The Selkie Enchantress (26 page)

“I did,” Caitlin conceded. “But this was different. I had someone to take care of now, someone to protect.”

“You could have come with me to Galway,” Liam said. “We could have gotten a place. I could have found a second job and still made it through school. We would have figured it out along the way, made it work.”

“But I would never have known if you were with me because you wanted to be, or because you felt it was your duty.”

“My duty?” Liam took a step back. “How could you ever have thought…?” Sleet rained down around him as more pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “When you left the island…” he breathed. “You didn’t go to an all girls’ school…”

“No,” Caitlin admitted. “I went to live with an aunt in Donegal—one of my father’s sisters. I thought I could handle everything on my own.” She scrubbed the heel of her palm down her mud-streaked denim. “I wasn’t planning to hide it forever. I was going to tell you. As soon as I found work, as soon as I knew there wasn’t a chance of you dropping out of school.”

“But you didn’t…” Liam shook his head. “You never told me anything.”

“I know.” Caitlin looked up at him. “Because everything fell apart.”

The wind cut through Liam’s sleeves and he felt a bitter cold take root inside him. “What happened?”

“Our son… Michael…” Caitlin clutched the box to her chest. “He was stillborn.”

Stillborn?
Liam sank to the ground in front of her. How much had she gone through without him? How much grief had she hidden from him, how much pain and heartache? “How could you have kept this from me? Why didn’t you come to me afterwards? I would have been there for you. Even if you had kept it from me in the beginning. I would never have let you go through this alone.”

“I wanted to tell you.” She swallowed. “I came to Galway once, a few months after… I came to your school to tell you the truth. But then I saw you standing on the steps of this beautiful stone building surrounded by a group of students. You were talking and joking. Making plans for the night. You looked so carefree and happy. And I… couldn’t do it. You had the whole world at your fingertips. I didn’t fit in there. I didn’t belong there. I thought you would grow, change into someone different. I thought you would change into someone I hardly knew.”

“Did I?” Liam asked brokenly. “Did I change into someone you hardly knew?”

Caitlin shook her head. “No. You didn’t. But that only made it harder. I moved back here because this was the only place I’d ever felt at home. I thought you’d stay in Galway, but you kept coming back. And you kept… bringing girls with you, a different one every weekend. And when you didn’t, you’d try to talk to me, and flirt with me like I was one of them. But I wanted so much more than that.”

Liam pulled her into his arms. He could feel her pulse racing through her soaking wet clothes. “All I ever wanted was to be with you, Caitlin. Since the first time you snuck in my bedroom window and gave me that fairy tale. Since the first time you kissed me on a dare when we were thirteen. Since the first night you let me lay with you when you were sixteen…” He looked up, realizing where they were for the first time. “…in
this
cottage.”

At the scuff of boots behind them, Liam glanced over his shoulder. Glenna held out her hand. “Give me the box, Caitlin. We’re running out of time.”

“No.” Caitlin shook her head, pulling out of Liam’s arms. “I can’t. It’s… Someone’s tampered with it.”

“Tampered with it?” Tara asked, sliding out of the cottage behind Glenna and Sam. “What do you mean?”

Caitlin pushed at her wet hair. “Someone’s played a terrible joke.”

Glenna took a step toward her. “Give me the box, Caitlin.”

Caitlin shook her head. “I want to get rid of it. Forget this ever happened. Whoever did this…”

“Did what?” Tara asked gently, walking over to kneel down beside her. “Caitlin, what was supposed to be in that box?”

Caitlin cradled it to her chest, her eyes meeting Liam’s. “Michael’s ashes.”

“Caitlin,” Tara put her arm around her friend’s shoulders, her voice soothing. “Please show us what’s inside.”

Liam took the box from her hands. He loosened the top and lifted the object out for all of them to see. The rain tinkered down on the gleaming silver baby’s rattle, in the shape of a seal.

“Dad?” Kelsey asked as he set her down inside the pub and helped her out of her soggy rain jacket. “How much trouble am I in?”

“Don’t worry about that, Kelsey.” He shook out the jacket and hung it over the hook. “We’ll talk about it later.”

Striding over to the fire, he unlatched the heavy cauldron from the iron hook, carrying it back to the sink to fill with water. His footsteps echoed through the empty barroom and he paused when he saw Kelsey lingering in the stairwell, chewing on her lip. “Go on up and change into something dry while I get the water boiling. It won’t be long but you shouldn’t be in those wet clothes any longer than you have to. There should be a few things left in your old bedroom.”

She scampered up the steps and he shook his head, carrying the cauldron back to the fireplace. When he had it settled in the hanger, he added a fresh log of peat and used the poker to stoke what was left of the flames until they caught fire and licked up the sides.

Kelsey came back downstairs and he turned, his heart clenching at the sight of his daughter in a lavender unicorn sweatshirt and a pair of pink stretch pants an inch too short.

“It’s all I could find.” She crossed the room to join him by the fire, glancing down at the puffy white unicorn with a braided mane on the front of her shirt. “Who gave this to me, anyway?”

“I think it was Sarah Dooley.” Dominic handed her a towel. “A few years ago for your birthday.”

“Someone should talk to her.” Kelsey sat on the floor next to her father, twisting the towel around her wet hair and holding her hands out to the fire. “She gives terrible gifts.”

Dominic let out a long breath, one he hadn’t even known he’d been holding, and caught her in another bear hug, squeezing her to his side.

“Dad!” she protested, wriggling out of his grip.

Dominic shook his head, refusing to let go until she sighed and gave up. He pressed his chin to the top of her head. She looked so precious in that silly outfit from a few years ago. It reminded him of how fast she was growing. And he wanted to hold onto her for a minute, before everything started to change. There was still mud on her face, dirt still caked under her fingernails, but that was Kelsey. She was always getting into things, always the first to stir up trouble if she could find it. Damned if she wasn’t going to cause him one heart attack after another as she grew up.

“Dad?” Kelsey inched back. “How did you know where to look for us tonight?”

“Tara had a hunch.”

“Because of the rose?”

He nodded.

“So, she’d seen it before?”

“She had, yes.”

“Didn’t she think it was strange? That it was growing in the middle of winter?”

“I imagine she did.” And they still needed to talk about why she had kept it from him. But that was another conversation, for another time. It seemed his family would have
a lot
to talk about over the coming weeks. But that was the nature of family, wasn’t it? Just like everything in life, you figured it out as you stumbled along. All that mattered now was that they were all safe. At the sudden guarded shift in his daughter’s expression, he angled his head. “What exactly did you think you were going to find under there, Kelsey?”

Kelsey looked away. “Owen thinks his mum’s some kind of a sea creature.”

“I see…” Dominic said slowly, remembering his conversation in the kitchen with Tara earlier. About the document she and Caitlin had found on Liam’s computer. About the missing fairy tale. She’d been convinced he was trapped in some kind of a spell.

Kelsey nodded. “When we heard Brennan’s story this afternoon, we thought she must be a selkie. I thought if we could find her pelt, we could prove that Owen was right.”

“Brennan’s story?”

“The one about the white selkie.”

Wasn’t that the same thing Tara had seen on Liam’s computer? “So you thought that because Tara’s ancestor’s pelt was hidden under the roses, this one might be, too?”

Kelsey nodded.

“But it wasn’t?”

“No.” Kelsey picked dirt out from under her nails. “I was wrong. I’m sorry. I just wish…”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“What, Kelsey? What is it?”

“I just wish I knew how to help him. I don’t know what to do.”

“About Owen?”

She nodded.

“Do you think he’ll be in a lot of trouble tonight?”

Kelsey looked into the fire. “I do.”

He studied his daughter’s worried face, firelight flickering over her fairy-like features. “Is there anything I can do?”

Kelsey shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

He reached for her hand. “Next time you think someone’s mum is a sea creature, would you tell me?”

Kelsey bit her lip and looked away.

“What is it?”

“I still think she might be a sea creature.”

Dominic’s pulled his hand back. “
What?
”

“I can’t help it.” She grabbed the poker, started jabbing it into the fire. “I think Owen’s right. He’s sure he’s been living underwater. He can’t remember anything else from his past except for starfish and seashells and selkies. And yet, he’s terrified of it. You’d think if he was from there, if he belonged there, he’d want to go back. But he doesn’t. He’s afraid of it. And he’s afraid of his mother. He doesn’t even want to be around her.”

Dominic stared at her. “Go on…”

Her anxious eyes flickered up to his. “He can’t read. I don’t think he’s ever been to school. I don’t think he’s ever even played with children his own age. I think he…” She lowered her voice to a whisper even though they were the only ones in the room. “I think he was
taken
.”

“Taken?”

Kelsey nodded, dropping the poker. It fell against the floorboards with a clatter. “Like a changeling. Liam has a book upstairs. I can show it to you.” She started to jump to her feet and he pulled her back down.

“I know what a changeling is,” Dominic said tightly.

“I think he might be one,” Kelsey whispered. “I don’t think Nuala is his real mum. I think she stole him and took him underwater.”

Dominic stared at his daughter. It wasn’t possible, was it? A strange sensation, like ice crawling over his skin, had him brushing a hand over his arm, like he was imagining it. But impossible things
had
happened on this island. And that
would
explain why nothing about Nuala’s past added up. Why she couldn’t seem to remember anything about Limerick. Why her son was always wet and looking at her with that strange distant expression, almost like he was afraid of her. And it would explain why Liam had fallen head over heels for her when he was supposed to be falling for Caitlin. “But why?” Dominic stammered, still trying to wrap his mind around it. “Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know. She must have had a reason.”

“But how would we prove it?” Dominic stood, starting to pace. “Even if what you suppose is true, it would be her word against ours. And how would we ever find his real parents? It would have been ten years since he was… taken.”

Kelsey crept closer to the fire. She huddled beside it, hugging her knees to her chest. “Haven’t you noticed how much Owen looks like Uncle Liam?”

Dominic froze. He stared at his daughter.

“I’d know, right?” Kelsey asked, looking up at him worriedly. “If I had a cousin?”

“Of course,” Dominic said slowly.

“I mean,” Kelsey picked at the dirt under her nails again. “If Owen’s ten… then Uncle Liam would have been eighteen when he had him. That’s not too young, is it?”

Eighteen. That would have been the year Liam left for university. There was only one girl on this island Liam was after at that age. The same girl who had left to finish her last two years of high school on a
scholarship
a few weeks after he had left for his first term.
Holy shit.

“Kelsey, I want you tell me everything Brennan told you this afternoon.”

“About the white selkie?”

“Yes.” He dropped to his knees in front of her, putting both hands on her shoulders. “Everything.”

***

“Where are we going?” Owen asked when they passed the cottage at the edge of the cluster of white-washed homes and the road curved down toward the docks. A yellow fog slithered through a gap in the stone walls. The rain had thinned to barely more than a mist and an eerie silence swept over the harbor.

“It’s time to go home.”

“Home?” Owen dug his heels into the pavement. “But I don’t want to go home!”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you snuck out tonight.” Nuala pulled him along, dragging him down the dark path. In the village, an owl hooted. Owen looked frantically over his shoulder at the silvery cottages. The shutters of many of them were crooked and barely hanging on. Garden gates were splintered. Stones had spilled into the streets, causing the runoff to bubble and split, streaming out around them.