Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (109 page)

She smiled at the boy. “You’re too smart for your own good, Lawrence.”

He returned the smile with one of his truly heart-stopping grins, that transformed his delicate features into something akin to the first real sunny day of spring.

“Think about it, will ye?”

“I will,” she said, and then stood watching as he walked down the laneway, long legs gobbling up the ground, until the bright ginger head disappeared into the gloom of the pines.

She sighed. Suddenly the house felt very empty. And the prickle in her spine that was her constant companion of late returned the minute Lawrence disappeared from view. She hadn’t quite told the truth about the replacement of the locks. True, they had been stiff, and required oiling on such a constant basis that changing them had been on the to-do list that Casey had left hanging on the fridge.

She had bought them, and Mr. Guderson had changed them for her. The chill feeling of being observed would have been enough to warrant changing them, merely for the sense of security it gave her, however false that sense might be. It was the impression that someone had been
in
the house, though, that had spurred her to get the locks changed.

It had happened twice now, since Casey had left. The first time she’d been away in the village, shopping, and had stopped to have dinner with Owen and Gert. It was dark when she had pulled the car up to the house.

Inside, at first, she’d thought someone was still in the house and she had almost turned around, got in the car and driven straight in to the youth center. Instead, she chided herself and turned all the lights on, called the dog in, and checked every lock in the house.

Nothing was disturbed, nothing was missing, and yet the unease remained. As if the air had been displaced in her absence with an energy that was, if not malevolent, at least very disturbing.

The next morning she checked the wood where the watcher had been before. There wasn’t so much as a bent stalk of grass disturbed. Yet the skin of her backbone said different.

The second time was after a full day’s work, during which she’d photographed an ancient set of remains that had turned up at the base of Black Mountain. It was a very old burial site, though the person, if the missing skull was anything to go by, had met a violent end. She had been musing on the possible history of those bones as she came in her front door, and so wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to her surroundings.

Stepping in and placing her camera bags on the floor, she had heard an audible click that sounded like the back door closing. She had run to the kitchen without thinking, the big window provided a panoramic view of the yard and wood beyond. Outside there had been no movement though, other than the gate creaking in the wind.

Finbar, however, had been missing, though he’d turned up at Mr. Guderson’s, wet and dirty, some hours later. That, however, wasn’t proof of anything sinister. Still, she had the locks changed before she went to bed that night.

She stood now, gazing at the empty road, rubbing the silky fur on Finbar’s ears. She was suddenly relieved that Lawrence had not taken him. The dog was agitated, whining softly in the base of this throat, wanting to run down the road after Lawrence.

“I know, boy,” she said soothingly. “I miss them too.”

It would be twilight soon. She shut the curtains firmly and then scooped up the dog’s leash and the keys to the car. She would go spend the evening with Owen and Gert, and maybe this time, when Gert pressed her to stay in their spare room, she would take her up on it.

CASEY WAS SITTING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, a sheaf of street plans laid out in front of him, and an untouched cup of tea at his right hand. There was something wrong with the layout that was before him, but despite the nagging pain behind his eyes from staring at the papers, the problem still eluded him. It was with relief that he heard the back door into the kitchen open and Lawrence’s puppy-like gait sound across the floor.

“Where’ve ye been?” he asked sharply, as Lawrence came in trailing the scents of dirt and fresh air.

“I’ve gone home for a few minutes,” the boy replied, returning Casey’s tone with a very blue look over the top of an armload of bags and bedding. “Someone ought to be checkin’ to make sure she’s alright, an’ seein’ as yer too stubborn to bother, I went myself.”

“I told ye, yer welcome to stay there with her.”

Lawrence merely raised a ginger brow to this statement, as if to say Casey wasn’t to be trusted on his own.

Casually Casey lifted his arms off the street plans, allowing them to roll up of their own accord before he asked in a friendlier tone, “What do ye have there?”

“Pamela sent along a few odds an’ ends for the two of us. Why,” Lawrence tipped everything willy-nilly onto the table surface, “don’t ye look for yerself?”

Casey grunted, noting the boy’s inquisitive look at the sheaf of papers he’d been looking over. “Alright then, let’s see what we have here.”

He itemized the contents of the bag as he piled things on the kitchen table. “Biscuits, scones,” he sniffed them, “an’ fresh baked too. Green apples an’ carrots. Does the woman think we’re mules?”

“I believe she mentioned something about the hind end of one,” Lawrence said, taking one of the apples and biting through its crisp skin. He propped his size thirteens on the table, slouching comfortably in a chair.

Casey snorted and gave Lawrence’s feet a smack. “Put yer feet down, we’re not beasts here. Reached the name callin’ stage, has she? Means her temper is coolin’ a bit. Another month or so an’ she’ll maybe let me through the door.” He continued piling items on the table. A box of Lyons tea was joined by a small bag of sugar, his favorite mug, a bottle of peppermint soap, and half a dozen towels. “She’s given me the guest towels, that’s not a good sign.” Eight packets of raisins followed, as well as two Aran wool sweaters. He shook his head over the sweaters. “It’s June, what’s the woman thinkin’? Or are they meant as a sort of hair shirt?”

“She said yer prone to colds since ye had the bronchitis.”

Casey surveyed the heaped table with a jaundiced eye. “Well she’s seen to it all—body, mind an’ spirit. I imagine this is meant to tell me I’m incapable of lookin’ after myself.”

“I think it was more meant as a way of sayin’ she missed ye,” Lawrence observed, grabbing another apple and a scone. “Ye’ve missed somethin’—here,” Lawrence tossed a small black bag to him. Casey caught it and knew what it was the second the worn velvet touched his fingers.

He turned from the boy, feeling the unfamiliar pricking of tears at the back of his eyes. Damn the woman, did she have to prove that she knew him as no one else ever could? Did she mean to bring him to his knees and still not allow him into his own home? His hand squeezed convulsively around the little bag, the contents making small dents in his palm.

“What is it?” Lawrence asked quietly.

“My daddy’s rosary beads,” Casey replied, voice tight, “she knows I don’t sleep well without them.”

Lawrence wisely held his tongue from response. Though Casey knew the lad’s sharp eyes missed little, and he likely had a good idea of just why Casey’s back was still turned to him. Casey took a minute to pull himself together and then asked in a gruff tone, “Did she look well?”

“No,” Lawrence said bluntly, “she looks as if she hasn’t slept a proper minute since ye left, and she’s lost weight.”

“Aye, the woman never eats well when she’s on her own.” He took a frustrated breath and scrubbed his hands vigorously through his hair, wishing he could rub the very thoughts from his mind. He turned back to Lawrence, summoning up a grim smile that he was fairly certain convinced neither of them.

Lawrence stood, shrugging his coat back on and tucking another apple into his left hand pocket. Casey treated him to a narrow look.

“Where are ye off to? Ye’ve not had a decent dinner, nor have ye shown me yer math problems from last night.”

The boy’s eyes shifted. “Just out with a few of the lads. I’ll be back before ye close up an’ I’ll take another of those scones with me. The math sheet is on my bed, ye can check yerself, I got full marks. I’ve got an essay due on O’Connell for end of term that I’ll need yer help with, s’due next Friday,” this last was muffled by dint of Lawrence breaking off half a scone in one bite.

Casey fixed the boy with a gimlet glare. “Don’t be tryin’ to wheedle round me by flatterin’ me with promises of needin’ help with yer history. Ye’ll be back an hour before I close up here, an’ ye’ll make a sandwich before ye go. There’s ham left from last night an’ some fresh milk.”

Lawrence suddenly fixed him with a suspicious glance. “An’ why are ye bein’ so reasonable? Have ye business to attend to tonight?” His eyes flicked to the big sheets of drafting paper that Casey had rolled up when he arrived.

“That’s not yer worry,” Casey said firmly, “just be back when I told ye, or ye’ll be better acquainted with the four walls of yer room then ye ever thought possible.”

“Ye can’t lock me up,” Lawrence said indignantly.

“Ye just try me, boyo,” Casey said, sending a stern look in Lawrence’s direction, “ye just try me an’ see what I can an’ cannot do.”

Lawrence returned the glare, but to his frustration, found he couldn’t stare the man down. “I’ll be back before curfew.”

After Lawrence left, Casey unrolled the street plans and picked up his pencil. After five minutes of staring blankly at the paper and tapping the pencil on his forehead, however, he gave it up as a lost cause. It was no damn good, he couldn’t focus, couldn’t sleep, didn’t have an appetite. He simply wanted to go home, sleep in his own bed, eat at his own table, put his arms around his wife, and listen to the damned perditious cat howl at the moon.

Several times during the week, he’d fought the urge to crawl home on his knees and beg her forgiveness, but the one time he
had
gone, he’d discovered that his keys no longer fit into the locks. And so he found himself firmly back in the anger zone. That he was locked out of the house he’d built with his own two hands left him speechless with fury.

Then why had he given Lawrence the dates for where and when he and Robin would be playing? He sighed. Likely for the same reason she’d sent over all the bits and bobs for him and the boy, because neither one of them wanted to say the word, but the truth was they were both sorry and missing the other. The woman had a rare temper, it was true, but the things she’d said—then again he’d said a few things himself that made him hot with shame just to remember.

His comments about Jamie, for instance. Why he always threw the man in her face every time he was angered, he didn’t know, or rather he did, but didn’t want to face that it was jealousy pure and simple. On a gut level, he knew she’d never cheated on him with the man, and yet there was a bond there, one that went back years before he’d been in her life, and it bothered him, festering just under the surface like a wound you couldn’t see but could damn well feel.

The man loved his wife, Casey could see that clearly. But Jamie had never, to his knowledge, done anything about that love, as much as it must have pained him. He understood it, but it rankled nonetheless. The real rub lay in the fact that Pamela loved the man back; yet even this he understood, for from the little she’d revealed of her past, it seemed Jamie had been the one friend she’d known in her growing years, when impressions went deep and stayed long. That and, he admitted ruefully, the man was not without his charms.

Casey was no fool; he knew men desired his wife. He had known that from the first, for desire had been the thing he’d felt himself from the day he first saw her. He’d wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life, more than he’d wanted to get out of prison, even more than he wanted happiness for his brother and some kind of peace for his country. It had scared him, still did at times, that one could need another human being to that extent. But he’d taken comfort in the fact that she was his—his to keep, bound to him by vows that went beyond the confines of mortality. And she loved him, of that he had no doubt, loved him in a way that made him wonder why God had decided to so bless him.

Then there was the wee matter of her job. It scared the hell out of him and that was all there was to that. She didn’t understand the sort of fire she was playing with, and fire in Belfast didn’t just burn, it incinerated. He acknowledged that she was a grown woman capable of making her own decisions, but she was also his wife. It was his job to see her safe. That was what a man did—looked after those who needed his care. Whether they appreciated that care or not was another matter entirely. Why couldn’t she understand that?

And admittedly he was angry, and the establishment of the safe houses and areas where the rebels could run to ground had been a small way to vent that anger, to feel that somehow he was doing
something.
That the bastards had not completely unmanned them individually, as a neighborhood, and as a nation.

Part of his rage was a left over from internment and another part was a gut-level response to the events of Bloody Sunday. Because there was no other way to respond to such an act of inhumanity. The only thing men such as those who’d opened fire on an unarmed crowd understood was a return of their own brutality.