Page 55 of Whale Harbor

“Hello,” Frankie said.

“What did you call my father?” Mary asked, somewhat indignant. Mac hushed her, but Honnie seemed delighted.

“That’s what we say here,” she said. “Macdara is his name and Cathal is his father and Pól was his father’s father and that’s how we know which family he’s from.”

Mary looked skeptical. She’d never heard this before.

“Fáilte abhaile,” Honnie whispered and pulled the children toward her to hug. Welcome home. All the way from America.

She ushered them inside. “Be telling me the news.”

“Now there will be more tea,” Mary said to Frankie.

IF MAC HADN’T KNOWN IT was Nuala at the funeral home, he never would have recognized her in death. Her face was gaunt and thickly powdered, her hair puffed to a degree that looked absurd. They’d put bright pink lipstick on her and she had a slash of rouge on both cheeks. Her waxlike hands were clasped together and a rosary weaved around them.

Mary took one long look, asked if that was the person who’d died, asked if it was really the real her, and then retreated to the corner, where she and Frankie conferred with wide eyes. Mac should have warned them, he supposed, but it hadn’t occurred to him. After a while, they made a quiet game out of touching the holy water font. He decided he’d let that go unless they got too rowdy. Cathal said a prayer by Nuala’s side before the funeral director opened the door to the villagers and Mac wondered what his father was thinking, exactly, down there on his knees.

He recognized two school friends who’d emigrated to England and must have come back, people who’d come to the wake specifically to see him and Barry, hearing they were at home. They waited on the line with somber faces, but when they arrived at Barry and Mac their faces transformed into the mischievous children they’d once been.

“There’s a long line,” Cathal whispered, when they stood chatting too long.

“Will you come down for a pint later?” Willie Tiernan asked them. “You might see some others you know.”

“All right,” Mac said, speaking for them both.

“Your mother was a lovely person,” one woman said as she placed her hand on Nuala’s coffin.

“She wasn’t my mother,” Mac said absently, thinking he was glad he came after all. The pub would be fun. They’d bring Coleman with them and maybe he’d give them a song. They’d bring the children.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. That’s right,” the woman said, and Mac felt Barry’s side-eye. He shrugged as if to ask what he wanted him to say instead.

“Just say thanks,” Barry said under his breath.

“But—”

“You’re worse than the children.”

“Who’s the eldest out of me and you,” Mac asked. “Since we landed you’ve been acting like it’s you.”

Barry rolled his eyes. Cathal stayed in his place on the receiving line the whole time, thanked people for coming. When people moved down the line and arrived at Mac, most said only that they were sorry for his trouble and kept moving, but some told him little stories about Nuala, that she always had sound advice, that she was quick to help out in a pinch. Mac didn’t know where to put these words. He couldn’t receive them into himself but he also couldn’t pretend not to hear.

“I didn’t know her too well, truth be told,” he said at one point, when he got a feeling like a woman wanted to talk with him about her friend. He was starting to feel tired, between the travel and the fact that he was there at all, and he hadn’t expected so many people. He overheard Mary suggest to Frankie that she’d seen Nuala’s hand move. “There!” she said. “It moved again!” Three seconds later Frankie said in a voice far too loud for the setting: “Stop it, Mary!” He rushed over to Barry to stare at the coffin from behind Barry’s hip, and Mary wouldn’t meet Mac’s eye. Barry turned to tell the children to behave but then he saw someone he knew come in, so he left them. Immediately, they lay down on their bellies and began swinging their legs in a way that made it hazardous for the old-timers to pass.

“Mac,” Barry said. “Do you remember Donal?”

“I do,” Mac said, shaking Donal’s hand, but then he excused himself, gathered Mary and Frankie, told Barry they’d be right back, and together they walked along the coast road to get some air. The kids were happy to escape, and so was Mac. It was too much, being in that room with all those people. The kids ran along the road ahead of him. In Yonkers, he’d never let them so far out of his sight.

“Where are we going?” Mary asked.

“I want to see something quick and then we’ll head back.”

They walked almost a mile from the village. The little ones got excited whenever they passed a cow or a horse in a field. Mary reached up her hand to a curious donkey who’d come to the fence to get a look at them, but Mac pulled her back and warned her about their bites. Eventually they turned and followed Mac through the rushes. He told them to mind the cowpats as they found the path to the beach. And then they arrived, the sand as yellow as it had ever been, and there were the boulders that had always been there, standing like sentinels guarding their little harbor.

Mac turned and squinted at the top of the mountain, remembering the day he and Rian watched the action on the beach from so far above. He remembered hating the sea spray because his jumper would feel damp for the rest of the day. But the day was calm now, the sand undisturbed, the sun strong despite the cool temperature. He walked over to where the whale once lay but there was nothing; two decades of storms had likely pulled the remains back into the ocean.

“What is it, Daddy?” Mary said. “You look sad.”

But then off to the side where the sand met the tall seagrass, Mac spotted a sun-bleached cage. He told himself it was probably a trap of some kind—no doubt fishermen had developed different tools since he was last there. Scattered around it were what looked like large circular stones cut perfectly alike. The kids followed him as he inspected them, lifted one to see how heavy it was. There were five, six, seven of them, round with straight ends rising up from each almost like handles.