Night Watch: A Novel

ConaLee waits with Eliza to get in the carriage. O’Shea drives the carriage to the front of the asylum, and Eliza says that O’Shea does not normally drive it. For a moment, ConaLee, O’Shea, and Eliza are close together. ConaLee sees Weed playing in a tree, and O’Shea looks disapprovingly at Weed. Dr. Story is in the carriage, and Eliza sits with him in the backseat. Dr. Story opens the windows as the carriage starts moving, and ConaLee sees Weed standing on the back of the carriage.

ConaLee thanks Dr. Story for inviting her, and Dr. Story asks about ConaLee and Eliza’s relationship. ConaLee repeats that she has no family, and Dr. Story refers to Eliza as ConaLee’s chosen family. ConaLee sees lights, like she may pass out, and Eliza pinches her. The carriage comes to a sudden stop, and O’Shea tells everyone to stay still. A black bear and her three cubs are standing in front of the carriage. Dr. Story tells O’Shea to shoot the bears, but O’Shea refuses. ConaLee pulls Weed into the carriage, and Eliza hugs Dr. Story. The bears cross the road, and Dr. Story tells Weed not to leave the asylum grounds. Dr. Story puts a hand on Eliza’s hair.

Dr. Story invites Eliza to his room for a drink, and then he invites ConaLee when Eliza looks at her. Eliza changes her mind, saying that she needs to rest, and she runs to the asylum when the carriage arrives. ConaLee catches up, but Eliza tells ConaLee to leave. ConaLee is nervous to leave Eliza alone, but Eliza disappears.

Dr. Story invites O’Shea into his office. O’Shea feels like he has nothing in common with Story. Story tells O’Shea that they are distant relations, through the late Dr. O’Shea who took O’Shea in. O’Shea says that he will not apologize for refusing to shoot the bears. Story implies that O’Shea should not have told Story and Eliza to be silent. They reflect on how O’Shea smoothed Story’s takeover of the asylum. Story says that Papa escaped the asylum, but he thinks Papa will not return. O’Shea knows that Papa is violent, and he worries that Papa will hurt someone. Story encourages O’Shea to focus on nonhuman animals to eat, though he regrets talking about guns and violence around O’Shea. O’Shea says that he is a violent man and that he does not respect Story’s dishonesty regarding Papa’s escape.

Outside, Eliza approaches O’Shea and tells him that she knows him from before the war. O’Shea pushes her away, but he begins having memories of the battle in which he was injured. He remembers the way Eliza smells, and they kiss.

ConaLee finds a desk in Eliza’s room with written pages on it. ConaLee takes the notes but feels guilty. At the window, she sees Eliza waiting in the garden. O’Shea approaches, and Eliza steps up to him. O’Shea wards Eliza off, but she steps forward and kisses him. ConaLee wonders if Eliza is mad, but she begins to see lights. ConaLee remembers Papa grabbing her, dragging her somewhere, and putting honey in her mouth. She bit his finger. Papa assaulted ConaLee, and she fled to Dearbhla in her mind.

In her dream, she is helping her mother get the rifle out of Bart’s grave, but the grave is a dark river. The river rises and becomes branches, on fire, resting on O’Shea’s back. ConaLee wakes up, leaves Eliza’s door ajar, and returns to the nurses’ quarters.

Weed sees Eliza and O’Shea kiss from his hiding place high in a tree. O’Shea and Eliza have sex, and Weed watches. On a higher branch, Weed encounters a swarm of ants that bite his hand. He sucks the wound and sees Eliza and O’Shea writhing on the ground below him. Weed turns away and climbs higher.

ConaLee reads her mother’s notes, in which Eliza describes killing the overseer and fleeing the plantation with O’Shea and Dearbhla. ConaLee is confused, thinking that Eliza might be writing dreams or stories to seem mentally ill. The letters talk about Eliza’s miscarriage en route to West Virginia, and Eliza implies that Weed is the spirit of that child. ConaLee thinks that she needs to find Dearbhla, and she tears up Eliza’s notes.

Dearbhla remembers telling ConaLee stories about constellations, including Orion chasing women. She cannot picture the asylum, but she knows she needs to go there and try to speak to ConaLee. Dearbhla takes the wagon and horse, stocked with provisions. In a clearing, Dearbhla gets the horse to drink and remembers Eliza’s story about O’Shea. At 16 years old, Eliza was forbidden from seeing O’Shea, but he found her one day when her horse was injured. He cared for the horse, and they had sex. When Eliza’s father saw Eliza and O’Shea look at each other, he ordered for O’Shea to be branded, instigating their escape. Eliza thought that O’Shea would return from the war and told Dearbhla this story while pregnant with ConaLee. Dearbhla can sense that Eliza, ConaLee, and Papa stopped at the same clearing on their way to the asylum.

Weed goes to Hexum’s room in the morning, but she is unresponsive at her desk. Weed remembers Hexum saying that she was a beautiful young woman, pursued and assaulted by men, including her family. She grew large and fought back. Weed tries to wake Hexum, pushing her onto the desk. Weed hears a gunshot. Hexum’s eyes are open, but she is not awake. Weed cries and sees Hexum’s lamp shatter, spreading flames over the desk. Weed jumps out the window, seeing that other people are calling for help.

Dr. Story thinks about confessing his feelings to Eliza, with whom he has a morning appointment. Answering his door, he finds both Eliza and O’Shea. Story invites them to sit at the desk, but a man jumps in through the open window of the office. It is Papa, brandishing a pistol. O’Shea knows what Papa did to Eliza and ConaLee, and he sees Papa as a manifestation of the horrors of war. Story tries to talk Papa down, but Papa points the gun at Eliza. O’Shea pushes Papa out the window, but Papa shoots O’Shea in the chest.

Mrs. Bowman enters, and she and Story see Papa dead on the pavement below. Story tells Bowman to get the surgeon for O’Shea. Eliza cradles O’Shea’s head and tells Story that O’Shea is her husband. Shocked, Story cannot find O’Shea’s pulse.

ConaLee follows the crowd out of the hospital. The women are rushing out, and they see Hexum’s room on fire. ConaLee can hear the men on the other side of the wall cheering.

Dearbhla arrives in Weston and hears the fire alarm bells from the asylum. She pulls the wagon through the gate to the asylum and sees masses of people with coats, blankets, and buckets. The alarm stops, and Dearbhla pulls up to the entrance of the asylum.

ConaLee sees townspeople with blankets crowding around the lawn of the asylum. The fire is out, and the alarm stops. People loiter and converse, and ConaLee spots Dearbhla on the wagon. ConaLee removes her hat and unties her hair, running to Dearbhla.

Dearbhla asks where Eliza is, and ConaLee points to Eliza, standing with Dr. Story on Story’s balcony. ConaLee urges Dearbhla to leave, and Weed jumps down into the wagon from a tree. ConaLee catches him, and they ride away.

A surgeon pronounces O’Shea dead of a gunshot wound to the heart. The police give Story permission to bury Papa’s body. Eliza tells Story her true name, adding that ConaLee is her daughter with O’Shea. Story urges Eliza to bring ConaLee to live with them, but Eliza saw Dearbhla take ConaLee. Eliza says that Dearbhla and ConaLee have a home, but Eliza does not. Story says that her home is with him, regardless of her name.

O’Shea sits at dinner with Dr. and Mrs. O’Shea. He is staying with them, like adoptive parents, and he knows that he is a placeholder for their own dead sons. He works at the hospital and does chores for them, but he wants to be independent. When Dr. O’Shea asks whether O’Shea thinks patients should spend holidays with family, O’Shea responds that he needs to leave their home. Dr. O’Shea suggests training O’Shea as an aide for hospital work, noting that soldiers, after the war, will appreciate a former soldier to care for them. After becoming an aide, O’Shea could get work at another hospital, achieving a sense of independence.

Mrs. O’Shea insists that O’Shea stay with them until he finds a new job, and O’Shea agrees. He feels no familial connection with these adoptive parents, and he knows that his heart is the only key to guide him.

ConaLee stands with Weed outside a house marked for sale across the street from a bank. Dearbhla died two years prior and left ConaLee her father’s account information at the bank. ConaLee buried Dearbhla on the ridge, where she slowly took over Dearbhla’s chores over the past seven years. After leaving the asylum, ConaLee became Weed’s adoptive mother, and they lived on the ridge with Dearbhla. The chap visited often, though the boy twin died, and the girl twin moved away. ConaLee moved back to Weston with Weed when Dearbhla died.

ConaLee asks the bank teller about her father’s accounts, handing over the information she has on him. The teller reveals that O’Shea’s chosen name was Ephraim Connolly, making ConaLee’s last name Connolly. ConaLee realizes that her name was a signal to trigger a response for Ephraim. Through Eliza and Dearbhla, ConaLee learned how her father was born to an enslaved woman, while Eliza was born to the enslaver.

The bank teller says that there is $340.54 in the account, which ConaLee can claim. Ephraim’s is the last account belonging to soldiers in the war, and the bank teller starts to cry, remembering her two brothers who died at Gettysburg. ConaLee explains that her mother and stepfather, Eliza and Dr. Story, have given her letters of recommendation to buy the house across the street. The bank teller says that she is the owner’s wife, Mrs. Paine, and she tentatively agrees to sell ConaLee the house.

ConaLee feels that it is what Ephraim would want her to do with the money, and the house is close to the asylum. ConaLee goes out to Weed by the house, and she thinks about the passing of time.