Authors: Joy Fielding
“Tell me about your daughter,” Liam said softly.
Marcy hesitated, trying to decide what facts to leave in and which ones to leave out. She didn’t want to violate what little remained of her daughter’s privacy. Unlike Judith, Devon had never willingly put herself out there for public consumption. She’d kept everything to herself, which had only contributed to her problems.
“My daughter is bipolar,” Marcy began, the words somersaulting from her mouth in a series of reluctant syllables. “Do you know what that is?”
“Is it the same thing as schizophrenia?”
“No. Devon doesn’t hear voices. She’s not paranoid. She just has a chemical imbalance.” She continued, trying to remember the exact words the doctor had used to describe the condition, then giving up in frustration. “It used to be known as manic depression.”
“One minute you’re happy, the next you’re bawlin’ your eyes out,” Liam said.
“I guess that about sums it up, yes.”
He apologized immediately. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound glib.”
Marcy dismissed his apology with a shake of her head. “It
tends to run in families. My mother had it as well. She committed suicide when I was fifteen.”
If Liam was shocked, he didn’t let on. “Is that the reason your sister opted not to have any children of her own?”
“She tried to talk me out of having any. She said I’d always be waiting, watching for signs. She was right.”
“When did you first know?”
“Soon after she turned seventeen.” Marcy thought back to that awful night when she’d found Devon in the kitchen, a broken flower vase at her feet, handfuls of salt at her mouth. She could see her daughter as clearly as if it were yesterday. “I’d suspected it for a while,” she admitted. “Her moods were getting blacker. Her behavior was becoming increasingly erratic. There were times she’d talk so fast I could barely understand what she was saying. But after this one incident, I couldn’t deny it any longer.”
“What did you do?”
“Not enough. Oh, I took her to the doctor, got her started on medication and therapy, tried to comfort her as best I could.…”
“Nothing helped?”
“She didn’t like the way the drugs made her feel.”
Like doing the butterfly stroke through a vat of molasses
, her mother had said. “She hated her therapist.” Marcy paused, swallowing the catch that was forming in her throat. “She hated me even more.”
“I’m sure she didn’t hate you.”
“How can you not hate someone who looks you right in the eye and still doesn’t see you?”
“I think you’re being very hard on yourself.”
“I lied to her, day in and day out.”
“You lied to her? How?”
“I told her everything would be okay. I told her if she’d
just cooperate and take her medication, then everything would work out, that she just had to be patient, give the haloperidol a chance.…”
“Which is what anyone in your situation would have told her.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Tears began falling the length of Marcy’s cheeks, a few sliding between her lips to rest against her tongue. “I had no patience for any of it, for the crying jags and the craziness, for the guys she’d bring home or the trouble she’d get into. You’d have thought that after everything I went through with my mother, it would have made me more understanding. But the exact opposite was true. I didn’t have the stomach for any of it. And I felt so guilty and helpless and angry all the time. I hated her for making me have to go through it all again.”
“What kind of trouble?” Liam asked.
What kind of mother hates her own child? Marcy was thinking. “What?”
“You said Devon got into trouble. What kind of trouble?” he repeated.
“There were a few incidents.” Marcy sighed with the memory. “One day she got into a fight with a neighbor who’d complained she was playing her radio too loud in the backyard. Devon swore at her and threw her shoe at her, just missed her head. And then she stole an expensive bracelet from one of her friends’ mothers, and the woman threatened to go to the police. Another time she got involved with this guy I tried to tell her was trouble.…”
“But she wouldn’t listen.”
“And Peter was no help. He didn’t know what to do or how to cope. Devon had always been a daddy’s girl, and now here she was, his little angel, this child who’d worshipped him her
entire life, and he couldn’t get through to her. He couldn’t help her. It made him feel so impotent. Which I guess explains Sarah. The other woman,” Marcy clarified, and Liam nodded, as if no explanation had been necessary. “Anyway, he blamed me. He said he didn’t, but I know he did. And he was right. It
was
my fault.”
“How do you figure that?”
Marcy shrugged. “They were my genes.”
There’s no mental illness on
my
side of the family
, she remembered Peter saying, although he’d apologized later.
Marcy told Liam the story of Devon’s “accident,” how she’d faked her own death and disappeared.
“And you thought she was dead until—”
“I never believed she was dead. Not really,” Marcy insisted. “And then I saw her walk by your pub.”
It was Liam’s turn to shake his head. “And I thought you were a cop.”
“What?”
“When you came back to Grogan’s, when you showed me her picture and asked if I recognized her, I assumed you were some sort of copper or private investigator. Even after you told me she was your daughter, I didn’t really believe you. I just assumed Audrey’s past had caught up with her.”
“Her past?”
“Well, like I said, I’ve only talked to her a few times. I don’t know that much about her. But I’ve heard rumors. You know.”
“I don’t know. Tell me.”
“Just that she’d been in some sort of trouble in London and that she’d come to Ireland to get away. Stuff like that. Nothing concrete. Like I said, just rumors. So when you showed up, askin’ about her, I assumed you were with Scotland Yard or Interpol.”
“And now?”
“Now I know you’re tellin’ me the truth.” He smiled, reached across the table for her hand. “Nobody makes up a story like that.”
Marcy smiled. “My husband thinks I do. He thinks I’m crazy.”
“Soon-to-be-ex-husband,” Liam corrected, “and I think
he’s
crazy, letting a woman like you get away.”
Marcy slowly slipped her hand away from his, placed it in her lap. “You should be careful when you say things like that. They could be taken the wrong way.”
Liam’s green eyes sparkled playfully. “And what way would that be?”
“Some women might think you were coming on to them.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think you’re just being kind.”
He laughed. “First time I’ve ever been accused of that.”
“Are
you coming on to me?” Marcy asked, amazed she was actually asking the question out loud.
“Don’t know. Haven’t quite made up my mind.”
Marcy smiled and shook her head. “How old are you, Liam?”
“Thirty-four on my next birthday.”
“I’m fifty.”
“Fifty’s not old.”
“It’s not thirty-four.”
“It’s just a number. And like I said, I’ve never gone much for girls my own age. Lost my virginity when I was twelve to a sixteen-year-old hussy. I’ve had a thing for older women ever since.”
Marcy rubbed her head to keep it from spinning. Surely she was imagining this entire conversation. Maybe she had a concussion after all.
“What are you thinking?” Liam asked.
“I’m thinking that for twenty-five years I had sex with only one man. My husband,” Marcy told him honestly, deciding what the hell, there was no point in being anything else. “And to be truthful, in the last few years, we hardly had sex at all. At least,
I
hardly had sex. As it turned out,
he
was having plenty. But anyway, that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that in all those years, no other man expressed the least interest in me, and now I’m fifty years old and I’m having hot flashes and my hair’s a mess.…”
“Your hair is gorgeous.”
“And I come to Ireland,” Marcy continued, ignoring his interruption, “and suddenly, I’m like this femme fatale. I’ve got guys falling all over me. And I don’t know, maybe it’s something they put in the beer over here, or maybe I’m just putting out these vibes of not-so-quiet desperation.…”
“Or maybe you’re just a very beautiful woman.”
“You could have any woman you want,” Marcy told him, doing her best to ignore the compliment.
“What if
you’re
the woman I want?”
Marcy shook her head. “You don’t want me.”
“I don’t?”
“You just feel sorry for me.”
“Why would I feel sorry for you?” he asked. “You’re a beautiful woman with gorgeous curls who’s found the daughter she thought was dead. I’d say that’s cause for celebration, not pity.”
“I haven’t found her yet.”
“But you will.”
“Maybe that’s when I’ll feel like celebrating.”
“Well, then,” Liam said, green eyes dancing with unspoken possibilities. “Looks like I’ll just have to stick around and help you find her.”
T
HE NEXT MORNING MARCY
returned to the house on Adelaide Road.
She was there by eight o’clock, having wolfed down the huge breakfast that Sadie Doyle prepared daily. The breakfast consisted of bacon and two eggs over medium, a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar, and two pieces of brown toast, complete with homemade marmalade and strawberry preserves. Judith would be properly horrified, Marcy thought as she ate, knowing her sister would have ordered only a small bowl of fresh fruit along with at least three cups of black coffee. Marcy had avoided liquids altogether. Coffee had a habit of running right through her, and she wasn’t sure when she’d next have a chance to go to the bathroom.
It could be a very long day, she was thinking now, checking
her watch for the third time in as many minutes. Already ten thirty and nothing had happened since Mr. O’Connor had left for work two hours earlier. At least she’d managed to find a fairly secluded spot at the side of a neighbor’s house across the street from the O’Connors’ from which she could stand and keep watch.
So far, there’d been nothing to see.
At least the sun was shining, she thought, purposefully ignoring the large cluster of ominous-looking clouds gathering on the horizon. Mercifully, it wasn’t as cold as it had been the last several days. She thought she might actually be able to take off the trench coat that had become something of a uniform since she’d arrived in Ireland. “Going up to almost twenty-one,” Sadie Doyle had remarked to one of the other guests at breakfast this morning. Marcy calculated the conversion to Fahrenheit: seventy degrees. “Positively balmy.”
“Positively balmy is right,” Marcy repeated now, deciding that about summed up her recent behavior.
Nuttier than a jar of cashews
, Judith had said. And she didn’t know the half of it. She didn’t know about either Vic or Liam, that Marcy had already slept with the former and was seriously considering jumping into bed with the latter. What was the matter with her, for heaven’s sake? Had she completely lost her mind? Could she really be thinking of getting naked in front of a man more than fifteen years her junior?
Why not? she wondered in the next breath. Men did it all the time. They never seemed to worry about not measuring up to their younger counterparts. Seriously sagging butts and flaccid underused muscles never stopped them. Despite receding hairlines and straining belt buckles, they generally seemed comfortable in their own skin and assured of their attractiveness, even when such assurance was unwarranted. Wasn’t Peter a prime example of this?
Not that Peter wasn’t a nice-looking man, Marcy thought. He was tall, slim, and fastidious about his appearance. He was also “generously endowed,” as Judith was fond of saying when referring to husbands numbers one and three. So it wasn’t altogether surprising that a woman like Sarah, who was only marginally older than Liam, would have found him appealing. Although when Marcy was feeling less charitable, she wondered if Sarah would have found Peter quite so attractive if he were less
financially
endowed.
I shouldn’t have eaten so much, she thought now, her stomach pressing against the top button of her jeans. If she continued to eat—and drink—the way she’d been doing these last few days, she’d put on so much weight Devon might not even recognize her.
Assuming I find her, Marcy added immediately. And then immediately after that,
Of course
I’m going to find her.
It was only a matter of time.
Maybe even today.
“Excuse me, but do you mind telling me what you’re doing there?”
The voice was equal parts curiosity and indignation. Marcy spun around slowly to see a middle-aged woman in a flowered housedress standing on the front steps of the house next door, curlers in her brown hair, hands on her wide hips. All that’s missing is the rolling pin, Marcy thought, smiling at the woman while silently debating whether or not to make a run for it. She took a few halting steps in the woman’s direction. “I’m sorry,” she told her, then stopped when she could think of nothing else to say.
“What are you doing there?” the woman asked again.
“I think I’m lost,” Marcy answered weakly.
“Lost?”
“I went for a walk—”
“You American?” the woman interrupted.
“Canadian. My husband’s mother was from Limerick,” she added hopefully, as if that might make a difference.
The woman seemed distinctly unimpressed with Peter’s lineage. “So what exactly are you doing skulking around behind the Murray house?”
“I wasn’t … skulking.”
“Looked like you were skulking to me.”
“No. I just went for a walk.…”
“This isn’t exactly a popular spot for tourists.”
Marcy improvised. “Exactly. As a rule, I try to avoid the usual tourist traps.”
The woman’s bushy eyebrows arched skeptically. “You miss out on a lot of good stuff that way,” she said.
“Yes, I probably do.”
The woman tilted her head to one side, as if waiting for further explanation. Or maybe she was just waiting for Marcy to start making sense.