Bridget woke, checked to see Effie still slept, and began unwinding the strips of cloth from around her head. The bands always loosened in the night and needed to be rewound in the morning. Something best done when Effie wasn’t looking. So that her face didn’t drop and her hands didn’t start twisting.
With the soft pads of her fingertips, Bridget touched the burns. Most of the water had gone out of what she thought of as peeled eggs. Wren eggs, robin eggs, even hen eggs. She looked up into the rafters to Grandma Teegan’s braid and whispered, “Can you see my eggs?” But braids couldn’t see, and she promised herself Grandma Teegan was home in Ireland. Grandma Teegan hadn’t stayed too long in America just for her. Wasn’t buried this side of the water and hadn’t died in the crossing. One day,
