TUS NUA - ch 50

TUS NUA – ch 50

New Beginnings – Mia and Midnight

(*)(*)(*)

Not five minutes after Mr. and Mrs. Dowd walked through the front door, Ellen and Neil Byrne drove up the path to the house.

Finola smiled. Her relief was obvious.

“Mr. and Mrs. Dowd, before I take you to the children, please let’s go into my office. There are just a few things I’m not sure if you know.”

She led the handsome couple who Finola judged to be in their mid-forties, to her office.

Once they were seated in her private office, Finola began with, “My name is Finola Duggan Diehl. It’s been many years since I’ve used the Duggan name but that’s neither here nor there.”

“Oh, my stars, Finola Diehl! I should have known,” Mrs. Dowed declared. “Mrs. Diehl, please, forgive me for not realizing. No wonder you found our little ones.”

Finola smiled, “Well, then, that puts a lot of questions to the wind. We’re very informal here so Finola will do.”

Mrs. Dowd smiled. “Well, then, Finola, it is. I’m Ida and my husband is Daniel. Since the girls are with you, I can only assume you saw the posters we placed around. But let me tell you a bit about our daughter, Mary. She was a wild one, our Mary. Sweet but wild. She calmed down a bit when she met up with Liam Quinnlyn. Such a sweet boy but so very hard of hearing. I swear to get him to hear a word, you’d have to shout loud enough for to be heard in the next county. But our Mary? Well, Mary and Liam were inseparable. They even developed their own kind of hand language. One day, they just disappeared. We looked everywhere. Even went to Liam’s house and that’s where we found out that his parents also had a problem hearing. Made us wonder if Mary and Laim got a bit older and married, would their children have the same problem. Mary was only thirteen.”

Finola nodded her head but held her tongue and allowed Ida to continue. “As I said, we searched everywhere. We put up the posters because we knew with the hearing disability Liam’s parents had, contacting them might prove more of a burden. The garda did their best but often the best is still not good enough. Do you have any idea what happened to them?”

Finola folded her hands in her lap as she spoke and briefly looked away. Then slightly straightened her back, looked into the soft blue eyes of Ida, and answered, “All we know so far is that… hmm, oh my, where do I begin?” She took a breath. “As my dearly beloved mother would say, ‘At the beginning, you fool!’ Well, that was my maam. I’ll begin with how we became aware of the little ones.” And she told the tale of how her friend Neil found the little girls and brought them to Tus Nua. She continued with the struggle they had getting the girls to speak.

“We concluded that the older one, Caroleena could speak but for some reason, her voice was always on and off. Sometimes, she spoke like a normal child and others, her speech was extremely limited. We had and still have the impression that Jennie can’t hear.” Finola mentioned how she dropped a heavy book behind the girl who never flinched at the sound.

“In the meantime, while we tried to find out who the children were and how they found themselves in the old Claremont School, it remained a mystery, until we were paid a visit by Kevin Donahue. He’s boy around thirteen who looked after them for years but then, well, circumstances placed him in a predicament that he couldn’t avoid and rather than put the girls in jeopardy, he had no choice but to leave.”

Finola knew the Dowds would have more questions about Kevin, but she pushed that aside for now.

“It was my niece, Mia who, on a hunch, showed Caroleena the poster of Mary and Caroleena began screaming, ‘mama’. We called the garda who agreed to take a DNA sample. They told us that they had found the remains of a couple who appeared to be in their teenage years and were working on extracting DNA in hopes they could find a family. At that point, the garda had no idea who they were or where they came from.”

They were interrupted by Dara who carried in a tray of hot tea and scones. “Please, eat something. You’ve had a long drive and an stronger shock. I can offer some Hennesey, if you’d like.”

They smiled, “Thank you so much but the tea and scones will be enough. Thank you, again.”

Finola continued. “It was my cousin, Alistar who knew enough to call you and make inquiries. Between him and Mia, well, they put two and two together and came up with four. So, now, here you are! Before I take you outside to the children, do you have any questions that I haven’t yet covered?”

Ida answered, “Do you have any idea when, oh my god, I had to ask this, but do you have any idea when our Mary met her maker? And how?”

Finola tried to keep her own eyes from misting over as she answered, “The only thing the garda can tell us is that it was only a matter of perhaps slightly more than a year after Jennie was born. As far as we know, they’re still conducting tests to find out more but, even for them, it isn’t easy. We still don’t know how the girls found the old Claremont school.”

Ida knew immediately what Finola meant but found it difficult to voice the words aloud.

“You mentioned a boy named Kevin.” Daniel uttered. “Can we meet him? Would he have any fear or objections to meeting us? If he took care of the children as you said, we’d like to thank him.”

“I’m sure that wouldn’t be a problem. Let’s go out to the playroom and you can meet your granddaughters and I’ll send for Kevin. Currently, he’s at my nephew’s house. Ian is a veterinarian and Kevin wanted to help him. I’ll send Mia for him.”

As they approached the small playroom that Finola fashioned just for the younger children, it was Caroleena who looked and as she did, she stood and ran towards Ida with outstretched arms as she cried, “Mama! Mama!”