'The Mountains Wild' Chapters 9 & 10

Sarah Stewart Taylor

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Published January 12, 2021

illustration of a young woman with her ear pressed up against a door listening

ILLUSTRATION BY KATHERINE LAM

Chapter 9

1993

I MET ROLY BYRNE FOR THE FIRST TIME at the Irishtown Garda Station. When we got back from Glenmalure, Emer and Daisy and I went straight to the station to report Erin missing and hand over the necklace. It seems impossible now that I didn’t even think about preserving it as evidence at the scene, but our only nod to procedure was to wrap it in Saran wrap — which Emer called “cling film” — when we got back to Dublin. It sat on the table in front of me while I gave all of Erin’s vital statistics to the young guard they sent out to talk to me. They said they would get in touch with the station down in Wicklow and contact the American embassy for me. The next day, they called and said we should come back to speak with the detectives assigned to the case.

We had been waiting for twenty minutes when Roly Byrne exploded into the room. We heard him first, an Irish accent I was starting to recognize as Dublin, fast and loud out in the hallway. The door slammed open and a young guy, only a few years older than me, with a thatch of blond hair and a sharp, hawky face, burst through it as though he’d been at a full run on the other side. He was wearing a dark suit that fit him well and he stopped in front of me. There was so much energy behind him that when he stopped, he swayed a bit on his black leather wingtips.

He thrust out a hand and said, “Detective Garda Roland Byrne.”

A tall woman in a navy pantsuit entered the room behind him and shut the door. She had short, bowl-cut dark hair and very pale skin, delicate reddish freckles spattered haphazardly across her nose and cheeks. She was broad-shouldered, and her black blazer, with wide lapels and large brass buttons, looked uncomfortable, like she’d stuffed her arms into it. She didn’t look happy to see me. “This is my partner, Detective Garda Bernadette McNeely,” Byrne said. “Now, tell us about your ... cousin, is it?”

I gave them the basics, Erin’s full name, age. I told them she had moved to Dublin in January, that she’d been working at the café and that it was the photographs in her room and my conversation with Conor Kearney that made me think she might have gone down to Glenmalure. Byrne nodded his head, but McNeely had a little scowl on her face, like she didn’t quite believe me.

When I was done, they asked Emer and Daisy about how Erin had ended up living in their house.

They were friends from back home in somewhere called Ballyconnell and they’d come to Dublin for college, computers, they said, at someplace called DCU. The house belonged to Emer’s aunt, an inheritance from her husband’s side of the family. “Sure, she’s got a house in Killashandra now, so she had no use of it,” Emer said. “She said we could have it if we wanted. We put a sign up in the corner shop for a roommate and Erin rang up.”

Erin had been living with them since January. Everything had seemed fine. She’d traveled without telling them before, and when they got home the evening of the sixteenth and realized that she was gone, they just figured she’d gone to Galway or something.

“So it wasn’t out of the ordinary for her not to tell you where she was going?”

“No,” Daisy said. “She’s a lovely girl. But we’re not in each other’s pockets. She doesn’t usually let us know where she is or what time she’ll be home or anything. She sometimes ... stays out for the night.”

“So no one rang or anything that day?”

“Well, we were out all day. There weren’t any messages on the answerphone, anyway.”

McNeely looked at them and then at me. “She have a fella?”

They shook their heads and said there didn’t seem to be anyone regular, and Byrne asked me, “Did your cousin tell you or her father about anyone she’s seeing?”

“No. She told my uncle that she was having fun, but he said he didn’t think she had a boyfriend or any really close friends here.”

“Any fellas ring her up?” That was for Emer and Daisy.

“A few,” Emer said. “An Irish fella named Donal rang her a couple times. He had sort of a Limerick accent. She said she met him at a pub and gave him her number and then wished she hadn’t.”

Byrne thought that was interesting. “Donal. Do you think he might have tried to contact her again?”

Emer shrugged. “It was back in January and he only rang twice. I wouldn’t think so.”

Daisy said, “There was another fella who rang a few times in the summer. He had sort of a funny accent. American or Canadian, but not really, a bit neither here nor there, if you know what I mean. I can’t remember his name, but the last time he said to tell Erin he was meeting some friends at O’Brien’s on Pearse Street if she wanted to join.” McNeely wrote that down.

“Anyone ever stay the night at your place?” he asked Emer and Daisy. They said no, never.

“So, she left on, what day was it now?” McNeely got out a little paper date book and turned it to September.

“The sixteenth,” Daisy said.

“What was the longest she’d been gone before when you didn’t know where she was?” Byrne asked Daisy.

She looked up. “She went up to Belfast in April, I think it was. She was gone ten days, eleven days, something like that.”

“And she hadn’t said anything to you?” Byrne asked me again. “She didn’t tell you or your uncle she was going on a holiday? She hadn’t been depressed, in trouble, anything like that?” When he said “in trouble,” Emer and Daisy both looked down at the ground.

“I haven’t talked to her in a while,” I said. Since she left. I haven’t talked to her since she left. The beach. Her face wet with rain. “My uncle said she called him a few weeks ago and said she was having fun, but nothing about a trip.”

I’d brought a photograph—Erin’s high school graduation portrait—and I handed it over. Then he asked me for my full name, date of birth, address. “So, you’re twenty-two years of age, then. Erin is twenty-three?” I nodded. “And there’s nothing you can think of that might tell us what was on her mind?”

I shook my head. “Nothing specific.”

They took some more information down and I told them I’d be staying in Erin’s room until we knew more.

I thought we were finished, but McNeely turned to me. “Why did Miss Flaherty come over here? She’s not a student. Does she know anyone in Dublin?” McNeely’s accent was different from Byrne’s and Emer’s and Daisy’s, Northern Irish, I was pretty sure. Her sentences headed toward Scotland, veering up at the ends, reminding me of a guy from Belfast I knew at Notre Dame.

“Erin is impulsive sometimes,” I said. “I ... I don’t really know why she moved here. We’re Irish, Irish American—Erin and I practically grew up in my uncle’s bar. It’s called Flaherty’s. Maybe she wanted to ... I don’t know, live here for a bit. Learn about Ireland.” My voice caught and I swallowed. “She ... we’d had a hard year. My mother died a year ago last summer and Erin had a rough time. She just wanted to try something new, I guess.”

I took a deep breath and proceeded. They were going to find out. “And her mother was Irish. She left right after Erin was born and they never had a relationship. We don’t think she was looking for her or anything like that, but maybe she wanted to see where she ... where she was from. I don’t know.”

“Do you know her mother’s name?” McNeely looked interested all of a sudden. There was something there. They could feel it.

“Brenda Flaherty. I think her maiden name was Donaghy. But we really don’t think she ever contacted Erin.” Emer and Daisy were staring at me. It was obvious Erin had never told them her mother was Irish.

“Had she been to Ireland before?” McNeely asked. Her eyes were a dark, navy blue. Her freckles swam together in front of my eyes for a moment.

“No. Neither have I,” I said.

“We’ll look into it and we’ll be back to you, Miss D’arcy. We’ll get on to the bus stations and that. The lads down in Wicklow. We’ll check with her job.” McNeely studied me thoughtfully and asked, “Could your cousin have wanted to harm herself?”

I froze. “I don’t know. She was ... She’d had problems before.” I tried to keep my face neutral.

“What kind of problems?”

How to say it? “She got depressed sometimes and she would go off by herself when that happened. She dropped out of college a couple years ago and since then she’s been pretty up and down.”

“All right, all right,” Byrne said finally. “They’ll search the walking paths tomorrow.” His light blue eyes swept across us. He was distracted, antsy, fiddling with the buttons on his suit. McNeely put a hand on his arm, as if he were a child and she was reminding him of his manners, and he stood and shook my hand and gave me a card with the station number on it.

“Don’t worry yourself too much, now,” he said. “I’ll bet she’ll turn up with a grand story.” But the grim tone of his voice told me he didn’t believe a word of it.

Chapter 10

1993

THINGS STARTED MOVING QUICKLY after that. Byrne and McNeely got back to me the next day to tell me that they had found the bus driver who had taken Erin down on the sixteenth. He drove the private bus to Glendalough, but he said the bus had been empty and she’d asked if he could drop her in Glenmalure. He blushed when he said it and finally admitted she’d offered him five pounds but he hadn’t taken the money. Byrne told me that the guards in Wicklow were working with the Army Reserve to search the forest and mountains where I’d found the necklace, and would interview potential witnesses, including the bus driver.

I tried to settle in at Erin’s, but it was strange sleeping in her bed while I waited for news. The sheets smelled faintly of her perfume. The next day I woke up and went to the corner store to get milk. I grabbed an Irish Independent and was reading a story about Erin when Emer and Daisy came into the kitchen.

“Is there news?” Emer asked, flipping the switch on the electric kettle.

I pushed the paper across the table to her. Gardaí Searching for American in Wicklow. Above a small reproduction of Erin’s picture, the article read, “The Gardaí are looking for any information about the whereabouts of an American student, Erin Flaherty, 23, who has been living in Dublin for the past year. Flaherty was last seen in Glenmalure on the afternoon of September 16 and the Gardaí will search the area today. Anyone who may have seen her or who may have information about her movements on the sixteenth of September is asked to contact the Gardaí.”

“It’s awful, waiting,” I told them. “You haven’t thought of anything, have you? The names of any of the guys who called, anything like that? Any friends who visited the house?”

Daisy looked up. “I realized last night. Her school friends came for a few days back in the summer. I think they were going Interrailing and they stopped in Dublin to see her. She seemed to have a good laugh with them.”

“Really? American friends? Jessica? Was that one of them?”

“Yeah, and two lads. Chris, I think, and Brian.”

If Uncle Danny knew Erin’s best friends from high school had visited Dublin, he hadn’t said anything about it to me. Everything seemed to speed up for a moment. Maybe she was traveling around Europe with Jessica right now. “You don’t think she might have been going to meet them or anything like that?”

Emer said, “She didn’t say it to us anyway. And that was back in the summer.”

“I’ll check with my uncle and see if he’s been in touch with Jess’s parents.”

Emer and Daisy said they were going to the shops and did I need anything? I asked them to get me more coffee and once they were gone, I shut Erin’s door and lay down on the bed, my eyes closed.

They were back an hour later. From Erin’s room, I could hear the front door open and close and their voices out in the living room. Something made me get up and tiptoe to the door, where I pressed my ear against the wood.

“Put it there,” Emer called out. “We’ll just be getting it out again in a bit.” They must have been unpacking groceries.

“Did you ... ?” Their voices were too low for me to make out what they were saying. I moved my ear to the crack between the door and the wall. There were a few minutes of silence.

One of them said something I didn’t understand and it took me a minute to realize they were speaking Irish. I took two semesters at Notre Dame and got really into the idea that I was speaking the language of my ancestors. I even joined a little Irish society on campus my sophomore year. But then I let it go and I don’t remember a lot — Conas tá tu? (Cone is Taw Too? How are you?) Go raibh maith agat. (Go Rev Mahagut. Thank you.)—I could only pick out words here and there. An raibh Erin ... (On Rev Erin ... Did Erin ... )

One phrase stood out, though.

Tabhair aire. Pronounced Tur arah.

I remember that, remember my teacher showing a slideshow with Irish phrases.

Tabhair aire.

A warning. Take care. Be careful.

***

Byrne called the next morning to say they had something: a woman named Eda Curran who said Erin had stayed at her bed-and-breakfast near the Drumgoff Crossroads.

“Here’s the thing, though,” Roly Byrne said. Here’s the ting. I could hear the excitement coming down the phone line. “It was the sixteenth she stayed there.”

“So ...” I was trying to put it all together, what it meant. “So she ...”

“So she didn’t disappear up there on the sixteenth,” he finished for me. “On the night of the sixteenth she was alive and well and sleeping at the Rivers Glen Bed and Breakfast. The woman who owns it said she was walking on the Wicklow Way. The next morning she said she was getting a bus. Didn’t say where she was going.”

“So she must have lost the necklace the day before?”

“Yeah.” Roly shouted something to someone else in the room. “And that’s not all.” He told me they’d searched the bed-and-breakfast. At first they hadn’t found anything, but as they were leaving, McNeely had asked if there was another toilet in the house.

“In the rubbish there was a little crumpled-up piece of paper,” he told me, his voice fast and excited over the phone. “It had a bus departure time written on it. We think it’s your cousin’s handwriting, based on the guest book she signed. It’s for the seventeenth, Miss D’arcy. From Dublin.”

It took me a minute to understand what he was saying. After staying at the bed-and-breakfast, Erin had been planning to go back to Dublin? To take a bus?

“Did she take the bus? Where is she now?”

“It didn’t say where, just the time and ‘Busáras,’ which is the central bus station. None of the drivers remember her but we’re looking into it right now. I’ll ring you if anything turns up. One other thing. Does the name Gary Curran mean anything?”

“No.”

“He’s the son of the woman at the bed-and-breakfast. He works for the forestry service sometimes. When he was at university he got a bit too enthusiastic about a young one who didn’t return his enthusiasm. We’re looking at that, too. In the meantime, see if there’s anything else you can remember that could help us out, that could give us a sense of her state of mind. Sure, it always helps to have a nice, full picture of the subject.” I could hear people talking in the background, phones ringing. I thought about those green-and-brown mountains, the clouds moving over them.

“Okay,” I said.

But he’d already hung up.

Erin, where are you?

I tried to think about Erin. I tried to remember.

***

Erin.

Erin is quick, a blur, always in motion. Maggie sits quietly and plays or looks through books. I am Maggie. Maggie is quiet. Erin is not. Erin is freckles and brown skin in the summer. She is hair in her face and quick smile and loud voice. Erin is always moving. Grown-ups have to watch her every second or she’ll be off, over the fence, out into the road. Uncle Danny is tired all the time. He doesn’t have the energy to do it. She gets away, over to the neighbors’, out to the beach, into the water. Someone finds her playing alone in a neighbor’s yard.

She starts staying at our house more so my mom can watch her. I hear my mom say to my dad, “Sometimes I wish I had a leash for her.”

“Just like Brenda,” my dad says.

“You’re terrible,” my mom says, but she’s laughing. I don’t know what they mean.

But I imagine Erin on a leash. She’s a happy, loud, jumping dog, a golden retriever or a Labrador. She’s always trying to get away.

Erin’s mother’s name was Brenda. I ask my mother about it and she tells me. Brenda. She grew up in Ireland. She somehow ended up at Uncle Danny’s pub and applied for a job as a waitress and “she and Uncle Danny liked each other a lot,” my mom says. When I ask what happened to her, she says that Brenda “wasn’t happy” and she “had some problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“She just ... She had trouble staying put. Don’t say anything to Erin.”

I wouldn’t. I’ve already figured out that Erin doesn’t like to talk about it.

“Where did she go?”

“We don’t know. She doesn’t seem to want to be in touch with Uncle Danny.”

“Or Erin?”

My mom sighs. “Or Erin.”

Later that night, when she comes to put me to bed, my mom says in my ear, “You know I’m not going anywhere, right, sweetie? That was a different thing, what happened with Erin’s mom.”

“Yeah. But ... why did she go away?”

“Like I said, she just ... she couldn’t stay put.” She pushes my hair back from my forehead, kisses me. “So we have to be extra nice to Erin, right?” She lies down next to me for a little bit and I breathe in her scent, Alberto VO5 shampoo, cigarette smoke from the bar.

After that, I imagine Brenda as a helium balloon with its string tied to the roof of Uncle Danny’s house. I imagine the balloon tugging, trying to get away and finally breaking free, floating up into the air until it’s just a tiny red dot high above us, among the clouds.

'The Mountains Wild' main page | Next: Chapters 11 & 12

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