Whispers in the Mist

by Lisa Alber

  He smoothed out the IV cord attached to Ellen’s hand, then held out the ring. “I forgot string.”

  “String? That won’t do.” Merrit flashed a small smile. “Men.”

  Her fingers traveled to the moonstone pendant dangling within the dip between her clavicles. She unclasped the chain and slipped the pendant loose. Holding it up to the light, she said, “How could he be so talented and also so—”

  “I know. It boggles the mind.”

  She held the chain out and Danny uncoiled it from her palm. His wedding band slid onto the chain and looked at home. The improvised necklace slid around Ellen’s neck and also looked at home.

  “Seamus was no match for Malcolm,” he said. “He knew Malcolm had killed Brendan. Malcolm made sure that Brendan died in Blackie’s Pasture. What better way to make his point to Seamus? Threat, revenge, and sadistic cruelty all in one go.”

  “Revenge?”

  “For interfering with Malcolm’s past. For using the past to force Brendan on him. For mucking about with the precious reputation of Firebird Designs. In the end, for threatening Malcolm’s fragile ego, risking his perfectly curated identity.”

  He thought back to Malcolm’s flat. No essence to be had there because it was nothing but set design.

  Merrit still sat in her composed manner, watching Ellen sleep. “I’m sad for Dermot and Gemma. Toby was still alive when they arrived. They were so close to finding him in time.”

  Danny stared at Merrit, absorbing what she’d just said. His fingertips tingled.

  She met his gaze. “What’s wrong?”

  He’d been a proper eejit, that’s what. Bloody Seamus and the peanut butter. Bloody Dermot and the creased wedding photo.

  Danny stood, pulled out his mobile, and was already dialing by the time he got to the door.

  “Wait, Danny,” Merrit said. “I never did tell you—”

  “I can’t now.” He placed a hand over the end of the phone. “Thank you for the chain. I’ll buy a new one and return yours soon.”

  SIXTY-TWO

  MERRIT STOOD IN THE doorway. She’d risen as soon as Danny had left the room. He waved “sorry” at a nurse and hurried down the corridor with mobile stuck to his ear. He didn’t notice how many of the nurses looked after him. What did they see? Tall, determined, strong, careworn. Perhaps. She saw a man with a cockeyed jacket collar and worn-down heels, a man who would now need to drop by Liam’s house to return her chain.

  And, a man who maybe didn’t need to know the whole story, after all.

  She returned to Ellen, this time perching beside her on the bed.

  “I tried,” she said.

  A monitor beeped; the feeding tube dripped. A small wooden crucifix hung high on the wall, unobtrusive but still there. The crucifix seemed strange to Merrit, like so much of her life in Ireland. Her relationship with Liam, her status as outsider, her doubts about her abilities to follow Liam as matchmaker, her need for community and connection.

  Which was why she’d latched on to Gemma. Maybe Gemma could become a friend if she stayed here. Maybe Merrit could foster a private matchmaking session between Alan and Gemma.

  She smiled. Silly. Gemma already knew what was what. So did Alan, for that matter.

  She picked up a silver brush from the side table and ran her fingers over the soft bristles. People were mysterious, yet they gave themselves away if you knew how to look. Danny, for example, the way he’d talked to Ellen while Merrit had observed from the doorway. His near constant contact with her body while he talked. This hairbrush for a woman with a shaved head beneath her bandages. He was in the process of realizing that he still loved her.

  “Danny holds on to his feelings, doesn’t he? Even if he thinks he’s let go.” The brush was lovely, a heavy silver antique that felt good in her hand. “I wish I’d gotten up the nerve to tell you that I hoped that Danny would become a friend, that’s all. There was nothing else. If you were awake, you’d be happy to know that he tolerates me at best. I’m not a slag.”

  She set aside the brush. “The thing of it is that I want to bring him back into the fold. For Liam’s sake. Danny hasn’t let go of his feelings for Liam either. You and I both know Liam was, still is, like a father to Danny. So I need to continue working on that. And village gossip be damned.”

  Merrit rooted through the giant purse she always carried around with her. Below a half-completed scarf, yarn, knitting needles, a water bottle, and her camera, she found it—the Ahern family picture from Fox Cottage. An exuberant Ellen waved a paintbrush toward the camera with little Mandy and Petey hugging her legs. Her giant belly pushed out a smock so that it was almost a tent over the children.

  “You were lucky that Malcolm didn’t see you that night.” Merrit shivered. “You probably just missed him in the pasture with poor Brendan.”

  Come home, Ellen had painted on the silage bundle. A message meant for Danny that anyone crossing the pasture would have seen. Danny would have learned about it soon enough even without Brendan’s death.

  Merrit set the photograph in its cheap plastic frame next to the antique brush, right where Danny would see it. When his head cleared, maybe he’d notice what Merrit had seen right away. Granted, Merrit made the connection because she’d talked to the color consultant at the paint shop. But still. You couldn’t miss the splash of color across the front of Ellen’s smock and the painted wall trim in background.

  It must be a sweet baby’s room with its magenta trim.

  “Maybe you’ll remain the final mystery.” She smiled. “Men. They’re obtuse sometimes, aren’t they?”

  She continued looking at the photo for a while. Home. Merrit had a chance to make a home for herself in Ireland. In fact, Ireland itself was home even if navigating local life felt like rough seas. The pull of the land grounded her, filled her up. She’d been home all these months and hadn’t realized it.

  SIXTY-THREE

  ALAN GATHERED UP HIS jacket and called Bijou. The dog jumped off the couch. Gemma shifted under her mound of blankets. She hadn’t moved from the couch except to go to the loo since she’d returned from the station after attacking Malcolm. They should have been celebrating now that she’d vanquished the John McIlvoy spectre from her past and now that Dermot had returned with Aunt Tara.

  Gemma’s listlessness worried Alan, but he couldn’t do anything about it for the moment. He didn’t need to be here, anyhow. Aunt Tara would return from her walk to continue her desperate hustling and bustling, cooking food no one ate, making endless calls about funerals and body transport, making something she called a “mourning pouch” in memory of Toby. She would take care of Gemma.

  “I need to get back to the pub,” he said.

  He kept his voice down because Dermot was sleeping in the next room. He’d been subdued also. Malcolm’s arrest hadn’t seemed to mean anything to Gemma and Dermot in the end. Maybe they didn’t trust their good fortune yet.

  Gemma pulled the covers down. Those brown, fathomless eyes of hers gazed beyond him. She pointed to the front door and yanked the blankets back over her head.

  Alan checked the window. Several Garda vehicles approached. He could hardly miss them with their neon yellow stripes and GARDA emblazoned in all capital letters. Danny and O’Neil approached and knocked on the door. The rest of the guards stood back but on alert. They’d pretty much surrounded the house.

  “You’ll need to stay out of our way,” Danny said. “We’re coming in now.”

  The door wasn’t locked and in they came. “Where’s Dermot?”

  The bedroom door opened. Dermot squinted against the light. A lifetime’s worth of grief coated him in a second skin.

  O’Neil stepped forward with handcuffs. “Dermot McNamara, you’re not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything that you do say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.”

  Dermot bowed his head, tears streaming down his face.

  “Explain,” Alan said.

&n
bsp; “I remembered that Seamus can’t open a bloody jar of peanut butter. No hand strength,” Danny said.

  “What?”

  “Malcolm has an alibi for Toby’s death, yet there was no way Seamus with this arthritic grip could have wielded the marble cross. You have to be strong to pick it up, much less wield it as a weapon.”

  “No,” Dermot said with clogged voice. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “You should keep quiet,” O’Neil said.

  “No!” Dermot struggled forward with O’Neil maintaining his grip on his arms. He dropped to his knees beside the bundle of blankets on the couch. “Gemma, please, listen.”

  The blankets shifted. Gemma peered at her brother.

  “I didn’t swing the cross like a weapon. I’d never do that. Do you believe me?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You have to believe me. We fought, yes, because I wanted to bring him back to Dublin and talk about what to do next. Talk about your welfare most of all. Him larking off like that. It wasn’t the way to do it. We had to think of you. We couldn’t spring it all on you like that.”

  She sat up. “You have to stop with that.”

  Dermot placed his head on Gemma’s lap, and she ran her fingers through his hair. Her look of despair just about shattered Alan’s heart. He stood there, stymied beyond the help of insightful chalkboard quotes.

  “Toby finally called me back,” Dermot said. “There must have been a hundred messages on his mobile by then, between Aunt Tara and me. So I met him in the pasture. His life had been a lie and he meant to bring it out in the open. He was hurt, angry—betrayed. He thought he’d be the family savior all on his own. I couldn’t get him to talk to me or to listen to me, so I ordered him to help me carry his things to my car. We were leaving. I picked up the cross. He tried to yank it away from me, so I raised it above my head, backing away, ordering him to grab his backpack.”

  Dermot shifted and looked up at Danny. “Toby yanked on my arms one too many times and the cross, it came down like a tree, cracked into his head. But I swear he was back up again straightaway, insisting he was fine. I don’t understand it. How could he have died?”

  “You left him there,” Gemma said.

  Dermot bowed his head. “That was my fault, leaving him. I should have known better. I said, ‘Fine, you stay here, break Aunt Tara’s heart.’ Something petty, in any case.”

  “You took the wedding photo with your mother and McIlvoy in it away with you, though,” Danny said. “That makes it seem not quite as accidental as you describe.”

  “It had fallen out of his pocket, that’s all. I grabbed it up as I was leaving. I told him I was going to burn it once and for all.”

  “We’d better go,” Danny said.

  “You’ll be fine now?” Dermot’s tone beseeched Gemma. “Please say yes.”

  “Yes.”

  In less than ten minutes they’d come and gone, and now all Alan could hear were Bijou’s pants. Without finesse, he whipped the blankets off Gemma. She said she was not so fragile, so let her be not so fragile.

  “Talk,” he said. “Did you know?”

  Gemma pushed curls out of her face. Alan relented as soon as she started shivering. He sat down next to her and wrapped the blankets around them both.

  “Did you know?”

  “I suspected,” she whispered, flinching as she spoke. She’d told him she detested the sound of her voice. “The picture we found in Dermot’s knapsack. Aunt Tara would recognize it. Toby took it from my mom’s mourning pouch when he took the earrings.”

  And so what?

  Alan caught on a second later. Dermot could only have retrieved the photo from Blackie’s Pasture.

  “It still doesn’t make sense,” he said.

  Gemma’s determined expression wilted. “It does make sense. Toby died because of me.” She clutched the covers and jerked them over herself. “Please leave me alone now.”

  Alan hesitated. She was fragile, but not that fragile. Most of all, she was her own person, who knew her own mind. “I’ll be at the pub if you need me.”

  “No, stay. Leave me alone and stay at the same time.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  GEMMA’S MEMORIES WERE ON overdrive now. She recalled too well the night her mom died. McIlvoy had lost his mind when her mom told him that she’d never said she’d share ownership of the family gift shop with him, she was sorry if he’d misunderstood but the business was held in trust for the children, there was no use talking about it, and why did it matter anyhow because her income was his, and his jewelry was selling well, and—that’s where McIlvoy had silenced her words.

  She wasn’t sure how much time had passed since Dermot’s arrest, but enough that Aunt Tara had returned from her walk, gone into hysterics, and called a taxi to drive her to the station. Gemma heard it all from the safety of her woolen cave. Her need to retreat was almost a physical pain, like she had an addiction.

  Perhaps she did. To silence and darkness and quietude away from reality.

  But now she had to face that reality. Ultimately, she was to blame for what happened to Toby. Dermot had spent years watching out for Gemma. He longed for a family of his own. He longed for her to get better. He feared that with any sudden shock she’d relapse into catatonia and he’d be back to the beginning. He feared what Toby’s revelations might do to her.

  His fear had caused him to confront Toby, to bully him.

  Gemma pressed fingertips against her eyes to keep from crying. But she could have handled the truth. She was handling it. Right now. She was.

  “Gemma?”

  She unwrapped the blankets from around her head. Alan’s face loomed, green eyes and a scar on his cheekbone and the barest dimple on his chin. Alan.

  Concern crinkled up his face. “What’s the matter?”

  She shook her head. She needed to be strong for Dermot now, the way he’d always been strong for her. Hopefully, Alan would understand.

  Gemma swallowed and ground out between rusty vocal cords, “Can I not talk for now?”

  In response, with halting precision, he signed the letters G, E, M, M, A, and retreated fast. Heart fluttering, Gemma scrambled off the sofa to follow him.

  He spoke as he headed toward the kitchen. “There’s no denying it’s twisted the way the fates played Malcolm’s hand back at him. The way he tried to get at your mom’s shop, and then later Seamus tried to get at his. And all because of his grand plans to take over the world of jewelry with Firebird Designs. It’s beyond comprehension. A special brand of lunacy.”

  Gemma pointed to Alan’s arm tattoo with its swirling temptations that could ruin a man.

  “And I have my own brand of lunacy too. As do you, I might add.” He got industrious with sponge and a dirty glass. “Nothing we can’t work out.”

  Gemma’s skin grew hot as she tried to process his words.

  Alan finished washing the glass and pulled something out of his back pocket. A sheet of paper. “Merrit found this when she fetched your mom’s earrings out of your jacket. She didn’t mean to pry.” He held out the sheet. “Here.”

  She’d forgotten. The flyer she’d pulled off the cork board at the fancy vet clinic. A local animal aid organization sought volunteers.

  “Bijou’s local vet could use an assistant,” Alan said. “Could be a thought.”

  Gemma pulled back the kitchen curtain to reveal crimson and orange light spreading the day’s last soft shadows across the pastures. Alan closed in behind her, but without touching her.

  “Are you ready?” Alan said.

  She nodded.

  “For anything?

  She nodded.

  “For everything?”

  She nodded. But, she told herself, she’d use her voice on her own terms.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  ONCE AGAIN, DANNY PAUSED at the threshold of his home. After a year in Fox Cottage, he was back to stay along with the children. It was a bittersweet pull, this moment. Even when he wasn’t living ins
ide this house, Ellen’s presence had made it home.

  But he had the children with him again, and he would hope for Ellen’s return.

  “Pappy, open the door,” Petey said.

  Instead, he turned around and sat them down on the stoop. They burrowed into his sides when he wrapped his arms around them. He’d missed them, holy hell, had he missed them.

  Around them, a low twilit sun caught at shadows and lost the fight with darkness. An orange glow settled over the countryside, deepening to red and purple and welcome night and welcome bedtime for all three of them. The fog had finally lifted.

  “Kidlings.” He cleared his throat. “You remember what we talked about—about Mam?”

  “It will be okay, Da,” Mandy said. “I know it will. You’ll see.”

  He squeezed her, wishing with every particle of his being that she hadn’t turned into a caretaker of adults.

  Petey’s voice was muffled against Danny’s side. “Grey Man almost got her, didn’t he?” He sniffled. “I’m scared he’ll come back.”

  He was so close to the truth of it that Danny had to force himself to keep his arm and hand loose around his boy. Malcolm would never be seeing Lisfenora again and thank the gods of old for that.

  “He won’t be back. That I can promise. He’s gone even though you’ll always hear stories about him, like faerie tales, nothing more.”

  “You got him, didn’t you?” Petey snaked his little arms around Danny’s torso. “I knew you would.”

  Oh hell, this was beyond Danny, this impending sense of doom that he would both love too much like Seamus and love too little like Malcolm. He didn’t know what the boundaries of fatherhood should be. He’d been a dad for nine years now and was just beginning to understand its ramifications.

  “When are Gemma and Dermot coming back?” Mandy said.

  “I’m afraid—” He stopped. He hadn’t thought about Gemma now that Dermot was in for a legal roller-coaster ride. There was still more to investigate about his claim that he’d struggled with Toby, not hit him with intent. Benjy would have to review the case all over again. Seamus had corroborated that Toby had admired the cross, so he’d given it to him. So simple. A boy who longed to be the family savior.