Authors: Joy Fielding
Don’t look at me, she wanted to tell him. Some secrets are best left undisturbed. “Have you been following me?” she said instead, suddenly reminded of yesterday’s sighting at the mall.
“Not exactly.”
“What exactly? Was that you yesterday, at the mall?”
“Maybe we should sit down.” He led her toward a nearby sofa, sinking into the overstuffed, apricot-colored velvet seat beside her, taking her hand in his.
“Was that you or not?” she asked again, trying to ignore the tingling in her arm.
“Yes.”
She quickly brought her hand back to her lap. “I don’t understand. Why?”
He shook his head, a deep whoosh of air escaping his lungs, then shook his head again, as if he himself didn’t quite believe what he was about to say. “After I was questioned by the gardai regarding the break-in at your hotel room, I decided to stick around for a few more days. I asked Detective Murphy to keep me informed.” Vic cleared his throat, shook his head a third time. “He called me yesterday, said you were being brought to the station. I went right over, hoping to get a chance to talk to you, convince you that I had nothing to do with the trashing of your room—”
“I never believed it was you,” Marcy said, interrupting.
“Well, thank you for that anyway.”
“Nobody told me you were there.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he continued. “You left with that young man from the pub, and I don’t know, I just decided to follow you. Don’t ask me why.”
“Why?” she asked anyway.
“I guess because I was worried about you. I’m still worried about you.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“Somebody breaks into your hotel room and trashes your things, I’d say that’s cause for concern.”
“But not
your
concern.”
Vic sat very still for several very long seconds. Then he took a deep breath, as if inhaling the full import of what she was telling him. “No, I guess not.” A hint of a wry smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Okay. I admit I’m a little dense about these things, but even I see the light eventually.” He rose to his feet. “I’m sorry. I won’t pester you again.”
“Do you know my daughter?” Marcy asked suddenly, surprising herself with the question she hadn’t meant to ask.
He looked startled. “What?”
“My daughter. Do you know her?”
Vic looked around uneasily. “No. Of course not. How would I know Devon?”
Again, the easy, almost casual use of her daughter’s name. “You’ve never met?”
“Marcy, you’re not making any sense. You’re from Toronto. I live in Chicago. When could I possibly have met your daughter?”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. Of course you don’t know her.” Marcy apologized immediately, watching as Vic’s eyes wandered toward the lobby’s front entrance. “What is it?”
“Looks like you have a visitor,” Vic said.
She followed the direction of his gaze to see Liam walk through the front doors, shaking the rain from his shoulders with an exaggerated shrug. “Liam,” she stated, pushing off the sofa and rushing toward him. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just about to ask you the same thing. You weren’t thinking of going out in this mess, were you?” he asked accusingly, as if he already knew the answer.
“I thought you were going to see your mother.”
“Decided to come see you first,” he said. “Good thing, too, by the looks of it.” Then he leaned forward and kissed her full on the mouth. “I’ve got news.”
“What kind of news?” Marcy asked, feeling the imprint of his lips on hers. She glanced over her shoulder toward Vic, knowing he’d felt it, too.
But there was no longer anyone sitting on the overstuffed velvet sofa by the stairs.
Vic was gone.
I
T WAS ALMOST SIX
in the morning when Marcy finally abandoned the idea of sleep. She’d been up all night, tossing and turning, trying to sort through the events of the last twenty-four hours. Hell, why stop there? How about the last twenty-four years?
“I’ve got news,” Liam had announced.
“What kind of news?”
“I drove by the O’Connor house. Don’t ask me why.”
“Why?” Marcy asked now. Why? she repeated silently, sitting up in bed and staring at the window, her arms wrapped around her bent knees. Sometime in the last few hours, the rain had finally stopped. Was that a sign?
It’s a sign, Marcy
, Liam told her.
A sign to take the day off and get some rest
.
I was worried about you
, Vic said.
I’m still worried about you
.
You can stop worrying about me
, Devon whispered from the gray early morning mist outside the window.
I’m fine, Mommy. I’m happy
.
We haven’t been happy in such a long time
, Peter said.
“The lights in the house were all on,” Liam had told her yesterday afternoon.
I admit I’m a little dense about these things, but even I see the light eventually
.
“They must have come home early.”
It’s gotten to the point where I hate coming home
, Peter said.
“They’re home?”
Maybe if you tried it more often
.
That’s not the point
.
What
is
the point?
The point is I’m not happy
. We’re
not happy
.
“Happy,” Marcy repeated now. Such a ridiculous word. What did it mean?
I’m fine, Mommy. I’m happy
.
“So, I decided, what the hell,” Liam told her. “I’ll just phone them.”
“You phoned the O’Connors?”
“They were in the phone book. It was easy.”
You’re not making this very easy for me
.
“What did you say to them?”
What are you trying to say?
“Well, it was Shannon who answered the phone.”
I’m in love with someone else
.
“Which was perfect, because it was Shannon I wanted to speak to anyway.”
You’re in love with another woman? Who, for God’s sake?
Sarah
.
Sarah? Our golf instructor?
You say that like it’s a dirty word
.
How long has this been going on?
Not long. A few months …
We’ve been married almost twenty-five years. We’re going to Ireland for our twenty-fifth anniversary
.
I was married to my first wife for almost thirty-three years
, Vic interjected, reasserting his presence in her head.
“I explained who I was,” Liam said, “and assured her I wasn’t trying to get her in any trouble but that it was very important she listen to me.”
“What did she say?”
One day Kathy said she was feeling kind of funny
.
“She didn’t say anything. She just listened.”
Three months later, she was dead
.
Sit down, girls
, the school principal told Marcy and her sister, ushering them inside his brightly lit office.
I’m afraid I have some very bad news
.
“And what did you say?”
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea …
“That I knew she’d been out with Jax on Friday night and that he’d given her a pair of earrings, earrings he’d stolen from your hotel room.…”
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown …
“She got all flustered, said she knew nothing about it, that she’d had no idea the earrings had been stolen. She begged me not to tell the O’Connors or go to the gardai.”
Marcy, the police are here
.
“I told her that I had good reason to suspect that Jax and Audrey were using her to get to the O’Connor baby.…”
We’ve found an overturned canoe.…
“My God, how did she react to that?”
“Well, naturally, she got very upset.…”
Has your daughter been depressed lately?
“What did she say?”
No, you’re wrong. There has to be some mistake.…
“That she was sure I was mistaken, that it wasn’t possible …”
Till human voices wake us …
“Somehow I managed to convince her. Or maybe she was just afraid of getting into trouble and losing her job.”
Our daughter is dead, Marcy
.
Devon is dead, Marcy
.
“At any rate, she agreed to help us.”
“What?”
“Shannon has agreed to help us find your daughter,” Liam said, temporarily silencing the other voices in Marcy’s head.
“How?”
“By talking to Audrey, setting up a meeting …”
Marcy held her breath, waiting for the rest of the sentence.
“Except it won’t be Shannon who goes to meet her.…” Liam said.
“It’ll be me,” Marcy whispered now, as she had the day before.
“It’ll be you,” he repeated.
“Do you really think Shannon will go through with it?”
“I think she’s too scared not to. Afraid we’ll go to the gardai about the earrings, or worse, blab to the O’Connors about Jax, and she’ll be out of a job. Nah, Shannon will come through for us, you’ll see.”
Marcy pushed herself out of bed and walked to the window, stared beyond the rain-soaked garden into the blank screen of the early morning horizon, watching it fill with images of
yesterday. The garden became the hotel lobby, its shrubs morphing into sofas, a series of trees at the garden’s periphery melding into the mahogany staircase, the wet grass weaving into an elegant area rug.
“How soon do you think this meeting will take place?” Marcy recalled asking Liam.
“Could be as early as tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
Today, Marcy realized, shivering despite her warm pajamas.
“Shannon said she was gonna call Audrey as soon as the O’Connors went to bed, try to set somethin’ up.”
“Do you think Audrey will get suspicious?”
“Nah. Why would she? They’re friends, aren’t they? Friends arrange get-togethers.”
“I guess.”
“What’s the matter?” Liam asked. “Not getting cold feet, are you?”
Was she? “It’s just that after everything that’s happened, it seems almost too easy.…”
“It’s not a question of being easy,” he told her. “It’s a question of greed.”
“Greed?”
“If our boy Jax hadn’t gotten greedy, if he hadn’t seen your earrings when he went to trash your hotel room and decided to pinch them, we wouldn’t have had any leverage. Shannon would probably have told me to sod off the minute I told her why I was calling. It was them earrings that made her stop and think twice.” He laughed. “I told you that things have a way of working out in the end.”
And if they don’t …, Marcy thought now.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown.…
“It’s not the end,” she said out loud.
Till human voices wake us …
“It’s not the end.”
And we drown
.
“It’s not the end.”
Our daughter is dead, Marcy
.
Devon hadn’t drowned.
“It’s not the end.”
So this is it?
Marcy asked her husband of almost twenty-five years, noticing his image lingering by the garden gate.
You’re really leaving?
It’s better this way, Marcy. You know it is. We’ll just end up hating each other if I stay
.
Too late
, she told him.
I already hate you
.
That’s too bad. I was really hoping we could be friends. We still have a son together
.
I don’t need to be reminded I have a son
.
Are you sure of that?
Damn you, Peter, Marcy thought, watching his image evaporate and the garden return to normal. Damn you for saying that.
Damn you even more for being right.
She returned to the bed and picked up the phone, quickly punching in the number for Darren’s cell. It was picked up after three rings, although there was no voice on the other end, only muffled sounds and heavy breathing. “Hello?” Marcy said. “Hello, Darren? Darren, are you there?”
“Mom?” a sleepy voice whispered.
“Oh, my God,” Marcy said, realizing she’d forgotten about the time difference. “I’m so sorry. Did I wake you?”
She pictured her son huddled beneath the covers of his narrow bed in the old log cabin he shared with the eight ten-year-old
boys in his charge and understood he was keeping his voice purposely low so as not to wake them. The curly brown hair he’d inherited from her was no doubt coiled into a comical assortment of hirsute twists and turns, and the serious hazel eyes he’d inherited from his father would be struggling to stay open.
“It’s okay,” he told her. Then, with growing panic, “Is something wrong? Did something happen to Dad? Did he have an accident on his way home?” The questions spilled out one on top of the other, each one more urgent than the last.
“There was no accident,” Marcy assured her son, feeling a pang of jealousy at his concern.
“He didn’t have a heart attack or anything, did he? He seemed okay this afternoon.”
“Your father is fine,” Marcy told him.
“I don’t understand,” Darren said, the last remnants of sleep falling from his voice. “Why are you calling?”
“I just wanted to talk to you.”
“At one in the morning?”
“I’m really sorry about that. I forgot about the time difference.”
“Time difference? What are you talking about?” Darren asked.
“Didn’t Dad tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“I’m in Ireland.”
“You’re in Ireland?” her son asked incredulously.
Marcy heard the silent
Are you crazy?
that followed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there today,” she told him.
“Why? You never come to visitors’ day.”
“That’s not true.” Marcy started to protest, stopping when she realized that it was true. She had always found some
excuse not to make the trip to Maine: Devon wasn’t feeling well; Devon didn’t want to go and Marcy didn’t think it was a good idea to leave her alone; Devon had been acting out again, refusing to take her meds. And then after Devon’s overturned canoe was found floating in the middle of Georgian Bay, Marcy had been too consumed with grief to go anywhere. It was all she could do to get out of bed. “How’s the weather up there?” she asked.