelope with an American stamp—a purple one showing a bald eagle against a cloud.
"From whom?" I asked.
"Brenda," Erin said. She didn't hand it to me; she set it down beside the butter crock, face down, so the return address on Broad Street was hidden. "She said you don't have to read it today if you don't want to. She said everything is filed, everything is done, and the sheriff in Delaware County has already served the notice of relocation on Grant’s attorney."
"What does it say?"
Erin pulled a kitchen knife from her pocket, cut a thick, warm slice from the soda bread, and handed it to Ellie on a cracked blue saucer.
"It says Richard had his surgery," Erin said quietly, leaning against the doorframe. "He survived, Nora. But he won't be back at the dealership. And Grant... Grant lost his junior partnership on Friday morning. The board held an emergency meeting after the scene at Morrison’s clinic. Apparently, two of the senior partners were in the waiting room with their daughters when Carol started screaming about the vasectomy."
Ellie chewed her bread, her eyes fixed on the black-faced sheep on the hill. "What’s a vasectomy, Aunt Erin?"
Erin didn't blink. She reached out and ruffled Ellie’s hair with a hand that smelled of rosemary and turpentine.
"It’s an old Latin word, darling," Erin said smoothly. "It means a man who isn't smart enough to know what a family is for."
Ellie nodded, satisfied with the definition, and took another bite of the warm crust.
"Is Maddie awake?" Erin asked.
"She’s working on it," I said.
Maddie’s left foot kicked once under the wool blanket, then her face emerged from beneath the pillow, her hair a wild, static-charged halo around her pink cheeks. She looked at the paper stars hanging from the ceiling, then at the window, then at Erin’s bread.
"I want the crust," Maddie said firmly.
May you like
"The crust is for the girls who help feed the hens," Erin said, pointing the bread knife toward the back garden where twelve brown hens were clucking softly in their wire pen beside the rhubarb patch.
Maddie was out of the bed before the sentence was finished, her bare feet hitting the floorboards with two sharp thuds as she lunged for her yellow wellies by the hearth.
