Ashes of Fiery Weather by Kathleen Donohoe Page B

Jack.
    Norah had always preferred to remember the months right after their wedding, before things got very hard. Like the day he graduated from the fire academy, when she’d been so proud to stand next to him, eight months pregnant, still not used to the idea that he was hers to keep. It turned out, the only thing she’d ever come up with for a life’s goal was to be Sean’s wife, the mother of his children, and it had been enough, most of the time. The days when it wasn’t, well, she got through them.
    Norah opened the
Daily News.
The story was on page three, with a picture of her and the kids on the steps of the church. The boys were looking straight ahead, as was she, but Maggie had her head turned.
    Â 
BROOKLYN FIREFIGHTER MOURNED
    Firefighter Sean O'Reilly Buried with Full Departmental Honors
    Â 
    Norah shut her eyes and pictured Fireman’s Corner in Cross Hill Cemetery. Sean’s grave, the first new one dug there since the late 1960s, was allowed because he had family there.
    She glanced at the clock. It was going on seven a.m., so it was about one in the afternoon in Ireland. Aoife answered on the third ring.
    â€œNorah, my God, how are you? We’re thinking of you here.”
    Norah said it was still unreal.
    â€œI hope you’ll come this summer for a visit.” Aoife spoke cautiously.
    Norah said, “I’d like to.”
    An infant. The way they cried. The way you were so tired when you had a new baby, that if you tripped on the sidewalk and fell on your face, you’d only be grateful for the chance to lie down. This time, she would be alone, with no one to spell her.
    â€œDid you ever do more for women’s rights?” Norah asked.
    â€œWomen’s rights?” Aoife’s astonishment plain from across the ocean.
    â€œBirth control,” Norah said. “The other.”
    Norah listened to her sister’s breathing quicken.
    â€œBirth control is legal here now. You must know that.”
    â€œOf course,” Norah answered. “The other isn’t.”
    â€œGod, no,” Aoife said.
    â€œDo you think it’s a terrible thing?” Norah didn’t want to use the word “sin.” She and Sean took the children to Mass every Sunday, though he had not gone as a child. Had Sean believed in God? It was a question Norah always meant to ask him.
    â€œNo,” Aoife said slowly. “Sometimes it’s the answer. That’s terrible, but the thing itself, no.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you, then?”
    After a short silence, Aoife said, “That was my first thought. Go to England.”
    â€œBut why didn’t you?”
    â€œWe were out at the pub and I got sick on the way home. Peter thought it was drink, like I ever drank that much, and I just said it.”
    â€œPeter didn’t want—”
    â€œPeter was thrilled. He said we’d get married. I said I didn’t want to do that,” Aoife said. “He told me he’d get his sister to talk to me. She was married. They had two kids. She’d tell me—I don’t know what he thought she’d tell me.”
    â€œHis sister would have told their mother,” Norah said. “And then—the whole of town would have known.”
    â€œI thought that’s what would happen,” Aoife said. “I know it would have. So if I went to England—”
    It sounded like she’d moved the receiver away from her mouth.
    â€œMam and Da,” Norah said.
    â€œDestroyed altogether.” Her voice was back.
    â€œBut you’re glad now?”
    There was a silence so long that Norah thought they’d been disconnected.
    â€œI’m glad for Noelle. I am.”
    Norah understood. Noelle was not the sort of child you could look at with regret.
    Norah had only met her niece twice. Once when she and Sean visited Ireland when Maggie was a year old, then when they went back for their fifth anniversary. Noelle and Maggie