The Parting Glass

“Do you know where they lead?”

Deirdre shook her head. “We weren’t supposed to know. I think my father’s generation was afraid we’d find a way to get inside and someone would get hurt. Do you want me to go down and help?”

“Stay here and help Peggy with Kieran, will you?” Megan could hear her nephew wailing. The crowd, the noise and the confusion were bad enough for a normal child.

She left Casey and Jon in charge, confident they could keep chaos at bay. Downstairs, she saw the boys at work and marveled. The tornado had nothing on the Brick kids for destruction.

Someone had wanted the tunnels sealed for all time. Five minutes into the pounding and prying, that someone was thwarted.

“Step back,” Niccolo commanded, and the kids did so without argument. He kicked away the last remnants of the paneling and shined his flashlight inside.

“What do you see?”

“I’m going to have to go inside to find out.”

She didn’t want him to go. Even if the tunnels had been safe at one time, they had been sealed off for decades. But what choice did they have? The saloon wasn’t safe, either, with a quarter of the roof on the floor and gas seeping from God knew where.

“I’m coming, too,” she said. “Two lights are better than one.”

“Please don’t,” Niccolo said. “Not until I’ve checked it out a little.”

“I’m coming.”

He knew better than to argue, especially in front of the young men, who seemed entranced at the possibility of marital discord so soon after the wedding. “Okay, but step carefully.”

“Really? I thought we could do an Irish jig or two on the way through.” She winked at Josh. Now that the fun part was over, the kids were beginning to look uneasy. “We’ll be right back,” she promised. “One of you run upstairs and see if anybody’s had any luck calling the fire department.”

Nobody moved. “Or not,” she said. She watched Niccolo step through the ersatz doorway into the tunnel. Rooney, who had stayed to watch the demolition, stepped in after him.

“Rooney,” she called. “Please don’t do that.” Her plea was ignored. She followed, stepping into the space and shining her light all around. Niccolo and Rooney were just ahead.

She hadn’t had time to think about what they might find in the little time that had passed since they found Rooney beating on the cellar wall. She’d formed a fuzzy mental image of a narrow dirt passageway filled with debris, bats and cobwebs. She had not expected a tunnel wide enough for three people to walk abreast. She hadn’t expected massive, roughly-hewn ceiling beams or dirty plastered walls. She caught up to her husband and father.

“Look at this.” Niccolo aimed his light to the right.

She followed the beam and saw a storage cellar similar to the one they’d just left. It was piled with boxes, and the shelves lining it held old glass canning jars, some of which were still filled with garden produce.

She whistled softly. “I had no idea. Look at this place.”

“Let’s keep moving.”

“Where do you think it comes out?”

“It goes down from here. There are steps ahead.” Niccolo shined his flashlight.

“When they built the Shoreway, they must have buried the entrance,” Megan said. “We’re going to find a dead end.”

“No,” Rooney said.

She had new respect for Rooney’s grasp of their situation. She followed, trailing her flashlight along the walls.

The steps were steep, ten of them, each so narrow they had to walk single file, and the ceiling grew lower until she was stooping. They halted abruptly at a small flagstone-surfaced platform. Stones layered the wall, too. Her heart sank. Then Rooney stooped and began to jiggle a stone near the top.

She saw light.

“Nick?”

But Niccolo was already helping his father-in-law move the stone. With every inch, more light streamed into the tunnel. “Get the kids,” he told her. “Then go upstairs. If the fire department isn’t on its way, bring everyone down here. Tell them to be careful. But this is our way out, Megan, and we’d be fools not to take it.”

chapter 5

The tunnel opened onto the hillside overlooking the Shoreway. Niccolo supposed at one time it had extended farther, but the Shoreway construction had destroyed the rest of it. Most of the entrance was walled in by dirt and even a grove of small willow trees. But there was a hole hidden by the trees that was just large enough to escape through.

“Lived here,” Rooney told him after Megan disappeared back through the tunnel. “In the bad years.”

At first Niccolo didn’t understand; then everything fell into place, and he realized what the old man was saying. Rooney had disappeared from his daughters’ lives for more than a decade. At some point in time he had probably lived in this tunnel close to the people he loved but hidden from their view. It was probably due to Rooney that the entrance had been uncovered, then sealed with stone. They could thank Rooney for this escape route.

“I saw you the night of the carjacking. Do you remember that? And you disappeared down the hill. I thought you crossed the Shoreway. Were you living in the tunnel then, too?” Niccolo asked.

He didn’t really expect an answer, and he didn’t get one. Rooney’s grasp of time was uneven. There were still days when he believed his wife was alive, days when he seemed surprised to find that his daughters were fully grown. Two years ago Niccolo had tracked the old man to a makeshift “den” on Whiskey Island, but now he knew where Rooney had stayed on the coldest days of that winter. He supposed that at the height of Rooney’s illness it was possible he had found places to live all over the city, places where he could escape and feel secure. Niccolo just hoped those days were over.

He and Rooney worked at moving the rock out of the way until they were joined by Josh, Winston and Tarek. Megan had asked the other kids to help her bring people downstairs and through the tunnel. The boys were on an adrenaline high. This was a day they would talk about for the rest of their lives.

With the help of more strong arms, the rock rolled away easily. They worked at another, widening the space until Niccolo could squeeze through. Outside, a fine rain fell, and the skies were still dark. But the wind had died down, and the air felt fresh and clean. There was no traffic on the Shoreway, which was only yards down the hill. He motioned for Winston to join him. Winston squeezed out the hole and gazed around.

“Well this part of C-town’s not looking so bad,” he said.

“Can you find your way along the hillside and back up to the street? See if you can find a working telephone and report what happened at the saloon?”

“Then I gotta call my mom.”

Winston wasn’t such a tough guy after all. “Make that your first call, okay?” Niccolo said.

“I’ll find somebody’ll know what to do.”

“Watch carefully for wires on the ground. Treat them like deadly snakes. Be very, very careful.”

“I’ll come back and let you know.”

“No, don’t. Go home.” Niccolo paused. “If you can get there.”

Winston nodded. “You think that twister did lots of damage?”

From the hillside, Niccolo couldn’t tell. Nothing looked out of place, except for the fact that no traffic was moving on the Shoreway. “Tornadoes are funny. They’ll take one house and leave everything else around it unharmed. It may have touched down on Lookout Avenue and no place else.”

“Hey, man, I’m ghost.” Winston raised his hand in goodbye and started across the hill.

“Good luck,” Niccolo called.

“Got my finger on the trigger.”

Niccolo, ignoring that imagery, turned and gazed up the hill. From the rear, what he could see of the saloon appeared undamaged. He was too far below the street to see anything that had happened there. He headed back into the tunnel just as Josh and Tarek led the first group of guests to the opening.

Niccolo explained how they would be exiting. “Is everybody okay to climb down to the road?” The climb wasn’t steep, but some of the older guests would need to take their time, since the path would be slick from the rain, and no one had worn hiking boots to the wedding.

“Apparently they’ve blocked it off, because there’s no traffic,” he continued. “We’ll gather down there as a group and walk along the road to the first exit. I’d rather do that than risk going up to the street. I don’t know what the rest of Lookout looks like.”

Everyone seemed in agreement. He ushered them outside, comforting and questioning each one about injuries.

For the next twenty minutes he consoled and assisted his wedding guests. Peggy came through clutching Kieran. He counted Andreanis until the last one came through. The rain had nearly halted by the time the last group arrived. Megan brought up the rear, with Casey and Jon just ahead of her. Megan didn’t mince words. “Nick, the gas smell is stronger.”

“Everybody’s out?”

She hesitated long enough that he wasn’t reassured.

“You don’t know?” he said.

“Did Josh come through? Aunt Dee thought she saw him opening the door to the apartment. One of the flashlights died, and earlier he’d said he was going to look for another.”

Niccolo had seen Josh come through at least twice, but he wasn’t sure if the young man had gone back inside to escort more guests or gone down to the Shoreway. He tried to remember, but the afternoon had become a blur of faces and situations.

“I went to the bottom of the stairs and yelled for him before I left, just in case,” Megan said. “I think he would have heard me if he was in the apartment. I’m sure he would have. He probably came through and you just don’t remember.”

Probably wasn’t good enough. Even though Josh was fully capable of finding his way outside now, he might not understand the urgency. They had played down the gas smell, so as not to unduly scare anyone. Panic was an even worse threat.

Niccolo decided to agree, at least outwardly. “I’m sure you’re right. Help the rest of the people down to the Shoreway, okay?”

“You’re not going back inside, are you?”

If Megan thought he was going back in, she would insist on coming with him. Niccolo asked forgiveness for lying to her on their wedding day. “No, I’m going to see what’s going on up above. I sent Winston to find a phone and call the fire department.”

Megan hesitated.

“Please, go on,” he assured her. “I can take care of myself.”

“Shouldn’t I come with you?”

“I think you should stay with our guests. Jon, will you and Casey help Megan make sure everybody gets to safety?”

Jon knew Niccolo was lying. Niccolo could see it in his eyes, but he nodded. “We’ll take care of it.”

“I’ll join you the moment I can.”

“Okay.”

Niccolo watched them go. Rooney had already made the climb, and no one was left at the mouth of the tunnel. He waited until Megan’s view was obscured; then he started back inside and climbed the steps up into the tunnel. “Josh?”

He tried again to remember if Josh had gone back inside. He started down the tunnel shining his flashlight on the floor just ahead of him, listening carefully. “Josh?”

He was almost at the entrance into the cellar when he heard an explosion. A split second afterward the world went black.

He awoke sometime later. Time had stopped for him, and when he opened his eyes he didn’t know where he was, or even who. He was lying on his back, staring up at a poorly plastered wall. The room was dark, but a beam of light shone at the wall’s bottom. He wasn’t in any real pain, although he was afraid if he moved too quickly that might change. He lay still, trying to put his thoughts together.

He’d heard a noise. He thought he remembered flying through the air, but how could that be? Unless he was dead. He’d heard afterlife tales of tunnels, of moving rapidly toward a bright, healing light. But if this was the afterlife, it was highly overrated. The floor beneath his fingertips was clammy. The air he breathed was smoke filled. Despite years in the priesthood, he’d never been a big fan of the biblical version of Hell, and he discounted that possibility immediately.

“Nick?”

He heard a woman’s voice in the distance. At the sound of his name, memory rushed in to fill the void. He had gone back inside the tunnel to find Josh. There had been an explosion…. He tried to sit up, but immediately his head began to throb. He decided against moving for the moment.

“Nick?” This time the voice calling him was a man’s.

“Here,” he croaked. “I’m here. I’m okay, I think.”

He heard footsteps, quick ones, and loud enough to make his head throb harder. He realized the light that illuminated the bottom of the wall was a flashlight. His flashlight. He had dropped it. He felt for it until he had it in his grasp. Then he shined it on the wall, hoping to guide his rescuers.

“Here,” he croaked again.

He waited. His vision was blurry, but as he stared at the wall, his eyes began to focus. Above him was an image. He struggled to focus more closely. A woman gazed down at him, an image as familiar as his own.

The footsteps drew closer, but now he paid little attention. He drew the beam along the edge of the image. Up, down, across. It was pronounced, certainly not the result of his injury. He was not looking at something that wasn’t there.

The Virgin Mary was looking down at him, and she was weeping.

“Nick, my God, are you all right?”

He heard a man’s voice. Jon. He was glad to put a name to it. Then he heard a woman’s, and he knew the worst moment of his day wasn’t over.

“Megan,” he croaked. He turned his head to see a vision in white running in his direction. She fell to the ground beside him.

“Are you okay? Don’t move. What happened?”

“Explosion. Gas leak. Maybe in the cellar. Fumes ignited by the—maybe the water heater. I should have thought to blow out the pilot light.” He coughed.

Jon joined them. “Were you in the cellar when it blew?”

Niccolo tried to remember. “Almost. Where am I?”

“About ten yards down the tunnel.”

Niccolo realized he must have been knocked off his feet by the explosion and catapulted to this place. “I should be…”

“Dead,” Jon supplied. “For sure. I don’t know why you aren’t. It’s nothing short of a miracle. Can you move your arms and legs?”

Niccolo tried. He felt bruised all over, but nothing seemed to be broken. “Josh?”

“Down below. You should have waited to find out.”

“Time wasn’t a friend.”

“You said you were going up to the road,” Megan said. “You lied to me.”

“I didn’t want you to worry….”

“You two settle that later. Right now, I think we need to get you out of here,” Jon said. “The fire department’s on its way. They’ll address the leak, wherever it is, but we don’t want another explosion while we’re in here.”

“Fire…” Inevitably, it followed explosions.

“There’s not much to ignite down here. We can assume the furnace room will be a total loss.”

Niccolo struggled to sit up. At the second try, and with Jon and Megan’s help, he managed. The world spun, but when he opened his eyes again, the Virgin still stared down at him.

“Tell me I’m not imagining her,” he said.

“Nick, you’re not imagining me,” Megan said.

“You’re real. I know. Her.” Niccolo shined his light on the wall again.

Jon and Megan turned to see what he was talking about. Niccolo watched Megan’s face. He watched his bride’s eyes widen. She stared at the wall, then at him. And then Megan, whose relationship with the Church was suspect at best, made the sign of the cross.

chapter 6

Cleveland’s Hopkins airport was open for business, and planes were still flying. That seemed incongruous to Peggy, who only the day before had wondered if she or Cleveland would survive the tornado’s devastation. Now, she stared at the ceiling in Niccolo and Megan’s guest bedroom and wondered how she would feel tomorrow, when she woke up in another strange bed. This time in Ireland.

A faint rapping launched her to her feet. She opened the door a crack to see her sister’s serious face.

“Phil tracked you down,” Megan said softly, so not to wake Kieran. “Nice of him.”

Peggy wasn’t surprised at her sister’s tone. Megan did not like Kieran’s father, nor, for that matter, did Casey. “At least he’s calling, Megan. I should have called him myself last night. There was just so much going on.”

“I suppose even Phil finds it hard to ignore the fact that the saloon was struck by a tornado. We’re the toast of the town. We made statewide news.”

“You’re supposed to be on your honeymoon.” Peggy looked around for something to pull over her T-shirt so that she could take Phil’s call.

“We’ll go after I get the estimates for renovations. I’ll have plenty of time to relax. I won’t be working for months.” Megan shook her head as if she was still adjusting to that thought. “Let me get you a robe. There’s nobody in the kitchen. You can talk to Phil there.”

Peggy checked Kieran, who was sleeping soundly, his tiny body curled in a ball. She wanted him to sleep, since their flight to Ireland was going to be trial enough. When Megan returned, she wrapped the flannel bathrobe around her and secured it; then, with a nod to her sister, she went down to the kitchen and picked up the receiver.

“Phil?”

“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to speak to me.”

She found a chair and tried to make herself comfortable. “Things are in chaos here, but we’re all right. I’m sorry you had to hear about it from somebody else.”

“The Columbus Dispatch had a front page article. Kieran’s okay?”

“Fine. We’re all lucky. Just cuts and bruises and one mild concussion. It was one of those freaky things. Lookout Avenue caught the tail of a twister. There were trees down all over the West Side, but it could have been so much worse.”

“The paper says the saloon sustained the worst damage on the street?”

“Let’s just say we won’t be serving Guinness for a while. Luckily it’s not a total loss. And since she has to close and renovate anyway, Megan’s swearing she’ll improve the place while she’s at it.”

“Megan said you’re still planning to leave today.”

“I am.” Peggy considered her next words but decided to go ahead. “I wish you could have come to say goodbye this week, Phil. Kieran will be a whole year older by the time we get back.”

“Tanya’s been sick. I was afraid to leave her.”

Tanya was Phil’s wife. They had married six months ago, and Tanya had wasted no time getting pregnant. Peggy wondered if Kieran was the reason for her haste—and continuing morning sickness. Tanya was young and insecure. Peggy had tried to find ways to assure her that Kieran was no threat to her marriage, but the message had never been received.

“I’m sending an extra check to Ireland,” Phil said, when Peggy didn’t respond. “A good-size one. I know you’ll need some help getting settled.”

Phil was as generous as he could be with child support, and that was one area where Peggy couldn’t fault him. He had little interest in Kieran, but he did take his financial responsibilities seriously. He was a fledgling architect with years of school loans to pay off, but he shared what he could.

“I appreciate it,” she said. “I’m going to buy supplies for Kieran’s classroom once I get there. Whatever you send will go toward that.”

“How is he?”

Uncharitable responses rose to her tongue, but she overcame them. “He’s the same, Phil.”

“Is he talking yet?”

“He can say hi. But he’ll be talking up a storm by the time I bring him home.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t…you know.”

She didn’t know. Couldn’t visit? Couldn’t love his beautiful, distant son? Couldn’t promise that he ever would?

“I hope you’ll write him,” she said. “I’ll read him your letters, and I’ll put your photograph in his room.”

“Sure. That’s a good idea. Please do that.”

“Goodbye, Phil. Give Tanya my best wishes and tell her I hope she feels better soon.” She hung up, suspecting that Tanya would feel better the moment Peggy and Kieran’s plane took off for Shannon Airport.

“I’m making coffee.” Megan stumbled into the room. “One cup or two?”

“I’ll take a pot.” Peggy watched her sister wander the room trying to find her wits and the coffee filters at the same time. Megan was usually a morning person, but she’d used up a year’s worth of energy yesterday, and it showed.

“Nick’s still doing okay?” Peggy asked.

“His skull must be made of titanium. I woke him up all through the night like the E. R. doc told me to, until he said if I woke him up one more time he’d start divorce proceedings.”

“A little edgy, huh?”

“He claims he doesn’t even have a headache.”

“It’s really something of a miracle, huh?”

“Peggy…” Megan filled the glass pot with water. She turned off the tap and faced her sister. “I’ve got to tell you something. But only if you promise not to laugh.”

“Any chance I can keep that promise?”

“Maybe.” Megan seemed to realize she was clutching the pot of water to her chest. She turned and poured it in the coffeemaker and installed the coffee filter. “When we found Nick yesterday?”

Peggy felt her skin growing cold. She hadn’t slept well, despite true exhaustion. Every time she’d closed her eyes she’d felt the house rocking the way the saloon had rocked when the twister touched down. Or she’d heard the explosion and felt the same stab of terror she’d felt when she realized Niccolo might have been caught inside.

“I was sure he was dead,” Peggy said.

“I know. He should have been. He was blown ten yards or more.”

“You were going to tell me something funny. I could use it.”

Megan measured the coffee into the pot and flipped the switch. “It’s only funny coming from me. When we found him, Peggy, I couldn’t believe he was alive. Talking, too, like nothing much had happened. We told him we had to get him outside, and he sat up. Then he shined his flashlight on the wall right under where he’d landed.”

Peggy was waiting for the punch line. “And?”

“There was an image there.”

Peggy waited. She had no idea what her sister meant.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Megan went on. “An impression of some kind, I guess. A stain? But it looks like the Virgin.”

For a moment Peggy didn’t understand. “Virgin?”

“Holy statues of our lady. She’s facing the other wall, robed, and her arms are out like this.” Megan demonstrated, as if she were welcoming guests. “And, well, here’s the thing. The face has no features, not really, but where her eyes should be…” Megan looked away. “Tears. It looks like she’s crying. Nick woke up, and that’s what he saw.”

Peggy didn’t know what to say. “Well…” She frowned. “Megan, you don’t think this is some sort of a miracle, do you? That doesn’t sound like you.”

“I think it’s a coincidence, and for that matter, so does Nick. It was just, well, spooky.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not right. It wasn’t spooky. It was lovely. Comforting, as if…” She shrugged. “For just a second there I felt like I used to when I was a little girl and we’d go to St. Brigid’s as a family. Sometimes, when everything was very quiet and the candlelight flickered on the wall and you knew the organ music was about to start. In that moment, you know, that’s how it felt.”

Megan rarely talked about religion and never in a positive way. She’d been born a Catholic and would die one. Like all of them, she loved Father Brady, and she understood her new husband’s devotion to the Church, but without Niccolo in her life she would have remained only nominally involved. She was a Holy Days Catholic, and her sisters were the same.

“You had a spiritual experience,” Peggy said. “I think that’s wonderful. Treasure it.”

Megan seemed to shake off the moment. She opened a cupboard and got down coffee mugs. “Yes? Well, I’m not looking for another one. Not if Nick gets blown down a tunnel first. That’s the real miracle. He’s alive.”