Chapter 70: The Confession on the Rope Walk

The hall emptied slowly. Ahern took Mairéad up to the room above the hall and put a wolf on the door, and two of the salvage men took Tom down to the net store and sat him on a bench with his hands on his knees and his wife crying in the doorway. The co-op went out into the lane in twos and threes and did not go home. They stood in the road in the dark and talked in low voices and did not go home.

I went out to the rope walk at the end of the pier because I could not stand in the hall any longer, and Declan came after me and stood at the far end of it with his hands in his pockets and did not say anything for a while.

"She wrote to a Bridget in Dublin," I said. "There was a Bridget in this village in March who died in the hall of her heart. And there was a Bridget in Dublin who was banished in 1988 and who came back in the spring because my sister wrote to her. And the woman in the harbor tonight had red hair and a mark on her throat and she is dead. And there is not a wolf in that hall who can tell me which Bridget is in the water and which Bridget is in the ground and which Bridget is sitting in a cottage in Dublin waiting for a letter."

"The woman in the harbor tonight is the Bridget who came back in the spring," Declan said. "I know it. I have known it since I knelt down beside her on the slip. She had the same coat and the same boots and the same way of holding her hand." He was quiet a moment. "The other one. The schoolteacher. She died in the hall in March and she is in the deep water with a weight on her feet and her family in Dublin has been told she died at sea."

I put my hands on the rail and looked at the harbor.

"Declan," I said. "There is a thing I have to ask you and I have been putting it off since the first night and I am not going to put it off any longer. In March, when my sister was on the floor of the boathouse and you carried her down the road and put her on the floor. Did you know she was alive?"

He did not answer.

"Did you know she was alive when the salvage crew took her off the rocks in April? Did you know when the coroner came and said it was a drowning? Did you know when the whole village was told and when they put the notice in the shop and when Father Byrne said the mass?" I turned round. "Did you know, Declan?"

He looked at the water for a long time.

"I knew she was alive on the night I carried her down to the boathouse," he said. "She was breathing. I put my hand on her chest and I felt her breathing and I told my son to cut the rope and I went out to the rocks and I could not find her and the tide had her. And I did not know whether she was alive or dead and I told myself she was dead because it was easier. And then in April the salvage crew came to me at the harbor office and said they had a woman on the rocks at the cove and they had been paid to take her north, and I said, who paid you, and they said, the woman herself. And I said, is she alive, and they said, she is alive and she is hurt and she is going north. And I stood in that office and I looked at the men and I said, then go." He looked at me. "And I went home and I did not tell a living soul."

The wind came off the water. The boats knocked against the wall.

"You knew in April," I said. "You knew in April and you sat in that office at noon every day and went through the boathouse and did not tell me. I came into that office in June and I told you I was going to find out what happened to my sister and you sat across the desk from me with your cup of tea and you did not say a word."

"I did not say a word because I was a coward and because I was a Beta with a broken mark and because a woman was alive in the north and if I told anyone she was alive then the Alpha would hear it and she would send the men from Sligo and there would be a body in the water in truth." He came down the rope walk toward me. "And there is a thing I have to say and it is worse than that. I did not tell you because I did not want you to go. If I had told you in June that your sister was alive in the north you would have gone north and you would have found her and you would have taken her and gone back to Dublin and there would have been nothing in this village for me but a broken mark and a boy in the hand of the Alpha." He stopped in front of me. "I wanted you to stay. I wanted you to stay more than I wanted your sister to be found. And that is the thing I have been carrying since April and that is the thing I have to say to you tonight."

I looked at him.

"You let me grieve," I said. "You sat in that office and you watched me grieve and you knew she was alive."

"I let you grieve and I watched you grieve and I told myself every day that I was protecting you and I was not." He put his hands at his sides. "I was protecting me."

The wind came up and the rain started again, thin and cold, and the harbor lights went to smears in the water.

"There is a thing about the bond," I said. "You told me on the first night that the bond does not lie and does not let go. And I have felt it since the first night and it has told me things about you that you did not say out loud. And I have been trusting it. I have been standing in a burned hall with a woman who has lied to this village for thirty six years and I have been telling myself that at least the bond is true and at least the man is true and that whatever else is a lie the one thing that is not is the thing between you and me." I looked at him. "And there is a thing the bond does not tell me. It does not tell me what a man does when he is frightened. It does not tell me that a man who is frightened will sit in an office and let a woman grieve rather than lose her. And I have been looking at the bond and not at the man."

Declan did not move.

"I am not going to say it is over," I said. "I am not going to stand on this rope walk in the rain and tell you to go. But there is a thing you have to know before the morning. I am going to stand in that hall tomorrow and I am going to put my sister's claim on the table and I am going to do it with a man beside me or without one. And if the man beside me is a man who has been lying to me since April then I would rather stand alone."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Then I am going to tell you the whole of it," he said. "Not the part that makes me look like a man who was frightened for a woman. The whole of it. In April I went to the men from Galway in the cove and I said, where are you taking her, and they said, north, and I said, who is paying you, and they said, the woman with the gold hair, and I said, then take her and do not come back to this coast. And they went. And I stood on that slip and watched the boat go round the point and I did not go with it and I did not send a wolf with it and I did not tell the healer and I did not tell the priest. And there is a thing I did do. I went up to the coastguard cottage the next night and I sat with the old woman for an hour and I did not say a word to her. And I have been up there every week since April with the coal and the paraffin and I have sat with her and I have not said a word." He looked at me. "That is the whole of it. I am a man who watched a boat go north with your sister in it and then went up a cliff and sat with an old woman and did not say a word to anyone."

The rain came down. I stood on the rope walk with the man in front of me and the bond in my chest and the whole of it going round.

"Declan," I said. "There is a thing I have to ask you and it is the last thing and then I am going to go to my sister. In April, when the men from Galway took her north, did my sister know who paid them?"

"She paid them herself."

"Did she know where she was going?"

"She was going north to Eileen."

"Did she know that Eileen had been banished and had been in the north for twenty years and was building a pack?"

Declan was quiet for a moment.

"She knew," he said. "She had written to Eileen in March before the claim. She had been writing to her for a year."