False Mermaid (34 page)

He stood at the door, conflicted about whether to knock or to hold back, not wanting to make it so obvious that he’d overheard. There were clearly some things she was not telling him. How easily the seeds of doubt and jealousy were planted. He hesitated a moment longer and pushed through the kitchen door.

“You’re up, too?” She gestured to the phone lying on the table. “I was just talking to Frank Cordova.”

“Any news?”

“Everything comes in such small increments. We may have found Tríona’s cell phone, which could help pinpoint the crime scene. They also have a bloodstained sweatshirt from Peter’s college—they have to run DNA tests to see if the blood could be Tríona’s.”

“Well, that would be something, wouldn’t it? I mean, all this time you’ve been looking for evidence—”

“Yes, but there’s something not quite right about it. They don’t know for sure that it’s Peter’s sweatshirt, and I just don’t believe he would be that careless—about anything. He plans things, figures out every angle. Making a stupid mistake like that—it isn’t like him. Trust me, I know
from experience how he manages every last detail. I haven’t told you the half of it.”

“Will you tell me now?” He pointed to the bandage on her forehead. “I’d especially like to know how you got that.”

“Only if you promise not to lecture me.” He held up his hand as if to swear, and she continued: “My car went off the road. I think someone jammed a water bottle under the brake pedal—”

He couldn’t help reacting. “Jesus Christ, Nora.”

“You promised not to lecture. There’s no proof, of course. No fingerprints but mine. Nothing to say the bottle didn’t just roll under the pedal by accident. Or that I didn’t put it there, trying to incriminate Peter.”

Cormac glanced up the stairs where Elizabeth was asleep. “We have to talk about what to do if he shows up here. He could be headed in this direction right now.”

“How would he know where to look?”

“Sooner or later he’s going to be able to connect us, Nora—if he’s half as clever as you say. At least a half-dozen people in Dublin knew I was coming up here.” He drew back and looked at her. “How did you find this place?”

“I stopped at the
óstan
in Glencolumbkille—but I made up a story, about bringing my daughter up for Fiddle Week, about your father being a distant relation—”

He spoke quietly: “Still, you’re an American, traveling with a child. I’m not criticizing, Nora. All I’m saying is that it won’t be difficult to track you, if he’s really intent upon it. We’re only being prudent to realize that. We should have a plan, a rendezvous spot, in case we’re separated. There’s an abandoned fishing village called Port na Rón just the other side of the headland from here. Roz told me about some caves under the rocks on the far side of the bay. That might be a good place to meet, even stay for a while if we had to.”

Nora looked at him curiously. “You’ve been thinking about this.”

“No such thing as too careful.” He reached for a bag under the table and pulled out a pair of walkie-talkies. “Mobile coverage can be spotty up here, so I thought we could try these—I use them on excavations. They’re on the same frequency, good up to twenty-six miles. We could each carry one.”

“You really think he’ll come here?”

“I think we have to be prepared for it. Would he have reported Elizabeth missing?”

“Probably,” Nora said. “He must have been surprised when she ran away, because he knew I was still in the States. But Elizabeth didn’t. I imagine he’d go to the police—he’s always had great luck with them so far.” After a moment she added: “Most of them, anyway.”

“If your picture’s likely to show up on the television, it might be best to steer clear of civilization. Keep out of sight.”

“I do have the offer of a boat—” She tried to force a smile, but couldn’t. “Oh, Cormac, I never meant to put any of this on you—”

He leaned closer. “Will you stop? Your troubles are my troubles, Nora. We’ll get through this—we just need to be vigilant. Let me show you how to find the caves at Port na Rón.” He reached into his bag for a map and flipped to the area showing the cluster of houses and outbuildings where they sat, with long, narrow plots of bog and pastureland going up over the mountain. “Go over the headland to the south here, and you’ll come to the village. You’ll see a rocky beach. The caves I mentioned are here, around the south side of the harbor. I’ve got to go see on my father in hospital tomorrow morning; you and Elizabeth could go over and have a look at the caves while I’m away. I can stop on my way back and get some extra provisions to stash there if we need them.” He drew back and looked at her. “Has Elizabeth told you why she ran away?” He was thinking of the long, fair hairs and the lone shoe he’d found under the cot at the selkie cottage. “Maybe she knows something she’s not telling. Children notice a lot more than we realize.”

Nora shook her head. “I’ve tried, but I can’t seem to draw her out. Once in a while I get the impression she wants to talk, but feels as if she can’t—maybe out of loyalty to her father. In spite of everything, he is still her father. That’ll never change with wishing, unfortunately.”

Cormac put his hand over Nora’s, and let his glance stray to the hall that led to his father’s empty room. “No, I don’t suppose it will.”

Elizabeth awakened to a room bathed in light. Heavy bedclothes pressed down the length of her body, and the air smelled strange—cold and musty, damp. Nothing had felt real since they arrived here. She had no recollection of getting to this room on her own—maybe someone had carried her. Opening her eyes a crack, she could make out the dark outlines of flower-patterned wallpaper, the bulk of a wardrobe at the foot of the bed. She sat up slowly and glanced around. From the small window she could see down a driveway, out to the road. Would they just stay here, never go back to America? If they were supposed to be hiding, this strange, bare place didn’t seem like a very good spot. This house was odd; its windows were small and close to the floor, like something from a fairy story. Old black-and-white pictures crammed the walls, and there were bookcases everywhere, even up in this bedroom. She tilted her head sideways to read the titles of the books on the nearest shelf:
The Sea Folk. The Selkie in Folklore, Myth, and Legend
.

Yesterday already seemed like a dream, waking up to the sound of the sea outside at the Donovans’ house, then the long drive to this place, and stopping at that spit of land where the one-eyed seal came swimming up to her. It was just as if they had never been apart. Her brain said it wasn’t possible—her old friend from Useless Bay couldn’t have followed her all the way to this place. Ireland must be at least halfway around the world from Seattle. But how many seals had such an identical star-shaped spot? And the way it had watched her, too—bobbing high out of the water, just like her friend back at Useless Bay. She wanted to call out to it in that strange, inhuman language she had sometimes heard it use, but she had not made a sound.

A dull pressure in her abdomen said it was time to find the bathroom. She slid out of bed and crept down the hall, holding her breath when her foot set off a loud creak from one of the floorboards. The bathroom door had a rippled glass window; inside was a deep bathtub with feet, and one of those high, old-fashioned toilets with a chain for a handle. She slipped
inside and shut the door, imagining that everyone downstairs could hear her moving about. Each embarrassing noise—the click of the latch, the squeaking hinges, and especially the hollow splash as she emptied her bladder—seemed magnified in the echoing room.

While washing her hands, Elizabeth examined her newly shorn head in the mirror, pulling at the uneven tufts, remembering the weight of each handful of long hair as it was cut, how it looked at the bottom of that wastebasket. She had never held any desire to be part of the secret, grown-up world, and had focused all her energy the past few months on refusing to be dragged over that threshold. But the transformation was happening anyway, against her will. She didn’t know the person who looked back at her from the mirror. At times it felt like there was someone else, something else inside her—a dangerous, wild creature who might come screeching out if she opened her mouth.

She opened the bathroom door and stood listening to a pair of voices from downstairs. One was Cormac—was he Nora’s boyfriend? From the way he’d acted last night, she thought he might be. Elizabeth tiptoed to the top of the stairs and saw him in the hallway below talking to Roz, the woman they’d met last night. Cormac was speaking to her now in a low voice, as if he didn’t want Nora to hear. “Please don’t go, Roz. You don’t have to leave.”

“I do, Cormac. I can’t stay here.”

“He could come back to himself anytime.”

Elizabeth wondered who they were talking about.

“Please, Cormac—we both know he won’t. I‘m not sure I can take that look in his eyes, day after day.”

“What about your work here—do you not want to go back to the selkie cottage?”

“I’ve finished all the interviews I had planned. I’m never going to find Mary Heaney, Cormac. She just became an excuse to stay on—”

Roz began to cry, and Cormac put his arms around her. Elizabeth’s stomach began to squeeze tight. Maybe he wasn’t Nora’s boyfriend after all. She went back to the bedroom, unsure whether she should go downstairs, and remembering another conversation she’d overheard three days ago. Her dad hadn’t known she was on the landing, but she had heard every word they said.

“I can’t believe you don’t see what she’s up to. All this acting out, trying to get your attention, just when we’re supposed to be going away? It’s her way of
getting Daddy all to herself again. That’s what she’s wanted from the beginning.”

“She’s only a kid, Miranda.”

“You really don’t see it, do you? I can’t believe you’re so blind—”

“That’s enough. Something could have happened to her down at the river.”

“Nothing happened.”

“All right, maybe nothing did happen, but what was she doing, running off like that? Did you say something?”

“Oh, that’s rich. The kid runs off, and naturally I’m to blame. Maybe it had nothing to do with me. Maybe she’s more like her mother than you thought—”

Elizabeth hadn’t actually seen the slap, but its sharp noise still seemed to reverberate in her ears. When her father spoke again, his voice was almost unrecognizable.
“Don’t ever let me hear you talk like that again, do you hear me? Stay away from my daughter.”

Remembering that confrontation, Elizabeth began to feel queasy again. Miranda and her father had never argued like that before, at least not that she knew. It was all her fault, for running away. Why did she have to go and find all that stuff on the Internet and mess everything up? It was better not to know. She missed the empty space inside her that was now filled with doubts and questions. All she wanted was for everything to get back to normal.

She crawled back into the narrow bed, pulling the covers over her head. Maybe running away had been a mistake. She knew what they were all thinking, Nora and everyone else, that she was running away from her dad, but it wasn’t true. He got angry sometimes, but he had reasons. She was always messing up, doing stupid things—like climbing up on that wall. He was trying to protect her. That’s why he got mad when Miranda said those things. He couldn’t have hurt Mama—if he had, he would be locked up, wouldn’t he? You couldn’t do things like that and not go to jail. She felt the questions crowding, pushing into one another inside her. Nora, her dad, Miranda, her grandparents—they all said something different, and it couldn’t all be true. Somebody had to be lying.

She hadn’t actually planned to run away at the airport until they were walking off the plane. What did Miranda mean—
maybe she’s more like her mother than you thought?
Sometimes when she lay in bed at night, with darkness close around her, certain memories came back, mostly as
she was drifting off to sleep, or just waking. Suddenly she felt a string of words rising up inside her, each a separate bubble, bursting as it hit the surface:
Lizzabet—Mama’s tired.

And then it all came back, like water under a door, rising around her ankles in a flood. All the days Mama was so tired she couldn’t wake up. Elizabeth remembered wandering through the silent house—frightened by the noises from the icemaker, looking up at the sink piled high with dishes, hallways and bedrooms strewn with toys and clothes. Whole days playing alone in her room, eventually having to brave the rumbling refrigerator for something to eat. Then she would go back into the bedroom and try shaking Mama’s shoulder again. Why wouldn’t she wake up?

The damp air under the covers pressed down on her, until she had to throw off the blankets and take a breath of cool outside air. With it came the smell of toast and bacon, floating up from below, awakening something in her—a hollow, cavernous hunger she hadn’t felt for days, and with it a sharp memory of her dad making toast on Sunday mornings, cut into triangles just the way she liked it, dripping with butter. Elizabeth wrapped her arms around her stomach, fighting the hunger inside. She missed her dad so much. Running away had been a mistake.

Truman Stark always took the back streets home from downtown. Ninth to Broadway to Grove Street, up past police headquarters on Olive, along the tracks at Phalen Boulevard to Clarence. From his bedroom window, he’d watched the workers put up the shiny new building on the corner. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the BCA. Sort of like the state FBI. They thought they were so special, the people who worked there. He had watched them, talking, laughing, getting into cars at the end of their shifts. He even followed a few of them, once in a while. They were just regular people, like him. Nobody special at all. So why did they get to work at a place like that, while he was stuck in a parking ramp, staring at TV screens, marking time? The injustice of it all stuck in his craw, threatened to choke him every time he looked out his bedroom window.