“Because he was yer father, an’ there’s never anything simple about blood.”
A fleeting smile touched Robin’s lips and then was gone. “How is it ye can take a few words an’ make clear what’s so tangled up in my mind?”
Casey shrugged. “Maybe it’s only that I’m standin’ on the outside an’ can see more clearly. It didn’t seem anywhere near so simple when my own father died.”
“I was sorry to hear of it. I couldn’t believe it when I did hear,” Robin met Casey’s eyes clearly, “didn’t seem possible that a man with that much life force an’ compassion could be gone. He was good to me, ye know, when no one else could find the patience nor the want, he did.”
Casey merely nodded, feeling an uncomfortable tightness in his throat. He leaned forward to stub his cigarette out in a small tin can he kept handy for the purpose.
“Casey, I came here tonight because I wanted to say that I’m sorry for all those years ago.”
“I’ve told ye it’s of no matter,” Casey said gruffly, busying himself with gathering his tools.
“Is that why ye won’t look me in the face when I speak of it?” Robin asked, a sharp edge of desperation in his voice.
Casey dropped the electrical cord he’d been wrapping around his hand, standing abruptly. “Why the hell do ye want to dredge this up, Robin? I said it’s the past, now can we just let it lie there?”
“No, because I need ye to forgive me,” Robin said, fine lines of tension spreading out from his mouth.
“Alright I forgive ye, now can we stop talkin’ about this?” Casey said impatiently, drawing up to his full height instinctively.
“I need ye to mean it.” Robin too had squared his shoulders. Once as teenagers they’d gone toe –to-toe over a minor quarrel, both too stubborn to admit they were wrong. Neither had come out of the resulting scuffle looking pretty.
Casey sighed, wishing he could absolve the man’s guilt with a healthy swipe to his jaw, but knew things were not so simple between the two of them anymore.
“Why the hell is this so important to ye?”
“Because ye were the only person other than Jo who ever really mattered in my life.” Robin replied, “Didn’t know that did ye? My parents were both drunks an’ didn’t care for me. My father was handy with his belt an’ his fists an’ little else. Ye knew what my life at home was like better than anyone, but I was too humiliated to tell even you the full truth. Do ye remember how we met?”
Casey snorted. “Not likely to forget, am I? Went home with a loose tooth an’ two black eyes an’ then Da’ let me have it for brawlin’ in the streets.”
“Aye well, I had the eyes to match, a nose that bled on an’ off for a week, an’ a rib that’s bent to this day. What I’m referrin’ to is the end of the fight, though, ye’d have won fair an’ square but ye helped me up off the ground instead an’ shook my hand. No one had ever dealt fairly with me before, not teachers—Christ I’d already been given up at school for a lost cause—not the neighbors who always gave me the eye an’ called me that little no-good Temple boy from the house on the corner. Then ye asked me to come an’ play rugby with ye the next afternoon, said ye could use someone with a head as thick as mine appeared to be.”
Casey smiled ruefully. “Sounds like somethin’ my daddy would have said.”
“Yer a great deal like him, ye likely don’t see it, but I remember him clear, an’ I see it.”
“Thanks,” Casey said gruffly, feeling a flush of pleasure come over him.
“Aye well,” Robin grinned suddenly, “yer still an ugly bastard an’ make no mistake of it.”
“Ah well, not all of us can be pretty as the north end of a south-runnin’ mule.”
“’Tis true,” Robin said pinching out the remains of his cigarette between thumb and forefinger, “but it’d hardly be fair to the lassies otherwise.”
“So many women,” Casey began—
“An’ so little time,” Robin finished. “Though some of us get less time than others.” In a twinkling he’d gone from joking to somber. His moods had always been that way, changing on a dime, laughing one minute and dark as the devil the next. “Does it seem like that to ye man, as if time just runs like sand through yer fingers an’ ye can’t account for the years?”
“Aye it does.”
“How can it be that she’s eleven years gone, when I can still see her face as though it were yesterday?” His voice cracked and Casey stepped closer, not needing to be told who Robin was speaking of, what ghost lingered more closely than any other. He knew, old friends always did.
“Bobbie,” he said softly, wrapping his arms around the other man, feeling as though he were taking a broken-winged bird into the shelter of his embrace. Robin was a big man, but Casey stood taller by a good two inches and was slightly broader of shoulder. “It’ll be alright boyo, ye’ll see.”
And knew even as he said it that neither he nor Robin believed a word of it.
“EVERYTHING ALRIGHT?” Pamela muttered sleepily, one eye half open, as Casey sat on the edge of the bed.
“Aye, all’s fine Jewel, go back to sleep.”
She yawned and half turned, brushing sleep-tangled hair out of her eyes. “I tried to wait up but it got so late and I couldn’t,” she yawned again, stretching toward him in welcome, “keep my eyes open.”
“I’m sorry,” he bent down and kissed her, “I’d no intention of bein’ so late. Robin showed up at the house, though, an’ wanted to talk. I’d no notion of how much time had passed.”
“Robin?” she said, the question clear in the two syllables.
He nodded. “Aye. He was feelin’ a bit blue an’ needed to talk to someone who knew him from the old days.”
“You mean,” she said, sitting up, “he needed to talk to you.”
“Well I suppose. There’ll be things that I understand without it bein’ necessary for him to spell it out, an’ that makes it simpler for him. Not havin’ to put it all into words.” He bent forward to take off his socks, depositing them neatly by the bed as he did each night.
“You’re a good listener. Not so many people are, you know.”
“Hmmph,” he grunted as he did when pleased by something, “when a person speaks, ye listen, I don’t think it’s a matter of bein’ good at it or not. I see little choice in the matter unless a man is deaf. Ye’ve ears—ye hear.”
“But you hear all the things a person is trying to say under the actual words, most people don’t. You also make a person feel as if you can take any burden they’ve a need to rest from.”
“There are some burdens,” he said, swinging his legs under the quilts, instinctively seeking her warmth, “a man cannot carry for another, though, no matter how much he might like to.”
“Eeeagh,” she squeaked, trying to scuttle away from him, “you’re half frozen.”
“Aye, an’ it’s yer duty as my wife to warm me up,” he replied, wrapping one arm around her and pulling her tight to him, relishing the sleepy heat of her.
“I do not remember anything of that nature being in our vows,” she said, giving up her struggle, half-hearted as it had been, and snuggling tightly along his length.
“Don’t ye? ‘Twas right after the bit about keepin’ me happy in bed an’ always havin’ a hot meal on the table—ow!” He tightened his grip in response to the sharp pinch he’d received on his thigh.
She nestled back into her pillows, with every intention of going straight back to sleep. Casey was fidgeting, though, and his restlessness communicated itself directly to her. She sighed, knowing she’d not sleep until he was easy in both mind and body.
“What’s wrong?” She propped herself up on one elbow and peered down at him in the dim light.
“Nothin’,” he said, trying to inflect a sleepy tone into his voice.
“Do you have a bridge to sell me as well?” Her voice was crisply sarcastic.
“Taken up mind readin’ have ye?” It perturbed him that the woman always kn
ew when something was niggling at him.
“Casey Riordan, I’d be a sad excuse of a wife if I didn’t know you well enough to see when something is clearly bothering you. Now tell me what’s wrong.”
He turned over on his back, eyeing the ceiling with a contemplative frown. “Ye know how there are things that ye just know, but ye don’t speak of them, because it would be wrong to put words to certain things. Like it would trivialize them somehow?”
“Yes,” she replied, and he knew it wasn’t just a word but that she really did understand. It was one of the first things he’d loved about her, that she didn’t expect everything to be said, she knew that sometimes a silent understanding was enough.
“I suppose that’s how Robin an’ I were about his da’, I knew an’ he sure as hell knew, but we rarely spoke of it. I think he was humiliated that the man was his da’ to begin with.”
“Why?”
“Well in the first place ‘twas said rather freely about the neighborhood that Manny Temple’d not drawn a sober breath in twenty years. He’d go on binges for days at a stretch, an’ Robin’s mam would have no idea where he’d gone nor when he might come back. He’d leave them without a scrap in the cupboard to eat, an’ drink up the few wages he managed to earn. The neighbors had little enough themselves but they took turns providin’ for Ginny Temple an’ her kids, though some of the women considered her nothin’ but a charity case an’ made sure she felt the shame of it. She’d refuse food for herself, but she’d not allow the kids to starve.”
“Robin has siblings?”
“Had,” Casey corrected, “Bobbie was the oldest, an’ then there was wee Jo, his sister. She was three years younger, no more than a scrap of bones an’ skin, with a mop of hair like her brother an’ a pinched little face that had never known much more than unremittin’ misery. Bobbie adored her, tried his damnedest to protect her, but for all she’d been beaten down by the conditions of her life she’d still a spark in her, an’ it got her into trouble with her da’ a great deal. Bobbie would take her punishment for her when he could, but his da’ cottoned on to this an’ realized ‘twas harder on Robin to see the skin peeled off his sister’s back than have it taken off his own.”
“What happened to her?”
“Disappeared when she was twelve, no one knew it for a bit though. Ginny told people she’d gone to stay with relatives in the South.”
“But she hadn’t?”
“No, but at first there was no way of knowin’ any different. Robin an’ I were away playin’ rugby down in Wicklow at the time an’ when he came home his mam told him Jo’d been sent to stay with his Aunt Rita in Dublin for a bit. He was relieved, thought it’d be the savin’ of her. He even talked about sendin’ money for her keep so as his Aunt would let her stay with her an’ not send her back to that house. A month goes by though an’ there’s no word from Dublin, the aunt’s got no phone an’ he’s gettin’ a little worried. Then one day all the letters that he’s written his sister come back in an envelope an’ he knows somethin’ is very wrong. So he an’ I hitchhike down to Dublin an’ pay a visit to his aunt. She’s shocked by our turnin’ up on her doorstep, an’ says Jo’s not there an’ never was. Robin’s goin’ clean out of his mind by then. He knew somethin’ very bad had happened, but he wasn’t ready to admit it. I think his body knew though, he got dreadful sick right off, throwin’ up an’ runnin’ a fever. We found a ride out of the city, headin’ north in the back of a truck. He was next to unconscious at that point an’ I started to get real scared, wonderin’ if he was goin’ to die on me. I didn’t understand ‘twas the shock, his mind couldn’t handle what it knew, so his body took the force of it. Poor bugger, there was nothin’ he could do, but of course he had to try.”
“What happened?” Pamela asked, feeling slightly sick at the mere idea of such an enormous betrayal.
“I don’t know. Even Robin never knew the entire truth of it. All he knew was that his sister was gone, an’ his parents didn’t seem to care where or why. Rumors started to float round, as such things will, that Manny’d finally beaten the life right out of her. Robin went mad, goin’ from house to house, poundin’ on doors askin’ if anyone had seen her or might have any notion of where she’d gone, but of course no one did. The police, to give them due credit, tried to help him out, but there was no sign of her an’ nothin’ to lead to her whereabouts, dead or alive. Of course they had their suspicions, but they could no more prove them than Robin could. His mam said she’d put Jo on a bus for Dublin an’ had presumed she’d made it to her aunt’s safe an’ sound. Bobbie was only fourteen years old an’ it wasn’t long after that that his father disappeared as well.”
“Didn’t their mother care?”
“She was a timid thing, Ginny was, didn’t hang onto the backbone God gave her more'n a minute, an’ she drank like a fish. She was one of those women who are just victims from the minute they’re born, and men like Manny Temple can smell that sort of thing a mile off. If Jo’s da’ had killed her, Ginny’d likely stood by an’ allowed it to happen, maybe not realizin’ until it was too late but still not stoppin’ it. Have ye ever seen a rabbit, Jewel, that’s about to be killed?”
“No, I can’t say I have.”
“Well they get all glassy-eyed an’ paralyzed, as though they’ll just lay down an’ give their throat over to the knife. That’s what Ginny Temple looked like, as if she’d always felt the shadow of that knife an’ saw no way to avoid it. She just let things happen to her, if ye know what I mean, an’ I guess she let the knife fall on her daughter in the end.”
“So even now he doesn’t know what happened to his sister?”
“No, he doesn’t. ‘Twas a horrible time, seemed as if the whole neighborhood had a black cloud hangin’ over it, people talked less an’ hurried past one another in the streets. There was a sinister feel even to the air, an’ I think people were ashamed that they’d not paid more attention to wee Jo Temple.
“Truth be told I felt wretched myself. She’d just been Bobbie’s kid sister to me, an’ I’d not paid her much mind beyond rufflin’ her hair or givin’ her candy.”
“You were just a child yourself,” she said soothingly, feeling the strung tension that ran through his muscles as he spoke of Robin’s doomed sister.
“That doesn’t excuse me from doin’ something about it though.”
“And what exactly could you have done? Confronted his father and gotten yourself hurt in the process? You were a boy, Casey; don’t try to put the burden of a man on the shoulders of a child. It was up to the adults in the neighborhood and you know as well as I do that many people think other’s children are none of their concern. Surely people knew.”
“Well I knew, an’ I suppose most in the neighborhood had some notion of it, but ‘twasn’t unusual for any parent to raise a hand to their child, an’ maybe some thought ‘twas only a matter of degree. I didn’t really know the extent of it, I didn’t bring it up with Bobbie. I figured if he wanted to tell me he would, an’ if he didn’t it was hardly my place to mention it. Things like that have a way of puttin’ up walls between friends. Some secrets are better kept, aye?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, “wouldn’t it have been better if he’d told someone?”
“He was too humiliated. Bein’ male has its drawbacks ye know, pride bein’ one of the biggest stumblin’ blocks. Even though he was a wee boy he still thought he ought to have been able to stop his da’, or to take the beatins’ without fear. I know it makes little sense to ye Jewel, but it’s how a boy will feel, particularly if he’s made to be the man of the house in every other respect.”
“Obviously it came out at some point between the two of you.”
“Was durin’ one of them fights we’d provoked, lookin’ for feminine sympathy an’ such. He’d got the shirt ripped off his back, right down the middle in two pieces. Afterwards he was real stiff, goin’ to great pains to keep his front towards me as if there was somethin’ he didn’t
want me to see. So I asked him if he was hurt, an’ he said no, just a wee bit bruised in the ribs. I nipped round him when he wasn’t lookin’ an’ then I saw it. It was a triangle, with its edges curved out, wide as the palm of my hand across an’ puckered on the edges. Inside of it the skin was real shiny an’ not the right color. Well I guess I must have gasped or somethin’ because he whirled round an’ I could tell right off he was mad, his eyes were like a gas flame, fairly blazin’ out of his head an’ he asked me what the hell I thought I was doin’.’
“There seemed little point in denyin’ what I’d seen, so I just asked him what had happened to his back. He was real quiet for a minute an’ I could see he was thinkin’ of maybe lyin’ about it but then he said ‘my da’ took an iron to my back.’”
“Dear God,” she whispered in horror.
“Aye,” Casey agreed, “an’ that wasn’t the worst of it. The man was a bloody sadist. He’d tortured the kids for years, an’ Ginny as well when the mood struck him. My da’ said such men were in the business of breakin’ those closest to them an’ there was little to be done about it short of killin’ them.”
Pamela, thinking of the Temple children and all they’d endured at the hands of the one who was supposed to protect them from the harsh realities of the world, was inclined to agree with Casey’s father.
“Was he angry that you made him tell you?”
“No, once Bobbie’d made up his mind to a thing he didn’t go back on it, an’ he’d not use the fact that he’d shared it against ye. In that way he was honest in his dealins’.”
“What on earth did you say when he told you?”
“I said I was sorry to hear it an’ handed him his shirt.”
“That’s it?” she said disbelievingly, aware—for not the first time in her life—that the ways of men were mysterious. Casey squeezed her hand.
“We were boys, Jewel, an’ so we dealt with it in a boy’s manner, went straight to the nearest pub an’ got completely legless. Mind ye, Bobbie had some odd behavior that reminded me now an’ again of what he’d told me that night.”
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2) Page 34
