The Promise of Light by Paul Watkins Read Free Book Online Page A

sense to me, that much I do understand.”
    I had thought this island was his holy ground, the same as it was for me. I believed it was a thing that joined us across the crevasse of years and misunderstanding. The further I had gone away from Jamestown, the more I found myself returning to it in my mind. My heart beat smoothly here. I felt the rising and falling of the tides in the roar of blood through my body. I had some strange communion with the ghosts of Conanicut Indians, who had lived here and slid without sound across the bay in their white birchbark canoes. And no matter how much Bosley and Hettie treated me like a tourist for going away, I knew and they knew that I was not one. A part of me was anchored here and they could not dislodge it.
    Now I realized that I had not spoken of this to him, or to anyone at all. This knowledge of a holy ground could not easily be gathered into words, and even to try was somehow to devalue it.
    Even in his pain, he had not been raving. I understood what he wanted. Now I would bring him to the place where his heart had once beat smoothly, because I knew that if anyone could tell me the truth about who he was and who I was, it would be there in that place. I could not go forward until I knew one way or the other. There would be no peace. It could not be swallowed and forgotten. If the people I had called father and mother all my life were not my blood, I had to know why it stayed buried like my nightmares until now.
    I walked to the window and looked out into the garden.
    My father stood in the moonlight, arms spread wide and his mouth open ready to scream.
    I cried out and stepped back.
    “What is it?” Willoughby rushed to the window. “What?”
    I looked again. It was a scarecrow in the vegetable patch, with a wretched sackcloth face. Floppy-gloved hands stretched palm up, as if waiting for rain. It was my father’s coat. My father’s hat wedged onto its straw head. I had forgotten about the scarecrow. It had only just been dragged from its winter place, propped up against the lawnmower in the garage.
    I stared at the scarecrow. “The only way I’m going to settle this is by going to Ireland. I was born there, you know. A month before my parents left the country.”
    “I know that.” Willoughby’s hand settled like a bird on my shoulder. “But what would you do when you got to Ireland? Who would you talk to?”
    “There must be town records. There’d be people who remembered my parents.”
    “There’s a war on over there.” Willoughby scratched at the back of his neck. “It costs more than you have to get passage on a ship.”
    “I’m selling the house.”
    “Oh, for crying out loud!” Willoughby stamped away back to his chair.
    “I don’t want to live under this roof anymore.” I knew that if I came back some day to live on the island, I’d choose the other side or maybe live out toward the cliffs. But I wouldn’t come back here. This was his house and it would never be mine. From now on, the murmurs of voices and pictures and smells would keep me from feeling at ease. It wouldn’t help to clear out the furniture and repaint the walls, the way some people did when they inherited a place. Then the furniture itself would turn to ghosts.
    “You’ll be murdered if you go to Ireland.” Willoughby began to rock in his chair. He stared straight in front of him. “I’m saying to you there’s a war on.”
    “What are you not telling me?” I paced slowly toward him. “What do you know?”
    “Nothing that could help you.” He started to put on his collar. Years of wearing it had left a permanent crease in his neck, as if he’d been hanged but survived.
    “Let me decide that.”
    “I believe,”—he cut the air with the knife-edge of his palm—“I believe he was active in trying to get the British out. I don’t know how active. I only heard some stories and I’m sure they can’t be true.”
    “What are they?”
    “If he didn’t tell you, then