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ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-3257-6 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-4967-3257-X (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-4967-3256-9

Dedication

For my sister, Connie

Donegal, Ireland - 1911

Donegal, Ireland

1911

Delia

Delia

The letter from America changed all our lives. The postman presented it to me with great ritual, as if it were a fine jewel. In his memory, he said, no one in my small village of Kilcross, in County Donegal, at the northwest tip of Ireland, had ever received such a thing, nor had he himself ever delivered anything so rare. After he pedaled away from our cottage whistling, I stood at the door holding the envelope, with its bright ribbon of stamps, in my hands like a colorful bird.

“’Tis addressed to me,” Ma said, looking at me accusingly. “You should have brought it to me at once instead of standing there like a statue. You’re useless, so you are!”

I watched her walk back down the hall and wondered, as I often did, how such a small woman could command such a large presence. She was no taller than myself, but in my mind she still towered over me the same way she had when I was a small child. After she disappeared into the kitchen, I fled outside. I ran around the back of the cottage and up the fields to my favorite place—a group of rocks, bleached white and smooth, which formed a circle beneath an ancient oak tree and from which I could look out across the vast Atlantic sea. I sat down on one of the rocks, panting, struggling to catch my breath. I shivered, suddenly aware of the winter cold settling around me. I had been coming up here since childhood to escape Ma’s wrath. When I was young, I often cried out of self-pity, and I was convinced it was my tears that had washed the rocks so clean. Now, at eighteen, I no longer cried, but the hurt in my heart remained.

I was born a twin. My brother, born first, only lived two minutes. My ma took it into her head I was a “changeling” who had been left by the fairies in place of my brother, whom they had stolen away. Such stories about fairy children are common in our part of Ireland. The villagers thought it was the stress of childbirth that had put such a notion in my mother’s mind, and that she’d get over it in time. But Ma couldn’t be talked out of her belief and had always treated me with suspicion and, sometimes, disgust. I knew her reason, but it did not ease the pain of her rejection.