Twisted River (3 page)

“What's wrong? Is something wrong?” Her dark eyes were wide and anxious.

“No, sweetheart, why would anything be wrong?”

There was plenty wrong, but nothing that Izzy needed to worry her young head about.

“Oh, it's just that . . . well . . . I thought. Oh, never mind. Good night, then, Dad.”

She retreated, sliding beneath the duvet.

“Night, night, Izzy.”

He closed the door and had that horrible feeling that once again he was failing his children. Fergus and Izzy were a long way from happy campers.

His legs felt heavy going up the stairs. In the kitchen a candle flickered on the breakfast counter. A freshly ironed shirt hung over the kitchen doorknob.

Shit!

He'd been distracted by the kids. He almost forgot. Making his way quickly downstairs again to the bedroom, he unzipped the whiffy nylon running jacket, putting it in the wicker laundry basket in the en suite shower room. He tugged the shirt over his head, not bothering to unbutton it. That could not go in the laundry basket. Those stains were never coming out—he knew that. Pulling on fresh boxer shorts and the T-shirt that he slept in, he opened the front door quietly and made his way to the wheelie bin around the side of the house.

Upstairs, on the top floor, he found Kate deep in thought, staring at the computer screen.

“Drink?”

He offered her the glass he'd brought from the kitchen. He'd opened a bottle of the cheap wine she'd bought last week. She might
want it when she heard what he had to say. But Kate didn't even look up. She didn't even acknowledge that he had entered the room.
Tap, tappedy, tap, tap, tap
went the keyboard. So it was going to be like that, was it? He might think the better of telling her anything just yet.

“Fergus stubbed his toe . . .” she said casually.

“Oh . . .”

Hardly a 999 call in the grand scheme of things, he thought.

“He was pretty upset.”

He kept his mouth shut. She was going somewhere with this.

“Like
really, really
upset, Mannix. You know the way he gets?” She looked up this time. Accusingly. “I-want-Dad upset, I-want-Dad-now-this-minute, that kind of upset . . .”

“Poor Ferg has had one shitty day,” said Mannix.

Her gaze was steady. “So I called your mobile, and when I couldn't get you, I called Spike. At home. Spike said he hadn't seen you . . .”

Now was his opportunity. The door was wide open. He should tell her now. He felt his pulse quicken. Her eyes searched his face for an answer. He opened his mouth to speak.

“My mobile . . .” He hesitated. “Must have left the bloody thing on silent. A problem with one of the servers tonight—we had a patch release, there were bugs, and guess who they call?” He grinned widely, amazing himself at how readily the lies tripped over his tongue. How easily they came to him now. It isn't what he had meant to say, not how he'd anticipated the conversation going, but once more she'd thrown him off course.

“You were at work?”

Her tone was assured. She gave little outward sign of not believing him. Her question innocent. But this was how things had been lately. Tiptoeing around each other. Yet it represented an improvement.

“Yup. No rest for the wicked . . .” He tried another smile and once again proffered the glass of wine. This time she took it, her fingers softly brushing his as she clasped the stem.

“I want you to take a look at something . . .” Taking a sip, she looked back to the screen.

Oh, Christ, what had she found?

“Come here.” She leaned back, pulling up a curvy chair she'd bought at a college end-of-year show during the good times.

His heart was in his mouth. But what he saw surprised him. Confused him. He leaned forward to get a closer view of the screen. An estate agent's website displayed a shot of an elegant wood-paneled sitting room with a large marble fireplace and an ornate over-the-mantle mirror. Three oversized windows dominated the room, one recessed in a high-ceilinged alcove. It wasn't an estate agent he recognized.

They'd spoken briefly about downsizing, but neither of them had had the stomach to mention it since. They loved this house. Selling the beach house had been wrenching enough. As for the apartments in Bulgaria, he didn't give a fiddler's, but this house was different. It was their family home. The bank couldn't take that. But what Kate was showing him was definitely not a downsize. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“What . . . ?” He looked at Kate.

“Just a minute,” Kate responded. “You'll see . . .” She proceeded to scroll and enlarge each of the thumbnail shots on the screen.

There was a well-appointed kitchen with a center island and ice-white floor-to-ceiling cabinetry with eye-level glass-paned cupboards. Saucepans and other kitchen utensils hung from a rack over the island.

“Mmm . . .” Kate murmured her approval at the stylish room.

“But, Kate . . .” Mannix tried to interrupt.

“Hang on to your boxers, I'll explain,” she said, and with exaggerated exasperation she proceeded to scroll through more photos. “The patience of a gnat,” she muttered.

Mannix thought he'd better do as she had asked. After all, it wouldn't hurt to humor her. He found himself looking at photos of bedrooms. There was no doubt about it. This was the home of someone with taste. And equally obvious, it was the home of someone with means.

The bedrooms were large, the beds too, and built-in shelving and wardrobes kept everything neat and tidy. A kid's bedroom showed a poster of Harry Potter behind the bed. Mannix had often thought it odd how Fergus liked Harry Potter in a dispassionate kind of way—
not with the same all-consuming enthusiasm as other kids his age. King Kong was the man for Fergus. Poor ol' Ferg was immutable in his likes and dislikes.

“And the pièce de résistance . . .” Kate gave a final click and pushed the mouse away with a flourish. She sat back in the chair with the satisfaction of an artist who has confidently swept the last brushstroke on a canvas.

In the foreground of the photo in question was a balcony complete with outdoor furniture. It overlooked a park and a river. Tower blocks could be seen in the distance. Dublin? London? It certainly wasn't Limerick. Two glasses of wine sat invitingly on a glass-topped rattan table.

“I don't get it.” Mannix shrugged as he swatted a tiny fly determined to land in his glass. “What am I looking at? Have we won the lotto?”

“I wish,” said Kate, smiling, and tried to sip her wine. The fly had switched its attention to her glass now.

“It's an impressive pad, I'll give you that . . .” Mannix eyeballed the screen, engaging with Kate in her flight of fancy. “The dude that owns that gaff isn't short of a few euros.”

“A few dollars, you mean . . .”

“Oh . . .” Mannix looked again at the screen, squinting at the small type in a sidebar. The address was given as New York. Riverside Drive, Manhattan, New York. He now stared stupidly at Kate. Was he supposed to know what was going on? Was this a reference to some earlier conversation that he was supposed to have kept in storage, something he'd nodded and smiled at, pretending to hear while he was mentally working on something else?

“Am I missing something?”

“No.” She laughed at his confusion, and leaning over, she put her head on his shoulder in a rare but welcome gesture of intimacy. He tangled his fingers in the blond waves. She didn't say anything for a second or two and he savored the moment. It had been awhile since she had openly sought any affection from him.

“I've been thinking,” she said, straightening herself up and looking
into the viscous yellow of the glass. “I've been thinking about Fergus and Izzy. And about you and me as well. But mainly about Ferg . . . We have to do something.”

“I agree.” Mannix nodded, unclear where the conversation was headed. What did a smart apartment in New York have to do with anything?

“We should go to New York. The four of us. On holiday. In the October school holidays.”

She looked at him. She was deadly serious.

Mannix guffawed with laughter.

“Jesus, Kate, I have to hand it to you. You take the biscuit. Here we are slaving away to get ourselves back on track, you're always harping on about it, for feck sake, and now you want us to take off for New York! How the hell are we going to afford that? What planet are you on, my darling artist?”

Kate's expression changed to one of hurt. Like he had suddenly slapped her when they'd been building bridges. Immediately, he regretted his impulsive outburst. His big bloody mouth.

“I have an idea . . . a plan . . .” she said in a little girl voice, making him feel worse.

“You do . . . ?” He tried to look conciliatory.

“As I was saying, before you jumped down my throat—I think it would do Fergus a world of good to have something to look forward to right now. Something good to focus on.
King Kong
is his favorite movie in the world, right? The Empire State—his favorite building? Hence, New York. It'd be one in the eye for Frankie Flynn, at least—the only place that little delinquent is headed is a young offenders' institute!”

“Of course, but . . .”

“I know, Mannix—the money. There's the accommodation for a start. That's where this comes in.”

She looked back to the PC screen. “It's a home-exchange site,” she explained. “The people who own this particular apartment are looking for an exchange home in the Clare or Limerick area at the end of October.”

Mannix raised his eyebrows, careful this time to bite his tongue. He'd been to the States plenty of times, California with Spike in their twenties, Cincinnati visiting relatives, with work in Texas, and latterly, only five, six months ago, in Boston on a training course with his latest job. But he found it pretty damned hard to fathom that someone with a luxury apartment in Manhattan would want an exchange home in Limerick.

“Just one question, Kate. Why?” He tried not to sound too skeptical.

Putting down the wineglass, she pulled in closer to the desk again and cupped the mouse.

“It says here . . . just a minute . . . I know I saw it somewhere . . . yes, here it is . . . Hazel Harvey.” Kate looked at Mannix. “She's the owner, she's a native of Limerick, so she says here in the owner profile. Born and reared on O'Callaghan Strand just over the bridge!”

“Oh, I see . . .” Well, that might explain it, all right. “Mmmm . . .”

“Okay, I know,” said Kate, anticipating his next remarks. “So, that's only one part of it. What about the rest? The flights? The spending money?”

“Exactly,” said Mannix, wondering what she'd pull out of the hat next.

“Well, don't be mad at me . . .” The little girl voice again. “I've been saving. Not much. Just a little every week—in the credit union. For Fergus, you see—for private speech and language therapy, and there are other therapies I've heard of for kids like him. There's a place in Galway. Anyway, that's all by the by now. I really think we need to do something now. Something today. Our little boy's self-esteem is going to be in tatters if we don't do something soon . . . and short of getting Frankie Flynn with a baseball bat . . . Anyhow, the long and short of it is I have the money for flights and sightseeing. I vote we spend it now.”

A wave of affection washed over Mannix. He'd always admired Kate's resourcefulness, her coping skills, especially in times of crisis. And, God knows, she'd needed that over the last few years. She looked at him now, earnest faced, waiting for a response.

His response seemed obvious. She'd conjured up a holiday out of
nowhere. He'd never even known about the nest egg. And this wasn't any old holiday. This was the holiday of a lifetime.

“Well?”

She was waiting.

“I can only imagine the look on Ferg's face . . .” A ripple of excitement fluttered in his belly. Something warm. Something good.

“You're up for it?” A slow smile was beginning to spread across her face. Her face was a mixture of mischief, excitement, and happiness colliding into one.

“You betcha!” he answered, leaning over and kissing her full on the mouth.

It wasn't the way he anticipated closing the evening. Not by a long chalk. He'd anticipated screaming, disbelief, disgust—and worse.
But one thing was for sure—it was clear that he couldn't tell her now. The timing was all wrong.

“Hopefully, we'll hear back soon,” she mumbled in between kisses. “I put up all the best photos I could find of this house. And views of the river outside. It may not be the Hudson . . .” She laughed then as her hands crept underneath his T-shirt.

“Come on . . . bed . . . now.” Mannix grinned.

The way things were going he could be in for a double whammy. Kate seemed elated by her scheming. Relieved that she had hatched a plan for Fergie's plight. She slipped her hand in his as they made their way down the stairs. He wouldn't squander this opportunity.

He was right. Kate wanted to make love. To feel him inside her again. As she wrapped her legs around him he couldn't help but feel dishonest, that he'd stolen her affection. Either way he was enjoying it, stolen or otherwise. But he wasn't a fool. Mannix O'Brien knew he was playing on borrowed time.

 • • • 

“Guys, I have something to tell you.” Kate was fit to burst.

She must have phoned him at least five times today to keep him abreast of developments. And he made sure this time his phone was not on silent. Even Mannix, who liked to move fast once he'd made a
decision, was surprised at how quickly and easily everything was falling into place. Twenty-four hours had not yet passed since Kate sent out her request, but the folks with the fancy Manhattan apartment were looking forward to coming to Limerick. They loved the look of the house overlooking the falls at Clancy Strand. They were a professional couple and their kids were roughly the same ages as Izzy and Fergus.