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Fiona patted Sarah’s back
and when she pulled away, Sarah could see the elation in her face.
Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks were flushed with color “I don’t
know exactly, mind, but he or she’ll be born in January, which
isn’t the best time but can’t be helped.”

“I am so happy for you, Fi. Both you and
Dec. Mike doesn’t know yet?”

Fiona shook her head. “I wanted to tell you
first.”

Impulsively Sarah reached over and touched
Fiona lightly on her stomach. “I hate that I’m going to miss
meeting her. Or him.”

“I know.”

There was a comfortable silence between the
two as they resumed drinking their tea.

“I have to say, though,” Fiona said quietly,
“that it’s given me some new perspective on you leaving.”

“How so?”

“I can see why you’d do anything to make
sure John had the most he can have. I get it.”

“A mother’s sacrifice,” Sarah said wryly
with no humor in her voice.

“I get it,” Fiona repeated. “And I also
wanted to take the time to tell you…” She took a long breath as if
for courage and for a moment, Sarah braced herself for what she
might say.

“I wanted to say, in case
time got away from us, how much I have enjoyed your friendship
these past eighteen months.” She reached out and took Sarah’s hand.
“You are the closest thing to a sister that I’ll ever
have.”

“And you, me,” Sarah said,
her eyes filling with tears.

“I’ll never forget you,” Fiona said, her
voice shaking now, “and if you write, I’ll write back until…until
things get sorted out again.”

“And one day I’ll come back,” Sarah
said.

“I know. Come back with John to show us what
a fine young man he’s grown into. Probably a Don or Professor or
some such thing. He’s so smart, we’d none of us expect anything
less from him.”

“I will. You know I will.”

Fiona leaned over and
patted Sarah’s hand, both their tea mugs empty now. “There’s just
one more thing I need to tell you and this one’s a tough
one.”

“Tougher than saying goodbye for almost
forever?” Sarah frowned.

“It’s about Papin.”

Sarah moved her hand from
Fiona as if she might need it to grip something in order to hear
what Fi would say. “Did the two of you talk? Did she tell you why
she’s been acting like a little shit for the last while? What’s
going on?”

Fi took another breath and
then retrieved Sarah’s hand holding it in both her own. “Well,
there’s no easy way to say it. She’s up the pole, petal, and that’s
pretty much the long and short of it.”

11

Declan stood with his hand on the latch to
the jailhouse door. He took a breath, straightened his shoulders,
and jerked open the door. It wasn’t a pleasant place. It wasn’t
designed to be.

His cousin stood up from a crouching
position over by the far wall. Declan wasn’t worried. He had heard
the poor bastard’s sobs from halfway down the path leading to the
jail. Up until today he’d let Gavin feed and tend to Ollie. But he
knew he was just putting off the inevitable. Sooner or later he had
to deal with him.

“Pull yourself together, man,” he said to
Ollie as he entered the room. Originally a two-stall stable, the
room was divided in half by thin wood planking that had had a hole
kicked into it by some horse. The straw bedding had long been
stamped to incorporate into the hard, dirt floor.

He’d let Padraig out within
hours of detaining him for beating his Missus. There wasn’t any
point in keeping him.
It sure as shite
wasn’t going to make him stop
. And hanging
onto him would only ensure poor Annie got it even worse when he
finally got home. Still, Padraig wasn’t a bad sort and Declan was
sure his company in the little jail had given some comfort to poor
Ollie.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come, Dec,” Ollie
said, wiping his snotty nose with a sleeve. He wasn’t even out of
his teens, Declan knew.

“You’ll likely be sorry I did,” Declan said
going over to him and starting to unknot the restraints.

“Is today the day, then?” Ollie’s voice
seemed full of hope.

“The day?”
Did the daft bugger think they were letting him
go?

“The day you hang me.”

Declan’s fingers stilled for a moment and he
looked in his cousin’s face. “Jazus, Ollie,.Why the hell did ya
have to kill her?”

“I didn’t know! I wasn’t thinkin’ right!”
Ollie’s face screwed up into a terrible visage of agony and Declan
jerked the boy’s hands free of his bonds to distract him.

“All right,” he said. “Although it smells
like you’ve been happy to piss right where you sleep.”

“I loved her, Dec,” Ollie said, hiccoughing
with renewed tears as he stumbled after Declan through the open
door. “I loved her like my life. To think I coulda hurt her, that I
killed her…”

“Well, you did kill her, right enough. Here
then, go piss against that tree.”

Declan stepped away from the boy and got a
flash of what it would feel like the day he put the noose around
his neck. He flinched and wiped a heavy hand across this face as if
to erase the vision.

“What happened, exactly?” he asked tiredly.
The details didn’t matter. Nothing could save him. The boy would
die in two days’ time no matter what. Gilhooley had made that
clear.

“Eeny was mad at me,” Ollie said, turning
back toward Declan. His arms hung limply at his side as if he
didn’t have the strength or the will to lift them.

“Why?”

“I did something stupid and fecked.”

“You cheat on her?”

“Is it cheating when it’s just a blow job?
Or not much more?”

Declan almost wanted to smile. He was so
young. “I’m sure it counts as cheating,” he said, motioning the boy
back toward the hut.

“She just went mental, saying I was a
feckin’ cheater and had betrayed her and on like that. I felt
guilty, you know? I just wanted her to shut up, only she was right
to say the things she did. I just wanted them not to be true so I
tried to get her to stop saying them.”

“I’m sorry, lad. Has your mother been over
to see you?”

Ollie nodded miserably. “She says I’ve
disgraced the family.”

“Is that all?”

Ollie looked at Declan, his face a mask of
shame and pain. “She says she still loves me.”

This just sucks every way
that it can suck,
Declan thought as he
motioned him back inside.

“I’m sure she does. And I know you’re sorry
it happened.”

“I
want
to die. I
want
them to hang me.”

“Go on, now, boyo. In you go. Nothing’s
happening today.”

“Tomorrow then? Only it would help to
know.”

“Not tomorrow either,” Declan said. He took
a shallow breath in defense against the rank smell of the interior
of the hut and picked up the rope.

“Soon, though, right? You’ll do it
soon?”

Declan fastened the rope around Ollie’s
wrists, already rubbed raw, and looped the end through a metal ring
fastened to the stall wall.

“Don’t worry about when, Ollie. If you’ve
got a mind to do it, though you might pray. It can’t hurt.”

“Not for my life. I won’t pray for my
life.”

“Maybe just for peace or forgiveness. I
don’t know. Mind you don’t piss in here again, yeah? Or I’ll make
you clean it up.”

“Okay, Declan. Thanks, mate.”

For what?
Declan wanted to say.
For washing me hands before I put the rope around your
neck?
He shook the image out of his mind
and exited the stall before Ollie could say anything more. He threw
the bolt and locked the door and found himself jogging to get away
from the place.

The three wolf puppies—two males and a
female—bit and pawed at the basket that contained them. They had
rough dark brown fur and big dark eyes. Their tongues lolled around
in their mouths in between the playful snapping they launched at
each other. Mike still couldn’t believe they were real. Had there
been any wolves in Ireland in the last seven hundred years?

“Where in the name of God did you find
them?”

John grabbed one of the wolves before it
escaped from the basket and shoved it back inside. “Whoa! That one
nearly got me! You see those teeth? We’re talking sharp.”

Gavin dragged the wooden cage over to where
Mike and John sat with the puppies. When John had come to get him
to see something outside the camp, for some reason Mike thought it
was an edible plant or maybe a broken snare. He should have known
when John wouldn’t tell him what it was that Gavin had to be
involved.

And it had to be something daft.

“Did you just find them in the woods? Is
that possible?” Mike stretched a hand out to the basket and all
three puppies attacked it with their tongues.

“Is that what John told you?” Gavin said,
grinning. “Yeah, that’d be the luck, wouldn’t it? No, Da. We got
‘em for trade when a bloke came by the came this morning.”

“What bloke? When did somebody come by the
camp?”

The rules were clear about strangers
approaching the community. If any did they were to be immediately
brought to Mike.

Obviously the rules of the old regime had
been quickly scuttled.

“He was just a trader, like, Da,” Gavin said
in his best scoffing tone. “He said he’d run into Brian on the way
to Dublin and that he was to bring this lot straightaway to
us.”

“Brian
told him to give you fecking wolves?”

“It’s for the camp’s defense, Uncle Mike,”
John said, scooping up one of the puppies and cuddling it in his
arms. “Mr. Gilhooley says we can train them. Other places are doing
it. People have been bringing ‘em over from the UK to train as
guard dogs.”

“He is totally off his nut. That is the
craziest idea I ever heard of.”

“Brian said you’d say something like
that.”

“Watch your mouth, boy.” Mike stood up from
the crouch he’d assumed to examine the dogs and straightened his
back. With dinnertime almost upon them, the temperature had dropped
and so had the light. “Who knows anything about training wolves?
It’s insane.”

“Well, if other places are doing it, we can
learn to do it too.”

“What did you trade for the puppies if I may
be so bold as to ask?”

Gavin looked at John as if to warn him to
keep his mouth shut. He shrugged. “Brian had already given the
bloke whatever he needed for ‘em,” he said.

“They’re not living with us,” Mike said.
“And they’re not getting any of my meat ration, either.”

“It’s for the good of the camp!” Gavin
said.

“Bullshite.”

“John!”

Mike turned in the direction of the camp
entrance one hundred yards away. “Is that your mum, John? Sounds
like she’s looking for you.”

John stood up, still holding the little
female he’d picked up. “But who’ll take care of the puppies?”

“They’re all going back to our place for the
night any way,” Gavin said reaching for John’s dog. “Go see what
she wants.”

“They are not coming back to our place,”
Mike said. “I’ll not have whining and crapping and peeing all night
long—at least not any more than I have to put up with living with
the two of you.”

“Da, please! John and I’ll take all the care
of them.”

“We will, Uncle Mike. You won’t have to do a
thing.”

“John! Are you outside the camp? Answer
me!”

Mike gave John a gentle push toward the
camp. “Go on now before she sends out the militia. The dogs’ll be
back at our place when she’s finished with you.”

John grinned and handed the dog to Mike
before dashing off in the direction of Sarah’s voice. Mike looked
down at the little wolf, who promptly licked him in the face and
whimpered.

“Jaysus, Joseph and Mary,” he muttered,
wiping off his cheek. “Whatever the hell next?”

“Da, can you carry the cage back to our
place? Now that John’s buggered off, I can’t do both.”

“I reckon that’s what you’ll say when he
climbs on that helicopter day after tomorrow, too, Gavin. How are
you going to handle these three on your own?”

“I can do it, Da. Brian has a book on
training ‘em.”

“Right. Because you are so good with rubbish
you learn out of books.” But he handed the puppy to Gavin and bent
down to pick up the cage. When they turned back to the camp
entrance, Mike was surprised to see the new addition of a large
white sign that was nailed to the gateposts. He stopped to stare at
it.

“It’s Mary Collins painted it,” Gavin said,
seeing where he was looking. “She used to do computer graphics
before the bomb but she has a fair hand at drawing letters.”

The letters were stark black against the
white background of the back of a placard. It had once been a sign
in Ballinagh, Mike knew. In another life, it had hung over the
hardware store entrance.

It read,
Welcome to Daoineville

“It just made sense to change the name, you
know?” Gavin said. He kicked at the dirt with the toe of his
trainer and hoisted the basket of puppies higher into his arms.

Mike grunted.

“Daoine
is Gaelic for people,” Gavin said.

“
Mebbe. But adding ville to
the end is just barking.”

“Well, at least it sounds less like a
dictatorship.”

“I never named the place Donovan’s Lot! That
was a joke!”

“Still. Better not to have a joke name,
don’t you think?”

“Bugger it.”

“
Did you hear Brian’s
thinking of requiring Gaelic be taught in the school? And only
Irish is to be spoken in the home? And any newcomers wishing to be
considered for entrance have to be fluent in Irish?”