Whispers in the Mist (12 page)

Danny wrapped his arms around them and kept his tone light. “You scared the living bejaysus out of me. I see you’re fit for bed. Has your mother left you alone to run a quick errand?”

“Don’t be silly,” Mandy said. “We’re too young to be on our own yet.”

Thank Christ for that. “Where’s your mom?”

“It’s like this, Da,” Mandy said, turning serious. Her hair was starting to reveal henna-like reddish highlights similar to Ellen’s. She brushed strands away from her face with an annoyed grunt. “We could hear you very well, you know, and even though we knew it was you, we decided to stay very quiet. It was hard, especially for Petey.” She shrugged with an exaggerated movement. “We were in the closet anyhow, see. We wanted to play a trick on you. But Gemma got scared. She’s our sitter, but she’s shy.”

“Gemma?” He’d heard that name recently. From Alan and then from Merrit, right. Gemma was the odd girl who had stolen her necklace. With the brother who had an accusation against Liam. “Now wait a minute—”

“Da!” Petey piped up. “Look what we got. Come look and see. But shh, we have to be quiet.”

Following his children’s lead, Danny dropped to all fours and crawled toward the closet, where two kittens blinked against the light.

“We need to keep the door shut for now.” Mandy poked her head into the closet, and Danny followed suit, looking at the woman crammed in at the other end. So this was Gemma, necklace stealer. The woman’s knees were drawn up under her chin, and she stared at a pair of Ellen’s summer sandals.

“They’re still getting their strength back,” Mandy said. “They need quiet, right, Gemma?”

Getting no response, Mandy shooed them backwards again and eased the closet door closed. “We just fed them. They need to go to bed now.”

“They’re our new kittens,” Petey said. “One for me, one for Mandy. Mam said it was okay.”

“So,” Danny said, “Mam invited Gemma and someone else—her brother?—to sleep over?”

The children grinned like it was the world’s best slumber party.

“For how long?”

“Hopefully forever!” Petey said.

Ellen must have lost her mind. Kittens Danny could handle. But not a couple of siblings with murky agendas.

“Kidlings,” he said, striving for a light tone, “fetch Gemma out, please. Tell her that as your da I need to be officially introduced to her and to her brother. Where is he?”

“He went to the pub,” Mandy said. “Gemma said he’s upset about something, so it’s better for him to be alone.”

“She didn’t really say anything,” Petey said. “She writes everything.”

Bloody brilliant. An odd girl who refused to talk, and a brother who drank his problems away. “And where’s your mom?”

“Don’t know. Just out for a while.”

Just out. There was no
just
about it.

“Go on then, coax Gemma out,” Danny said. “Tell her I don’t bite.”

Mandy swatted his arm. “You’re funny. Of course you don’t bite.”

They shut the closet door against him and began their quiet entreaties to Gemma.

Danny still held the jewelry gift box, but now with the full force of his aching fingers. Sweat matted the black velvet. He raised the lid. A pair of earrings blinked up at him with an iridescent blue sheen. He was no expert, but he guessed opals—and nice ones too. No way would Ellen buy these for herself, so the question was, who gave them to her? And where was Ellen now, leaving their children in the care of a woman who refused to talk? Now he wished he’d read his wife’s journal while he had the chance.

Danny replaced the box in its compartment, then slipped off his wedding band and replaced it also.

SIXTEEN

A
LAN HANDED OFF A
whiskey and soda and continued on down the bar, picking up empty glasses. He moved fast, trying to keep up with the festival crowd. He was essentially a servant, his presence forgotten until his customers needed a drink, so forgotten that they didn’t bother lowering their voices when he was in the vicinity.

“—and you are too eager to please.” Seamus sat with Brendan at the end of the bar where it curved toward the wall, away from the rest of the regulars. “I swear to Christ you need to—”

Every night it was like this, catching bits of conversation that were none of Alan’s business. He set the dirties in a bin for later washing and turned on the taps to rinse his hands. The noise drowned out Brendan’s response to Seamus. They looked alike, those two, with their beaky noses and fair skin. Brendan didn’t have his father’s outgoing temperament, so whereas Seamus took the measure of you in a direct manner, his son engaged in glances. They had the kind of relationship that Alan used to hope he could foster with his father back in France. But that was before his father turned out to be a right prick.

Alan dried his hands as he scanned his customers. Off in a corner, Malcolm sat at a cozy two-top table with a woman Alan didn’t recognize. Malcolm leaned forward on his elbows, listening to her. He nodded and responded, apparently asking her a question, because she smiled and continued her end of the conversation.

Unlike Alan, Malcolm never seemed to have trouble attracting women. Gentlemanly manners and charm worked wonders, apparently—even for a man as unusual-looking as Malcolm. Alan could use some charm lessons.

A raised glass beckoned Alan back to his duties. Dermot, the poor sod. His erect posture but bowed head, the way he clenched his glass yet let his lower lip hang, told Alan that the man was on his last edge. It was as if his body wanted to simultaneously erupt and melt.

“You ever hate yourself?” Dermot lifted his head like it already hurt from a hangover. “Never mind. I’ll take a double.”

Alan pushed the glass up against the Scotch optic to dispense one shot, paused, and then pushed up again to release the second shot. He set the glass in front of Dermot and wiped the already clean counter with a bar rag. “Gemma okay?”

Dermot swallowed a large gulp and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We have a place to sleep now, anyhow. A woman named Ellen Ahern lent us a room. Kind of her.”

“Careful there, mate,” Alan said. “Her husband’s Gardaí. Still married even if they’re not living together.”

“Police? Fan-fecking-tastic.” A spasm contorted Dermot’s face. “We should have been here and gone already—back to Dublin.”

Dermot looked so pained that Alan rolled up the left sleeve of his hurling jersey. He pointed to a tattoo that encircled his forearm. It swirled in a vibrant smoke of imagery around his arm, one illustration feeding into the other in waves of blue. “The design’s called ‘A Man’s Ruin,’” he said.

Alan rotated his arm to show off the overall theme. Booze bottles, dice, fags, pills, a small Catholic cross, and in the center of it all a blonde woman with a snake covering her pornographic bits.

Dermot caught Alan’s wrist and rotated it underside up. “What’s that supposed to mean, the shamrock?”

“It means that depending on luck can ruin a man as well as anything else.”

Dermot almost threw Alan’s arm back into his face. “But you forgot a few things, didn’t you? You forgot family. Family can hang you up like nothing else.”

Without word, Alan pointed to the snake entwined around both the Celtic cross and the blond woman.

“And there’s secrets also. Where’s secrets on your arm? They’ll eat you alive.”

“Yes,” Alan said. “But I didn’t think of that at the time.”

Nathan Tate squeezed in beside Dermot and ordered a Black and Tan. Alan once again caught himself up in the swirl of customer satisfaction. He kept an eye on Dermot, who drank steadily without talking to anyone. Alan was aware of Seamus returning to his usual spot amongst the crows with Brendan at his side, and the subsequent debate about who had first coined the term “crows” to describe themselves.

The vocal blur washed over Alan. He kept half an ear attuned to the crowd while his thoughts gravitated back to Gemma. She had to figure heavily in Dermot’s preoccupations with family and secrets. He slapped his bar rag against the counter.

Stop. Gemma was none of his business. He maneuvered his way around one of his waitresses and almost bumped into Bijou. She pawed at the ground, her signal for a bathroom break. Every night at 11:00, more timely than the wall clock. Alan assessed the teeming room and the wave of newcomers pressing in from the front door. He pulled Bijou’s lead out from behind the cash register.

“Brendan,” he said. “It’s time.”

With a ready smile, Brendan held out his hand for the dangling lead.

“Your pint will be waiting.” Alan tucked a plastic bag into Brendan’s hand. “And don’t be forgetting this. Fitz will talk me a new piehole if he finds one of her piles. That man can smell dog shit in his sleep.”

Brendan laughed. Over the summer he’d filled out and his acne had faded. Alan had watched Brendan grow up in the bar, sipping sodas alongside his da until this year when he’d graduated to sneaking sips of Guinness from Seamus that Alan pretended not to notice. Brendan enjoyed his status as the youngest crow and often looked on his father with pride. It embarrassed Alan to see his doting expression. His adulation wouldn’t last; it never did. Seamus would betray him at some point.

“Off with you then,” Alan said.

The crowd parted for boy and dog. Alan pulled down his sleeve to cover a man’s ruin.

Saturday

Children are very nice observers,
and they will often perceive your slightest
defects. In general, those who govern
children forgive nothing in them,
but everything in themselves.

François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

SEVENTEEN

D
ANNY PULLED UP IN
front of Alan’s pub, hoping that Alan’s call was a false alarm. The Plough’s lights cast an ominous glow through the fog. Given the hour, the plaza was otherwise enshrouded in the peaceful hibernation of night. He rubbed his eyes, exhausted at the start of this new day. Ellen had returned to the house thirty minutes ago, at around 2:30 a.m., and she hadn’t been thrilled to see him waiting up for her. By then, Dermot had arrived drunk and, with barely a how-do-you-do, had weaved his way to his sleeping bag, apologizing the whole way.

At least his wife’s maternal instincts hadn’t completely abandoned her. Gemma McNamara appeared to be a responsible and caring person. His evening with her and the children had passed quietly enough once the woman ventured out of the closet. After a tortured session of sign language, inept translations, and finally, the written language, Danny understood that his wife had offered the McNamaras free accommodations in return for help around the house.

All the better for Ellen to engage in nocturnal adventures outside of their home.

He hadn’t mentioned the opal earrings, but he had plenty to say about inviting strangers into their house without consulting him first. Thankfully, Alan’s call had interrupted his whispered argument with Ellen. He couldn’t get away from the house fast enough after that.

Inside the pub, wall sconces cast pools of light onto upturned chairs. Their legs pointed toward the ceiling, stiff as rats in rigor mortis. Alan pressed an ice pack against Bijou’s ribs. Seamus slouched on one of the wingback chairs beside the hearth. A half-empty bottle of Jameson sat on the floor beside him.

“Brendan’s missing,” Alan said.

“I’m after telling you,” Seamus mumbled, “that you’re wrong.”

Alan adjusted the ice pack on Bijou’s ribs. “Brendan and I have an agreement during the festival. Every night at eleven he takes Bijou for her constitutional, only tonight, Bijou returned dragging her lead.”

Seamus’s voice wobbled. “Brendan’s first festival as a man. Letting his rod point the way.” His face crumpled. “No, Grey Man along and grabbed Brendan into the mists.”

“He’s been talking to himself like that for the past hour,” Alan said.

First Lost Boy, now Brendan. Boys about the same age, just starting to come into their own. Danny wished Seamus hadn’t mentioned Grey Man, even in jest.

Whining, Bijou pulled away from Alan and planted herself next to the door.

“He’s got sunshine for shit where Brendan’s concerned,” Alan said, “but dogs don’t lie—to themselves or others. I’d trust her over anyone.”

“You two have been sitting vigil for Brendan’s return since closing?” Danny said.

Alan pointed to the Jameson bottle. “Seamus didn’t mind, but now it’s gone almost four hours, so I called you.”

Alan kneeled beside Bijou and beckoned Danny closer. “It’s okay, girl. Down. Play dead.”

Bijou obeyed her master but now panted with anxiety. Danny knelt by her head, let her sniff his hand, and cooed a few soothing words. Short-haired, lean, and now stretched out long, it was obvious where a foot had connected to Bijou’s side. The swelling hid the ribby waves beneath it.

“Bruised but not broken. I’ll take her to the vet tomorrow to be sure.” Alan’s voice tightened. “Some bastard did this to her.”

“But I don’t understand,” Seamus slurred. “Where’s Brendan?”