Siobhan
Chapter Five
We walk past the Penguin Palace where we stop for ice cream, and then we walk home the long way eating it. The ice cream drips down the front of my dress, but Uncle Donny doesn’t even get mad. He teaches me how to suck it out of the bottom of the cone like a straw.
“What do you want to do this afternoon, kiddo?” he asks. “The world is our oyster. Unless you want to watch television, apparently.”
“I want to play outside,” I say, because that’s what I like to do best of anything. And because I need to ask Hannah to help me start solving Theo’s murder.
“Hey, sounds like a party,” says Uncle Donny.
Teddy is full of energy because of all the ice cream, so he races around me in circles. Then right as we get close to the house, a loud red rattling truck drives slowly past us—and I know that truck by the American flag painted on the back. It’s Mac!
Mac backs up and pulls into the driveway.
“Hi Mac!” I shout.
I used to call him Uncle Mac, but Mama says he’s not really my uncle and I should stop calling him that. I think it’s because he goes away a lot, which is not like a real uncle. Even when Uncle Donny and Mama have words, he doesn’t go away for long. Mac goes away for months and months until we’ve almost forgotten him. Plus, Mama told Hannah’s mom that he left her high and dry. And they both shook their heads, so that’s a bad thing, although you’d think being dry would be better than wet.
Mac gets out of the truck, but he seems confused. “Hey, Alfie,” he says. He always calls me that, not because he can’t pronounce it but because that’s his special way of saying it.
“Mac is Mama’s special friend,” I explain to Uncle Donny, who has come up behind me. Maybe Mac is not going to be an old cuss today. “And this is my uncle Donny!”
“Yes, I’m familiar,” says Mac, holding out his hand for Uncle Donny to shake. He does, but slowly. “I’m sorry, I was expecting Siobhan. Is she around? I’ve been calling. Seems like the phones are down.”
“She’s a little busy at the moment,” says Uncle Donny, and his voice sounds different than usual, like when he’s in a hurry but he’s trying to be polite. “Can I help you?”
Hannah comes out of her house because she sees us standing around in the driveway. “Hello, Mr. Donny,” she says. “Hello, Mr. Mac. Can Aoife play now?”
“That sounds like a good idea,” says Uncle Donny, and this time he doesn’t check with me if I want to or not. “Just stay close, okay, girls?”
Luckily, I’m happy to play with Hannah, because I want to tell her about my mantle. “Maybe we can sit on your steps and talk,” I tell her, and I try to give her a special look so that she knows it’s about a secret.
“Okay, sounds good,” says Uncle Donny, waving me off.
I pull Hannah away by her shoulder.
“Aoife, why does your hair look like that?”
“My uncle Donny did it,” I say, smiling. She looks not so impressed. Teddy will pull her hair if she’s not careful—he’s done it before, but not hard enough for her to notice.
I look back and Uncle Donny is still talking to Mac, who is now leaning against his truck. It’s an ugly truck, with the windows taped up, but it looks extra bad next to Uncle Donny’s shiny silver car, which is not taped up anywhere.
“Hannah, I thought more about your dream,” I say. “I think you’re right. Maybe we really do need to solve Theo’s murder.”
I don’t tell her about the saints or how they’ll bring back Mama, because I don’t think she’ll understand those parts.
“Great!” says Hannah. “Let’s start right away!”
“We need to make a list of suspects, right? And then interview witnesses?”
“All right, I think it’s time for you to leave,” says Uncle Donny, and his voice is loud enough that Hannah and I both stop talking and look over. Mac is leaning back against his truck like he doesn’t mind being shouted at. But I know he doesn’t like it when Mama does it. Mac is scary when the yelling starts. I remember once, a long time ago, Mac threw a plate against the wall and it shattered everywhere. It was Mama’s special plate from the Old Country and it belonged to Gramma Aoife. I still remember the sound of it breaking into a million little bits. It makes my stomach hurt to hear him yell, like a fist in my throat, closing. Teddy hides under the porch, even though his big butt sticks out. He hates it when grown-ups fight, too.
“Well maybe I will, for now,” says Mac. “Alfie! Goodbye, girlie. See you when I see you.”
He always says that. “Bye Mac,” I say back.
Uncle Donny just crosses his arms and watches with his stern face as Mac gets into his truck and backs out of the drive. He honks his horn cheerfully, and Hannah and I both wave.
“Your uncle Donovan seems mad,” says Hannah thoughtfully.
“Maybe Mac was being grouchy again,” I say. I don’t tell her that last time I saw Mac, there was more yelling than that. Maybe Uncle Donny is on Mama’s side.
“If your uncle Donovan and Mac had a fight, who do you think would win?” Hannah asks. I picture how the two of them looked standing at the bottom of the driveway. Mac is gray and tough and Uncle Donny is skinny and tall.
“Mac,” I say, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. Uncle Donny is pretty good at getting people to do what he says. Mama says he has a lawyer’s silver tongue, but I asked him to show it to me once and it was pink. That’s what a figure of speech means.
“I think your uncle Donovan would win,” says Hannah. “Because he would call the police and the police would see that he’s an upstanding citizen and Mac is white trash.”
Hannah just thinks that because Mac drives a dirty red truck and wears sweat pants and smells like cigarettes and because her mom tells Mama he’s no good. And sometimes Mama also says he’s no good. And I don’t know one hundred percent if he’s any good or not.
“Are you girls okay to play out here a little longer?” Uncle Donny calls over.
“Absolutely, Mr. Donovan,” says Hannah sweetly. She’s sitting up straighter all of a sudden. “I’ll watch out for Aoife, don’t worry.”
He does not seem very worried.
“You know, I wonder, Aoife,” Hannah says to me, stroking her chin like a cartoon character. I know she saw that on TV somewhere. “Did Mac know Theo?”
I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t always remember Mac being around, but Mama usually introduces him as an old friend. Or maybe she just means he’s older than her?
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I’d say we already have our first suspect,” Hannah says. She takes out a notebook and writes, on the top of the page, MACK. “Do you know his last name?”
“No.” I never thought about it before, but I guess he must have one.
“Try to find it out,” Hannah tells me. “And ask him if he knew your brother. We know your uncle doesn’t like him; maybe that’s because he suspects him of killing Theo.”
“Mama wouldn’t be Mac’s friend if he killed Theo,” I point out.
Hannah tosses her head. “She’s probably blinded by love, like on TV,” she says.
I hope that’s not true, but she does wear glasses sometimes. And it definitely seems like Uncle Donny doesn’t like him very much.
Hannah’s mom calls her from inside the house. Neither of us answer. She won’t find us right away.
Hannah is adding numbers to her list of suspects. “We need at least one more,” she says. “There’s usually two or three.”
That makes sense. If there was only one suspect, the mystery would be too easy to solve.
“We can probably find a few more this afternoon,” says Hannah. “I heard my mom say she’s going to invite you over. We’ll find a good time to sneak away, and then we’ll look for clues. Okay?”
I look over at Teddy to check what he thinks. Teddy nods his head real big. I did promise I would be brave. “Okay.”
“Hannah!” calls Hannah’s mom. “
Are you out here?”
“Aoife, is your uncle married?” Hannah starts packing up slowly.
“I don’t think so.”
“He’s very handsome.”
I frown. “So?” I don’t like Hannah saying it, and Teddy growls.
“So my mother is single, too. Maybe she can marry Mr. Donovan—and then we’d be like sisters!”
“No we wouldn’t,” I say.
“I said we’d be like sisters, not that we’d actually be sisters. We’d be cousins, though, I think. Just think, I’d have five cousins instead of four.” Hannah looks pleased.
I don’t have any cousins.
“I guess,” I say. But secretly I don’t know if it would be fun for Hannah to be my cousin and my neighbor. What if Uncle Donny started liking her more than me? She’s older, and she can do better Barbie hair. And she can make her whole body into the shape of a bridge if she starts off on her back on the grass.
“Hannah, here you are.”
We both look up because Hannah’s mom has come to the front door. I like Hannah’s mom, even though Teddy says she’s boring. If she was an animal, she’d be a big groundhog standing up in the grass. She is big and soft and looks good to hug. But I still like my mama more.
“You’re supposed to be cleaning up all those toys in the basement before your grandma gets here. And your lunch is sitting out on the kitchen counter.”
“Can Aoife eat with us, too?”
“If her uncle says it’s okay.” So I know Hannah has been talking about us at home, or else her mom wouldn’t know about Uncle Donny.
When I ask, Uncle Donny says that will be a huge help because he needs to go run errands. He goes over and introduces himself to Hannah’s mom and says they are lifesavers, which is a kind of candy. I am glad he is happy, even though I don’t really like to eat with Hannah’s family because all the stuff they eat is weird and not like Mama’s food (when she used to cook). Mama never made lunchmeat sandwiches on white bread. When Mama is feeling up to cooking, she bakes her own bread out of brown wheat, and we eat it with soup that she cooks in the Crock-Pot all day long so it’s extra delicious. And I’m not really hungry right now anyway because we already had ice cream after church, but I know not to argue.
Anyway, these days Mama and I don’t have a real lunch either. We just have some water and crackers and Mama says it’s just like communion.
“Thanks a million,” says Uncle Donny, coming out of Hannah’s house. “Aoife, be good, okay?”
“I’m always good,” I say. “Teddy’s the one who causes trouble.”
“Teddy again, hmm,” clucks Hannah’s mom.
“You know when I was your age, I wanted an imaginary room to myself,” says Uncle Donny.
Hannah’s mom laughs. Uncle Donny is so funny.
But I don’t want them to get married.
Meanwhile, Hannah’s mom is smiling at my hair. “I called Stephanie to come over, too,” she tells Uncle Donny. I didn’t think I’d see Stephanie again so soon, but it’s good because she doesn’t watch us all that close.
“Sounds like a plan,” says Uncle Donny.
“Did Mac make you mad?” I ask, as he hands me a tube of sunscreen and a baseball cap. “Are you going to have a fight?”
“No, we’re not going to have a fight. Sometimes, uh, Mr. Mac and I don’t get along, but that just means we have to use our words and talk things out.”
“But you didn’t talk things out. You told him to go away.”
“Ah, yes, but that was only so that we could, you know, think about the words we’re going to use next time we see each other and talk things out then.”
I guess that makes sense.
“Now, put some sunscreen on, Aoife.”
I like the smell of sunscreen, so even though it’s cold and it makes me greasy, I put it all over. When I am finished, Uncle Donny laughs at me.
“Missed a spot,” he says. So he rubs the rest of it in more, all over my shoulders and my neck. Then he uses his thumbs to wipe some off my cheeks and puts it on my ears.
“Have fun playing outside,” he says. “I wish I could come with you. Never get old, Aoife! Always stay young and beautiful!”
“Okay,” I say.
“Good. Now I won’t be long, okay, E-fers? Have a good time.” Uncle Donny kisses my head, goes back to his shiny car, and drives away.
As soon as we turn around, Hannah’s mom has to go break up a fight between the two boy cousins, who are yelling about the Xbox. Hannah’s mom says the boy cousins are driving their mom to distraction. I think they’re very distracting, too.
Hannah and I are just thinking it might be our chance to start investigating, but Stephanie shows up first.
“Thank God,” says Hannah’s mom. “Please take this whole rowdy lot out to play.” Even though Hannah and I are never rowdy. That’s the boy cousins.
“I was thinking of taking them down to the park, if it’s okay with you,” says Stephanie.
The park! I love the park, although Mama never wants to take me. I only get to go when she visits Theo. But luckily, she goes to visit Theo a lot. Teddy loves the park, too. It’s his favorite place to be. In the park, he shrinks down to his smallest bear size, no bigger than I am, and runs through the trees with Hannah and me.
I hope when we get to the park we can sneak away and go to the Secret Place. Teddy is the one who discovered it, and he showed me one day when Stephanie wasn’t watching properly. It’s all the way at the far end of the park. Now whenever we go, we always try to find a way to go play there.
“That sounds great. Just don’t bring them back too soon.” Hannah’s mom is trying to get the littler cousin, Ethan, to put on sunscreen even though he doesn’t want to, and he’s hollering over her. Finally she finishes and gives him a shove out the door.
“Aoife, how’s your mom doing?” she asks me over her shoulder.
That reminds me all in a burst that Mama isn’t next door waiting for me to come back. I forgot for a minute in the excitement of investigating. I don’t think I’ll be able to answer at all without starting to cry. Teddy rubs around my legs to make me feel better.
“She—she’s fine, but she’s busy, so my uncle Donny is staying with me,” I lie. Even though I know it’s wrong to lie.
I get the feeling Hannah’s mom knows something is wrong, but I’m glad she doesn’t ask anything else. Maybe because Ethan is screaming that he didn’t want to wear sunscreen and he shouldn’t have to because his mom doesn’t make him.
“I don’t care what the rules are in your house, Ethan. In this house we all wear sunscreen when we’re outside between ten and three. Aoife, I hope she’s feeling better soon. Tell your uncle that if he needs anything, I’m here to help, okay? Now out, all of you. I mean it. I need to clean the carpets before Grandma gets here. Stephanie, thank you; you’re a national treasure.”
Outside, the boys run ahead of us, pushing each other, and Stephanie wheels her bike along between us and them. Hannah and I walk slowly behind, telling secrets.
“We have to figure out Mac’s last name so I can check if he’s a molester,” Hannah whispers. “That’s your job. How are you going to find it out?”
“I could just ask him,” I say. “He’ll probably tell me.” I think about the sound of that plate shattering against the wall, and I wonder if that’s how Mac killed Theo, too. Maybe he broke him into a thousand tiny pieces that Mama had to sweep up. I don’t like to think about that.
“How are we going to find the rest of the suspects?” I ask.
“We’ll have to investigate,” she says.
“How will we even know it’s the murderer when we find him?”
“Because, he or she will try to kill us,” Hannah whispers back.
Oh.
It’s so hot outside that the black street has bubbles, but I don’t stop to poke them with a stick even though I want to, because we’re on our way to the Secret Place.
“You’re too slow,” yells
the bigger cousin, Liam, to Hannah and me. Stephanie and the boys got too far ahead of us and are standing on the corner, shoving each other. Liam is up on top of the curb and Ethan is trying to step up to stand there, too, except Liam keeps pushing him off. Next thing I know, Liam will start pinching his nose, which is what he always does to make Ethan start crying.
“Go on ahead, we’re coming,” says Hannah when we’re close enough to talk in a normal voice. “We want to go look at the stream.”
“The stream is stupid,” says Liam, wiping his fingers off on his pants. I don’t know what he’s touched that leaves a greasy stain like that.
“Well, just go do whatever you want to do, then,” says Hannah. “It’s not like we care.” I think she’s brave to talk to the boy cousins like that. Liam is a whole year older than her, and Ethan is a year older than I am, so I never say anything to either of them if I can help it. We don’t usually play with the boys unless Hannah’s mom says we have to.
“Stupid,” says Liam, shoving Ethan so he bumps into Hannah. Ethan starts yelling and trying to hit him back, but he’s too little, and Stephanie sighs and nudges them to start walking again.
“All right, keep it moving, we’re almost there,” she says.
“Maybe we can ask Stephanie if she knew Theo,” I say.
“That’s a great idea!” Hannah takes my hand and pulls me off to the side. “She could be a material witness.”
Mama says that sometimes Hannah is not showing off because sometimes she just doesn’t realize I’m not understanding what she means. Either way, Mama says I should ask politely and be gracious about the chance to learn something new.
“What’s one of those?” I ask, maybe not as gracious as I should be.
“It’s somebody that may have seen something very important,” she says, excited to explain. “Stephanie is probably old enough to remember Theo, and she may be able to tell us what happened to him.”
I’m glad we have one of those around to talk to. “Let’s do it,” I say.
We’ve been dragging our feet enough that the boys are already at the park, running around on the grass yelling, and Stephanie is waiting for us with the bike in the shade. She doesn’t mind waiting, though—Stephanie likes to read books while she babysits us, and she doesn’t really care what we get up to as long as we come back when she calls us. Her job, she says, is to keep us alive until we get home.
All That's Bright and Gone (ARC) Page 7