Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2)

by Cindy Brandner

  “What happened to make that so impossible?” David asked gently, aware that outside the barred window, night was releasing its hold on the planet.

  Pat shrugged. “My daddy died an’ my brother went to prison for five years, an’ I couldn’t seem to dream proper for a long while after, if that makes any sense.”

  “It makes a great deal of sense,” David responded quietly, Eddie’s face swimming up, unbidden, in his consciousness. “My brother shot himself a few years back. Things seemed meaningless for a long time after that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pat said simply, surprising David with the calm sincerity of his words.

  “An astronomer, is it? I’ve always thought they were rather romantic souls, spending their lives searching the heavens, leading an uncomplicated life.”

  “Told ye I was a simple man with simple dreams.”

  “I don’t think,” David said in a strained voice, still wiping blood off the corner of his mouth, “there’s anything simple about you, Patrick Riordan.”

  Pat shrugged, as if to say the designs of his character were of little concern to him anymore.

  They sat there for a moment, both weary, while morning gathered behind them in gray slipstreams of cloud and the faint whisper of rain against the window.

  “It’s gettin’ light,” Pat said finally, as the room around them turned the color of ashes.

  “Yes it is,” David said, trying for some modicum of dignity in his tone. “I suppose we’d best get you back to your cell before they realize you’re gone.” He took a deep breath, hoping his shaking legs would bear him up onto his feet. In front of him, however, broad and strong in the heavy light, a hand held itself out. He hesitated, uncertain of the meaning of it.

  “Take it, yer still shakin’,” Pat said gruffly.

  David took the hand, and allowed himself for a moment to rely upon the strength whose natural bent was to help not harm, and wished fervently they’d met in another time and another country.

  Pat was clad again in the overalls, the hood held loosely in his other hand.

  “I’m sorry,” David said, not knowing clearly just what he was sorry for, just knowing that he was.

  Pat nodded, dark eyes inscrutable as he turned again into the Irish prisoner who could not allow himself the weakness of human flaws. He put the hood back on himself, voice slightly muffled through the two layers of thick material.

  “Tie it for me, will ye?” he asked, and by these words David knew he had been given a fragile gift, which must be held carefully.

  Forgiveness.

  Chapter Forty-four

  An Examination of Conscience

  IT HAD BEEN A LONG TIME since Pamela had sought the comfort of the church. In Boston she had been tempted, but had not felt worthy to seek solace in the arms of her childhood religion.

  The prayers and articles of faith were so deeply ingrained in her that she knew she still, on a daily basis, lived as a Catholic. And someone raised Catholic could never quite shake the fear of Purgatory. Nor the knowledge that to commit such an act as she had those last days in Boston might well condemn her unequivocally to hell.

  To cross the threshold of a church made her feel like a scarlet hypocrite and she was quite certain that all who saw her would see her sin writ large across her face.

  Father Jim however, had made it easy, by asking her several times to come and help with various projects he was instituting in his parish neighborhood. The man wasn’t above using guilt as an inducement either, for he’d remarked on more than one occasion that Lawrence could well use the moral ground which the church could provide, as an underpinning for his new life.

  Thus many of their weekends were now spent here, within the building of the church itself where assistance was meted out to those most in need. Basic necessities such as food and clothing were attended to and for those in search of temporary shelter, be it of the temporal or spiritual variety, the church was a place to lay their heads.

  Father Jim took his particular brand of spirituality to the streets as well, for he believed in walking amongst those to whom he preached. In living and working in understanding of their lives, loves, and circumstances—even those who might well consider themselves beyond the boundaries of salvation.

  Over the weeks, the small parish had become a shelter to Pamela. The violence of the streets ceased at its doors. Inside was sanctuary in the finest sense, where the peace could be felt as a softness, as a quiet difficult to find outside its doors.

  So she found herself in the dim confines of the church on a Saturday morning in early October, after a night of arguing herself near senseless—had she committed this sin in free will? Yes, and yet what other choice had she been given? It was Love or Casey. One life in exchange for another. So was her contrition perfect when she did not regret that the act had saved her husband’s life? The Church might argue that she could not know that Love would kill to keep her, but of that one fact she was certain, he had meant to kill Casey in order to claim her for his own. These thoughts would give her no rest and she determined to find a way in which to broach the subject with Father Jim.

  It took the entire morning, as the two of them sat putting together hygiene packages for the local orphanage, for her to gird up the courage to ask him the question that had burned within her for months now.

  Father Jim had just held up a small bottle with a wry smile and said, “Seems a bit foolish to be handing out socks and tooth polish when the wee fiends are out stoning soldiers and lighting tanks on fire.”

  Then she simply blurted it out, as was often the way when she’d carefully planned what she would say.

  “Do you believe there are sins that are unforgivable?”

  Father Jim looked up sharply from the washrag he was tucking around a small pamphlet on the care of the adolescent body.

  “I mean rather,” she stuttered, “that what I’m asking is—is what if a person had felt they’d no choice but to commit a sin, that someone else was in grave danger had they not committed this sin. Do such circumstances expiate the need for perfect contrition?”

  Father Jim placed a bar of soap in the box and put the lid on, putting it to one side with all the other completed boxes, before answering.

  “It’s a bit hard for me to give you an answer without knowing the exact circumstances around the commission of the sin. All I can tell you with surety is that there is no sin so great that it cannot be forgiven by God. You know that surely.”

  She trembled suddenly, afraid now that she had broached this subject that had been like a great stone sitting on her chest for months now.

  "If your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow; and if they be red as crimson, they shall be white as wool.” Father Jim quoted, his brown eyes soft with compassion.

  “Do you really believe that? I mean really. That there is no sin too grievous for God to forgive? You don’t think He exacts some earthly price for sin? For mortal sin,” she added, feeling a wave of panic as soon as the words left her lips.

  Father Jim’s brow furrowed into three distinct lines, as it did when he gave all his attention to a matter. She held his gaze, though it made her shake, it was too important to hear his answer, to know what he really thought, to look away now.

  Her own pulse sounded loud and ragged in her ears. Minutes uncounted passed, a small eternity as she awaited his answer. In the distance she could hear the soft chatter of tea cups meeting saucers, as the ladies who polished the oak pews took their break in the rectory.

  “Perhaps Pamela,” Father Jim finally said, “it’s more a matter of forgiving yourself, rather than needing God’s forgiveness. The two things are, many times, one and the same.”

  “You don’t think there are some sins that cannot be forgiven? Don’t quote me Church doctrine, tell me what you yourself believe.”

  Again there was the searching gaze, and the wrinkled forehead. At long last, he shook his head.

  “My thoughts and the Church’s are one
on this matter; a sin is only unforgivable if there’s no repentance in your heart, and even then I don’t presume to understand what the measure of God’s forgiveness might be. Neither should you.”

  She nodded, and knew that he could see she remained unconvinced.

  “Perhaps confession would help to unburden you of whatever it is that’s haunting you.”

  “Haunting me?”

  “Yes, haunting you. It would be good for you to lay it down, however terrible you think it is. I don’t need to remind you that the confessional is sacrosanct.”

  “I know.”

  In the eyes of the Church life was sacred, a gift from God to be used well, to be spent on good works and lived in faith. Did the fact that Love Hagerty had committed few good works, and had lived only by his faith in the ultimate corruptibility of man, make his life less sacred? And how could she ask Father Jim these things, without leading him to understand just what the demon was that haunted both her sleeping and waking hours?

  “I—” she began, but Father Jim’s eyes looked past her suddenly, and her skin prickled. Then a smile broke across his face, lighting the small space around him.

  She turned, heart thumping painfully.

  In the last pew he sat. Her heart picked up and she began to half run down the aisle. The dark head was bent down as though in prayer. Behind her she heard Sylvie emerge from the kitchen and give a small yelp of utter shock. Then she flew past Pamela down the aisle.

  Not Casey then, but Pat. For which she was truly grateful, and yet she still felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach and winded.

  She continued her walk down the aisle, limbs leaden with disappointment. She could hear Father Jim call softly after her, but she ignored him, unable to face anyone in this moment.

  Sylvie was sobbing and Pat’s arms were around her, speaking softly, words of comfort and reassurance. She slipped past them, feeling that she was intruding on a very private moment.

  Jamie stood outside the vestibule doors.

  She smiled, knowing she wasn’t fooling him for a New York minute.

  “It’s wonderful that you got him out. That he’s safe now.”

  “I’m sorry it wasn’t Casey. You know I would have moved heaven and earth—”

  She shook her head. “Jamie you don’t need to apologize. I—it’s just that for a minute I thought it was Casey. If I hadn’t mistaken them I would have been thrilled that Pat is out.”

  “I know,” he said, “but nevertheless I am sorry.”

  His words, simple yet genuine, knocked her interior walls a little. Her face twisted, and she knew that she wasn’t going to be able to hold the tears back for long. She wanted to run headlong down the church stairs before the storm overtook her.

  But Jamie, knowing her despair only too well, opened his arms, though he did not move forward.

  She stepped into his embrace. And felt an immediate sense of relief and exhaustion as though all her carefully constructed barriers had melted at his touch. That for the moment she was safe. The tension leaked out of her shoulders.

  Suddenly she realized she was clinging to him as though he were a life preserver, but he did not move nor flinch from her touch, knowing, as he so often did, what was necessary to her.

  “What is it?” he asked quietly.

  “I’m afraid, Jamie,” she said, eyes closed against his shoulder. As if here and now she could be blind to sin and the need to atone for it.

  It was a mark of Jamie’s understanding that he did not ask of what she was afraid, but rather responded simply to the fear itself.

  “It’s alright, whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. You’re not alone.”

  And suddenly she felt the shape of forgiveness, as insubstantial as a whisper in the dark and yet there all the same. Not forgiveness entire, but the possibility of it.

  This, she knew, was as close to confession and the expiation of her sins as she was going to come just now.

  “YOU’RE WORKING FOR WHOM?” Jamie asked, glasses slipping off the end of his nose in consternation.

  Two weeks after Pat’s release, Pamela stood across from Jamie in his study, informing him that she had been, for the last two weeks, employed as a photographer.

  “The police,” she replied, looking back steadily.

  “They’ve hired you—with your bloody last name they’ve hired...” a grim look crossed his face. “You didn’t use Riordan, did you?”

  She flushed, but tilted her chin up defiantly. “I can do good work for them, Jamie. I understand this work. I like it.”

  “What did you tell them your last name was?”

  “I used my mother’s maiden name—Vincente,” she said. “It’s my business what church I attend anyway.”

  “That is completely beside the point, as you well know,” Jamie said flatly. “If your bosses ever find out who your family is, you’ll be fired directly, and that’s only if you’re very lucky.”

  She knew Jamie wouldn’t be impressed by her reasoning, and so did not explain to him that it was work or go mad at this point. She needed something to fill the empty hours spent waiting to hear about a husband from whom, since that first terse missive, she had heard little. Only rare, much handled missives that, by necessity, were short on information and emotion. Pamela knew it was unavoidable, and that Casey was very aware how many sets of eyes might look upon his words, and would be careful to compromise neither her nor himself. Still it made for a most unsatisfactory form of communication.

  Legal recourse had thus far proved frustrating in the extreme. She was stonewalled at every juncture, the lawyer she’d hired telling her he’d twenty-five cases identical to her own and that none looked terribly hopeful.

  Jamie would be even less impressed if he knew she’d been receiving anonymous notes tucked into her lunch or sometimes in her car about files that existed regarding Brian Riordan and his early demise. But Jamie was distracted, for he’d had police roaming his property in an effort to discover what had led to a dead body in his stream. So far the result of that investigation merely pointed to a woman that had gone missing two days before Jamie and Pamela had stumbled upon her. The police weren’t entirely certain, but Jamie had told her all suspicions seemed to be aimed at an abusive husband who had merely used Jamie’s land as a conveniently remote spot to dump the body.

  The first note Pamela received had shown up at the end of a particularly long day, when she’d stayed behind to finish developing pictures of a crime scene that had been especially gruesome. The body had been dumped off a country road just over the border of County Armagh. And it had been different from her usual purview in that it was the body of a woman, and it looked as though the murder had been sexually, rather than politically, motivated.

  “Bar slag,” the constable who’d been with her had roughly said, and then gone and lit himself a cigarette while Pamela had started the process of photographing the body and the few small artifacts that surrounded it.

  Though she strove to maintain a professional distance from her subjects, the woman had bothered her. In a week in which she’d photographed no less than six corpses in various states of torture and mutilation, this one had gotten under her skin.

  Something about the woman’s chipped red nails, her peroxided hair and short skirt had made Pamela feel a wave of pity for her. Had she gone out in hope that night of meeting at last that special someone? Had she thought he was the one? Or was he just another in a long line of faces and bodies that ultimately proved disappointing? Or perhaps it was the bottle of Tabu that had fallen out of her purse—Rose had always worn Tabu and the scent was a poignant memory note for Pamela.

  By the end of day she had been exhausted, the trembling fatigue of early pregnancy catching up with her. She was also more than a little depressed, having been once again sent a visitor’s pass to see Casey that had expired by the time it reached her.

  The note was taped to the visor in her car. If the evening sun hadn’t been directly in her eyes
on the drive home, it might have taken her several days to find it. As it was she had locked the doors immediately, and driven a good ways home before pulling over and opening the note.

  It was only one line, but the wording was guaranteed to catch her attention.

  ‘I know what really happened to Brian Riordan.’

  Other than that there was a small, crudely drawn symbol of two interlocking rings at the top of the paper.

  More had come, sporadically, so that there was no pattern to their appearance. She never saw anyone near the car, though it chilled her to the core to know someone was getting in and out without being detected. This led her to the conclusion that it had to be one of the men with whom she worked. Whoever he was, he also knew of her relationship to Brian Riordan. All of which made her distinctly wary.

  Yet the notes, which all seemed fragments of a much larger picture, did not frighten her. She had a sense that someone was merely trying to lead her to a conclusion and didn’t intend her any harm. The latest had been slightly more alarming in that it would require some action on her part. It directed her to the file room of the station where she worked, stating that something of interest awaited her there.

  On each and every one of the notes was the same sketch of the interlocking rings. She knew she’d seen the symbol elsewhere, but couldn’t for the life of her remember where.

  When she opened the latest note, a small heavy object had fallen into her lap. A tarnished key, which she felt quite certain would unlock the door of the file room. She only hoped she was ready for the Pandora ’s Box this key would unlock and bring to light.

  She told none of these things to Jamie, though. She even managed to keep a stoic face as he listed the one hundred and two disasters that could occur as a result of her foolhardy venturing into police work.

  Nor did she tell him she believed that through cataloguing the dead, gathering the sad bits of evidence that told the story of their end, she could make up for causing the death of another. Could atone, and perhaps buy her way back out of the cold into grace or life.