Read Online Her Name Is Rose by Christine Breen - Free Book Online Page B

cover of the folder, as if in afterthought, was a handwritten-addressed envelope. It said: Adoption Board, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland.
    â€œIris?”
    Iris froze.
    â€œWould you get the door, please?”
    Iris quickly returned the folder. The paper clip fell to the ground and she brushed it away with her foot and went to get the door.
    Sonia carried in a small tray with two mugs and settled the tray on the side table. She looked at Iris, her eyes pausing on the chair a moment before picking up the folder and sitting down with it securely in her lap.
    â€œI hope you’ve had a few minutes to recognize, Mrs. Bowen that the Adoption Board can do nothing more for you as the adoptive mother.” She passed Iris a tea mug. “I am so sorry. It’s just the way it is. And has been for many years. And until the laws change—”
    â€œI understand.” Iris paused a few moments and, still standing, took a single sip of the tea and then said, “Actually, I have to go. I have to catch the five-twenty train back to Limerick.” She put her mug down. “I have a long way to go from here.” She waited for Sonia to say something but Sonia only looked at her own mug. Then she, too, stood and the two women faced each other.
    An instant of silent understanding passed. Nothing was explained nor questioned. But there was a moment—definitely, and a powerful connection—and for that fleeting moment Iris and Sonia were co-conspirators against the chaotic universe.
    A moment that could possibly change a life forever.
    â€œThank you for your help,” Iris said.
    Sonia smiled weakly and weariness showed in the circles under her eyes, as if each day she prepared to face the world but it was wearing her out. She walked Iris down the wide Georgian hallway to the front door. A partial ellipse of light shone from the fanlight above the door onto the marble floor.
    â€œGood-bye then, Iris,” Sonia said, and she held Iris’s hand very firmly. “Good luck … with everything.”
    Stepping across the street and onto the footpath, Iris reached out to hold on to the black railing enclosing the small park. She turned back to see the blue door of the Adoption Board close, the city street now a blur of noise and traffic passing. She took from her pocket the envelope she had torn from the folder. She had folded it small, but now gently opened and pressed it flat. She’d got what she’d come for. In the top, left-hand corner, inked in faded blue writing, was an address.
    â€œLuke,” Iris whispered. “Hilary … Hilary Barrett. 99 St. Botolph Street. Boston, Massachusetts.”

 
    Five
    There is no difference between the fiddle and the violin —Rose had learned that by heart and said it in response to neighbors and friends in Clare who often asked why she played the violin instead of the fiddle. The fiddle was traditional, it was what a child was expected to learn in the west. “Sure it’s who we are,” Tommy Ryan had said one day hearing her play. But Rose was a girl who wanted to form her own identity. They’re not really different, she would say, just played differently. When she played a jig she’d say she was playing the fiddle, but when she played a sonata or a concerto she was playing the violin. “Same instrument. Just played differently. Traditional and classical. I’m both.”
    When, as an eight-year-old, she’d showed an interest in learning an instrument Luke and Iris took her to a music school in Ennis, where she sat in on several classes, including fiddle. It was Andreas the violin teacher, an Austrian from Salzburg who’d moved to Ireland, who’d captured her imagination. A stocky man with a head of thick, gray hair. On her first lesson, he’d said, “Mein Roslein, the music’s in you and you’re in the music. Keep practicing and one day you’ll find each other, and then