Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
CLOVER
TWENTY-ONE YEARS LATER
G iving the bundle of knotted rope in my hands an exasperated shake, I let my head fall back with a groan.
I’d never be able to prove it, but I suspected that Da took great pleasure in tangling up his own fishing nets. He was probably spying on me at that very moment, laughing his arse off while I struggled to straighten them back out.
Arsehole.
I stared up at the overcast sky and prayed for an afternoon shower, one so heavy that I’d finally be allowed to come inside and take a break. But all I got was a single drop of rain—one perfectly timed splat , right between the eyes. It felt like the almighty himself had just spat in my face.
Which was fitting, considering that I was in my own personal hell. Actually, in my version of hell, I wouldn’t be standing in front of a house that resembled a crusty white barnacle growing on top of a cliff overlooking the Irish Sea. I’d be standing in front of a mountain. One so tall that it broke through the swirling thunderclouds overhead. So wide that it wrapped around me on both sides, caging me in. But this monstrosity wouldn’t be made of stone or ice or flows of lava. No, the mountain of my nightmares would be formed from something far more horrifying.
An endless hellscape of reeking, knotted fishing nets.
With a defeated sigh, I dropped my head, wiped my rain-splattered nose on my shoulder, and allowed my attention to drift toward the sea. I could only resist that view for so long, and the more monotonous my chores were, the more difficult it became.
The wind was relentless as I trudged over to the cliff’s edge, dragging the heap of tangled rope behind me. I’d thrown on a pair of shorts that morning, thinking, surely, it would be warm enough for them in mid-June—a decision that I was now regretting. Goose bumps covered my exposed legs, and every strand of hair that hadn’t made it into my messy bun lashed me in the face, but I was too distracted to notice.
Dropping the net, I pulled the hem of my jumper down with one hand and shielded my eyes with the other.
I’d lived on the Howth peninsula my entire life, but the sight of the sea and the grassy little island that sparkled just offshore never failed to take my breath away. Ireland’s Eye, as the island was called, felt like an oasis that was always just beyond my reach—a tiny, tranquil, floating hill, abandoned by civilization. The only buildings on the Eye were two small stone ruins, and the only creatures that lived there were a few rats and rabbits and sea birds and a colony of plump gray seals who liked to sunbathe on the rocky beach.
As beautiful as it was, the island wasn’t what drew my attention to the sea day after day. It was hope. Dumb, stupid, pointless hope.
I still remembered the exact moment when I’d learned what a selkie was. It was my first day back at school after Ma’s accident, and I had no real concept of where she’d gone. I was only seven at the time, and no one had bothered to explain to me what had happened. I’d just woken up one morning to the sound of Da breaking things. He was fall-down drunk, slurring about Ma being “gone” and “not coming back.”
Then, for the next few days, he just sat slumped over in his armchair, staring blankly at the TV with drool in his beard and a bottle of Jameson in his fist. He couldn’t even sober up long enough to go to the funeral. My aunt and uncle took me, but they didn’t want to talk about what had happened either. Everybody had just cried a lot and hugged me a lot and said that they were sorry and that I’d see her again one day.
When?
When will I see her?
Where did she go?
Can I call her?
Can I visit?
Can I go live with her instead of Da?
He was so scary now that she wasn’t around. And mean. He said he couldn’t stand how much I looked like her. He told me to stay in my room so that he wouldn’t have to see my face.
Why did she have to leave me with him?
There were so many questions that I’d been too afraid to ask. Not only because I was terrified of upsetting my father, but because I was even more terrified that someone might tell me the truth. That she really was gone. Forever.
“A selkie,” Ms. Bell announced, pointing to an illustration on the screen in the front of the classroom, “is a mythological creature, believed to live in the waters of Scotland and Ireland. It looks like a seal, but when it removes its seal coat, it looks human.”
The class gasped.
“Legend has it that fishermen will sometimes find these creatures in their human forms, and they’ll fall so in love with them that they’ll hide the selkie’s seal coat so that it can’t shift back. Then, they’ll take them home, marry them, and sometimes even start a family with them. But a selkie’s place is in the sea, so they never stop searching for their missing skin. And once they find it, they’ll disappear into the water and never be seen or heard from again.”
My eyes watered, and my throat burned as an explanation more palatable than the truth took root in the cracks of my broken heart.
“Clover?”
I hadn’t realized that I’d raised my hand until every face in the room was pointed in my direction.
I hadn’t spoken to a soul since the funeral, and I wasn’t sure that I was ready to start, but when I looked into Ms. Bell’s concerned brown eyes, the words just tumbled out of my mouth. “Ms. Bell, I think me Ma is a selkie.”
Thirteen years later, the cruel laughter of two dozen seven-year-olds still echoed in my ears as I scanned the island for seals, hoping one of them would show a glimmer of recognition. Nod in my direction. Maybe even wave.
But the seals were gone, just like I knew they would be. Because right behind the island, anchored about a hundred yards offshore, was a cruise ship the size of Mount Brandon.
Nine months out of the year, Ireland’s Eye was Howth’s little secret, but every summer, the tourists descended upon it in swarms. You could practically watch the island sink under the weight of all those Nike-wearing, picture-taking, flower-crushing foreigners. But the worst part was that their boats scared away the seals.
And the fish.
Which turned my da into an even bigger arsehole than he already was.
Most of the fishermen gave up on fishing during the summer months, using their boats to give tours of the island instead, but Oliver Doyle was “no fucking tour guide.”
He wasn’t much of a father either.
As if he were conjured by that thought alone, the sound of a van door slamming shut yanked me from the past back into the present with a violent, terrifying jerk.
Still decked out in his oilskins and wellies, my father walked to the back of the van, his boots crunching in the gravel driveway next to the house, and he pulled out a bundle of ropes as big as a washing machine.
My heart slid into my stomach, but not because of the nets. It was his posture, the scowl beneath his wiry blond beard, the stoop of his hulking shoulders.
The catch hadn’t been good. It never was in the summer.
And I was going to pay for it.
I walked as quickly and quietly as I could from the cliff’s edge back to my spot behind our house, but when my father’s gaze landed on me—tiptoeing through a patch of grass with a net that was very much still knotted in my arms—I felt like a deer that had been caught in the crosshairs.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
I could feel my pulse in my throat as Oliver stomped over to me with joyous wrath in his bloodshot eyes. He was looking for someone to take his frustrations out on, and by not having my chores done, I’d just served myself up to him on a silver platter.
I looked down at the net that I was frantically trying to untangle as he approached, too terrified to hold his stare.
“Nowhere, Da.” I tilted my head in the direction of the cliff without looking up. “I was just watchin’ the boats while I worked. This last net’s givin’ me trouble.”
“Watchin’ the boats, were ya?” He mimicked in a high-pitched voice before snapping, “Look at me when I’m talkin’, girl!” Oliver’s black wellies appeared in my line of sight just before his meaty, callous hand wrapped around the nape of my neck and jerked my head back.
I gripped the rope tighter and swallowed a whimper as he forced me to make eye contact with him.
“ I was on one of those fuckin’ boats, workin’ me arse off all day, while you were up here, doin’ what? Lookin’ fer selkies and merfolk ?”
I pulled my gaze away from his blazing blue eyes and glanced over at a stack of neatly folded fishing nets piled next to the shed. It was the least confrontational way I could think of to answer his question about what I’d been doing all day, but when his head followed my line of sight, the tightening of his grip on the back of my neck told me that I’d made a terrible mistake. Oliver didn’t want to see that I’d been working too. He wanted to be angry with me, and now, thanks to that simple glance, he was.
Oliver shoved me to the ground so fast and so hard that the wind was knocked out of me before I had the chance to scream. I landed on my side in the rocks, and the bone-crunching pain in my ribs immediately brought tears to my eyes.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry …
Straddling my body, Oliver pushed me onto my back and clutched my face with one hard, rough hand. The gray clouds seemed to gather overhead, watching the spectacle.
“Ya think yer too good fer this now, don’t cha? ’Cause yer goin’ to some fancy fuckin’ college. Ya think yer better ’n’ me?” He released me just long enough to pull that hand back, flatten his palm, and slap me across the face.
The worst part about being hit wasn’t the sting, not for me; it was the sound. That smack would ring in my ears for hours, sometimes days—long after the swelling went down—reminding me that I was weak, humiliating me over and over again, from the inside out. The sharp clap of skin hitting skin was the soundtrack of my youth. The vibration of my soul. And the source of all my shame.
I barely heard the rest of his speech over the sound of it repeating like a broken record in my head.
“Ya won’t be thinkin’ yer better than me when I put yer arse out on the street, now will ya? The only reason yer still here is ’cause Sheila begged me to let ya stay until you could afford a place of yer own. But yer twenty goddamn years old now, darlin’. I can kick you out whenever the fuck I want. So, maybe think about that the next time ya feel like bein’ smart with me.”
My cheek throbbed, my eyes burned, and panic took hold once I realized what was happening. I couldn’t cry. Crying only made him angrier. I had to hold it in. I had to.
Widening my eyes to keep from accidentally blinking out a tear, I stared straight ahead at Oliver’s heaving whiskey barrel of a chest. A stray beam of sunlight had broken through the clouds, making the side of his bushy blond beard glow like hay that was about to catch fire.
I wished that it would.
“Ollie?”
Da pulled me to my feet so fast that the world spun out from under me and went black. The heap of green rope tumbled out of my arms and onto the ground as I struggled to stay upright and conscious. I felt his arm wrap around my shoulders as Oliver’s girlfriend, Sheila, stepped through the back door, bouncing their thrashing toddler on her hip.
I hadn’t even known Oliver had been seeing anyone until Sheila showed up on our doorstep, pregnant with his baby and crying because her husband had just kicked her out. She’d been a permanent fixture at our house ever since, and honestly, she was the best thing that had ever happened to us. I tried to stay within earshot of her at all times because Da never raised a hand to me when he knew she was around.
The downside of Sheila’s arrival was that she’d given Oliver a son, which only solidified his disdain for me. He had a new family now. A new child. One that could carry on the Doyle name and wasn’t a walking, talking redheaded reminder of the woman who’d shattered his heart.
“Can I borrow Clo for a minute?” Sheila asked, grimacing as my half-brother whined and wriggled in her spindly arms. “Odie’s fightin’ his nap again, and I need her to work her magic.”
Odie was short for Odin, the Norse god of war. That name was one hundred percent my father’s doing. He prided himself on his Viking blood. Sometimes, when I saw him standing on the bow of his fishing boat, I could almost picture him leading the longship full of Norsemen who had raided Howth all those centuries ago.
He would have fit right in.
Da tightened his grip around me in a fake show of fatherly affection, squeezing my injured shoulder with his viselike hand. It was a warning. Oliver didn’t like it when I got involved with anything related to his new family. As far as he was concerned, Sheila belonged to him and Odie alone. She was their special mother figure, not mine. And the sooner I got out of his life, the sooner he could start pretending like my mother had never existed.
The feeling was mutual. After two years of working part-time at the Trinity College bookshop, had almost saved enough money to put a deposit down on an apartment and afford some basic furnishings. Honestly, I probably had enough already, but I couldn’t leave Odie. Not yet. Not until he was old enough to tell me if Oliver ever tried to hurt him …
Or make him untangle those goddamn fishing nets.
“Ten minutes,” Da said, giving my shoulder a shake that made my freshly bruised ribs scream in pain. “Then, this one has to go check the lobster traps.”
I could almost hear his smug grin.
More chores.
Sheila gave me a sympathetic half-smile as Oliver steered me across the yard and into the house. I didn’t know how much she’d seen or heard, but it didn’t matter. She knew. She knew what went on, and she pitied me for it. But I pitied her even more. Because once I left, she’d most likely be taking my place as his punching bag. And unlike me, he’d never let her get away. Ma had tried to do it, and look where it had gotten her.
The back door led into the kitchen, where Oliver left his wellies on a rubber mat and hung his oilskin coveralls on a hook above them. Beside the hook was one of Sheila’s coastal-chic additions to the house—a wooden anchor with the words Life’s a Beach painted on it. Like living on a rocky cliff next to the freezing cold sea in rainy Ireland was the same as having a beach house in the Caribbean.
Sheila tried to hand me the wailing one-year-old, but Odie clung to her with a high-pitched shriek. It felt as if he were crying all the tears I was trying to hold back. My ribs and cheek throbbed, my eyes stung and my throat burned, but what hurt the most was the fact that I had to pretend as if nothing hurt at all.
“Shut him up, will ya?” Oliver grumbled as he shuffled into the sitting room, popping the tab on a can of Guinness.
“He’s just overtired.” Sheila winced, prying his chubby fist out of her limp brown hair. “Nothin’ his big sister can’t fix.”
“Well, she’d better fix it fast if she’s gonna check those traps before dinner,” Oliver sneered, flopping into a blue recliner that was at least a decade older than me. The springs groaned and squeaked beneath him as he yanked on the lever, extending the footrest.
As soon as Sheila extracted the last of Odie’s fingers from her hair, I whisked him into my arms. Turning his body sideways, I pressed his belly against mine and began twisting my torso back and forth while making a shushing sound. He went still immediately. It wasn’t magic—I was simply the only one in the house who’d bothered to research how to get a baby to stop crying.
With Odie taken care of, Sheila plopped down on the couch, her small frame landing in a pile of seashell-shaped pillows—another one of her design touches.
Da turned on the TV, and while the two of them watched the glowing screen, I stood behind them, rocking and shushing and soothing myself . Lifting Odie’s sleeping body to my chest, I clutched him like a teddy bear as one of the tears I’d been trying so hard to suppress finally slid down the swollen side of my face.
Stop it , I scolded myself, wiping my wet cheek on Odie’s soft head. If Oliver sees you crying, it’s gonna be so much worse.
“In breaking news,” Mia Patel, a BBC newscaster, announced, “a report released by the Irish Directorate of Military Intelligence indicates that a Russian invasion of Ireland might be imminent.”
“What?” Sheila sat up with a jolt.
“Bah.” Oliver waved a dismissive hand at the TV. “Don’t be an eejit. Nobody’s invadin’ shite.”
“According to the minister of defense, Ireland’s recent conflict with the United Kingdom and hostile annexation of Northern Ireland—spearheaded by Ireland’s Taoiseach Séamus Rooney and members of his radical nationalist party, the United Irish Brotherhood—has left the small island nation alienated from the rest of the world. By making an enemy of the United Kingdom and its vast network of powerful allies, the Republic of Ireland is now relatively defenseless against the iron fist of Russian President Alexi Abramov, who has declared a personal vendetta against the UIB.”
“Listen to this gobshite, will ya?” Oliver gestured toward the newscast with his half-empty can. “We finally take back what’s rightfully ours, and we’re the fuckin’ bad guys.”
“Anyone living within twenty kilometers of Dublin, an international airport, or a major harbor are advised to evacuate until—”
“Da, we live near all of those—”
“Clo!” Oliver’s sudden shout brought a fresh wave of startled tears to my eyes. Turning around in his chair, he glared at me as I widened my eyes to hold in the moisture. “For Christ’s sake, go check the fuckin’ traps already. Didn’t ya hear?” He grinned like a madman through his wild blond beard as he thrust a hand in the direction of the TV. “The Russians are comin’ for dinner!”