Whispers in the Mist

by Lisa Alber

  “Gemma’s shyness began at an early age,” Dermot pontificated much to Gemma’s irritation. He had his Gemma-speech down pat by now. “In fact, her shyness was so extreme that in certain social situations—like at school—she wouldn’t talk at all. She would take the teacher out of the room to ask her for permission to go to the loo, and even then, she’d whisper. Most children grow out of it, but Gemma didn’t get the chance because our mom died and Gemma woke up to reality months later to discover that her brain wouldn’t let her talk at all anymore.”

  Dermot didn’t bother relating how much Gemma had improved over the years. No more vomiting at the mere thought of leaving the house. No more leaving the house with a wide-rimmed sunhat tied down along the sides of her face. No more hiding out in the closest Ladies’ every chance she got. With a force of will and Dermot’s help, she’d come a long way.

  “The doctors call her disorder selective mutism,” Dermot said, “because she can talk, but she doesn’t. Before our mom died, she was your average case. Afterwards, something else entirely: the perfect case study. She’s been prodded by the best of them.”

  Ellen sounded intrigued. “She doesn’t talk because she doesn’t want to?”

  “No, it’s more like—” Dermot paused. “Okay, it’s like this: You know people who are phobic about snakes? Phobias are irrational and no amount of coaxing is going to get such a person not to lose it at the sight of the smallest snake. There are cases of people dying of fright, crazy as that seems. It’s all in their heads, of course, but it’s still too real—they can’t control the way their bodies react to snakes. The brain is that powerful. It’s like that for Gemma with anything she considers public exposure.”

  “That’s tragic.”

  Gemma wished she could convey the sheer terror that sometimes engulfed her. How could anyone comprehend the sensation of bones turning to glass and skin to paper? It was like at any second she would shatter from the inside out and turn into a puddle of goo. Dermot did his best to describe her disorder, but he never got down to the heart of it, which was that sometimes she thought she was going to die, simply die, if one more person laid another spotlighting and dagger-like gaze on her. Gemma barely remembered what she was like Before, when, according to Dermot, she screamed and cavorted and giggled like a normal child when she was inside their home.

  “Our mom’s death sent her over the edge,” Dermot said, “and I hoped coming back to a place our mom had visited would dislodge some of the anxieties, further her progress.”

  When did you become such a good liar?

  Dermot’s grip on his fork tightened. He set it aside with a quiet clink against the wood tabletop. It’s the truth now.

  You think I’ll magically start to talk again. Just like that?

  We can hope.

  No, he could hope. He’d never said it in so many words, but she knew he wanted a life of his own—a family with a wife and two kids and a house without Gemma living with them and dragging everyone down. She understood his need for her to make progress, because it was her need too.

  But of course, he’d never explain all of this to Ellen. Just like he’d never tell Ellen what he believed, which was that the beginning of the end of their mam’s life started with Liam the Matchmaker.

  And ended when Gemma witnessed her murder.

  Friday

  Before mine eyes in opposition

  sits Grim Death, my son and foe.

  John Milton

  TWELVE

  IN POT O’ GOLD Gifts, Brendan Nagel slapped a price sticker on a hand-carved Celtic cross. These crosses were quite nice, in fact, carved from Connemara marble and standing about eighteen inches high. He’d given one to his dad for his birthday. He’d had to beg Malcolm for an employee discount, the stingy bollocks.

  Brendan glanced at the clock. Half ten and Malcolm still hadn’t arrived. Except for souvenir-mad customers, Brendan had the shop to himself. Not that he minded. Somehow things went smoother when Malcolm wasn’t playing grand host. Not to mention, Brendan didn’t like the way his boss sideways glanced at him sometimes. But Brendan’s dad had told him to hush his worries about getting fired. Brendan’s life was on track and it would remain that way. He’d see to Brendan’s welfare, he would, and Brendan trusted his word. Brendan could take over the shop one day, so his dad said. And wouldn’t that be a first for a Nagel?

  With a smile at the nearest customer, Brendan counted down the hours until he could begin his weekend. At sixteen, his dad had agreed that Brendan was old enough to try his hand at the festival. Brendan squirmed in happy anticipation, imagining breasts, any and all, small and large, older and younger, round or oval. He might not land a shag, but hopefully—luck be with him!—a grope or two. It struck him hilarious that a festival meant for marriage-making attracted plenty of good craic. They ought to call it the Shagmaker’s Festival, not the Matchmaker’s Festival.

  He grinned to himself as he lifted the cross, clutching its weight against his chest while he maneuvered toward the shelves along the near wall. He couldn’t help the prick of apprehension as he brushed against the fresh-scrubbed shelves that had been covered in fingerprint powder the previous day.

  The bell above the front door jingled as Brendan settled the cross in place.

  “Brendan Nagel?”

  He jumped. “Ay?”

  “We need to follow up on a customer who came in on Sunday while you were working,” Danny said.

  Brendan had never spoken to Danny Ahern while he was on duty, but he didn’t seem any different than he was at the pub. A little intense but not in a mean way. Danny leaned against shelves with hands in pockets. Relaxed like that, he didn’t seem all that keen. Just doing his job.

  “Perhaps you heard about the death of a lad about your age?” Danny said. “We’ve been circulating a description and asking for help in identifying him.”

  “Ay.” Brendan busied himself arranging a display table.

  “What can you tell us about the victim?”

  “His earrings?” Brendan said.

  “Oh?”

  “At first I figured him for about the most bent of the bent. Because of the earrings.”

  “What about them?”

  “They were big and blue and girly. He looked like a ponce, is all.”

  “Anything else?”

  Brendan thought back, confused now. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. He wasn’t a bloody mind reader. “I heard him say—into his mobile, not to me—that he’d found him.”

  Behind Danny, one of his men stood with pen poised over his notebook, looking too ready, it seemed to Brendan, and he wondered if he’d already talked too much—sounding like a pansy.

  Danny reiterated for the sake of the officer taking notes. “You’re saying that you heard the victim say that he’d found a man, as if he’d come to Lisfenora to find this man?”

  “Yes, to find him.” Now Brendan was really confused. “But no.”

  “So which is it?”

  “He hadn’t found the man yet. He said he had a lead to finding the man. Bloody proud of himself too, I might add. As if he was some kind of Sherlock Holmes.”

  “And how did you happen to overhear this?”

  “Oh.” Brendan’s thoughts scattered as he tried to remember what was what. “I passed him on my way to the post office to buy stamps for Malcolm. Is that a problem?”

  Danny’s eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled. “I don’t know, is it?”

  A waft of salt-tinged moisture entered the shop as the door opened. Brendan stepped toward the new customers, hoping that Danny would get the hint and leave. He didn’t want to talk about the dead anymore. It was too creepy. They were about the same age. Had been about the same age.

  THIRTEEN

  DANNY’S RELAXED DEMEANOR MAY have eased Brendan Nagel into opening up, but it was all show. As soon as Danny stepped out of Pot o’ Gold Gifts, his smile dropped. He buttoned his coat against the chill and already wished for spri
ng with its wild riot of violets and primroses. This foggy grey shite could only signal a miserable winter to come.

  “Come on,” he said to O’Neil. “I need my breakfast, and you can update me.”

  O’Neil was the most senior of Danny’s officers, with a promotion due to him if he were willing to move to a new district. As they walked to the Plough, Danny felt O’Neil organizing his thoughts under his shaggy head of hair. He cultivated a purposeful dishevelment intended to trick the other guards into thinking he was one of them. But this was a man who’d quit Trinity to travel around India, and who counted himself a member of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Ireland. Danny would miss O’Neil if he ever decided to transfer.

  Through filaments of moisture Danny caught sight of Liam and Merrit at work in the plaza. The crowd wasn’t as thick as usual, and as he opened the pub door, he wondered how Liam was holding up.

  Inside the pub, Danny raised a hand in Alan’s direction and maneuvered his way between clusters of wingback chairs near the fireplace. Their upholstery carried the genteel-shabby look that came with years of use. He managed to lay siege to a couple of seats just as two young women clomped away with hiking boots trailing a line of dried mud pellets.

  A waitress arrived with coffee and a basket of brown bread. She laid silverware, butter, and marmalade on the trestle tray-table at Danny’s elbow. As soon as she departed, O’Neil launched into a summary of how little the case had progressed thus far. Danny slouched with coffee cup cradled near his face. He inhaled coffee steam as if it were a serenity incense.

  “Nothing came back from the fingerprints we lifted from the shop yesterday, not that we’d expected anything,” O’Neil said. “Our boy is still a John Smith. Local inquiries haven’t led to any other sightings of the boy around the village, except that old Mickey over there”—he pointed toward the bar where the codger was already seated for the day—“fancies he saw a lad who fits the description at a pub, but he can’t remember which pub.” He wobbled his head in a fair imitation of Mickey with too many pints under his belt. “The man’s too wrecked to know where he is half the time anyhow.”

  “Keep the questions going out at the pubs—and everywhere else, for that matter.”

  They lapsed into silence, neither easy nor uneasy, more like primed for the next set of actions. After a few minutes in which Danny spread marmalade on his bread and chewed without tasting, O’Neil said, “Did Brendan Nagel seem a mite jumpy to you?”

  Danny had thought the same thing, but the lad’s twitchiness could have stemmed from an instinctive aversion to the guards or guilt over a youthful misdeed that had nothing to do with the victim.

  “Hard to tell with teenagers,” Danny said.

  O’Neil grinned. “Shifty, the lot of them, even the good ones. I’m off to see what kind of calls we’ve received because of the sketch. Probably the usual lunatics. Cheers.”

  A moment later, Bijou’s nails clicked across the floor toward Danny. The pub mascot received pats and cheerful salutations from the regulars, which she accepted with regal poise. Bijou circumnavigated the precarious tray-tables, and once she reached Danny, she flopped her backend down and pushed her head under his hand.

  “As if you don’t get enough attention,” he said.

  She knew who her human friends were, did Bijou. She nudged at his thigh. After a quick peek at Alan, Danny laid a chunk of bread on the armrest. A dainty flick of tongue and it was gone. Danny’s usefulness finished, Bijou ambled toward her pillow.

  Danny heaved himself up and approached the bar. As usual, Alan waved away Danny’s money. “My good deed for the day,” he said.

  Seamus, sitting in his usual spot with his morning Guinness tucked between his hands, snorted. “Business I give Alan, I ought to receive every tenth pint for free.” He sat between Mickey and the artist fella, Nathan Tate. They straightened, the better to eavesdrop on what Danny had to say.

  “Just came from speaking to Brendan,” Danny said to Seamus. “Asked him about the victim.”

  “Bloody shame it had to happen. And no closer to his name, are ye?”

  “No. Brendan might have overheard something, though. Did he mention anything to you?”

  Seamus’s beaky nose twitched, veins, pores, and all. “What teenager talks to his father? But he’s an honest lad, so honest I worry about his future. This world is cruel, cruel indeed to people-pleasers like him.” He gulped at his pint. “I’ll let you know if he does have something to say.”

  “Bribe him with a new smartphone,” Nathan said. “That’ll get him talking.”

  Seamus cast a half smile toward Danny. “The man speaks. You’ve met Nathan Tate, haven’t you? Moved here last month. Creates clay pots, he does. I plan to see his wares sold in Malcolm’s shop.”

  “Don’t bother,” Nathan said.

  “Malcolm can’t like your nose in his business, I’m sure,” Danny said to Seamus.

  Seamus’s bark of a laugh followed Danny out of the pub. “Too bloody bad for him.”

  FOURTEEN

  TO MERRIT’S DISMAY, SHE found herself standing in Liam’s bedroom with the McNamara siblings. With the help of Danny’s wife, they’d found the house and pulled up alongside Merrit as she stood next to her car obsessing about who detested her enough to paint slag on the door. Merrit’s attempts to shoo them away had failed, and then Liam had surprised her by waving them inside.

  And now here they stood. In Liam’s bedroom of all places. A leftover whiff of illness tickled Merrit’s nose, reminding her that although he was in remission, Liam was far from a healthy specimen. A surgeon had removed a section of his left lung. The good news was that the cancer had been localized. The bad news was that Liam was slow to recover and sometimes had trouble breathing.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering why we’re in my bedroom,” he said.

  “You could say that,” Dermot said.

  “Count yourself privileged, laddie.” Liam swung an impish smile toward Merrit. “I haven’t shown Merrit what’s inside this armoire yet.”

  While Liam used his storytelling blarney to describe the provenance of the armoire—French, Louis XV, 1860s—thereby heightening the suspense, Merrit let her mind wander. Gemma stirred her curiosity, so she took this opportunity to study the girlish woman who stood with eyebrows drawn together and chin tucked.

  Whereas Dermot looked like he was about to leak at the seams, Gemma maintained a ramrod straight posture as if girding herself against disaster. A polka-dotted scarf held her curls in check at the nape of her neck, and artfully arranged patches decorated a black skirt that brushed the tops of her coalminer’s boots. A vintage Ramones

  t-shirt layered over a black long-sleeved top completed her ensemble.

  And, Merrit told herself, don’t ignore a face that could have inspired Botticelli. The constant high color in Gemma’s cheeks must have stemmed from her anxiety issues, and the reddened lips from her habit of chewing on them. She did a good job of camouflaging her prettiness with tortured body language and black clothing.

  Gemma chose that moment to glance up at her. Her cheeks reddened yet more in response to Merrit’s smile, and her eyes darted around the room before settling on the armoire.

  “And so,” Liam was saying, “it’s fitting that I store my history as a matchmaker in this exquisite antique. Look here!” With a flourish, Liam swung open the armoire’s doors to reveal shelves stacked with paper.

  “Oh, wow,” Merrit said, catching on. “These are ledger pages?”

  “Exactly. Detailed records of all the matches I’ve made since I started in the late 1960s.” He turned to Dermot, whose expression now registered something other than annoyed forbearance. “When did I allegedly match your mother to your father—”

  “Stepfather,” Dermot said. “That bastard’s no genetic relation to us.”

  “Of course. My apologies. What did you call him—John McIlvoy?”

  “Yes. Matched in 1991.”

  Liam pointed toward the bottom
of a stack on the fourth shelf, and Merrit hurried forward to move pages to Liam’s bed. It was heavy going, and Dermot stepped up to help. Liam’s matchmaking ledger held 200 pages at a time, bound together with leather ties.

  “There,” Liam said when the dates “1990 to 1992” surfaced on a piece of cardboard, one of many that separated the sheaves from one another.

  Their solemn procession returned to the living room, where the group arrayed themselves around Liam at the end of the dining room table. As soon as Liam sat and began turning the pages, Merrit pulled a chair closer and perched with elbows on the table. Dermot did so as well while Gemma propped herself on the arm of his chair. The pages grabbed at each other with a shushing noise before they parted.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t shown me these before,” Merrit said.

  “And scare you back to the States? I thought not.”

  True. Most of the time, she felt like she still had one foot facing back toward California. This was especially true now that Liam’s health had improved, and she had time to take stock of what her life might be like in Ireland, living in the shadow of Liam’s beloved status.

  And now to see all of these records from Liam’s matchmaking career. Mind-boggling and scary at the same time. Liam had created thousands of joined lives, and thus thousands of new generations, and even if a rare couple ended badly, they all began as members of an elite club. Merrit knew this because she’d seen it in the pubs by night when Liam introduced chosen men to chosen women. She’d watched the chosen accept their destiny with the kind of faith Merrit had never known.

  In these ledger pages, decades’ worth of tradition stared her in the face. The impact hit her full force: the decades of her life stretching out in front of her. She wasn’t sure she could make that commitment. She wasn’t sure she should make that commitment. She felt inadequate to the task, plain and simple. In the end, her decision to stay in Ireland after Liam’s eventual death couldn’t just be about becoming matchmaker. She needed her own reason, apart from Liam’s plans for her.