Page 53 of Whale Harbor

“Well? Let’s hear it.” Cathal looked the same except smaller, grayer, more weatherworn. Something else was different, too, that Mac couldn’t name. He was wearing the same old jacket and trousers he’d owned for more than twenty years.

“Cén chaoi a bhfuil tú?” Mary asked, her gimlet eye taking everything in.

Cathal clapped a hand over his mouth in delight. “Tá mé go maith, go raibh maith agat,” he said, and she nodded.

“Welcome home, Macdara,” Cathal said, standing from his crouched position to shake his hand. “You’re very welcome. All of you.”

THAT THE COTTAGE WAS VERY quiet now was all Cathal said about the loss of Nuala. It had only been three days but he told them the difference was profound. He squeezed into the car with them to head there and told them he’d only started getting used to Eamon and Seamus being gone—their comings and goings had made the house seem full—and now this. Beside him in the back seat the kids just stared at him. When they entered the cottage, Barry and Mac holding bags, Cathal stood twisting his eyebrow for a moment. Barry suggested tea, so Cathal put on the kettle. He went digging in the press for a sleeve of biscuits.

“There’s Coleman for company, of course,” Cathal said, “but to live with only one person after so many—it all happened so fast.” And Coleman was so quiet, where with Eamon and Seamus you never knew what blackguarding was afoot, what time they’d sneak in and in what state. “Pure wild, them two,” Cathal said, but with affection so bare that Mac felt like he’d seen something he wasn’t meant to see and looked away. “They’re getting on all right in New York?”

“They are,” Barry said. “They’re fine. A good number of late nights, I’d say, but otherwise all right.”

“What harm?” Cathal said. “When they get their papers sorted they’ll come back for a visit. And Vincent? He hasn’t been there long enough to know, I suppose.”

Vincent certainly seemed to be getting on all right. The rest of the younger brothers avoided applying for jobs that required papers, but Vincent took a different approach. He didn’t lie about his citizenship status, he simply left it blank and listed his credentials underneath, and it worked. He got a job in an office that overlooked Columbus Circle and did something with computers that he’d studied in school. He had to wear a dress shirt every day. When the paperwork came back attached to his first paycheck he saw someone had written PENDING in bold letters next to the citizenship question. He was good with computers and had just recently told Mac that the company was sending him on a training program so he could learn more. He made little of it, said he had to sit in a hot back room all day, that he had to punch in and out just like the rest of them, but they all knew it was something elevated to sit in a chair for work and never get his hands dirty. He went out with his work friends on Fridays, and they tended to go to places the others had never been.

“The others—” Cathal seemed to consider how to put it. “They include him in things? You all do? When you get together at the weekends?”

“Of course,” Barry said and shot Mac a warning look. It was fine. It was all fine.

“Of course we do,” Mac echoed, wanting to add that it certainly wasn’t Vincent’s fault that they didn’t know him. He wasn’t exactly one of them, but week by week, month by month, he was less of an outsider. Noel told Barry who told Thomas who told Mac that one day, when he and Eamon were standing in line at the deli, someone asked them what sort of job their new roommate has that he has to get dressed up every day.

“He’s not our roommate, he’s our brother,” Eamon said and didn’t answer the question. “Nosy prick,” he said when they walked away.

Coleman was at the chemist’s, at work, and Cathal said that as soon as they had the tea they had to go around to see him. The chemist had given him the days off because of the death in his family, but Coleman was devoted to his routine. The cottage was as small as Mac remembered. He’d braced himself for Nuala’s touch all over it, things he wouldn’t recognize, but it was almost exactly the same except for the toilet Cathal had eventually put in, and a flagstone patio with a small iron table and chairs that were slowly turning to rust. There was electricity now, lamps here and there, a small refrigerator. There was a toaster. Cathal showed them that he’d insulated the back room and added a window. That’s where Coleman slept.

Mary stuck close to Mac and was unusually quiet as she looked around. She nibbled the biscuit Cathal had given her. “It’s just a cookie,” she whispered to Frankie. When they were finished, Cathal pointed to the door of what Mac still thought of as the baby room and told the children they could either sleep in there or up in the loft, to figure it out with their fathers. The kids opened the door and there were two beds made neatly, as if Cathal had been expecting them. Mac could see the cords of electric blankets trailing from under the quilts and toward wall outlets and remembered the chilblains they used to get up in the loft in the winter. Outside the day had changed again, and it began to drizzle. Seated around the fire, they heard the engine of one car and then a few minutes later another pass by the front gate.

“You’ll find things quite a bit different, Macdara. Barry has been back, so he’s seen.”

The main things struck Mac as the same, but it seemed important to Cathal that Mac see the changes, so he didn’t say that. “Are you all set for tomorrow?” Mac asked. Tomorrow would be the wake, and then the following day would be the funeral. There were always things that needed to be done.

“I am, I suppose,” Cathal said. “She told me herself what she wanted to wear and all that. I’ll run it over to the funeral home later.”

So it wasn’t a surprise, Mac thought. A long illness, a gradual decline. No one had had to race to find a doctor.

It was quiet as the clock ticked.

“Will we go see Coleman?” Barry asked.

THEY FILED INTO THE CHEMIST’S, Cathal leading the way. Coleman was standing behind the register.

“Look who I met on the road,” Cathal announced.

“Hello, Coleman,” Mac said. But Coleman looked scared.

“It’s just your brothers come to visit from America,” Cathal said. “Isn’t it good to see them? It’s a great surprise.”

“That’s you, Macdara?” Coleman asked, coming from around the counter. “I thought you were Thomas except you look so old.”

Mac laughed. “I’ve learned a lot about how I look today.”

“Older,” Coleman said.

“And me,” Barry said. “Do I look older?”

“You do a bit,” Coleman said very gravely, and they laughed. Coleman looked older too. He’d filled out, grown taller, but he had that same innocent look. He was only thirty-three or so—Mac tried to calculate, two years older than Rian—but his face was deeply lined from all the miles he put in on his bicycle, making deliveries. They introduced the children but Coleman already knew their names. “Mary and Francis,” he said, shaking their hands like they were adults. “And, Mary, you have a new sister, don’t you? Named Ann?” As always, one of the brothers had called Ireland as soon as the baby was born to get word to Cathal.