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“Well, then I guess we have nothing more to
discuss.”

“You can’t understand why
I’m doing this?
Really
?”

“We’re done, Sarah. Go to
America. We don’t need your help for the harvest. In fact, it’s
bloody cheek, throwing your scraps at us, saying you’ll stay to
help. Typical bloody Yank, if you ask me.”

Sarah could see tears
threatening in Fiona’s eyes, which felt worse than anything she’d
said so far. She took a step toward her but Fiona bolted for the
door, slamming it on her way out. Sarah watched her friend stomp
across the camp, grabbing up a basket of wet laundry as she went.
In their last year together in the camp, the two had nearly decided
to move in together until Declan began to stake his claim and it
became clear that Fiona would only be a temporary
roommate.

As Sarah watched her now,
her heart squeezed to think she might never see Fiona again after
next month. Sarah couldn’t imagine a friendship back home as close.
She turned back to her kitchen. Of course, she hadn’t depended on
pals back home to quite the extent she’d had to with Fiona in the
months following The Crisis.

It was a different world. When it came to
forging relationships, she had to admit, maybe a better one.

She returned to the
kitchen and pulled out a bowl of dough she’d allowed to rise all
night. She grabbed the dough and began to knead and shape it until
it was satiny smooth before plopping it back in the wooden bowl she
always used. It was Dierdre’s bowl, the dear old woman who had
taught Sarah so much in the weeks right after all the lights went
out.

She touched the rim of it, worn smooth after
decades of shaping dough. Sarah wouldn’t bring many things back
home with her, but she’d like to have the bowl. On the other hand,
items of function here were valuable, this bowl no less so. She
would leave it in camp.

Voices coming quickly closer made her glance
out the kitchen window. Papin and John were coming in. She frowned.
John should be with Gavin, minding the goats in the north
pasture—or mending harnesses or whatever chores Mike had them
doing. At midday, it wasn’t usual for him to be home.

“Mum!” Papin called as the two entered the
cottage. “Da gave John the day off to help you pack.” The girl
frowned and looked around the cottage. “Cor, we’re not bringing any
of this shite with us, are we?”

“Watch your language,
Papin,” Sarah said, wiping her hands on her apron. “Well, that was
nice of him, although not necessary. I told him we wouldn’t go
until after the harvest. That’s four weeks yet.”

John sat at the table and threw a ball
against the wall. It hit with a loud whack and rolled back to him.
It looked to be a cricket ball.

“Stop that, John. As long as you’re here,
you can fill up the wood box. I’m baking all day tomorrow and I’ll
need at least twice as much as I have in there.”

John didn’t move or look at her.

“And Papin? Aren’t you to be helping Auntie
Fi with the wash? I’m sure I heard her say you were.”

“She told me not to bother,” Papin said
cheerfully. “Is there anything to eat? Only me and John haven’t had
our tea yet, have we, John?”

Sarah sighed. She supposed
she couldn’t force Fiona to have Papin help her, but the child
managed better—even at the best of times—if she was kept busy.
Sarah pulled out a piece of bread and spread it with the soft
churned butter she kept on the table.

“I have some things you can do for me, in
that case,” she said, cutting the slice in half and handing one to
each of them.

John shook his head. “Not
hungry.”

It took everything Sarah had not to scold
him for his sullenness. But they’d already had all the words that
could be said between them on the subject. Nothing she could say
was going to make it any easier for him. He had it in his head that
his home was here and his friends were here and his family was
here, and that’s all there was to it.

At thirteen, he wasn’t really a child
anymore. Except, of course, he was.

“Well then, go ahead and fetch the wood,
John,” she said, turning back to the stove. “Dinner will be same as
usual.”

“Except we won’t be having
it with Aunt Fi and Uncle Dec, I guess.”

Sarah’s shoulders sagged
but she turned back to him. “It’s true your Aunt Fi and I are
working something out. But mostly it’s because she’s a newlywed and
needs some
alone
time with her new husband. Okay?”

John frowned as if he hadn’t thought of
that. “Really?”

Papin elbowed John in the
ribs. “And you know what she means when she says
alone time
, don’t you,
boyo?”

“That’s enough, Papin. Off you go, now,
John.”

He pulled himself to his feet and trudged
out the door, banging it shut behind him.

“All right, Papin, the dishes won’t do
themselves. The rag is by the tub.”

“It’s impossible to clean them without
soap,” Papin whined.

“It just takes longer. Like everything else
in this life.”

“But not back in America.” Papin grabbed the
rag and began polishing a ceramic dish with it. “Tell me more about
what our lives will be like back there.”

“Well, we’ll have automatic dishwashers, of
course. But I don’t want you to think there won’t be chores.”

“Work for the sake of work? To build
character?”

“Something like that. And school, of
course.”

“I’m too old for
that.”

“Well, you’re not.”

“Sarah, I’ll be the class
eejit! I’ll be in the same grade with the five-year-olds or the
half-wits.”

“You’ll be in a class with
people your age and ability. Don’t worry, it’s going to be
fine.”

“And you’ll teach me to
drive, right? Will we have a car straightaway? And all of us with
smartphones? I had a mobile phone before The Crisis, you
know.”

Sarah saw Papin stare
moodily out the window, as if remembering her phone.

“It’s hard to imagine how different our
lives will be,” Papin said softly, as if to herself.

Sarah turned back to the
chicken she was plucking—a job she loathed and one that always
reminded her of three terrible days she spent living in a
chicken-processing factory in the Cotswolds—when it occurred to her
that
different
might not necessarily be better.

A part of her hated the
fact that she’d said they’d stay until after the harvest was in. As
upsetting as their leaving was for everyone, it would be so much
easier just to rip the bandage off and
go
. But the harvest was a lot of
work and three extra hands picking and sorting would make a big
difference to the community.

As Papin started to hum, a
flash of red outside the window caught Sarah’s eye. It was Mike,
wearing a red tee shirt, leading his gelding through the camp and
talking with Gavin, who was trotting to keep up with Mike’s long
stride. Seeing him unexpectedly like this gave her a funny
fluttering feeling in the pit of her stomach, as it always
did.

Watching him, she found
herself facing down the barrel of a nascent thought she had kept at
bay all these months of living so close to him, the same thought
that had been slowly forming through the long, tense ride home
yesterday.

I’m in love with
him.

As she watched him,
knowing for sure how she felt—how she had always felt—and knowing
it just when she was about to leave for good was about the sickest,
most excruciating feeling she’d had in a long, long
time.

And she had felt some pretty sick things in
the last eighteen months.

***

“So will we still
have
Lughnasa
this year?” Gavin swung down from his horse. He, Mike and
Declan gazed at the long line of irregular fence posts jammed into
the ground before them.

Declan frowned. “Do ya usually have a
harvest fair?” he asked Mike.

Mike shook his head.
“What’s usual? We’ve never had a proper
harvest
‘til now.”

“Right.”

“I meant what with Mrs. Woodson and John and
Papin leaving straight after the harvesting,” Gavin said.

Declan patted his pony’s neck. “Sure, it’ll
put a damper on things.”

“We’ll have the festival,” Mike said firmly
to Gavin, “to celebrate the year’s harvest no matter what.
Meanwhile, we need to get busy on these defensive boundaries.”

“Busy how, Da?” Gavin said. “It’s impossible
to string wire between all the posts. We don’t have it to hang for
one thing.”

Declan scratched his head. “I didn’t want to
say anything, but wouldn’t it make more sense to use what fencing
we do have to strengthen the pastures? Surely, keeping our
livestock corralled has to come first…”

“First behind our
security.” Mike said. “Nothing comes before that.”

“But, Da, we can’t put a fence around the
camp. It’s just not…not…”

“Feasible,” Declan finished.

“Feasible or not, it’s what we’ll do. I’d
suggest the two of you get working instead of working your
gobs.”

“But, Da—”

“This is not a democracy, Gavin,” Mike said
severely. “I have given considerable thought to the situation and
I’ve decided that strengthening our perimeter is the best use of
our resources for the now.”

“Why not have us dig a moat while we’re at
it?” Gavin said under his breath as he turned away.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

“Too right.”

As Gavin mounted his horse and rode to the
first fence post in the line, Declan turned to his friend. “Fi’s
right out of her mind over Sarah and young John leaving.”

“I know.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“
Who?
Sarah? And what would I be saying? ‘
Don’t go back to your own country where life is still normal
but stay here and plant turnips with your new
friends?
’ Besides, she’s made up her
mind.”

“Fi’s practically mental
she’s so pissed off.”

“She’ll get over it.”

“How are
you
doing?”

Mike shrugged. “It is what it is.”

“You’re wrong about messing around with the
perimeter fencing. It won’t keep anyone out who wants in bad
enough.”

Mike clapped a heavy hand
on Declan’s shoulder. “Dec, me boyo, I’ll tell you what I told me
lazy gobshite of a son.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, we’re not a
democracy.”

Mike watched as Declan
pulled out a roll of fencing wire from his saddlebag and began
unspooling it. It was late July but still not hot, even at midday.
By Mike’s calculations, they should start harvesting within the
week. There was a good crop this second year and they would have
much to celebrate.

He went to his horse and
rummaged around in his saddlebag for pliers. They didn’t work
nearly as well as wire cutters would but, like everything else in
this new world, he would make do with what he had.

The summer day had a fresh
scent to it that filled his lungs with the pleasure of being alive
and a part of it all. He caught a glimpse of a butterfly moth
inspecting one of the gorse bushes by the closest
fencepost.

As he watched it flit
through the leaves, he found himself thinking that to his dying day
he would remember the look on Sarah’s face when she realized she
could leave Ireland and go back to the US. There was no conflict,
no doubt, no ambivalence at all. Just sheer undiluted joy at the
thought of leaving Ireland.

Of leaving me.

Didn’t he always know this
time might come?
Would
come? Ever since that first US military helicopter showed up
last year, wasn’t it always just a matter of time before another
one came?

Honestly, as he’d told
Fiona earlier that morning, he
had
hoped that his relationship with Sarah would have
progressed to the point that she wouldn’t
want
to go home. He shook the
thoughts away.
What possible good is to
think like that now?
He and Sarah had been
close this last year, but not in the way he’d hoped. And now there
was no more time.

Now she was leaving.

Out of the corner of his
eye, he noticed Declan had stood up from his fencepost and was
looking down to where Gavin worked. Mike twisted around to see what
he was looking at.

“Who do you suppose that is?” Declan
said.

Gavin stood a hundred yards in the distance,
his hands on his hips, his long hair moving in the summer breeze.
He was talking to a tall man with a pack on his back.

Mike swung up into his saddle and put his
heels into his horse’s side. “Stay here,” he said to Declan with
more force than necessary as he cantered the distance to his son
and the stranger.

3

That night, Brian
Gilhooley sat in the seat of honor at the campfire. It was a warm
summer’s night, with the scent of the evening meal still wafting
high above the camp. Having drained him of any news he had, many of
the families—with children needing to be in bed—had said their
goodnights and left the fireside, leaving Sarah, Mike, Fiona and
Declan with a few others to entertain their guest.

Even as an outsider, Brian
could tell there were painful dynamics in play around the campfire.
He smiled at the American woman, Sarah, as she handed him another
mug of tea. She had lost her husband the year before but he could
see she was strong. She had sent her own two children off to bed
twenty minutes earlier and had spoken more to him than anyone else
in the camp, which he found to be very odd.