Ashes of Fiery Weather by Kathleen Donohoe Page A

happen,” Norah said. She ducked her head so her hair would fall over her face and hide the flush spreading over her cheeks and down her neck. Sean had discovered early on that she was a bad liar. When he’d asked if she’d had a boyfriend in Ireland, she’d thought of Hugh and said she didn’t. Sean had laid a hand on her reddening cheek and laughed. “Hey, I don’t give a fuck. He’s there. I’m here.”
    Norah barely remembered what Hugh looked like. Were Hugh and Sean to stand side by side, she would still be at a loss to describe him, poor Hugh Quinlevan.
    â€œOkay.” Sean tossed the Hershey bar down the stoop. “Okay.”
    Norah stood and ran down the steps to the gate. Sean followed.
    She had the gate open. He pushed her hand off it and knocked it shut.
    â€œWe’ll get married.”
    Norah started crying.
    â€œI’ll ask you the right way,” he said. “I was planning to after I got called for the fire department and I knew I could support us. But listen, I’m making decent money at the bar and I can pick up another job somewhere, so what the hell, right? You’ll marry me?”
    â€œYes.” Norah nodded, and Sean wrapped his arms around her and she leaned into him and shut her eyes. In her mind, Norah played out the scene sure to happen in the kitchen at home. Her mother leaning one hip into the counter as she held the phone, as if the whole house would collapse if she dared to move. Her father, silent in his seat at the head of the kitchen table, the newspaper set aside as soon as he understood from Ireland’s side of the conversation that their second daughter had gone down the same path as their first.
    Her father would leave for the pub. Her mother would sink into the couch in front of the television. They would both, at different hours, climb the stairs to the dark hallway where the smell of cooking always lingered, and settle into bed.
    Sean stepped back and said, “God, a baby.”
    â€œA baby,” Norah echoed, her stomach pitching. She hadn’t much thought about it as a real, actual child. It was a way to keep Sean. A way to stay.
    He’d kissed her first. He took off her clothes, and she let him. She wanted him to. She’d known all the while what would probably happen, and she’d let it happen.
    She had, in a way, taken his whole life. Sean didn’t realize it. His mother would know.
    Norah pressed her forehead into his chest. Sean kissed the top of her head and then spoke against her hair. “It’s fine. It’ll be good.”
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    April 1983
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    Norah sat at the kitchen table. All three children were still in bed. Today was Saturday. They’d go back to school on Monday. That would be the start of what everyone was gently calling “getting on with their lives.”
    She felt sick and hungry at the same time, the way she always did early on. With Maggie, she’d overlooked the nausea and ate what she wanted to, ignoring her new mother-in-law’s advice out of spite; Delia had not been happy to have her son’s bride move into her house.
    Thank God they’d been able to get their own apartment not long after Maggie was born.
    Thank God they’d taken the leap before she found out she was pregnant with Aidan, when Maggie was only three months old. Irish twins, Sean said, trying to smile but unable to hide his panic.
    If they’d still been at Delia’s, they almost certainly would have stayed. As it was, Sean had too much pride to move his family back in with his mother, when he’d just moved them out.
    â€œI suggest you get a second job,” Delia had said when they told her.
    â€œI already have,” Sean had said, unable to meet her eyes. In fact, he had three jobs. The fire department, bartending at Lehane’s and carpentry work thrown his way by an older guy in the firehouse. A lieutenant whose father had worked with Gentleman