Free Buried in a Bog by Sheila Connolly

you?”
    Maura sat obediently. “By the way, I really appreciate you letting me use your car. I’d never realized that there was no way to get around once you leave the main roads.”
    “So Michael sorted that out for you? It slipped my mind yesterday. Ah, you young lot—you don’t walk places the way we used to. Impatient, aren’t you?”
    “I guess so. What was it you said when I came in? Was that Irish?”
    Mrs. Nolan toddled back. “
Dia duit
, you mean?” When Maura nodded, she explained, “It’s a greeting—it means ‘God be with you,’ but you may think of it as ‘hello.’”
    “You said something after it too. Ah why-ra?”
    “But that’s your name, dearie. I won’t trouble you with learning the language—not many people speak it anymore, although our government does keep trying to keep it going, more credit to them. But your name is Maire, which is Mary.”
    What, now they’d given her a new name? “But I’m Maura,” she protested. “And you called your grandson ‘mee-hawl’?”
    “Yes, that’s how it’s said in Irish. As for your name, your grandmother and I wrote back and forth about it, when your parents were expecting you. She wanted you to have an Irish name, but she thought that Maire with the ‘a-i’ would be hard for you in school, and Maura with the ‘a-u’ is closer to the Irish sound of it anyway, and less old-fashioned than ‘o-i’ Moira. Better than Mary, don’t you think? Now, if your father had wanted to follow the old naming patterns, you should have been Nora, after his mother, but she thought that might be too out of date for a girl. What was your mother’s name, again? It seems to have slipped my mind.”
    “Helen.”
    “Ah, that’s right. Now, had you been a boy, you should have been James, after your grandfather, Nora’s husband. If you like, I can tell you where he’s buried, so you could pay your respects.”
    She’d forgotten to ask Mrs. Nolan about that, although ithad been in the back of her mind. Her Irish grandfather had never been a very real figure to her. Gran had rarely mentioned him, though she wasn’t sure why. “Were he and Gran happy together?” Maura asked. She’d sometimes thought that maybe it had been an unhappy marriage, which was why Gran had wanted to put that whole time in Ireland behind her.
    Mrs. Nolan’s next words quickly erased that idea. “Indeed they were. He was a fine man, tall, hardworking. And he adored your gran—you could see it in the way he looked at her, when he thought she didn’t see. It near broke her heart when he died. He shouldn’t have, wouldn’t, if he’d gotten to hospital in time. He’d cut himself haying, but he said it was nothing to worry about until it was too late and it had gone septic, and no doctor near.”
    “Was that why she left here?”
    “In part. It made her sad, being here without him, even though she had friends and family all around. She hoped she’d have better opportunities in America. She knew some people there, and she found work, and someone to look after her son. He grew up to be a fine man, didn’t he?”
    Maura wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement, but she had no reason to disagree. “As far as I know. His only mistake was marrying the wrong woman. The less said about her, the better. I don’t know where she is, and I don’t really care.”
    They both sat in silence for a few moments. Then Mrs. Nolan said, “A sad thing, that poor man in the bog.”
    “You’ve heard about that?” Maura asked, surprised. How had she found out?
    “Oh, yes. Mick came by yesterday and told me, andanother friend or two stopped in as well. Michael insists I have a phone here, but I keep it only to please him, and I don’t use it much—I don’t hear near as well as I once did. My friends know to come directly rather than phone, bless them. They told me all about it.”
    “Do they know who it was yet?”
    “No one’s gone missing around here, that we remember.