Ashes on the Waves (15 page)

By the time we reached the helipad, the doors to the vehicle were closed and the rotors were starting up. We shielded our eyes and closed our lids partially to keep out the whirling debris stirred by the enormous blades. With a deafening roar, the machine lifted off, removing Anna’s friends from my life.

She waved until there was no possibility they could see us any longer and we were again alone. She wrapped her arms around my waist and I held her against me, willing the world to stop so that I could simply revel in the joy of her nearness.

“You smell so good,” she said, nuzzling against my chest.

I conjured my best Francine accent. “Irish Spring soap, lassie.”

She laughed and my heart leapt.

“Can you hang out with me awhile?”

“I can think of nothing I would rather do.”

I followed her through the gate and stooped to pick up the portfolio.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

I nodded and followed her up onto the porch, wondering if I would ever grow accustomed to the peculiar sensation that I was being swallowed whole by the house every time I entered. Probably not, I conceded with a shudder as we stepped into the entry hall. From the archway under the gaping mandibles of the double stairway, Deirdre Byrne appeared. I hadn’t seen her in a long time. She shot us a frightened look, then scurried away.

“That’s the new maid,” Anna said. “She’s a little freaked out, I guess. Understandable if you have to deal with Miss Ronan on a regular basis.”

Instead of going left into the dining room, where we had been last night, Anna led me to a passage on the right. Wall sconces that looked like inverted raptor claws lined the narrow space, giving the impression they would grab a passersby if he got within reach.

Before my mo">Be inverbid imagination could get the best of me, we entered an enormous kitchen. The floor was the same black marble as the entry hall, and the cabinets that stretched all the way to the ceiling appeared to be made of mahogany. The stainless-steel-clad countertops matched the enormous double oven with eight burners on top. There was a sink big enough to bathe in and on the far wall, a rack held utensils and knives in a terrifying, deadly display. All those knives, I marveled, one of every shape and size. I had only one. I only needed one, but with this kind of wealth, it wasn’t about need.

“I’m starving,” Anna said, pulling a pot down from a rack above a gigantic chopping block table in the center of the room. “Miss Ronan has the day off, thank God, so we’re on our own.”

I wondered where Miss Ronan would go or what she would do on a day off.

Anna pulled a pitcher and a white paper package from the refrigerator and placed them next to the pot. She poured cream from the pitcher into a cup on the counter near the stove. “I’ve been dying to get in here and make something, but she’s always lurking. She’s like a disease or something.”

Too bad there was not a cure to make her go away, I thought as I watched Anna return the cream pitcher to the refrigerator and remove a jar of amber liquid and some leeks.

Again, I marveled at the sheer size and extravagance of the room. The entire village could outfit their kitchens with what I could see on display alone. I could only wonder what was inside the numerous cabinets and drawers.

Anna walked to the utensil rack and selected a knife with a large triangular blade. After washing the leeks in the sink, she returned to the chopping block and removed and discarded the dark green ends. She just threw them away. On Dòchas, very little was thrown away. The tops were perfectly edible, and it seemed a waste. With incredible speed and accuracy, she diced the leeks into tiny pieces and scooped them into the pot, adding a chunk of butter from the white paper.

“So, you can set that down if you want,” she said, nodding to the portfolio I still clutched.

I laid it on a table near a door that opened to the outside of the house.

Anna placed the pot on the stove and turned a knob. The burner under her pot lit as if by magic without a match.

“Any more fallout from the Johnny thing?” she asked, opening the lid to a bin in the corner.

“No.”

She pulled several potatoes out and selected a funny-looking knife from the rack. “Good.” She paused, a potato in hand, and simply stared into my eyes. “That was scary. I thought I was going to lose you.”

“I thought you were going to lose me too.”

She smiled and ran the funny knife over the potato, leaving a curled strand of peel in its wake.

“Can I do something to help?” I asked.

“Nope. This is my thing. I love to cook. Just have a seat and be amazed.” She winked.

I sat at the table where I’d placed my portfolio and watched as she deftly removed the peel from the remaining potatoes. The sunlight slanted through the transom at the top of the room, illuminating her striking face from an angle, and I longed to pull out my sketch pad.

She paused in the middle of chopping the potatoes into cubes. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring.”

“I’m admiring.”

She blushed and turned her attention back to her task, chopping with incredible dexterity and speed. She hummed lightly under her breath as she stirred the leeks around in the pot. “If I could, I’d spend all day doing this.”

“I would assume you have staff to cook for you.”

She smiled and slid the potato cubes into a bowl she held under the counter edge. “Yep. That’s who got me interested at first. Our cook, Beth, used to let me help her when I was a little girl.”

She poured the golden liquid into the pot. “Vegetable stock Miss Ronan saved from yesterday’s meal.” She stirred the contents with a big spoon.

My hackles stood on end at the mere thought of Miss Ronan. I remembered Anna’s plan to pump her for information. “Did you speak with her about me yet?”

She put the lid on the pot and turned the dial on a timer. “A little. She wasn’t very forthcoming. She just said to avoid you.”

“Please don’t.”

She met my eyes directly. “I can’t.”

The metallic ticking of the timer matched the tempo of my aching heart. No matter how much I wished to halt time or pretend the Cailleach was but a bad dream, my moments with Anna were running down, just like the minutes on that timer. In order to save her, I would have to turn my back on the first happiness I’d ever known and persuade her to leave.

I have no time to dote or dream:

You call it hope—that fire of fire!

It is but agony of desire.

—Edgar Allan Poe,
from “Tamerlane,” 1827

T
he soup has a bit to go,” Anna said, pulling out a chair at the small table by the door. “Do you want something to drink?”

“No. Thanks.” I sat across from her.

She rubbed her hands over the leather portfolio. “This was a surprise. It’s hard for you to share your art, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

She ran her fingertips along the zipper present on three sides. “I noticed how uncomfortable you were when Francine showed me your paintings at the store. What are you afraid of?”

What I always feared: rejection—the one constant in my life. I didn’t answer but watched as her fingertips skimmed their way along the zipper to the end.

“Did you bring them to show me?”

I held my breath as she grasped the pull on the zipper. She met my eyes, asking permission without words.

“Yes,” I whispered.

My heart raced as she traced the pull around the portfolio, laying it open.

She met my eyes again before turning her attention to the contents. She stared a long time at the landscape on top, tipping her head slightly as she studied it.

“You have a great sense of motion and colontthdth=or,” she said. “Who taught you?”

“No one.”

She flipped the page to the next landscape. “My parents sent me to art school every summer for three years.”

“So you paint?”

She flipped to the next canvas. “Nope. I suck at it.” She slid that one aside, revealing a portrait of her I had done last month based on a tabloid picture. “But you don’t.” Her crystalline blue eyes met mine and I held my breath, waiting for her reaction. I had taken some poetic license in this painting and had given it an impressionistic flair, using broad strokes and intensifying the colors.

She turned to the next, then the next and shook her head. “You are so wasted here, Liam.”

As she flipped through the remainder of the paintings and sketches, I noticed her fingers trembling. I caught her hand in mine. “What?” I asked.

She didn’t pull her eyes away from the watercolor of her in a party dress I’d painted years ago based on a photo found in a New York newspaper. “How long?” she whispered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“How long have you been in love with me, Liam?”

“Forever.”

In silence, she examined the rest of my work. As she reached the last one, a practice sketch for the painting of us as children that hung in Francine’s kitchen, tears filled her eyes. She gently closed and zipped the portfolio, not looking at me, and set it on the floor, leaning it against the wall.

I had no idea what was running through her mind that would cause such a reaction.

The timer gave a shrill series of dings and she moved to the stove to tend her creation. She added some cream from the cup she had poured earlier and continued stirring, keeping her back to me.

“Anna,” I said, standing behind her. “I’m sorry if I upset you somehow.”

She reduced the fire under the pot to a flickering blue ring, then turned to face me. “Sorry. You’re sorry?”

I nodded.

“You’ve been stuck here in this godforsaken place suffering all kinds of abuse and neglect while I’ve been off running around not even aware you existed, and you’re sorry?”

Stunned, I took a step back.

“I’m the one who’s sorry, Liam. I’m going to make it right, too.”

She had it all wrong. There was nothing to rectify. “I don’t want your pity or charity.”

“What do you want?”

I wanted
her
—body, mind, and spirit—all of her, and I wanted her now, but that was impossible. “I want you safe.”

“Oh, brother.” She pulled two bowls from the cabinet to the right of the stove and ladled soup into them, then placed a spoon in each. From a basket at the end of the counter, she procured two crusty rolls and put them on a plate. She carried the plate and one of the bowls to the table. “Let’s eat.”

I grabbed the remaining bowl and followed her. I had no idea potatoes could taste so good. She had thrown spices in, but I hadn’t paid close attention. “This is amazing. Truly.”

She beamed. “Thanks. I’m going to open a vegetarian five-star restaurant someday. Dad says he’ll send me to culienddnnary school in Paris next year if I stay out of trouble.”

“S’cuse me, miss,” Deirdre said from the doorway. “Miss Ronan told me to attend to you. Do you need anything?” Her eyes flitted to the roll in my hand. I knew that look.

Evidently, Anna recognized it too. “Come on in and join us,” she said to the girl.

Deirdre shook her head so vigorously, a hairpin fell out. “Oh, no, miss. My mother and Miss Ronan told me to never fra—frat—um . . .”

“Fraternize,” Anna said.

“Yes, miss. That. I’m not supposed to be doin’ that with you.”

Anna stood and pulled a chair over. “You wouldn’t be. You’d just be following my orders.”

Wide-eyed, the girl watched as Anna ladled another bowl of soup and grabbed a roll from the basket. She set them on the table and gestured to the girl to sit.

“No, miss. I couldn’t.” Saying no to hot, fresh food was certainly painful for her. She clutched the apron at her waist and twisted it in her fingers, never taking her eyes off the table.

Anna sat. “It is not a request; it’s an order from your boss. Now sit.”

“And . . .” The girl twisted her apron even more violently.

Anna shifted in her chair to see her. “And what?”

“Him.” She gestured to me with her chin.

Just when I was feeling normal, reality crashed down upon my head. Who was I kidding? Myself, obviously. I put my spoon down, no longer hungry.

“Liam, you mean?” Anna left her chair and stood behind me, facing her. The girl nodded, avoiding my eyes. Anna ran her fingers through my hair. “Well, I wasn’t offering you Liam, only a bowl of soup. He is delicious, though, huh?”

Anna must have made a face or gesture behind my back because the girl covered her mouth and giggled.

“He’s not what you’ve been taught, Deirdre. He’s just a person like you and me.” Anna sat in the new chair by my side and left hers opposite me open. She switched the bowls so that Deirdre wouldn’t have to sit next to me. “Who do you work for?”

“You, miss.”

“Then do as I say and sit, please.”

Deirdre obeyed, moving as if she were treading upon broken glass. Gingerly, she sat, stiff-backed and wary.

“Go ahead. I want your opinion on the soup,” Anna said. “I think it needs something. What do you think?”

It needed nothing, but my clever Anna had found a way to entice the girl to eat without guilt. My chest swelled with admiration.

We ate in silence for a while. Deirdre struggled to not shovel the soup into her mouth as fast as possible. I knew that kind of hunger. I’d felt it much of my life.

“What do you think?” Anna asked.

“Oh, miss. It’s wonderful.”

“Well, I think you should test out another bowl for me,” she said, taking Deirdre’s bowl and filling it at the stove. “So, how did you come to work here?” Anna placed the fresh bowl in front of her.

Deirdre’s eyes darted to Anna and then back to her bowl. “Since my dad lost his boat in a storm, we really nm, bowl ineed the money. My parents also thought it best I get some training to make me a good wife.”

Anna dropped her spoon into her bowl. “Wife! My God. How old are you?”

Deirdre sat up even straighter. “I’m almost fourteen. I’m plenty old, miss. My mom married at barely thirteen.”

Anna shot me a horrified look.

Her parents, Polly and Edmond Byrne, struggled hard to feed themselves, and the only reason they hadn’t married her off already, lessening the burden, was because of the lack of eligible husbands.

Deirdre took another bite of soup. “You see, miss, if I get married, it’ll be better for my family. My husband will provide for me and I’ll have a warm place in the winter and a real bed.”

“You don’t have a bed?”

Deirdre put her spoon down and wiped her mouth. “My family does right by me, if that’s what you’re asking.” She raised her chin and tucked a loose strand of auburn hair behind her ear.

Anna nodded and tore off a piece of bread. “So, if I needed an employee to live here and be my personal assistant, would that be something you’d consider?”

“Live
here,
miss?”

“With your own room,” Anna added.

Her face lit like a lantern, then clouded over. “Well, I’d have to ask my parents. Are you sure it would be okay with Miss Ronan?”

Anna’s expression didn’t change, but her tone was as ominous as a threatening storm. “Miss Ronan works for
me.
”

“Yes, of course, miss.” Deirdre stared at her hands folded in her lap.

Anna carried her empty bowl to the sink and Deirdre jumped to her feet. “No, miss! Please, let me. It’s my job.”

“Great. If you’d clear the table, then, that would be great,” Anna said, placing the pot in the refrigerator.

Deirdre reached for my bowl and then recoiled as if touching something I had touched would taint her somehow. Though it stung, I didn’t fault her. She’d been systematically brainwashed from infancy. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

After putting my bowl in the sink, I followed Anna back through the constrictive hallway into the entry hall. “Let’s go outside,” she said. “This place gets to me after a while.”

As we descended the porch steps, the wind shifted out of the south. Anna covered her mouth. “My God! What’s that smell?”

It was a smell one never forgot. It burned into the core of memory for eternity, permeating all senses to the point of being its own special sixth sense of sorts. It was the smell of Dòchas. The smell of the inevitable. The smell of death.

“Let’s go back inside,” I suggested.

Her hand muffled her words. “What is it? God. It’s horrible.”

“It’s Johnny’s funeral pyre. You can see it just there.” I pointed to an area west of the lighthouse where a dark plume of smoke rose into the air. Like a terrifying specter, it writhed and twisted, bringing its inevitable scent with it, causing the living in its path to recoil in dread.

Anna, mouth still covered, ran back into the house.

I followed, but there was no sign of her in the entry. Eyes huge, Deirdre huuffled hovered in the archway leading to the kitchen.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“I won’t tell you. I won’t let you hurt her.”

She must have thought it was I who had spooked her. “For God’s sake, Deirdre. Tell me where she is.”

“No.”

“Liam!” Anna’s voice came from upstairs. Without another glance at the girl, I ascended the stairs two at a time, calling out for her when I reached the top.

“I’m here.” Her voice came from a room at the far right of the balcony.

I found her curled up in a window seat beneath an expanse of stained glass that stretched all the way to the ceiling. Sunlight refracted through the beveled pieces of glass, showering her skin and hair with flecks of color, making her appear Otherworldly.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. I just had to get away from the smell—that smell of burning . . . Ugh.” She shuddered.

The room had a settee the color of the sea and a bed with spiral carved posts several feet taller than I was that tapered to sharp points. On a stand near the bed, an enormous suitcase stuffed full of clothes stood open.

Following my gaze, Anna remarked, “I didn’t unpack. I hadn’t planned on staying.”

“Good,” I blurted out before I could catch myself.

“Good?”

“Anna, I . . .” The hurt look on her face caused something in my chest to pinch. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded.”

“I’m glad because it sounded pretty crappy.”

I sat next to her. “This isn’t the place for you.”

“This isn’t the place for anyone, Liam.” She traced a blue fleck of light on my arm, and I thrilled at the simple touch. I needed to tell her the truth despite my body’s insistence otherwise.

“Why didn’t they just bury him? Why burn him like that?” she asked.

She traced a different fleck of light higher up my arm, making it difficult to speak. “It’s just how we do it.”

“It’s gross and wrong. He should be buried since the ground isn’t frozen.”

I stilled her hand. “It is not wrong. The spirit has long departed. It makes little difference whether the body left behind becomes food for the worm or ashes on the waves.”

She said nothing for a long time, then took several deep breaths before speaking. “Why did you say ‘good’ when I told you I hadn’t planned on staying? Do you want me to leave?”