Whispers in the Mist (5 page)

FIVE

I
N THE
P
LOUGH AND
Trough, Gemma turned the milky blue stone over. It glowed from within as if it wanted to impart its knowledge to her. The moment she’d caught sight of it out on the plaza, she’d known it was a sign. Why, she wasn’t sure, and this was what had frightened her. If she didn’t know why, then her impulse to rip it off the woman’s neck must stem from the bottomless well.
That
scary place, the place inside Gemma’s head where she had long ago stored the bad stuff that bided its time until her memory decided to start working again.

“Excuse me,” a woman said, “I’d like my necklace back, please.”

Gemma turned toward the wall, still fingering the stone. The comforting mass of the pub dog snuffled and adjusted itself against her back. Unfortunately, she’d have to engage with this woman because answers were required. She hated the inevitable necessity of communication with strangers that set her bones to feeling like glass and her skin to feeling like parchment.

Above and behind her like towering speakers, several voices rose at once. Dermot loudest of all, telling the woman to stand back. Gemma heard the shock in the woman’s voice when she said, “You?”

“Back off from Gemma, if you’d please,” Dermot said.

“No,” the woman said, “I won’t. She stole something precious from me, and I want an explanation. From her first, and then from you. How dare you”—she lowered her voice but Gemma’s acute hearing caught her words—“walk up to Liam like that, full of accusations?”

Another voice, male, softer and with a slight accent, called the dog. “Bijou, come.”

Bijou
. Gemma smiled toward the wall so no one could see. Maybe the dog was a sign. A
good
sign. She knew enough French from listening to language tapes to know that the dog’s name translated to Gem or Jewel. Someday, she’d open her mouth and speak French; it would come out in a perfect stream. Dermot didn’t understand her need to study a foreign language. She’d never explained that someday it might be easier to talk in a new language. To start fresh.

She snapped back to the conversation above her—the inevitable pull of the world.

“Gemma?” Dermot said. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

She concentrated on the pendant that glimmered in her palm, observing how the scant light played ghost games within it. Here she was, causing Dermot problems once again. She could hear it in his voice—the you’re-my-burden gruffness.

I wasn’t going to keep it
, she signed with her hand.
Ask her where she got it
.

Dermot stooped and lowered his voice. He spoke in the careful tone he often used with her. “What’s wrong? You don’t steal.”

She held the necklace up in an open palm toward Dermot, watching his face. He tried to hide his uneasiness beneath nonchalance, but he couldn’t stop his skin color from fading to ash. He turned over the pendant, examining the silverwork.

And?

Nothing,
he replied in sign language.

Ah. Switching to sign language gave him away. He often signed when he wanted privacy or to hide something. And right this second she could tell by the prissy way Dermot pursed his lips that he was hiding his emotions. He was her dear brother, but he was also a smidge on the stodgy side for a thirty-six-year-old man.

“Oh, okay then,” came the soft male voice again. “Go on back if you must. Good dog.”

Bijou returned to the pillow. Her tail whapped against the suede, and the scent of cedar rose into the air when her squat body dropped with a huff. Gemma reached back to pet Bijou. The dog’s tawny fur tracked smooth over burly shoulders and lean waist. Gemma felt the ripple of skin over ribs before her hand reached well-muscled thighs. This dog was in excellent condition, and Gemma respected the owner’s diligence to his caretaking duties.

Dermot stood. “Gemma apologizes. That’s not her usual behavior, believe me, right, Gems?”

Because she felt guilty about causing Dermot problems, because the other man was a good dog owner, and because, in the end, she was curious about the woman, she steadied herself and turned around. Her heart accelerated and sweat dribbled out of her armpits, but she congratulated herself for, if not making eye contact, at least letting her gaze rest on the woman’s chin.

“Good job,” Dermot said. “Like going on stage, right? Worse beforehand, but once you’re there, you’re fine.”

So you say
, Gemma signed.

Dermot held up the stone toward one of the sconces and it brightened like an eye. The broken chain dangled below his hand. “This is pretty, Gemma, but if you wanted me to buy you a necklace, why didn’t you ask? Of course, I will buy you a new chain for it, Miss—?”

Introductions circled between the three of them standing above her. They hurried through them as if they didn’t care to stay acquainted. The dog owner, Alan, was also the pub owner. The woman, Merrit, was American. “And Gemma McNamara meet Alan and Merrit,” Dermot said.

Merrit said hello, and Alan reached out to give Bijou a pat. Over by the bar, pint glasses clanked and someone howled with laughter.

Ask her where she got the necklace
, Gemma signed.

Dermot returned the broken necklace to Merrit. “She would like to know where you got the necklace.”

“Oh, is that all?” Merrit’s face brightened when she smiled. Gemma liked her for not treating her like a curiosity and for stooping to answer her. She didn’t raise her voice or slow her speech either. Her hair glinted with red highlights even in the shadows, and her light hazel eyes glowed from within like the moonstone, except with a green glow rather than blue.

“I got the necklace from my mom,” she said, “who’d gotten it from my father.”

“That’s the simple version,” Alan said. “Most interesting is who Merrit’s father is.”

“And why,” Merrit said, “must I explain when we both know that the minute I leave the whole lot of you locals will rush to confess my many sins to Gemma and Dermot?”

“Come, Bijou,” Alan said. “Time for a walk.”

Eighty pounds of dog flesh sat up again and leaned against Gemma, then followed Alan’s stiff form out of the pub.

“Sorry,” Merrit said to Gemma. “Village politics. Long story short, I came to Ireland to meet my biological father and stayed. Or, am staying for the moment.” She paused. “My dad is Liam the Matchmaker. I’m the grand usurper and demon seed, especially because his son, Kevin, moved away last year pretty much because of me and hasn’t been seen since. He was adopted, and here I arrive, a blood relation—anyhow, I’m suspected of casting him out with a hex, I’m sure, not to mention wrecking a marriage and bringing murder to the village, which of course I didn’t. Not really, anyhow. You’d think people would lighten up after a while.”

Merrit smiled and shrugged, but Gemma caught the discomfort beneath the nonchalant gesture. “To answer your question, my father the matchmaker gave my mother this necklace as a love gesture back in the 1970s, and I inherited it when she died.”

“Excuse me,” Dermot said, “did I hear you say that the matchmaker bought this necklace?”

Something in Dermot’s tone made Gemma shrink into the invisible shell she carried around with her. She curled back toward the wall. The connection between the matchmaker and the necklace hit too close to home, right where Gemma’s bottomless well resided. Out of her mouth came a sound, one of the few she made. The unearthly vocal scratch sounded far away, but it was hers all right. Her skin felt flayed, imagining everyone looking at her and wondering about her awful voice, so unused, so scratchy.

Behind her, Merrit rushed to ask what was wrong.

“We have our own long story.” The pillow shifted and Dermot’s body warmth replaced Bijou’s. Gemma pressed her spine against his side.

“What does my necklace have to do with it?” Merrit said.

I don’t know
, screamed Gemma inside her head.

Dermot’s breath tickled the back of her neck. “You tell your precious matchmaker father that he matched our mother to her murderer, and we need to talk to him.”

SIX

E
LLEN
A
HERN STOOD WITH
shears in hand, stabbing at the blackberry vines that invaded her garden. She snapped the blades through a skeletal arm that reached for her out of the fog. Most of the time, she missed because tears clouded her vision worse than the fog. After a while, she punched out in any direction until, energy spent, she sagged against the rock wall. She managed a feeble last chop before dropping the shears. Scratches crisscrossed her arms from the blackberry thorns, but she didn’t care.

It was no use hacking at the mess this way. She must eradicate the bloody weed by its roots. She’d stared at the blackberry invasion all summer while her marriage continued to flounder, and now that it was too late, she attempted a salvage. She was pathetic. Once in, blackberries took over like chaos itself, overwhelming everything.

She let her head sag toward her chest. The mist muffled sound but not scents. Peat smoke, that comfort; lingering berries like bottled summer; baby shampoo that she’d let Petey rub into her hair during their shower. That last, the smell of innocence.

Without little Petey, she’d not have showered at all today. Couldn’t be bothered. But he’d recently started bathing with her again. At five years old, was he too old? She hoped not because that token of time with her son was one thing she could manage. He’d concocted elaborate games to prolong their showers, such as drawing on the tiles with his bath-time crayons and insisting he write the whole alphabet, then his name, then hers on the shower walls. This morning, he’d graduated to older sister Mandy’s name.

She almost smiled at that, but felt her lips sag when she realized that Petey was leading her into a conversation. Day after day getting closer to his da’s name. Danny. Petey already knew all the letters and sounds; he could spell out the word himself. By the end of the week, he’d ask her how to spell his father’s name anyhow, and she’d teach him, and then Danny would be in the shower with them like a steam-ghost.

“Damn you, Danny,” she said, turning away from the vines he’d promised to eradicate months ago. Every now and then, blaming her husband helped. She balled her fingers into fists, felt the pressure rub pain into her blisters, and then made for the house, the insides of which were no more cheerful than the outdoors. The gloom sank into rips in the sofa cushions and dulled the shine off the crystal stemware she’d inherited from her mother. Some might say her home was homey, but to her, it looked threadbare and empty.

At first she didn’t catch the sound of sobbing, but once she did, her heart wrenched. Petey. Jesus, Petey. She’d spent too long with her self-pity, as usual. She followed the sound of his tears to her bedroom, where he lay with her pillow clutched to his chest.

“Petey, my love,” she said. “I thought you were sleeping.”

He froze, and then a second later sprang off the bed. Ellen dropped to her knees. Petey patted her cheeks and let loose a series of wails. She picked him up and burrowed the two of them under the comforter. She inhaled baby shampoo. Between sniffs and little-boy gasps, he said, “I couldn’t see you. I looked out every window, but you were gone, and I thought Grey Man got you too.”

“Grey Man’s not real, I told you that.”

Petey shot out his lower lip. “He is too real.”

After five minutes trying to reassure Petey, Ellen gave up. She gazed at the snotty smears he had left on the window. She wouldn’t survive the day if she had to stay cooped up listening to him munge on about Grey Man.

“I have an idea,” she said. “We’re going for a walk.”

“No.”

“Oh yes we are.”

“Why? You can’t make me.”

Oh yes she could. She checked his forehead. Satisfied that he no longer had a temperature, she shooed her protesting son out of bed. She helped him with his sneakers and zipped up a jacket over his pajamas. They set off over the field that backed onto their yard. There hadn’t been much rain so the going was easy, none of the usual mud slurry. They walked along the drystone wall that bounded the left side of the field. Officially, they trespassed on neighbor Travis’s land, but no one minded such things as long as they left the cows and sheep to their peace. The fog lightened and other rock walls appeared as faint lines that divided the hills into squares and rectangles. Great swathes of heather covered the hillsides in a purplish haze. They’d turned colors overnight, September on the wane.

Little good the peaceful vista did her today. Something lurked, all right, but this could also be her guilty conscience. Failure as a mother. Failure as a lover. Failure as a wife. She just thanked whatever saint was out there that the children hadn’t mentioned the babysitter she’d found to sit them last night. Danny would have beetled his eyebrows at her and said “Oh?” in that leading way of his, putting her on the defensive. She deserved a life too.

Such as that went. What a bloody joke on her.