Chapter Sixteen
Faye stared at the broken railing as the door to Maeve’s bedroom closed.
That moment, stuck in a loop: Molly, defiant in a worn flannel nightgown, a hand-me-down from Maeve.
Her foot kicking out, the villain swiping at her children, the shove—so righteous and powerful coming from something so small.
Atta girl! Then, surreal horror. A failed railing, a flailing man.
Like a ship captain’s wife in a widow’s walk, Faye had lit every lamp in the house when William left in search of their daughter.
She’d wound herself up, fearing something terrible had happened to Maeve while also replaying that woman’s accusations.
“Your daughter is unnaturally attracted to mine. I’m worried she might have absconded with her.
” Faye had been too shocked to respond, much less defend Maeve from this ridiculous accusation.
Unnaturally attracted! Still. She’d kept that part from William, only telling him there’d been an accident, that a friend of Maeve’s was missing, and that the girl’s mother was worried.
That all fell away now. Conor O’Kane was sprawled on the fringed rug in the narrow vestibule, one leg twisted strangely at the hip.
The air around him seemed charged, life and death in conversation about what was there for the taking.
Blood oozed over his tobacco-stained teeth, and Faye had the strangest memory of him as a boy when those teeth were fine and white, the way he left his shirt unbuttoned after they dipped in the bay, the way he spread his legs when he talked to Fiadh.
His hand juddered and twitched. His eyes pleaded with her as he breathed in ragged gasps soggy with blood.
She did not think he could move his head.
One word sniveled out of him, suffering and clipped. “Help.” His hand flopped near hers, a fish on land.
Faye picked at her lip. They had been children together, briefly, long ago, far away. But she did not owe him anything. She could not save him. She would not try.
She backed away, out of his reach. She did not want to feel his touch.
“Du h?ttest . . . Du h?ttest . . .” Faye said. It was the language she’d spoken as a child, but it would not come back to her. “You should not have come here.”
His eyebrows flicked, and he grunted. “Fiadh.”
Faye could not see the images that flashed before Conor O’Kane’s eyes then—the green paths, the mossy shore, stones in a churchyard, pebbles that rattled in crashing waves, Fiadh’s blush when he’d dared to touch her cheek.
She could not see Conor’s mother, Theresa, waiting at a white gate.
She could not feel his anger and resentment fall away, ribbons of a heavy robe untied, a burdensome yoke lifted.
His furtive eyes closed, his breathing stopped. A bloody bubble popped into drool.
Faye sunk back on her feet, the knots on the fringed rug digging into her knees. She screamed at the world of her making that had brought them to this place.
William rushed down the stairs. He stopped in his tracks as he took in the scene—splintered wood, stunned wife, dead man.
In the pause, Faye imagined rolling Conor’s body up in the rug, wrapping it with rope, weighting it with stones.
She could almost picture it, her and William rowing out in the darkness in the yar little boat she’d made him haul away, how they would hurl Conor overboard into the deep green sea, that same sea where her own story ended and began, let the currents ferry him to wherever he would rest.
William eased toward her, breaking the spell. “Give me your hand.” Faye took it, let him pull her to standing. “Now, step over. Yes, like that.” She was in his arms. Safe again. The tears came, fear and sorrow falling from her onto William. “There now. No, don’t look at him anymore. Look at me.”
Faye lifted her eyes. “Are the girls okay?”
“Tell me what happened. Quick now.”
Faye wanted to shroud O’Kane, but William said they shouldn’t touch anything. She told William the story that Maeve told her. “He had the photograph. He must have come to apologize. But Maeve was scared and ran from him.”
“He tripped then, on a loose rug. On his way to the bathroom.”
“No! William. Molly pushed—”
He pointed his finger, cut her off. “No, you listen. He tripped on the rug. Honey, he tripped on the rug. He was drunk, he had to use the bathroom, he tripped on the rug. The girls didn’t see him.
They didn’t see anything. No one did. Do you understand?
You go up there, and you make them understand and then we are done with this.
Done with Conor O’Kane.” His face was hard, his eyes wide and certain.
While William was on the phone with the sheriff, Faye climbed the stairs, armed with the story.
She bumped up the runner in the hallway, made a lump a person could trip over.
She opened the door and found Maeve and Molly huddled on the bed, Maeve’s bedspread wrapped around them.
It gave Faye a start, these sisters next to each other, so unsure of what would happen next.
A flicker of memory, arriving in the barracks in Ireland, trembling on a cot with Elisabeth.
She crouched in front of Maeve and Molly, put her hands on their legs.
She could control this for them. She could make certain they wouldn’t be hurt by this one terrible, troubled night.
“This has nothing to do with you, not with either one of you, you understand? Not a single thing. This was an accident had by one man and one man alone. He was a bad man. He was drunk. He tripped on that runner,” Faye said, pointing to the open doorway.
“That’s what happened. If anyone asks, you didn’t see it.
No one saw it. Conor O’Kane was heading to the bathroom. You heard a noise. That’s it.”
Maeve sat up, wrapped the bedspread back around Molly. “But Mom, earlier tonight . . .”
Faye had caught Maeve’s eyes before and tried to tell her then that her secret was safe. No one had to know. Faye would say it one time, then it would be forgotten. She lowered her voice. “Was Wendy Walker with you when you saw him?”
Maeve nodded.
“And did you see anyone else tonight other than her?”
Maeve shook her head.
“Listen to me. There was no earlier tonight. You did not go to the party. Nothing at all happened. Nothing. You make that clear to that girl and don’t speak about any of it again.
Not to anyone.” Despite herself, she thought of the phone call, of what Conor said he saw.
That was dead now too. “And that includes Daddy. It would break his heart, you understand that, right?”
Maeve nodded.
“Get your pajamas on. Quickly. And brush your teeth.”
She turned her attention to Molly. Her little face was ashen.
“Pix.” Molly sat up, and Faye zipped her lip with an invisible pull.
“Not a word. It’s very important. Not a single word.
Never, ever speak of it. Mama and Daddy will take care of everything.
That man fell. That’s all. He fell. You understand? ”
Molly’s eyes were wide, glassed. She nodded, the barest gesture. Her mouth opened and closed twice, like a fish out of water.
“You do it, honey,” Faye said. “Zip that lip.”
Molly lifted her hand slowly, drew her pinched fingers across her mouth.
Faye touched her cheek. “That’s a good girl.”
Maeve whispered, “Is he . . . ?”
Faye squeezed between the girls. She wished her arms were wings, that she could fold her daughters beneath them. “Yes,” she said. “He’s gone. He can’t hurt us anymore.”
The sheriff arrived with the ambulance, lights blazing in the night. Maeve stuck to the script when the police asked questions. Molly, obedient, didn’t say a word, didn’t shake her head yes or no. “She slept through the whole thing,” Faye said.
William answered their questions with earnest ease.
“Honestly,” he said, “I don’t know what brought him here tonight. We’ve known him a long time. The families were connected back in Ireland years ago.”
The sheriff took perfunctory notes. No one seemed much interested in the details of the common story.
An ex-con, a known drunk and pain-in-the-ass dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs.
No sign of foul play, no bloody knuckles or torn clothes, no weapons.
Only distraught parents and children in nightgowns, cheeks tight with dried tears.
Conor O’Kane went out on a stretcher, black boots poking out from under a white sheet, his hands empty. Faye and William, Maeve and Molly, watched from the open front door until the police car and the ambulance pulled away, sirens silent, emergency lights dark, and all was quiet.
William rolled up the stained rug to carry out to the trash. Only then did Molly speak. “My magic carpet.”
“We’ll get another one, honey. I promise,” Faye said, though she could see the defeat in Molly’s eyes.
She loved to play the game, especially with her big sister or with Faye if Maeve wouldn’t give her the time.
Molly would sit on the rug, whatever playmate straddled behind her.
With an old vase for the lamp to rub between her palms, she’d say something like, “My carpet is a hot air balloon!” or “My carpet is a bird!” and then whisk them away to magical places, weaving stories of colorful beasts, of planets and stars, seas like the bluest diamonds, impossible mountain peaks—flights of imagination and wonder.
If only we could fly to a place where Conor O’Kane had never darkened the doorway, Faye thought.
“No,” Molly said, resigned. Her eyes drifted to the splintered railing, darting as if a murder of crows circled above. She flinched, then furled into herself. “It’s ruined.”
Faye and William lay in bed, grave still. “Is this the same day, or is it tomorrow?” Faye whispered. If not before, she knew she was old now.
“It’s tomorrow.”
She sighed. “Okay, good.”
“They’ll come for his car.”
“We’ll need to call Papa in the morning. Or maybe go over. That’d be better.”
“Suppose Glenda’d be next of kin if they really did get married.”
Faye thought of the three brothers. They had seemed inseparable, but of course, that was false. Distance or death separated everyone eventually. She did not want to think on him anymore. And yet. “I wonder if he ever told Jean what happened between him and his family.”
“I can only imagine.”
“It must have been bad. He and his brothers were close. From what I recall.” She sighed again, heavy and effortful. Floorboards creaked in the hallway, and her first thought was of Conor O’Kane’s ghost out there, come to haunt her family. “Did you hear that?”
“I didn’t hear anything,” William said, his voice sleepier.
She listened, but there were no more sounds. “I guess it was nothing.”
William touched her hand in his way. “Try to sleep.”
Faye dreamed about Fiadh crashing through waves, seawater splintering like wood around her.
Neither she nor William heard the floorboards creak again under the weight of tiny feet outside their door.
They did not know that their child tiptoed down the stairs, splayed herself out like a chalk outline by the front door, and flew away in her imagination on a magic carpet, looking for the place where dead people go so she could give back the inky impression that Conor O’Kane left behind on her shoving hands.
They did not know that her little fingers crawled along the bare floor and found a portal to the past, missed by lazy authorities, behind a blocky table leg, there, in the empty vestibule, in the windowed moonlight.