by Erin Hart
She recalled the first time she’d spoken it aloud, in the conservation lab at Collins Barracks in Dublin. They were standing over an exam table, discussing the fate of the red-haired girl from the bog, and in her agitation she had touched his hand, addressed him by name for the very first time. “Cormac,” she said aloud into the darkness.
They were both treading across no-man’s-land, unsure where to put a foot down. She reached into her pocket for the hazel knot, studying the faint wrinkles in the greenish bark, the dark brown marrow of its angled ends. A charm against mischief, he had said. A protection. She couldn’t tell him how it had rescued her from danger this very night. Nor could she ask the host of questions that tumbled around inside her brain—how long did the charm’s peculiar powers last, and just how far did they extend? What if she wasn’t the one who needed protecting?
9
Cormac leaned forward, pulling hard on the oars, pushing against the aft seat with his legs. Another twenty minutes and he’d be completely spent. It was just after seven o’clock, but the sun had been up for nearly three hours, and glorious light fell against the wall of black clouds that obscured the western horizon.
The conversation with Nora had unsettled him, but at least she seemed pleased with the tune. He should have told her the name—what had stopped him? He poured his frustration into the rowing, pushing himself against the limits of his own strength, feeling the strain in his shoulders and thighs. The distance between him and Nora seemed to grow in that brief conversation, and for the first time he understood that it might be a span he couldn’t leap. But he’d made the decision, booked the ticket. It was too late now to turn back. With each oar stroke, he tried to wipe away his fears of the future, to concentrate on the task at hand.
The water was relatively calm today. Of course this wasn’t the smooth river sculling he had grown accustomed to in Dublin, more like the rough seas he’d plowed back home in Clare. But the motion was the same, tucking one oar handle under the other in a thoughtless, rhythmic repetition he found calming. It cleared his mind, helped him to see things outside the clutter and noise of everyday life. The first morning up here, he’d inquired at the local post office at Glencolumbkille, asking if there was a local rowing club, or anyone who might let him take a skiff out for an hour or so. He’d headed off to Teelin harbor this morning before anyone at the house was up, hoping to get in a good workout before going back to tell his father that he was leaving, booked on a plane that took off from Shannon tomorrow morning.
As he rowed below Sail Rock, a group of seals pushed up alongside him, heads poking out of the water. The frank curiosity in the dark, liquid eyes made it easy to see the connection people felt with them. There was something almost human in their aspect. What else could have fueled the long-held suspicions that they could slip from their skins and walk about on land, even bear human children? How amazing it must have been to live in an age where gods and men, animals and spirits mixed together freely, where shape-shifters and hybrid creatures were taken for granted. Or perhaps the old beliefs masked a darker reality. If what Roz was discovering was true, the story of Mary Heaney’s disappearance might implicate a whole community in her violent death. How much better if the villagers of Port na Rón could somehow convince themselves that she was a mysterious changeling who had simply returned to the sea?
Cormac looked into a pair of heavy-lashed, dark eyes that followed him silently from the water’s surface. People said seals were fond of music, that you could call them just by singing or playing an instrument. He watched the animal’s nostrils flare, trying to catch the scent of food, its flipper raised in unmistakable salutation. For one moment, it seemed possible that these creatures might carry knowledge of a young woman’s strange disappearance. The seal beside him opened its mouth to sing in a strange, vowelish language, and others in the group responded. At last the whole pod, evidently concluding that he had nothing to offer, dived deep and abandoned him. If they did know anything about Mary Heaney, they weren’t telling.
He’d almost completed his circuit out from Teelin, and now started to row back to the harbor. He stayed as far as possible from the base of the sheer drop, where, no matter what the weather, the sea boiled and churned around the rocks below. The Devil’s Chair was barely visible here at sea level, proving once again that point of view was all. In only a few days, he had developed a fierce attachment to this stretch of rough coastline, to its seals and seabirds, the beaches and tiny harbors tucked up beneath the soaring cliffs. And yet he felt himself already halfway across the ocean, already parted from this place before he had even left.
Despite the relative calm, the western wind off the Atlantic was never indifferent, and it took all his strength to keep from drifting too close to the rocks at the cliff base. Although it was July, and he was rowing flat out, the chill would have cut through him entirely if he hadn’t thrown on a windcheater over his fleece. He turned his rowboat toward the harbor and was tying it to a ring on the concrete jetty just as the dark clouds now settled overhead let loose their first few drops of rain. Time to head back and face the old man.
The house was dark when he arrived. He tried the switch inside the front door, but the wind had evidently knocked out the power—the second time in as many days. As he made his way through the darkened sitting room, he heard a slow creak from the back of the house. Someone else was up early. His father had been sleeping until at least half-nine every morning—following his doctors’ advice. The same creaking sounded again, followed by a sudden crash.
Cormac followed the noises to his father’s bedroom at the back corner of the house. The door was ajar, and in the half light, he could see Roz kneeling on the floor next to the old man, holding his hand, calling his name. He pushed the door open.
“Roz, what’s happened?”
“I don’t know—he just collapsed. We’ve got to call for an ambulance—quickly.”
Cormac felt himself moving automatically, fishing the phone from his pocket, pressing in the number for emergency services, and holding the phone fast to his ear, hoping to God that his father wasn’t going to die right here, right now. If Roz hadn’t been in the house, if he’d gone rowing just a few minutes later or hadn’t turned around exactly when he did—
“Yes, we need an ambulance—” He heard his own voice, calmly answering the operator’s questions, while his eyes got used to the half darkness. On the floor before him lay his father, naked but for a flannel dressing gown open to the waist. Joseph Maguire’s eyes were open but unblinking. That this could be the same man who had spoken so blithely about his “spell” the other night was inconceivable.
“They’re on their way,” he said to Roz. “They said to keep him warm.”
As his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness in the room, he suddenly realized that the duvet from the bed was wrapped around Roz. Her shoulders were bare, her loose hair in disarray. Conscious of his gaze, she reached for a bathrobe that lay on the floor and pulled it about her.
“Cormac, I know how this must look—we’ll have to talk about it later. Help me.” She took the duvet and began tucking it around his father, speaking in a low voice: “Everything’s going to be all right, Joe—an ambulance is on the way. Can you hear me? Please don’t leave us.”
At the hospital, Roz sat beside Cormac in the waiting area at Casualty and handed him a plastic cup of weak tea, purchased from a woman pushing a food trolley through the wards. She took a deep breath. “Cormac, I know how things looked this morning, but it’s not what you might think—”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Roz—”
“No, I do. He’s your father—”
“The man walked out when I was a child, Roz. I didn’t see him again for ten years. We’re barely acquainted, if you want to know the truth.”
“I know. He told me everything. About leaving Ireland, about his work in South America, all the people he knew who just disappeared. He told me about your mother—and you.
”
“Me? He doesn’t know the first thing about me.”
“He does. And he cares about you, Cormac, more than you know.”
“He’s certainly had a very odd way of showing it.”
“You say he doesn’t know you, but what do you know about him? He’s such a remarkable man, Cormac. Do you know anything about his work in Chile all those years, the thousands of people he treated with no concern for his own safety—all the lives he saved? Did you know how many times he was arrested and tortured? And in spite of all that, I’ve never met anyone so…” She searched for the words. “I don’t know—so completely engaged with the world, so alive.”
“Why is it every person who tries to convince me what a great humanitarian my father is, just happens to be someone he’s shagging?”
Roz looked as though she’d been slapped.
“Please forgive me, Roz. That was a rotten thing to say. I’m so sorry.”
She was quiet for a moment. “We’re both upset.” A tear escaped and trickled down her face. She brushed it away, and then smiled. “Do you know what’s funny? We haven’t actually—I’d only moved my things down to his room on that day you arrived. He wanted to send me packing back upstairs, but I told him he was being ridiculous. For God’s sake, I said, we’re all adults. He kept insisting that he didn’t want to be unfair to me. Almost as if he knew—” She buried her face in her hands. Cormac moved closer and put his arm around her.
“As long as we’re offering true confessions,” he said, “I’m booked on a flight to America first thing tomorrow morning. “
Roz looked up at him. “Who or what’s in America?”
“Someone I don’t want to lose.”
She squeezed his arm, and shook her head in sympathy. “We are a pair, aren’t we? You know I’ll do everything I can to help.”
“Start of term is only a few weeks away, Roz. Nobody expects you to stay on here. I might be able to request some emergency leave. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
He stood and walked to the end of the corridor, where he could see the nurses still hovering over his father and hear the quiet murmurs, the squeaking of their shoes on the polished tile floor. One of his father’s bare feet poked out from under the blanket, and Cormac felt an unfamiliar surge of protective instinct. One of the nurses finally noticed as well, and tucked the blanket more securely around the old man.
Part of him couldn’t consider abandoning his father now, despite anything that had happened in the past. The man had left whatever life he’d made for himself in Chile to return home and care for his wife in her last days. Éilis—Cormac’s mother—was still his wife. And still loved him, all those years later. Maybe that should count for something.
The fantasy he’d had of landing once again on Nora’s doorstep was rapidly evaporating, and he could feel her slipping further away from him. Why had he not gone with her? Fear of crowding her, perhaps. But if she was going to reject him eventually, wasn’t it best to give her a clear opportunity? She must know how he felt, that he’d never felt the same about anyone else. But their lives were not yet intertwined, and maybe they never would be. He’d always been so separate, unto himself. Could he change—was it possible, at this late date?
He looked in at his father, and decided it was no mystery why the ancient gods had been so often imagined as moody, capricious parents. Something buried deep within the life-giving force bestowed a kind of extraordinary, mythic stature. How strange it was to see the person he had once imagined as a divine being, a colossus, reduced to mere mortal once again. Cormac turned away from that unsettling sight and stared down at the pale, bitter tea in his cup, now gone cold.
BOOK TWO
It was delightful and refreshing to see them disporting themselves in their native element. And their eyes! Such eyes! they were simply the loveliest I ever saw in any creature—large, dark, liquid, and lustrous, with a wistful, pleading, melancholy expression that went far to justify the local legend which represents them as a certain class of fallen spirits in metempsychosis, enduring a mitigated punishment for their sins. The seal has a way of looking right into your eyes, as though asking for sympathy and kind treatment. It makes one feel pitiful towards them, and I wonder exceedingly how the sailors who prosecute “seal-fishing” in the polar regions can have the heart to knock them on the head with a bludgeon.
—The Home of a Naturalist, by the Reverend Biot Edmondston and his sister, Jessie M. E. Saxby, 1890
1
The light was all that Nora could register, because her whole body was on fire. Strong hands held her wrists while soft, slow kisses found her most sensitive places. When her phantom lover raised his head, the face belonged not to Cormac but to Frank Cordova. Caught in his grip, she watched his lips move in slow motion: Don’t be afraid. I’ll catch you. When she tried to pull away, the face altered again, and this time the eyes looking into hers belonged to Peter Hallett. She struggled harder. How could this be happening? It wasn’t real. She jerked awake and threw off the tangled sheets, shot through with cold fear and disoriented by the half light in the unfamiliar room. Heart still racing, she checked the locks on the doors and windows. Everything was secure; it was just a terrible dream. She didn’t dare try to sleep again.
When the doorbell buzzed at a quarter-past eight, she had been awake and dressed and going through the case files for nearly two hours. She tried to look out and see who was downstairs, without success. Who besides Frank Cordova even knew she was here? After the bell sounded a second time, she ventured down the narrow stairs and peered through the peephole to see Frank standing outside, freshly showered and shaved, looking not much the worse for wear after last night.
“I figured with the jet lag, you wouldn’t be able to sleep in,” he said, when she opened the door. “I’m really sorry about last night.” He was staring down at the threshold between them. “I shouldn’t drink. I was way out of line. Sorry.”
“I was nervous about seeing you, too.” The memory of his looming countenance in the dream this morning made her flush, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“So we’re okay?”
“Yeah, we’re okay. You want to come in?”
Relief broke over his face. “Yeah, sure.” He followed her upstairs into the small kitchen.
“Are you hungry? I don’t have much—”
He waved a hand, looking a little queasy at the prospect of solid food. “No—just coffee, if it’s handy.” He took a seat at the table, looking uncomfortable. He wasn’t tall, barely six feet, but he had the sort of masculine bulk that made the kitchen furniture seem almost child-sized. Nora kept the door to the sitting room closed. For some reason, she didn’t want him to see her makeshift incident room with files still spread across the floor.
She poured two cups of coffee, while he cast an appraising glance.
“Seems like Ireland agrees with you.”
Nora felt the blood rising to her face again, and this time, Frank seemed to take note.
“It was good to get some distance,” she said. “From everything. I think going away was the only thing that saved my sanity. You remember what it was like.”
The downcast look said he remembered all of it—the late nights, the media circus, the grueling emotional roller coaster of leads that evaporated almost as quickly as they appeared. And the frustration and despair that had driven them together for one reckless night. It had been a mistake. But clearly she’d been wrong in thinking he perceived it that way as well.
“How have things been with you, Frank?”
Cordova shifted in his seat and looked away, and she could almost hear the sound of a door creaking shut. Not going to happen. Not in broad daylight, and certainly not when he was sober. He gave her a weary smile. “The usual. Not enough hours in a day. That’s what they’ll carve on my tombstone.”
“Frank, last night—”
“Last night was not exactly the usual, if that’s what you’re worried about.” H
is left thumb absently traced the groove around the rim of his mug. “I suppose you know about Miranda Staunton. You think her brother fixed her up with Hallett?”
Nora heard a note of antipathy in Frank’s voice that said he hadn’t forgotten or forgiven the way Marc Staunton had treated her. The way Marc had taken Peter Hallett’s word over hers. The way he’d walked out when she wouldn’t desist in unmasking his old friend. It was a little unsettling to admit how good Frank’s lingering resentment made her feel. She took a sip of coffee, but found its taste bitter on her tongue. “To tell you the truth, just hearing that Peter planned to marry again convinced me to come back. I didn’t find out that Miranda was the bride-to-be until last night. I can’t let go of this crazy idea that we might be able to stop him.”
“I hope it’s not crazy—I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“Here’s something you might not know. He’s leaving the country on Saturday—taking Miranda to Ireland, the same place he took Tríona on their honeymoon. That was something I only discovered last night as well.” She watched the news work its way across Cordova’s features.
“So we have what—four days—to crack a case that’s hung us out to dry for five years? Even if we had something, it takes time to build a case.” Nora realized that he was probably swamped at work, and couldn’t just drop everything for a cold case, even this one. They sat in awkward silence for a moment. “Four days. I thought we’d have a little more time.”
“Frank, you said something last night, about another girl at Hidden Falls—”
His eyes narrowed. “What did I say?”
“That Peter didn’t know you’d found her. You said you weren’t sure it was anything to do with Tríona.”
Cordova took a deep breath. “A Jane Doe turned up down at the river three days ago. A fisherman came across the body, in a patch of swampland down at Hidden Falls—you know yourself, sometimes it’s just a feeling.”
