Ashes of Fiery Weather (56 page)

The disappointment cut more than Katie would have guessed. She'd wanted to ask what Maggie O'Reilly named the children she kept.

Rose had answered with some hesitation. Because the information wasn't quite hers to give? But Katie thought there was something else there, an acknowledgment that though the answer was simple, the question was not.

“The invitations are going to be cheap and handwritten. Aside from the ceremonies and the color of my dress, there won't be much difference between the wake and the wedding.”

“In ancient Ireland, wedding dresses were blue,” Katie said.

“Really? I never heard that.” Rose sounded pleased. “Maybe I'll do it.”

If I'm invited, Katie thought, if that's what you're saying, maybe I'll come.

Katie knew, and she sensed Rose did as well, that they had reached the end of their meeting. A hug would have felt wrong—taking things too far—and Katie was relieved when Rose offered her hand. Their handshake was brief, though Rose squeezed lightly before she let go.

Katie wanted to press her palm to Rose's palm to see if, indeed, from one angle, her hand would be hidden by Rose's and, from another, Rose's would be hidden by hers.

Katie went straight to the subway, walking intently with her eyes downcast, as if she were wary of broken squares of sidewalk. She'd planned to case the neighborhood after leaving the museum, maybe walk by Sean O'Reilly's firehouse and Lehane's, but now she wanted only to leave. Never before had she been recognized by her features. By coming here, she had taken the dare and she had been called out.

Katie got off the F train at Carroll Street, one stop past where she would catch the bus to Red Hook. It meant a much longer walk, but she had the rest of the afternoon free.

Rose had not asked for her contact information, which surely meant she knew how to find Katie online. She was certain, though, that Rose did not have any idea where she lived.

Katie walked down the narrow sidewalks, passing rows of brownstones. She reached Sacred Hearts and St. Stephen, a huge Catholic church that she kept meaning to go into, just to see it. Not today. She crossed Hicks Street and climbed the wide, awkwardly spaced steps of the overpass that led from pretty Carroll Gardens into the far more spare Red Hook. If she'd lived here as a child, she would have pretended it was a bridge and the humming Brooklyn-Queens Expressway below was a river. Indeed, the overpass felt a bit like the door to the stairway to her Sag Harbor bedroom.

These days, everybody moved to Brooklyn. It should be no big deal that she had too. The Irish studies track at Lyons College in Brooklyn Heights was well established; it offered cultural events in and around New York City as part of the curriculum. Really, she might well have chosen it anyway. That it had no on-campus housing had given her pause, but only briefly. She decided she was more suited to being a neighbor than a roommate anyway. Her father had not been happy about it, though he was the one constantly cautioning her not to waste what he delicately called her “inheritance.”

Katie asked him to Google Red Hook so he could read for himself that it was set to be the next big neighborhood, in spite of being so far from the subway. She'd rented a one-bedroom for a good deal less than a studio closer to the college.

She'd kept her car but was considering selling it. Walking almost everywhere was helping her learn Brooklyn, which she'd found unexpectedly foreign. She'd hoped for an innate familiarity, asserting a life that might have been. It seemed, though, that Brooklyn was a place she'd have to learn the way she would anywhere she chose to live.

Her apartment was on the second floor of a three-story building near Coffey Park. Across the street was an abandoned warehouse that had once been a brewery, according to her landlady, who lived on the ground floor.

Katie entered her apartment and shut the door, leaning against it, listening to the silence the way some might listen to a piece of music. The apartment had a galley kitchen against the brick wall and a bedroom that overlooked a weedy backyard. The couple upstairs, who'd been in New York for less than a year, told Katie they were hoping to persuade the landlady to let them plant a vegetable garden. Katie had often seen the woman out there after dark, smoking, and doubted the vegetable garden would happen. But she encouraged the couple to ask anyway. They believed they were going to get just what they wanted from New York. That was nice.

She had been in her apartment for three months, but so far Katie had bought only a desk, a bed, a bureau, two bookcases and, instead of a couch, an easy chair that looked adrift in the long room. All summer, she had not had a single visitor, though that would change tomorrow when Owney came.

Katie changed into jeans. She stuffed the skirt she had on into her laundry bag, though she might as well have thrown it out. She'd never wear it again. Next she checked her email, rubbing her eyes, which felt heavy, as if she'd been crying or awake all night. Nothing beyond the usual stuff, but surely Rose had already contacted Maggie. In Ireland it was almost nine o'clock at night. Perhaps Quinn could keep a secret, but Katie assumed Rose could not, and wouldn't even try. She didn't want her to. If Maggie did write to her, after midnight New York time, Katie resolved not to answer until September 12.

Last year, for the tenth anniversary, Katie had visited Owney at his college, and they'd spent most of the day reading, her on his bed, him on his absent roommate's.

Katie wasn't sure yet what they'd do tomorrow. Owney had never gone to the reading of the names, and she went only the first year. She'd stood beside her father, holding a picture of her mother and constantly pushing her hair out of her eyes in that awful, incessant wind. She'd refused to go again.

Impulsively, Katie took her keys out of her bag and grabbed her phone. She slipped into the hallway and listened for a moment, but she saw and heard no one. Still, she climbed the stairs quietly and went to the door at the end of the hall, which was supposed to be locked. The lock was broken, probably on purpose. She climbed the narrow steps to the roof and cautiously opened the door. The roof, with its ledge as high as her waist, was empty. She had not come up here often, too nervous about getting trapped, even given the broken door. She imagined herself having to call 911 and enduring the embarrassment of a rescue.

Katie picked up a stray brick and put it in front of the door, propping it open, and tested the doorknob for good measure. It was loose. Though total disrepair would have been bad, she liked that the building was rundown. It was better than the tidiness of Sag Harbor.

Katie went to the edge of the roof. Across the water, the Manhattan skyline looked like a painting. It was hard to believe she had lived there once and was made to run away.

The sky was not dark enough to properly see the Tribute in Light. But tomorrow evening, she and Owney could come up here and look. At first he would refuse. He would say there was no point. His father was dead every day. But Katie would insist.

She also intended to suggest that he break the pattern his own mother set in motion eleven years ago, this drifting in and out of strangers' second homes. Move to Brooklyn.

Katie rubbed her arms. Autumn had definitely arrived to stay.

September is the saddest month. Not April.

April, Katie thought, had only ever meant the start of spring and usually Easter Sunday. Though Katie has read plenty about identity issues, medical concerns, feelings of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of reunion, unrealistic expectations, she never once realized that she had two calendars to consider. That is, two calendars with only August 27 in common.

Katie felt as if she'd spent the morning trying to solve a riddle.

There is the woman who gave birth to you and the woman who raised you for nine years and they cannot both be your mother, but they are both your mother. Who is your real mother?

Perhaps it wasn't a matter of DNA or love, or the weight of twenty years apart.

Katie might have to split her loyalty between the living and the dead.

If she had met Maggie O'Reilly today, she would have had the obvious questions ready. Why did you have me? Why didn't you try to keep me? Were you ever sorry?

Katie had not thought of what she might say to the rest of the family. But the casual way Rose spoke about the rest of the family made Katie understand that the O'Reillys were real, with whole lives outside of the bits of biography Katie had culled from the Internet. Lives that intersected with her own beginning.

Katie wanted to learn, as well, about April 5, 1983, in a way she had not when she first read about Sean O'Reilly's death. Despite knowing that he might be her grandfather, Katie skimmed over what had happened to him. She wouldn't do that again. The day of the week, the color of the sky, how the fire started, why he couldn't be saved. It was not curiosity. She wanted to know the facts, the way you do when something will soon be yours. And Katie also wanted to know if, for Maggie O'Reilly, losing her father had somehow made it easier to walk away.

She had from September to April to find a way to ask.

THANK YOU
to my agent, Caryn Karmatz Rudy, for her belief in what
Ashes of Fiery Weather
could become, and to my editor, Lauren Wein, whose vision for the book brought the story to a place I could not have taken it on my own.

I want to thank the team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, especially Pilar Garcia-Brown, for her insightful comments on the manuscript, and Larry Cooper, for the acumen of his manuscript editing.

I am grateful to my parents for never suggesting I “do something” with my B.A. in English. That is, they never said to choose a profession more practical than that of novelist. Not once, through two unsold novels and twenty years of writing, did they tell me to become, instead, another person.

Thank you to the two people who have always been on either side of me, my sisters, Jennifer and Elizabeth; to my brother-in-law, Alex; and to my nieces and nephews, Eddie, Meghan, Nick, Lily, Kristen and Michael.

There is too much to say to my husband, Travis, so just one word: February.

Our son was born when I had about one hundred coherent pages of this book, and he was almost three when I finished the first draft. Before, I used to lean on the novel-as-child metaphor. It was comforting. It made sense. After, I discovered that it is neither accurate nor fair.

Liam, there is only you.

Thank you to the men and women of the FDNY, particularly my father, uncles and cousin, and the fire families of New York, who suffered unprecedented losses on September 11, and in its aftermath called on the traits that have always been there—resilience, courage and compassion. And, eventually, humor. This book is for you, for us.

K
ATHLEEN
D
ONOHOE
was raised in Brooklyn in a family of Irish American firefighters. She has published short stories in several literary magazines
and currently serves on the board of Irish American Writers & Artists. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son. This is her first novel.