by Lisa Alber
Mackey shoved the bag between them onto the bar top and stomped away. Seamus peeked over the rim. He fumbled out a jar of peanut butter and proceeded to twist at the lid with fingers curled like gripless anemone tentacles. For the first time, Danny noticed his inflamed knuckles. They reminded him of his rheumatoid granny.
“Got the word on Gemma,” Seamus said. “She is found, and good for Alan. The hero, though you’d never know it.” He loosened his grip, shook out his hand, and tried the lid again.
Danny said, “Let me,” and unscrewed the top. Alan plopped bread and a knife down in front of them on the bar counter.
The homey smell of peanut butter reminded Danny of his children, of Ellen slathering it on crusty brown bread along with homemade strawberry jam, back when she made jam. His stomach howled, and he took over the job of spreading the mashed peanuts on bread, first for Seamus, then for himself. Its comforting texture saddened him. He shoved himself past the feeling, thinking about how to break through Seamus’s grief long enough to get some information out of him. The direct approach seemed the best bet.
“You lied to me,” Danny said, “and I want to know why.”
“Wha—?” Seamus gagged on his wad of peanut butter and bread.
“Theresa O’Leary says your boy met Toby at her pub. Why hide a fact like that?”
“Why indeed? Except that at the time, my son, he were alive, and I knew he had nothing to do with that boy’s death. No way in hell. Call it a father’s protectiveness.” He broke into a shaky laugh that echoed around the room like an entrapped bird. “Knew you’d get serious with me sooner or later.” Seamus blinked furiously and tried to twist the lid back on the peanut butter jar.
Danny helped him and dropped it into the grocery sack. “Best mates by the end of the evening, so she said.”
“You’re slaying me with this, you surely are. Only I don’t feel like laughing.”
“He brought Toby around to meet you. Why?”
Seamus rocked himself into a standing position. He clutched the grocery bag to his chest, teetering. “Slaying me,” he repeated and shuffled out of the pub.
Wednesday
My father, now in heaven, is a keeper
of the birds. And his eye is on his sparrow.
Don Williams, Jr.
FORTY-SEVEN
MERRIT’S SWOLLEN LIP FELT like a slug hanging on her face. She tested its tenderness with a fingertip, wincing, and then forced her hand away from her face. She knocked on the door of Fox Cottage and entered when she heard the muffled sound of Dermot’s voice.
Heat almost blasted her out of her shoes as she closed the door behind her. With fireplace tongs in hand, Dermot turned a bleary and flushed face toward her. His hair clung to his head in sweaty streaks. He must have kept the peat fire burning through the night because it had infused the room with its earthy, tar-like odor. He reminded Merrit of a horror movie she’d once seen, something about cabin fever, in which the young and nubile characters went mad with stir craziness. Bulging eyes, twitchy lips, jerky movements.
“I hope you don’t mind the intrusion,” Merrit said. “You know that Liam and I live down the track, right? Liam owns this cottage.”
“Danny mentioned as much. Thanks for letting us stay here.”
Merrit waved away the gratitude. She wasn’t much of a help to anyone these days, whether out on the plaza with Liam or at Alan’s pub yesterday, but here she was anyhow, hoping to be let in. She held out a box of corn flakes and a container of milk. “Thought you might need breakfast food. I’m not sure what Danny has stocked in the kitchen.”
“Just about nothing.” Dermot squinted at her, his leg jiggling. “What happened to you?”
“I stepped in where I didn’t belong.”
Merrit edged along the back of the couch. Gemma appeared placid under a mound of blankets, the way she stared up at the crossbeams and blinked slow as an owl. Flushed as Dermot, yet she shivered in spasms that belied her calm appearance. Dermot shoveled more peat pellets into the grate.
“Is she—?”
“Catatonic. You can say it.” Dermot grabbed the cereal from her, opened it, and started eating the corn flakes dry. He spoke through hasty handfuls. “Just like after our mom died. Trauma-induced. Though, I take that back. She’s not as bad this time.” His eyelid twitched. “No need for feeding tubes, at least.”
“What happened? Last night in the forest, I mean.”
“Bloody hell if I know. Alan was looking for her, and Malcolm was helping until he ended up brawling with Nathan. All I know is that something frightened Gemma back into her shell. It could have been anything.” He stuttered to a stop, then continued as if compelled to say what he was thinking out loud. “Even something as small as the sound of flesh hitting flesh.”
Dermot hoisted Gemma into a sitting position and settled her back on a pile of pillows. He placed a corn flake on Gemma’s lower lip, murmuring for her to chew and swallow, just chew and swallow, please. Gemma continued blinking without expression. Dermot pushed the cereal flake, no longer an inconsequential one of many, but a crunchy harbinger of Gemma’s fate, so that it tipped into Gemma’s mouth. Merrit could feel Dermot’s desperation—just chew and swallow, just chew and swallow—and then his relief when her jaw moved and the muscles shifted beneath the thin skin on her neck.
Dermot breathed. “You see? No hospital needed. I can take care of her until she comes out of it, which she will. You’ll see.” He placed another flake just inside her mouth. “That’s my Gems, you’ve got it. A little nourishment, a rest, buckets of fluids, and you’ll be right as rain, won’t you?”
Gemma continued blinking, Dermot continued pleading with her, and Merrit left the room to wipe away her tears in the privacy of the kitchen.
“Can you bring out bowls and spoons?” Dermot called.
So she did, glad for the task. “Why don’t you show me how to feed Gemma so you can take a break? You look like you’re about to lose your mind.”
“You could be right. I’ll pack our stuff at Ellen’s house.” He paused. “If the guards will let me in. And run by the pub to thank Alan—I owe that man my firstborn child—and buy some adult nappies, just in case.” His grunt sounded more like a soul in despair trying to fly free of its body. “Jesus, I don’t think I can bear it. Not again.”
“Take your time,” Merrit said. “I’ll look after her until you return.”
“All you do is feed her as if she were a baby. And maybe you can walk her to the toilet now and again. Somewhere in there she knows what to do.” He kissed Gemma’s cheek. “Back straightaway, Gems.”
Dermot tapped the front door closed behind himself. He’d forgotten a jacket but Merrit supposed he wouldn’t notice the cold outside. She lifted a spoonful of cereal and milk to Gemma’s lips. She remembered her babysitting days, shifting plastic spoons in pastel colors into the tiny mouths of her charges. She’d done so with indifference to whether the infants ate or dribbled, almost with a cavalier attitude, thinking of it more as playtime than caregiving. Now, with Gemma, she focused on landing every atom of nutrition into her mouth.
Gemma didn’t dribble. At the slightest pressure of spoon on her lip, she opened her mouth. She chewed and swallowed, all the while staring into a middle distance. It was like feeding a giant doll. This opening, chewing, swallowing, and opening, chewing, swallowing was devoid of Gemma’s essence, that intensity and odd grace that characterized all her movements.
But she was eating. This had to be good.
“Ah, Gemma,” Merrit said, “if you were awake, what would I say? Something about Alan, because I’ve seen the way he looks at you. At least it’s obvious to me that you like each other. I’m supposed to be a matchmaker. Somehow I’m supposed to be charmed for it the way Liam is. Runs in the blood, so he says, over generations. Gemma?”
No response. She nudged another corn flake into Gemma’s mouth.
“I’m not sure I’m cut out for living in such a close-knit community.
I don’t know what I’m trying to achieve. Sometimes I don’t know why I’m still here.” She stared into Gemma’s fathomless eyes. “Are you less lonely in there, Gemma? Does the catatonia lessen the pain of your isolation?”
Sometimes loneliness was worse when you were surrounded by people. Maybe Gemma had learned this lesson long ago.
“Gemma, can you hear me?” The nothingness of her. “They say that coma patients register on some level and you’re more awake than that.”
Merrit pictured Ellen Ahern under a crisp sheet, laid out like an Egyptian mummy. Danny—what he must be feeling. She’d have liked to visit the hospital to show support, but that would probably just be her desperation leading the way again.
From far away a voice filtered into Gemma’s dark and safe corner where nothing affected her. Sensory inputs washed over her and away before she could make sense of them. Some things, like the cool press of metal against her lip, set off a bigger signal—food, eat—that also slid away, leaving her floating again without knowing whether her mouth had responded or not.
Memories beckoned, but had no effect. She floated, aware but not aware, preferring her imprisonment with its peace and its simplicity. In this nothing place she could relax her vigilance. Rest her weary brain, hear voices through cotton, recognize her five senses signaling from afar, trying to rouse her from her safe place.
For now, she knew without awareness of having produced the thought, that she preferred floating in her dark and safe corner.
FORTY-EIGHT
DANNY WATCHED A NURSE help settle Ellen into her private room on the women’s acute ward. Wires, tubes, and monitors still surrounded her but somehow Danny felt more breathing room outside of the ICU. The shushed atmosphere upstairs had sucked the oxygen out of the rooms. Here, nurses chatted as they passed in the corridor and laughter floated from the bedsides of recovering patients. Perhaps the noise would be good for Ellen.
“Right then. Now we wait.” The nurse held out her hand. “I’ll get an orderly to bring the flowers she’s received.”
After she left, he pulled Ellen’s lavender sheet spray out of the small suitcase he’d brought from home. His hands ached and a deep abrasion left a smear of blood on the spray bottle. He hadn’t been able to sleep last night, alone in his family home for the first time in a year and with Ellen’s blood soaked into the kitchen floor. The scenes of crime officers had released the house to him, but it had still felt like a crime scene. At 2:00 a.m. he’d heaved himself out of bed and torn out the stained linoleum until his fingertips were raw. And once started, he hadn’t stopped until his kitchen floor was laid bare, tarry linoleum glue stuck to what were once lovely pine floorboards.
He’d have those floorboards sanded and varnished like new by the time Ellen returned from the hospital. For now, he’d make do with spritzing her hospital sheets and pillows with the lavender spray. A flap of the sheets scattered the scent in the direction of her nose. Next, he shuffled through various nightgowns he’d stuffed into the suitcase and pulled out Ellen’s sterling silver hairbrush and mirror set, inherited from her very Victorian granny. Danny thought she might like to see some of her favorite belongings when she woke up. He set the antiques on the bedside table beside a handmade wooden box that contained the children’s first baby teeth, their infant bracelets, their locks of baby hair.
Next came a romance novel called Broken Promises. Feeling ridiculous, he nevertheless opened it at the bookmark and read aloud from the top of the page: “ … and Anna pressed her face against his chest, smelling his musk that aroused her yet further. She flicked her tongue in ever-tightening circles around—Jesus, Ellen, this is utter shite. I can’t read this to you. I’m sorry, but I can’t. How about I bring in one of your old favorites? I could stand reading Rebecca.”
He imagined a twitch of humor around her eyes. She’d foisted Rebecca on him years ago, insisting that he give it a try because of its literary merit. He’d tried, but given it up for her to read aloud to him. Every night for a month, he’d drifted off to sleep after half a page. Her voice had been his lullaby.
“I’ll bring it next time,” he said over a sudden clamor of voices from down the hall.
Laughter filtered into the room. Danny tensed. He stood as Malcolm’s voice grew louder. The man couldn’t help himself; he had to announce himself all over the ward.
“Of course, you must visit my shop. I’ll give you a ten percent discount on your first purchase. How’s that for incentive?”
More laughter, and then Malcolm appeared in the doorway with the nurse. They each carried several floral arrangements that friends and family had sent to Ellen.
“Such colorful bouquets,” Malcolm said, “and so many more still upstairs, aren’t there, Maggie? This one is from me. Of course, I couldn’t arrive without a token.”
He settled his dozen lilies center-most on a narrow shelf that ran the length of one wall. “I picked these out one by one, never mind the florist, I can always spot the best blooms. It comes with working with beautiful objects my whole life.”
To Danny’s disgust, the nurse looked like a woman in love. Her cheeks rosy, her smile glued in place, a finger twirling her ponytail. “I’m off on my rounds. I’ll get that orderly to bring around the rest of the flowers.”
Malcolm’s gaze followed her angular form as she left. Funny. Danny had never noticed how reptilian he looked with his eyelash-less blinks.
“Nurses are grand, aren’t they? They pride themselves on pleasing others.”
Malcolm settled a guest chair closer to the window, unbuttoned his suit jacket, and pressed his hands down the length of his body to settle the expensive cloth just so. He hadn’t looked at Ellen once.
Danny’s fingernails bit into his palms and with a force of will he said in a neutral tone, “What are you doing here?”
Malcolm patted the bandage on his head. “Came to get my head checked, just to be sure.” His teeth flashed in the hazy sunlight that managed to sneak through the cloud cover. “Thought I’d check on Ellen while I was here. I’m glad to see her so peaceful. And, has she lost weight?”
No, Malcolm didn’t just say that. He didn’t just imply his working knowledge of her body.
“Now then,” Malcolm continued, “what news have you about the graffiti on my windows?”
“We have other priorities, wouldn’t you say?”
Malcolm cocked his head, looking puzzled. “We can’t let a vandal go about terrorizing the village. For all we know, it’s that Nathan Tate. He has something against me, some notion in his head about his father’s death. And now I have a slight concussion on top of everything else.”
“You’re the victim right enough,” Danny said.
Malcolm either hadn’t heard or had chosen to ignore Danny’s snide tone. Danny thought the former, which was odd. He’d never noticed Malcolm’s social obtuseness before. Danny slid onto the mattress next to his wife. He leaned back against the headboard. Now Malcolm was forced to at least see his wife while he spoke to Danny.
“It doesn’t worry you that Nathan accuses you of killing his father on McIlvoy’s behalf?”
“Of course not. What nonsense.”
“What about the Firebird necklace and John McIlvoy’s identification found on the body? You know you’re in a world of hurt if you’re helping McIlvoy hide, him being a suspect in a murder and all.”
As I’m sure you know, he didn’t say.
“Danny, Danny, even off duty, you’re a Garda officer at heart.” He settled back in his chair, expansive, as if the two of them were sitting before a roaring hearth with Scotch in hand. “I’d consider letting go of the assault charges against Nathan if the man would leave the village. Return to wherever. I don’t mind telling you that I didn’t sleep last night, I was that distressed over the whole business.”
Danny brushed back Ellen’s hair. Malcolm reignited his smile, turning it on like a reflective coating, bouncing everything back out at the world. He still hadn’t looked
at Ellen.
“This is all a bit much. I might have to consider a vacation. Perhaps to St. Tropez, though I have to take care with my skin. Wouldn’t do to sunburn.”
“I would advise against leaving the country.”
“Now you’re just being petty.”
“Why were you in the woods last night?”
“Oh, that. Alan needed help, and I’m nothing if not civic-minded.” Malcolm stood and rebuttoned his jacket. “I must be off then. I have a dinner date in Ennis. The French restaurant? You must know it. Le Bouchon?”
Oh yes, Danny knew the restaurant, and Malcolm knew well enough that Danny couldn’t afford it on his salary.
Malcolm twitched at the lilies he’d brought, rearranging them with his back facing Danny and Ellen. “There, quite nice.” Turning, he asked, “How is the girl, Gemma, by the way? Last night she seemed quite, well, stupid, shall we say?”
Nice of him to ask about Gemma but not Ellen. Most genial of him, to be sure. Keeping his tone even, Danny said, “She’s not well. Back to a catatonic withdrawal is my best understanding, the same as before, when your dear friend, John McIlvoy, murdered her mother.”
“Oh, now you’re just trying to get a rise out of me, aren’t you? Police tactics, brilliant, but I’m too perceptive for that. I’ll be off. Cheers then,” Malcolm called with a backwards wave, only to backtrack from the hallway a second later.
“I can’t believe I forgot to warn you.” Malcolm leaned against the door frame, at ease and loving himself for it, Danny was sure. “Ellen’s doctor is meant to be on his rounds and should be arriving to talk to you sometime this morning. He has been trying to contact you—”
Danny’s heart banged against his sternum. Contact him? He hadn’t received any messages. He yanked his mobile out of his pocket—dead.
