‘I have been organising all the letters my sister sent me during the time I was away from Vinalhaven,’ Susannah continued.
Emer sat up with a jolt. Surely now was the time to tell Susannah about her letters to Kate, tucked away in the quilt upstairs? But she was sure Susannah would be furious with her for concealing her discovery. At least for today, she wanted to enjoy their new companionship. She’d wait and pretend to find them in a few days’ time. Although, if she was honest, it was because she wanted time to read them all.
‘These letters are private correspondence from my sister to me,’ Susannah said. ‘No one else has read them, but I want to pass them on to Lynsey and Rebecca when I’m gone.’
Emer wondered why Susannah had never shown the letters to her nieces before.
‘For years, I wondered whether I should share the letters with the girls,’ Susannah said, as if reading Emer’s mind. ‘But I’ve always tried to protect them from the truth about their mother and father.’
Emer felt a cold shiver down her spine at the change of tone in Susannah’s voice.
‘They’d lost both of their parents in tragic circumstances,’ she said. ‘I thought it was better to look to the future rather dwell on the past. For a start, they had my mother to deal with as well.’ Susannah sighed. ‘Not long after Kate passed away, my mother began to develop dementia. I think it was the shock of losing her youngest child.’ Susannah shook her head sadly. ‘She’d forget Kate was gone, and nearly every day we’d have to tell her she was dead. It was very hard for me, and in particular for Lynsey and Rebecca, to live with.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Emer said.
‘That’s why I encouraged the girls to leave Vinalhaven,’ Susannah said. ‘Get away from all the stories and gossip about their parents, and my poor mother ranting on about it. She was in that state for years. Absolute hell for her.’
‘That’s terrible,’ Emer said.
‘My mother only died eight years ago,’ Susannah said. ‘Imagine all that time, every day, finding out your child has died?’
It sounded horrific. Emer hadn’t liked the sound of Susannah’s mother from the letters she’d read, but now she found herself feeling sorry for her.
Susannah gave a big sigh, and picked up the first letter on the pile.
‘Well, let’s start from the beginning again since you’re putting it all on the computer,’ she said. ‘I’ve organised the letters in order. So this is the first one Kate sent me after I arrived in Harvard. It’s dated October 18th, 1958.’
Susannah read the letter out in a steady voice, careful not to betray the emotion she must have been feeling as Emer began to type. Strictly speaking, as her nurse, Emer should have been advising her to take more rest, not push herself, but it was quite clear these letters were Susannah’s legacy to her two nieces. As the hours passed, the older woman’s intense focus on her project reminded Emer of the times she’d watched Orla painting when she’d come home from nursing college at the weekends. During Orla’s Leaving Cert, when their mammy had been at the beginning of her chemo, she had let Orla take over the good room and turn it into a painting studio of sorts. Their father had given out, but Mam was right, the room was never used. Emer remembered the glee with which her mother and sister had stripped all the furniture of its plastic coverings and opened up the dusty curtains. Emptied the sideboard of glasses, plates and useless Feeney knick-knacks, before filling it with all of Orla’s art materials.
Emer remembered there had been one drawer full of leaves that her sister had dried in the autumn, and flower heads she’d picked. She had been particularly obsessed with red roses and Emer could still conjure that intense perfume of drying roses from all those years ago. Another drawer had been full of stones she’d collected in the woods. Orla prided herself on her collection of witches’ stones, as she called them, which were small stones with natural holes all the way through them. She used to make them into necklaces and give them to all her friends at school. Emer had liked nothing better than to curl up on a beanbag in the corner of the room after a busy week at her nursing studies in Dublin and watch her sister create – painting, making witches’ stone necklaces, using all her materials from nature to create artwork. It had relaxed Emer, and often she’d fall asleep, to be woken by the squeaking and scratching of the bats in their attic. The good room would be in darkness and Orla gone. Only then would Emer go look at her sister’s pictures. They were all stories, taken from where they lived. The big lime tree in the middle of a circle of faery-sprites, mist curling off the lake with the white pooka horse at its shoreline, yellow eyes staring out of the frame and making Emer shiver. The two white swans which came to nest every year taking flight above the rippling lake. Orla had told her she believed them descendants of the swan-children of Lir, flying off to the sea of Moyle after three hundred years, and now returned to their lake to sing of peace and harmony to the two sisters. The pictures had such presence, it felt as if they were alive in the good room with her. Part of her was in awe at her sister’s talent, but a small part also envied it. Orla possessed something so special. Everyone in the family said how talented she was. But Emer was ordinary.
It was only when Ethan had been packing up to move to New York that he had given Emer the drawings. A whole sketchbook full of charcoal studies of her – Emer – looking out of the window of their childhood good
