St. Patrick's Bed (Ashland, 3) (22 page)

He smiled. I know he did. He didn't want much. He never had.

And that night, lying in bed, eyes open in the dark, Jeanne beside me as always, Adam just down the hall, the walls of his room lined with new cracks, always new cracks, I thought of Brendan and Darla, on a mountain in the west of Ireland, beneath wild skies, taking turns lying in St. Patrick's Bed. I thought of Uncle Jim, of Nanny's parents, dealing with the cards life had dealt them, adopting children, of Phil Berney, Jeanne's father, with a baby in a laundry basket at his feet. Then I closed my eyes and looked through the microscope again, saw the life that was teeming, coursing through my body, through all our bodies, swimming upstream against all odds, thought of the plastic bottle of water on the shelf at the back of our bedroom closet, of a silver flash beneath dark waters of a mountain lough. It could still happen, I thought. Yes. It could happen.

About the Author

Terence M. Green was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1947. He is the author of seven books, among them the novels
Shadow of Ashland
and
A Witness to Life,
both of which explore the same family that is at the heart of
St. Patrick's Bed.
A five-time finalist for the Aurora Award (Canada) and a two-time World Fantasy Award finalist, Mr. Green is a graduate of both the University of Toronto (B.A., B.Ed) and University College, Dublin (M.A.). Married with three sons, he lives in Toronto. For more information, you are invited to visit the author's Web site at www.tmgreen.com.