Emerging into a clearing, she saw the remains of a small stone cottage, the roof having collapsed long ago, exposing rotting timber beams where crows now sat in silent respect. A low wall ran around the perimeter, enclosing what would once have been a garden but was now overgrown with a dense wilderness of long grass and weeds and wildflowers. Olivia picked her way through, resting her hands against the old walls, absorbing the soul of this place her dear Nana and great-grandmother had once called home: the cottage in the woods where bluebells came right up to the door in the spring and a fairy ring grew at the base of an old elder tree.
Birds sang in the trees around the cottage while the waterfall rushed ever onward behind the canopy of foliage. It was beautiful and serene. A private place that had known such grief and pain, and such unremitting hope and love. Olivia walked around the damaged walls, following a mossy path toward the ruined remains of the house. She peered through glassless windows, imagining the places where her family had once slept and eaten and where her great-grandmother had once sat as she’d watched two young girls play at the stream.
At the front of the cottage, she bent down and pushed aside the long grass. There they were, just as she’d known they would be. A pair of small stone boots on the step, wildflowers entwined between, around, and inside them, poking through weather-worn cracks. The sight of them, so small, gave Olivia pause as she thought about the little girl who had once lived here, once played here. She had been much loved. And she would be remembered.
Gathering a small posy from the wildflowers around her, Olivia took a moment for quiet reflection before leaving the cottage to its silent recollections, retracing her steps back through the woods, following the sound of the church bells that chimed the hour.
It didn’t take her long to find the grave.
The headstone was small and weathered, the inscription partly erased by decades of rain and wind. And yet Olivia walked straight to it, crunching over the gravel pathways, past neatly tended plots, and around the church walls where pigeons roosted in the eaves and rooks cawed their rowdy welcome from the rafters.
It was the most colorful and vibrant of all the graves. Purple and pink, lavender and yellow, blue and green wildflowers bloomed all around it. Not one shop-bought bouquet. Not one pot plant. Something else had tended this grave.
Olivia bent down, running her fingertips across the lettering on the headstone.
“Here lies Aisling Hogan, who went to play with the fairies. 1911–1916.”
Blinking through her tears, Olivia placed her posy of wildflowers at the foot of the headstone.
“For you, Aisling. You can rest now.”
The breeze stilled around her.
All was silent.
All was as it should be.
She sat for a long time, thinking, remembering, paying her respects at the graves of her great-grandparents, Ellen and Robert, and paying her respects to little Aisling, on behalf of all those who hadn’t been able to. Only when the sun dipped low on the horizon and a cool breeze nipped at Olivia’s arms did she walk back into the village, to her room at the local pub.
She had just turned the key in the lock when her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was the nursing home. Could she come as soon as possible? Nana had taken a turn for the worse.
SHE WASN’T TOO late, but the nurse said it wouldn’t be long. She must prepare herself, but how? How would it ever be possible to say good-bye to this woman who had become everything to her?
She took a coffee, although she didn’t really want it, and crept quietly to Nana’s bedside. The room was neat and tidy, everything in its place. It was as if the room knew Nana was leaving and was already packed and waiting with her suitcase, ready for wherever she was going next.
She looked unbearably frail and fragile in the bed, dressed like a summer meadow in her nightie speckled with pink and white flowers. Olivia brushed her fingers lightly over Nana’s hands, remembering how Nana used to rub the backs of her hands when she couldn’t sleep, troubled by dreams she couldn’t understand.
The minutes passed slowly as the sun sank below the trees and the moon rose in an inky-blue sky, speckled with the first pinpricks of starlight. Olivia told Nana about her trip to Cottingley and how lovely the moors were beneath their heather blankets. “I found the cottage, Nana. It was exactly as you remembered it. A carpet of bluebells coming right up to the door.” She took a breath before she carried on. “And I found Aisling. She’s sleeping now, Nana. She’s safe.”
Perhaps there was the slightest flicker beneath paper-thin eyelids. The slightest movement of fingertips. A distant sigh.
Olivia could never be sure.
As darkness fell, she sat in silence, watching the rise and fall of the blue blanket. Up and down. Up and down. In these final moments, everything else fell away and life came down to nothing more than the desire for the heart to keep beating, for the bedsheets to keep up their continual ebb and flow.
“I love you, Nana,” she whispered, squeezing her hand gently. “Very, very much.”
Nana slept.
She didn’t hear.
The hours slipped slowly away.
Olivia had nothing with her other than the few remaining pages from Frances’s story. Pulling them out of her bag, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and began to read aloud. Whether Nana heard her or not, she wasn’t sure, but she read on until the words began to swim about on the page and her eyelids became leaden, and she couldn’t fight the urge to sleep any longer. As her eyes closed, the final pages of Frances’s story fluttered to the floor like feathers, floating beneath the bed, where the final secrets would remain unseen, unread.
THE NURSE SHOOK Olivia gently awake at dawn. She opened her eyes and glanced toward the bed. The blanket was still. The room echoed with the sense of a life departed.
She was shown into a private room. While the nurse went to make tea and toast, Olivia stood at the window and watched the sunrise. It was peaceful and full of hope. A perfect day for a stroll along the harbor. Pappy would be waiting for Nana. She knew he would.
The nurse set the tea on a table. “She always spoke very fondly of you, Olivia, even when she wasn’t entirely sure who you were.” Olivia watched the clouds, rose-tinted by the sun. “But there were moments when she remembered and knew exactly who you were. And she always told me she loved you very much.”
Olivia’s hand stilled on her teacup as she turned around. “Did she? Really?”
The young nurse nodded. “She often told me, after your visits. ‘She’s a grand good girl, that one. Always says she loves me. Isn’t that nice?’”
It was all she’d ever wanted to hear.
The nurse sat with her for a while, and they shared stories and memories of Nana. The tea had gone cold in the pot by the time a gray-faced man knocked lightly on the door. He was in a tartan dressing gown. Olivia recognized him as the man Nana had told her was an Olympic swimmer.
He touched Olivia gently on the arm. “Please excuse me for interrupting, but I wanted to say that I am very sorry for your loss. Martha was a special lady. It was an honor to know her.” He crossed himself as he said this, and as he did, his dressing gown gaped slightly at the neck, revealing a thick ribbon and a flash of silver.
When he’d gone, Olivia asked the nurse who he was.
“That’s Tom. Swam for Ireland in the Olympics once. Never goes anywhere without his medal.”