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Chapter 47
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
CONOR'S HOUSE IS DARK and quiet. He turns lights on and makes tea. He puts Miles Davis on and we lie on the couch with a blanket over us and drink tea and listen to Miles. I tell him about Cathal Deasey, about Niamh Horrigan, about how when she saw him as they brought her out, she broke down, screaming and crying, how I hugged her hard, told her she was okay, stroked her hair, how her parents came to the hospital, how they wouldn’t let go of her, wouldn’t leave her room for a second.
They haven’t found any remains, but today they’ll search the grounds.
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Conor asks, “Do they know if he was responsible ... if he, if Erin was one of his victims?” He tries to figure out how to say it. “Were they able to link the scarf and necklace to him?”
I tell him we don’t know. Before I left the hospital, they told me they found some things of Teresa McKenny’s and June Talbot’s in the house and they think he must have killed Erin and Katerina Greiner, too. They’re searching his things, the house he lived in in Croydon. Niall Deasey’s in custody, too, but they don’t think he knew.
We listen to music. Conor rubs my feet.
I feel, for the first time in a long time, like I can stop paying attention.
And yet I notice the way Miles’s trumpet wavers on high notes. I notice the framed black-and-white photograph of a peat digger hanging over the dining room table. I notice the way Conor’s hair sweeps over his ears, the graying whiskers he missed shaving.
I like it here.
Then headlights sweep across the front window.
“Bláithín and Adrien,” Conor says. We get up and go to the door. Bláithín’s wearing a tweed cape in brilliant red. Adrien’s hair is wet and he’s shy when Conor reintroduces me. He comes in and goes straight to the kitchen and then upstairs. I stand back so Bláithín and Conor can talk but Bláithín just says she’ll come and get him Thursday for his dentist appointment.
She’s out the door already when I say, “I’ll be right back,” and follow her out. I close the door behind me and call out, “I’m sorry. Bláithín, can I ... can I ask you a question?”
She turns, her keys already in her hand. She doesn’t say anything. The streetlight is illuminating her cape. She looks on fire.
“I’m sorry about the way we first met,” I tell her. She hesitates. “I am as well. It was awkward and I behaved very badly. I saw ... what happened, on the news. Are you okay?”
I dip my head, just a little. I don’t know. I say, “I want to ask you something.”
She looks up, on edge suddenly. The keys dangle from her hand. “Yes?”
“Did Erin leave anything else behind? At the flat that day? Anything besides the jacket?”
She puts the keys back in her pocket. She comes a little closer. Now she’s standing in shadow and I can barely see her eyes. But her voice comes out of the dark, strong but low.
“I guess it can’t hurt now. There was a letter in the pocket. It was part of one, like she’d started writing it but hadn’t finished it. It was a letter to Conor. She said she’d been thinking about everything and she couldn’t be quiet anymore. There was something about how she didn’t care anymore what people thought, she had to tell the truth.”
“It was a letter to Conor?”
“I wasn’t sure—she hadn’t written his name—but then she wrote something about something that happened at O’Brien’s. ‘I’ve been thinking so much about what happened at O’Brien’s,’ she wrote. I figured it out. It was a night I was away in Wicklow. He’d told me he’d been at O’Brien’s that night. A pub. He’d said he was there with friends from college.”
“This was in the summer?”
“Yes. I ... I read the letter and then I ripped it up and flushed it down the loo. It was like if I could destroy it, it wouldn’t exist and maybe she’d never tell him. Maybe he’d never know and then he’d forget about it and things could just go back to the ... to the way they were before she arrived.”
She looks up at me and smiles. “It was magical thinking. I was so young. I didn’t know anything about relationships. I didn’t know that you can’t just erase things, you can’t just pretend they were never there. They have to be brought out into the open or else they just fester and grow. That’s what happened. All those years, it just sat there. We never talked about it until ... well, recently.”
I watch her for a moment. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“I am as well.” She smiles. “I hope they figure out what happened to her. I never thought...Until I had Adrien, I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for you, for her parents.”
She gets in the car and she drives off. I watch her taillights heading south, back to Wicklow. I think of the mountains, the clouds gathering in the dark over the rusty brown and green valleys. Something’s stirring in my brain, but it’s not fully formed. An idea, a word, a name. O’Brien’s. O’Brien’s.
Conor is doing dishes in the kitchen and when I come back in he turns around and looks worried. “Is everything okay? Was Bláithín all right? She’s okay, really. She just —”
“No, she was fine,” I interrupt him. “Conor, did Erin ever tell you she had feelings for you?”
“Maggie, there was nothing like that between us. I thought you understood that.”
His eyes are dark, troubled. I watch him.
I think of what he asked me.
Do they know if the guy in Wicklow was responsible...if he, if Erin was one of his victims? Were they able to link the scarf and necklace to him?
The scarf and necklace.
The scarf and necklace.
The water rushes from the faucet, eerily loud. My perceptions slide and blur. The lights are too bright over the sink, over Conor’s face.
“I have to go,” I say. I turn too quickly. My shoulder flashes pain at me, but I barely notice it.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing, nothing’s wrong. I have to go,” I tell him. “Something’s come up. An emergency. I need to go right now. I’m really sorry.” I can’t look at him. I need to get away from him. I need to think.
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