Chapter Three #2
The years of living on her own have sharpened Lena’s alertness.
When Sean was there with her, the world stopped at the walls of their farm; anything beyond that could go disregarded.
When he died she got the farm off her hands as fast as she could, keeping only two acres in case she wanted a garden or a horse someday, but instead of contracting, the boundaries of her awareness disintegrated altogether.
Now her senses catch the smell of Sunday roast blown from Ciaran Maloney’s house, or the scurry of sheep half a mile away roused by a passing fox, or the shadow of a cloud moving over the mountain.
Probably this is her mind’s response to being a woman alone in the middle of nowhere, but it brings her pleasure rather than fear.
She’s always loved this place, through all the people tangling up her feelings about it; anything that brings more of its details to her notice is welcome.
What wakes her is nothing she can put her finger on. The house is quiet. If anything or anyone were nearby, the dogs would have warned her, but no movement comes from the kitchen. Only the air feels wrong, charged up with a fine electric hum too high to hear.
Lena gets out of bed and goes to the window, shivering a little as the cold strikes her. Outside, the immense stretch of darkness is spattered with bright windows. Between them, smaller points of light bob like will-o’-the-wisps.
It’s past four o’clock, but Lena knows Noreen will be awake. Sure enough, she answers on the second ring.
“Helena! Is Cal after finding something?”
“I’m not at Cal’s. What’s going on?”
Noreen lets out a gust of breath. “God, for a moment there I thought…’Tis Rachel Holohan. She’s after going missing. You know Rachel, Claire’s one, the blondie—”
“I know her.”
“I’m awful worried, Helena. I was saying to Cal just this afternoon, I saw her there with Eugene and they didn’t look great, d’you know the way?
Rachel’s pure mad about that fella, but he’s a sleeveen little fecker, if the boss’s daughter was giving him the glad eye up in Dublin he’d give Rachel the aul’ heave-ho like a shot.
And she’d be only devastated. She’s better off without him, but sure they don’t think that way at that age, everything’s the end of the world—”
Lena says, “When did anyone see her last?”
“Now I heard this from Claire, and she’s up to ninety, why wouldn’t she be, so I mightn’t have it right, but anyhow.
Eugene’s down for the weekend—honoring us with his presence, aren’t we the lucky ones.
” Noreen isn’t normally bitchy; worry is sharpening her.
“So Rachel spent the day with him. She left him around half-four and he says she was grand then, and she musta gone home sometime after ’cause her car’s there, but Claire and Fintan were over in Athlone doing a bitta shopping and they et there and didn’t get home till half-eight, so they missed her.
They thought she was meeting up with Eugene again in the evening, so they weren’t worried that she wasn’t there when they got home, they just thought he’d come and got her—”
Lena moves out to the kitchen, leaving the lights off. The dogs stir and raise their heads, and pad sleepily over to her for pats. She rubs behind each of their ears in turn, and they lean heavily against her legs, pleased at the unexpected company.
“Only then last thing at night Eugene rang the house, he said he was trying to get on to Rachel to say good night but she wasn’t answering.
He never saw her in the evening. She was never meant to go back out with him at all.
No one’s seen her. I wasn’t even here, we brought the kids into town to the pictures, I’m driving myself mad thinking if I’da only been here I mighta looked out and seen her— Claire and Fintan are going mental, all the men are out looking—”
Lena says, “I saw her.”
“What? You did? When?”
“She came here. Around half-five, maybe, or a bit before. Her cat had scratches; she brought him over for me to have a look.”
“Helena! How was she? What kinda form was she in, like?”
Far off in the darkness outside the kitchen window, more lights waver along invisible trails.
“She seemed grand,” Lena says. If Rachel is off somewhere trying to make a decision in peace, or just having a good cry for herself, the last thing she needs is to come back to a townland that knows all her business; specially since it sounded like that business wouldn’t make her popular around here.
“A bit worried, maybe, but I reckoned that was just the cat.”
“You’ll have to tell Claire. Go on, ring her now and ring me back after.”
“You ring her,” Lena says. She doesn’t want to talk to Claire. “It’s years since I saw her; I’d be intruding.”
“I could, I suppose. Just, the state she’s in, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy…
” Noreen’s voice cracks. “God, Lena, some days I almost wish I’d never had kids, d’you know that?
It’s too much, honest to God it is. It’s more than any woman could take.
When something like this could happen any day, outa nowhere, one minute everything’s grand and the next…
” She sniffs and catches a shaky breath.
“God, wouldja listen to me, making a big aul’ drama outa nothing.
Rachel can’t have gone far, without the car; she’ll be home by morning and I’ll feel like a right eejit.
Come here, I’d better go ring Claire. I’ll let you know if I hear anything. ”
Lena puts her shoes on and finds her torch. If Rachel came here once, she might have come back. Daisy, whose tolerance for society is limited, has gone back to bed, but Nellie is delighted at the genius idea of a late-night outing. Lena keeps her close to heel.
The old stone byre where Sean’s ancestors kept their cattle is empty, just a scatter of hay left from years ago, when Sean and Lena used it to store feed. The shed is full of the clutter that belongs there, and nothing else. No one is huddled against the house’s walls.
Lena finds herself walking quietly, on her own land, and deliberately makes herself step more firmly.
Under the sweep of the torch beam, the grass lies wide and bare.
Nellie has the beagle passion for spotting everything and sharing it all, but the only time she alerts is to a mouse-sized skitter among the grass.
An owl swoops low over Lena’s head, warning her off his hunting ground, but apart from him there’s no one, and no sign that anyone’s been and gone.
She goes back inside and makes herself tea.
Noreen and every woman in the townland will be doing the same, while their phones hop out of their pockets with the woodpecker drilling of notifications, information and speculation and emotion zipping through the air like insects.
Lena stands at the kitchen counter, warming her hands on the mug and watching the lights move outside the window.
The road splits, the main fork heading for the village, a narrower lane winding off towards the river. Flashlight beams crisscross the village road: Tommy Moynihan and his leadership skills have things covered. Cal and Trey head for the river.
The cold has worked its way through Cal’s boots; he can’t feel his toes. “How you doing, kid?” he asks.
“Grand.” Trey flicks her light over a patch of mud churned by sheep tracks. The only human ones among them are from man-sized wellies.
“You freezing?”
“Nah.”
Cal can smell water up ahead, a clear cold note cutting through the rich autumn tangle of scents.
His flashlight catches the thick strip of woods that borders the river.
“You got a little more left in the tank? No point monkeying all around those banks in the dark, but we might go down as far as the water, see what we see.”
“Yeah. No problem.”
She looks sleepy, but not exhausted. Trey is mountain-kid hardy; no amount of exercise is enough to tire her out. “OK,” Cal says. “Tomorrow you can sleep till noon.”
“Was gonna anyway.”
“Till two,” Cal says. He hopes either one of them can sleep, after tonight is done.
The river has good perch fishing; sometimes Cal and Trey catch dinner there, or don’t, depending on the river’s mood.
It’s narrow enough that a kid could throw a stone across it, but fast and rocky; you need to know its tricks.
The approach is thick with growth left to its own devices and accumulating in layers: fallen leaves ankle-deep over a thick bed of other years’ leavings, brambles and underbrush hip-high, and far above that the spread of trees, alder and birch and willow, their trunks coated in moss.
Even on a summer day it’s a dim place, flickering with sunbeams and midges.
On a night like this the bank is a new kind of dark, closer and unsettlingly personal, with the ceaseless, restless rush of the river somewhere up ahead.
“Stay behind me,” Cal says. “Right behind me.”
There’s a path to the water, but it’s nearly invisible even in daylight, and they lose it after only a few steps.
They pick their way through the snarl of undergrowth, swearing every now and then when they snag on brambles or stumble into a sudden dip.
The flashlights find nothing but branches in every direction, crisscrossing till their patterns lose any meaning and start to feel like hallucinations.
The sound of the water keeps them on track; without it they’d be wandering in circles, lost just yards from the road.
“Listen,” Trey says, stopping.
Sounds come from upriver, getting louder against the noise of the water. Something big is crashing through the undergrowth.
“Hey!” Cal shouts.
A man’s voice calls something back—Francie Gannon, could be, from the deep note—and a beam blinks between the trees. Cal swings his in answer.
“How long till it gets bright?” Trey asks.