Chapter Seventeen
It was the Wednesday before Halloween, and the days were noticeably shorter.
William had turned new spindles and repaired the man-size gap in the stair railing, glossy paint the only sign that Conor O’Kane had been there at all.
Thomas was over early for family night and the promise of apple pandowdy.
Maeve and Molly dutifully sat with their grandfather at the kitchen table, sipping hot cider while he regaled them with stories of death and Samhain and shape-shifters, how the veil thins between the living and the dead, how this is the time to watch out for evil faeries who steal children and unsettled ghosts looking to even the score. “Light little fires to keep them away.”
“Papa,” Faye admonished. Molly had been having nightmares, though she was not one to cry out in her sleep.
Instead, she would come into Faye and William’s room, tears streaming down her face, and stand next to the bed—for how long, Faye didn’t know—touch one of them on the shoulder or slip a hand between the mattress and their sleeping body to wake them.
It had been a long, difficult summer. That girl Wendy’s prom date had died from his injuries.
Faye and William had gone with an insistent Maeve to a memorial in the packed gymnasium.
The sickly floral odor barely masked the standing stink of sweating teenagers.
“Lilies and carnations,” Faye whispered to William.
He stuck out his tongue to feign a quick gag, the two of them still in agreement after all the years since the flower shop.
Faye had watched Maeve scan the crowd, assumed she was looking for Wendy, even though Faye had heard that the family left even before the school year ended, citing the girl’s grief as the reason they couldn’t stay.
Conor O’Kane’s death the same night was hardly a footnote compared to a star athlete dying young. Faye had tried not to feel relief.
Thomas flipped his wrist at Faye. “You know your grandmother Jean thought that pile of boulders behind the cove house was a thin place. That’s why she stood there so often—commune with the dead, talk to Fiadh and the boys.”
“What do you mean, talk to them?” Maeve asked. “Mom’s right here.” William, too, home from work, gave Faye a puzzled glance.
Faye could only roll her eyes, dismissing her poor father, who himself seemed to dwell in some in-between more often these days. The wind howled, and doors rattled like spirits knocking for entry. “Stop now,” Faye said, harsher than she intended. “You’re scaring the girls.”
Thomas startled, let out a laugh. He put his hands on either side of his face and made a show of rattling it back and forth. “You’re right, my little Faye. Of course.”
“No, tell us more,” Molly pleaded. “About ghosts.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Faye said. She dug through the utensil drawer for peelers. “Here,” she said, laying them next to a bowl of bright-red apples. “Are you three going to peel or just sit there?”
Thomas picked an apple from the bowl and handed it and a peeler to Maeve. “Now, Maeve,” he said. “How old are you? You must be about ready for a husband.”
“I’m in high school, Grandpa. Besides, I don’t want a husband.”
Thomas poked at her. “Every girl wants a husband! Humor an old man. Peel that apple but don’t break the skin. When the ribbon drops, it will reveal the first initial of your beloved.”
“I want to marry you, Grandpa,” Molly said, grabbing her own peeler and apple.
“See?” Thomas said, his hand on the top of Molly’s head. “Even your sister wants a husband. Even if he is a crusty old man.”
Faye tried to appear distracted but listened intently.
Maeve had been in a mood for months. Even William had noticed and mentioned it to Faye, who dismissed his concern.
“Senioritis,” she told him. He’d wondered aloud if Faye thought it had to do with “the accident,” which was how they referred to Conor O’Kane’s death when they mentioned it at all.
There had never been a discussion about that girl Wendy, but Faye was glad she was gone. A problem that solved itself.
“Fine,” Maeve said with a huff.
The girls went to work on their apples, Maeve carefully keeping the peel intact. Molly hacked almond-shaped shards onto the table.
“My mother swore by it,” Thomas said. “Cunning, she was. She made witch bottles to hide in hearthstones. Ward off evil. She was long dead, my mam—bless her soul—by the time our boys died so close to each other. I thought we needed a witch bottle, but your grandmother wouldn’t allow one in our house.
Too superstitious.” He sucked at his teeth.
“Maybe if she’d listened to me, Fiadh would be here, and things wouldn’t have gone the way they did. ”
“I swear,” Faye said, a warning in her voice.
Shame rose in her, unwelcome as always. She did not want to scold her father, not in front of William and the girls.
But she couldn’t let Thomas slip into the past like that, and after all this time.
She hadn’t told him about Conor’s last word, how he, too, had invoked Fiadh.
It made her feel small, the way she resented Fiadh’s staying power so long after her death.
She felt her cheeks flush as her shame doubled.
“I’m right here. What’s gotten into you? ”
The girls’ eyes widened, and their heads dipped.
“Don’t mind an old blabbermouth like me,” Thomas replied, rapping his head with his knuckles. He gave Faye a weak smile. “The attic’s empty.”
Molly inspected her slashes of peel. “What does that mean?”
Thomas looked at the pile and laughed. “Means you have to wait until you’re better with the peeler!”
Maeve’s crimson peel slipped to the floor.
“Oh, look,” Thomas said. “What’s your letter?”
Molly squatted next to the elaborate coil, traced the ragged peel. “Could be an M.” She tilted her head. “Or W.”
Faye caught Maeve’s eye in a sideways glance. “Oh, please,” she scoffed.
Maeve bent over in her chair. “That’s not a letter. It’s a broken heart, Grandpa,” she said, her voice small and blue.
Thomas tapped his lip thoughtfully, considered the peelings, considered Maeve. “Cursive,” he said. He told her the peels don’t lie, that hers would be a winding path with twists and turns to find true love.
After dinner, Faye cleaned up the apple peels from the table and floor, went about washing the last of the dishes.
William had taken her father back to the cove.
Thomas didn’t like to drive past dark anymore, part of whatever it was that was going on with him, this desire to be home more than anywhere else.
Molly had asked to stay over at the cove house again, to sleep in Faye’s old bedroom there, but Faye couldn’t risk it, not with her father being in such a mood, the way he slipped up and slid back.
She had waited with him at the front door while William warmed up the car.
“She won’t use these stairs,” Faye said.
“Molly. She doesn’t think I notice, but I do.
She only goes up and down the back ones. ”
He stared up at the new railing. “You’ll all forget soon enough,” Thomas said.
“I hope so.” The girls well out of earshot, Faye sat on the step, remembered the body that had broken there months before. “I used to sit on our stairs at home and eavesdrop on you and Jean in the living room.”
“Overhear anything good?”
Faye pulled her knees up. “Nothing really. I think I was trying to figure out a way in with her, figure out what she said to you or what you said to her that might help me. I never could unlock her. I’ve been mad for years that she treated Conor O’Kane like family, but I never got that from her.”
Thomas sat next to her, surprisingly nimble, put his hand on her knee.
“If it makes you feel any better, she was nicer to him than she was to me, most of the time. The two of us, you and me, we reminded her of something she wanted to forget. Conor O’Kane reminded her of something she wanted to remember.
He was tricky that way, sinister how he wheedled his way in.
Doesn’t surprise me, him falling to his death.
” He twisted his mouth and made a clicking sound.
“Tough to stay upright on cloven hooves.”
“Papa!” Faye said, smiling despite herself. “You’re sure you don’t want to stay?”
But he said no, he only wanted her man to take him home.
Faye dried the last dish, felt the mist of Thomas’s thinning veil around her.
She took the dirty washcloths and dishtowels down to the laundry in the basement.
She did not want O’Kane’s ghost to skulk and stomp the dust of her home, disturbing thoughts she guarded.
She would need to smudge him from this house, forget he was ever here.
She spotted a leftover box of sparklers on the shelf next to the powdered detergent. Just the ticket.
Maeve and Molly huddled in the living room watching a rerun of Family Affair, the Uncle Bill in that show a spitting image of her William.
Molly curled next to Maeve, head on her sister’s lap.
“Look what I found in the basement. Why don’t we light them off and scare those ghosts away.
” She put on her brightest smile, thought her brightest thoughts, forgetting that light reveals shadows.
“Sparklers!” Molly screamed, jumping out of Maeve’s embrace.
“Come on. You too,” Faye said to Maeve, who pulled herself up off the couch.
“Oh,” Molly said, more seriously. “I need gloves.”
“Honey, you—” Faye stopped herself. Let Molly wear her gloves if it made her feel better. “Hurry up and get them.”
In the driveway, Faye lit Maeve’s sparkler, and Maeve lit Molly’s.
October frost coated the pumpkins and the field behind the house.
Snow couldn’t be far behind. Tonight, though, wool sweaters kept them warm, and sparklers made it like summer with stars hanging so low they seemed to fly from the ends of their metal wands. Dancing shadows rose from the darkness.
“Let’s make wishes,” Faye said.
“Write your husband’s name, Maeve!” Molly said, her voice mocking.
Maeve’s brow furrowed in the flashing light, and she spun around like leaves on a dust devil, circles and circles, drawing cyclones up from the ground like she was spell-casting, no name at all as far as Faye could tell.
Molly leaped, feet twisted, eyes closed, muttering words Faye could not make out.
Faye saw it then, the milky veil. Everything will be better now, she thought as she blazed names—Thomas and William and Maeve and Molly—into the stars.
She added Fiadh and Jean. She wrote Mutti and Vati because she had forgotten their given names.
She thought of the boy marching on the wall by the sea, a wild thing like in the children’s book.
Go away! she thought and wrote Conor. When she wrote Gisela, her old name, a flurry of leaves lifted around her.
She spun, relieved and unfazed, torching the night with the last of her sparkler.
Elisabeth, she wrote as her sparkler flickered out.
Molly’s scream tolled crisp as a bell. Faye grabbed her outstretched hand, pulled off a singed glove, and held the child’s palm close. A red streak blazed her little lifeline. “What happened?”
Molly sputtered. “It hurts!”
“Well, duh,” Maeve said. “Why did you grab it like that?”
“Maeve, leave her alone! I know it hurts, honey,” Faye said and put her lips to the burn.
Pangs, sudden and sharp, wrenched Faye’s heart.
She’d released them, all the unsettled ghosts.
“Let’s go put ointment on this. You’ll be okay now.
” She rushed Molly inside as darkness fell and the veil thickened.