Authors: Joy Fielding
“Has something happened? Have you found Audrey?”
“No. I … I … bought a cell phone,” she blurted out, quickly rattling off her number. “I’m so sorry for disturbing you. I just thought this way you could call me—”
“The instant I see her,” Liam said, finishing the sentence for her. “Promise,” he added, as if understanding Marcy’s need for reassurance. “So what are the plans for the day?”
Marcy told him about her intention to check out the university.
“Good luck,” he said, hanging up before she could apologize again.
I’ll need it, Marcy thought, dropping the phone into her purse and setting out for the university campus.
ACCORDING TO THE
brochure the Visitors’ Centre provided, University College Cork was established in 1845 and was currently one of Ireland’s leading research institutes. Located on a hill overlooking the valley of the river Lee, the campus was a pleasing blend of the old and the new, an attractive quadrangle of colorful gardens and wooded grounds interspersed with old, Gothic-revival-style buildings and modern concrete-and-glass structures. More than seventeen thousand students attended the four main colleges: one college for arts, Celtic studies, and social science; one for business and law; one for medicine and health; and one for engineering, science, and food science. The university was also home to the Irish
Institute of Chinese studies, which Marcy decided probably explained the high number of Asian students she’d been seeing since setting foot on campus.
Knowing it was highly unlikely that Devon would have enrolled in anything to do with medicine, business, engineering, or law, Marcy decided to concentrate on the arts. Her daughter had always been drawn to drama. From the time she was a little girl, her dream had been to become an actress. As a teenager, she’d spoken often of going to Hollywood. Marcy had tried to dissuade her. “It’s a lifetime of rejection,” she’d said.
She should have been more supportive, Marcy thought now, marching along the brick and concrete pedestrian road that ran through the campus, glancing at the clusters of students dotting the white concrete benches that lined the path. Would it have killed her to be more encouraging?
“Why do you always have to be so negative?” she could hear Devon demand.
“I’m just trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need your protection. I need your support.”
“Excuse me,” Marcy said now, stilling Devon’s angry voice with her own and showing her photograph to a group of young women who were walking by. “Do any of you recognize this girl?”
The three girls took turns looking at the picture. “No,” the first one said, her two friends nodding in quick agreement.
“Don’t know her,” they said, almost in unison.
“Thank you. Excuse me.” Marcy continued in the next breath, quickly approaching a young man balancing an armload of books. “Have you seen this girl? Her name is Devon.…”
“No, sorry.”
“You may know her as Audrey.”
“Sorry, no.”
It was the same with everyone she asked.
“Sorry. Can’t help you.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Don’t know her.”
“No, sorry.”
Marcy occasionally pressed. “Could you look at the picture again? Maybe you took an English class together?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Couldn’t say.”
“No, sorry.”
“Have you tried the registrar’s office?” someone suggested.
Moments later Marcy was in the office of the registrar. “She doesn’t look at all familiar?” she asked the woman behind the reception desk.
“No, I can’t say I recognize this one. You’re sure she’s a student here?”
Marcy admitted she was sure of no such thing.
The woman typed something into her computer. “Audrey, you said her name was?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Last name?”
Marcy hesitated. Which name would her daughter use? “I don’t know.”
The woman shook her head, her eyes seemingly focused on a spot to the left of Marcy’s nose. “I’m afraid I can’t help you without a last name.”
“Try Taggart.” Marcy spelled it. “And if there’s no Audrey Taggart, try Devon.”
“Audrey and Devon Taggart.” The woman sighed as she typed in both names. “No, nothing for either of them. Sorry. Have you inquired at the other colleges?”
By four o’clock, Marcy had tried virtually every department
on campus. She’d popped her head into every office and classroom, visited every gallery, walked down every hall, investigated every nook and cranny of every building, peeked behind every tree, asked every student she was able to corral to look at the photograph. “You already asked me,” one muttered, sidestepping her as if she were a panhandler.
Marcy was just exiting the campus when she saw her.
The girl was standing on the footbridge separating Bachelor’s Quay from North Mall, staring down at the water below, seemingly lost in thought. A breeze was blowing her long hair into her face, and every few seconds her hand reached up to push the pesky strands away from her mouth.
“Devon!” Marcy cried out, her voice disappearing under the wheels of a passing car. She began running up the street toward the bridge, each step bringing her closer to the daughter she feared she’d lost forever. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Please let her be happy to see me, she prayed as she ran. Please let her not be angry. Please let me hold her in my arms again.
Which was when she heard the shouting and turned to see the bicycle coming out of nowhere, a look of horror on the cyclist’s face as he tried to avoid crashing into her. But he was traveling too fast and her reflexes were too slow, and his front wheel caught the back of her legs, spinning her around and lifting her off her feet.
In the next second, Marcy was sprawled across the pavement like a rag doll, a small crowd gathering around her. “Are you all right?” someone was asking. “Is anything broken?” “Can you stand up?”
Marcy felt hands underneath her arms, dragging her to her feet, returning her to an upright position. “I’m fine,” she said, barely recognizing her own voice. What the hell had just happened?
“You’re sure? Do you need to go to the hospital?” a young man asked, pushing his way to the front of the crowd.
“I don’t need a hospital.” What I need is to find my daughter, Marcy thought, recovering her equilibrium and deducing from the boy’s ashen complexion that he was the one who’d run her down. She looked frantically toward the footbridge, but she couldn’t see over the heads of those who’d stopped to help her. “Please. I have to go.”
“No,” the young man insisted, his strong hand on her arm preventing her from going anywhere. “You shouldn’t move for a few minutes. You could have a concussion.”
“I didn’t hit my head. I don’t have a concussion. Please, if you could all just get out of my way …”
“You heard the lady,” the young man snapped at the small crowd. “Back off. She needs some air.” The people immediately began dispersing until only Marcy and the young man remained. “I’m so sorry,” he was saying, curly brown hair framing a face that was more rugged than handsome, small dark eyes skipping nervously across her features, as if checking for signs she was about to collapse.
He looked to be in his twenties, Marcy thought, her eyes straining past his head toward the footbridge. The same age as Devon. “It’s okay,” she said, her voice flat. “It was an accident.”
“I was just goin’ along, mindin’ me own business, not payin’ enough attention, I guess, and suddenly there you were,” the boy elaborated in a strong Irish brogue. “I tried turnin’ the wheel—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Marcy assured him, her brain absorbing what her eyes already knew: that Devon was no longer standing on the bridge, staring absently at the water below, a breeze blowing wayward wisps of hair into her sad face.
Her daughter was gone.
She’d lost her again.
T
HEY GREW UP ALWAYS
checking each other out, looking for signs of incipient depression, a laugh that was too loud or lingered too long, a sigh that split the air with melancholy, a smile that melted effortlessly into a frown, a mood that shifted too abruptly, cascading from high to low and then back again with unnerving speed, like the roller-coaster rides they used to enjoy when they were kids.
Except they never really had a childhood, and roller-coaster rides quickly lost their ability to thrill, especially since their daily lives proved far less predictable, and therefore far more terrifying, than anything an amusement park ride could offer.
“What’s the matter? Are you upset about something?” Marcy would ask whenever she caught Judith looking even vaguely out of sorts.
“What are you still chuckling about?” Judith would demand of her sister after she’d told a moderately funny joke that had Marcy still giggling moments later. “It wasn’t that funny.”
“Are you all right?” Marcy.
“Is there a problem?” Judith.
“Are you depressed?” Judith.
“Is something bothering you?” Marcy.
“Marcy! For God’s sake, where the hell are you?” Judith was shouting now.
Marcy held her new cell phone away from her ear, already regretting her decision to phone her sister. “I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask
how
you were,” Judith shot back instantly. “I already know you’re nuttier than a jar of cashews. What I asked is,
where
are you? Do you know there’s something wrong with your cell phone? I keep calling and getting nothing. So I called Peter and he told me the name of your hotel in Dublin, and I called them, and they told me you checked out. What are you laughing about, for God’s sake?”
Marcy swallowed the few giggles still tickling her throat. Judith had always had a way with words, she was thinking, relishing the phrase “nuttier than a jar of cashews.” “I’ve always admired your ability to express yourself.”
“My ability to express myself? What on earth are you talking about?”
“You don’t pull any punches,” Marcy said, imagining the outraged arch of Judith’s thin eyebrows, the impatient twisting of her lips. “I’ve always loved that about you.”
“Are you high?” Judith asked.
“No, of course not.” Marcy had always been too afraid to experiment with drugs.
“Where are you?” Judith repeated.
Marcy looked around her tiny bathroom in the Doyle Cork
Inn. She was sitting, naked, on the edge of the white enamel tub, steam rising like beckoning fingers from the hot water that filled it, as if inviting her to climb inside. “What difference does it make?”
“What do you mean, what difference does it make? How am I supposed to come and get you if I don’t know where you are?”
“Nobody’s asking you to come and get me. I don’t want you to come and get me.”
“Marcy, listen to me. You have to calm down.…”
“I
am
calm. You’re the one who’s all upset.”
“Because
you’re
in the middle of some kind of breakdown. Which, don’t get me wrong, is perfectly understandable under the circumstances. Believe me, I know what you’re going through,” she elaborated quickly and unnecessarily. “Your daughter died, your husband left you for another woman. Not to mention our family history …”
“I’m not crazy, Judith.”
“You’re in Ireland, for God’s sake. You went on a second honeymoon alone. You think that’s normal?”
“It might be a little unusual, but—”
“Just like it’s a little unusual to see your dead child wandering the streets of Dublin?”
Cork
. Marcy almost corrected her, biting down on her lower lip to keep the word from escaping. “I didn’t see her,” she said instead.
“Of course you didn’t see her,” Judith repeated, stopping abruptly. “What do you mean, you didn’t see her?”
“I didn’t see her. I was wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Judith asked again.
Marcy could feel her sister struggling to understand. “I realize now that the girl I thought was Devon was just a girl who maybe looked a bit like her but wasn’t her. I was just seeing
what I wanted to see.…” Marcy pictured the girl standing on the footbridge separating Bachelor’s Quay from North Mall, staring absently into the water below.
“You didn’t see her?”
“It wasn’t Devon.”
Judith’s sigh of relief was almost palpable. “How do you know it wasn’t her?” she asked suspiciously.
“Because Devon is dead,” Marcy told her.
Judith pressed her. “You’re not just saying that because you think it’s what I want to hear?”
That was exactly why she was saying it, Marcy acknowledged silently. “Devon is dead,” she repeated, each word cutting into her throat like a sharp knife, leaving large, gaping holes in her flesh.
She felt her sister nodding her head. “Okay,” Judith said, and then again, “Okay.” Another pause, another nod of her head. “So, where are you and when are you coming home?”
Marcy lied, the same lie she’d told Vic Sorvino. “I’m in Paris.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Marcy sighed. Vic hadn’t believed her either. “I’ll be home by the end of next week.”
“Wait. If you’re really in Paris, I have a great idea,” Judith said quickly. “Why don’t I book the next flight and meet you there? I’m sure Terry won’t mind if I go away for a few days. In fact, he’ll probably be thrilled. We can go shopping and see the sights, just the two of us. Come on, say yes. It’ll be fun.”
Like old times, Marcy was tempted to say, except that their old times had never involved shopping or seeing the sights. Their old times had been anything but fun. “Let me think about it.”
“What do you have to think about?”
“I’ll call you.”
“Just tell me what hotel you’re in and—”
“I’ll call you,” Marcy said again, immediately disconnecting the phone.
She pushed herself off the side of the tub and walked naked into the bedroom, stepping over the clothes she’d left lying on the floor and tossing the cell phone onto the bed. She hated lying to her sister. But what other choice did she have?
You could have told her the truth, Marcy thought, returning to the bathroom and trying to make out her reflection in the steam-covered mirror over the sink. “Who’s in there anyway?” she asked out loud, wiping the mirror clean with her forearm, only to watch it fog up again almost instantly, blending one confused feature into another before she faded from sight altogether.