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

by Cindy Brandner

  “Yerself an’ Love Hagerty.”

  Four words, she thought, putting her head down to the bed in an effort to control the panicked spinning the words had caused. Four simple words, a minor arrangement of vowels and consonants, and the world beneath your feet tore apart. Ground that had seemed like granite, now quicksand.

  “Is it true?” It was just barely a question. She saw that he’d always suspected, but had kept it from himself. In some perverse way, it was almost a relief to have it out. As though someone had finally removed the knife from her belly, and she could now quietly bleed to death. Casey wasn’t going to let it be that easy though.

  “Look at me woman. Is it true? Ye owe me the truth.”

  She pulled herself up, scar feeling like a lick of flame along her cheek. He’d had the courage to ask this question, now she must have the courage to answer it. She looked directly into his face.

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  He staggered back slightly. “Oh Christ, why—how could you do this to us?”

  “I was working for the FBI,” she said tonelessly, the words sounding utterly ludicrous. “They said if I could get incriminating information out of him, they’d make sure you never faced any prison time and they’d find a way to keep you out of his reach.”

  “And did they ask ye to whore to the man for this information?” he asked, tone horribly calm.

  “Yes, they did. It seemed a small price to pay to keep you alive,” she said, knowing the words were like a slap across his face.

  “Why didn’t ye tell me?”

  She shook her head slowly, wishing she could break the mutual gaze they were locked in. “How could I tell you? You’d have hated me and I couldn’t bear the thought of that.”

  “Lying to me was better?” he said hoarsely.

  “Of course it was,” she whispered, throat thick and heavy as lead. “Because at least I could still have you, and the burden was only mine to bear. I could manage it. But to have you hate me, to have you look at me,” she swallowed against the metallic surging at the back of her throat, “the way you are now. That I couldn’t bear.”

  “You couldn’t bear it?” He gave a short strangled laugh. “You couldn’t. I’ve just watched a man I loved like a brother take his life in front of me, an’ all I can see in my mind’s eye is you—you and him—a man who tried to have me killed—in bed, him touching you, inside you,” he spit the words out, face the color of ashes. “He must have had a good laugh at my expense, here I was tearin’ myself up about what I’d seen in his business, what I’d done at his service, an’ he was screwing my wife the whole time. I have been such a goddamn fool—such a fool where yer concerned!” His clenched fist shot out, driving into the wardrobe hard enough to rock it on its foundations. “Goddamn it, Pamela, how could ye?!”

  “You—you didn’t kill Robin?” she stuttered, her mind having grasped at the information as a straw of salvation.

  “No, I’d not the courage it seems, so he had it for me. He shot himself in the head. He gave me the choice, his life or my own, an’ I discovered that I valued breathin’ over a clean conscience.” The tone was dry but she heard the tidal wave of emotion that could not stay dammed much longer. His mouth was a grim line. “I’d best pack.”

  He grabbed a bag from the top of the wardrobe and began to pull clothing off hangars—shirts, pants, sweaters. He yanked open the drawers of the bureau, grabbing handfuls of socks and the white cotton briefs he favored.

  “Casey,” she said, the panicked bird beating frantically now, “you can’t leave.”

  “No? Why’s that?” he asked, grabbing his kit bag without regard for its contents and shoving it into the bag.

  For a single moment, she considered telling him about the baby, and then just as quickly rejected the notion. She would not have him stay out of guilt. He would stay for love or he would not stay at all.

  “Can’t you understand why I did it? I did it to keep you alive. That’s all that mattered to me, keeping you alive and whole.”

  He snorted derisively. “Thanks, but all things considered I think I’d just as soon be dead.”

  “You forgave Robin when he betrayed you, are you telling me you can’t ever forgive me?”

  “Robin was my friend an’ there was a time I trusted him with my life, it’s true. But I trusted you with my heart. It’s a fact that I’m still walking about breathin’ but whether I’ve still a heart,” he shook his head, rubbing a bruised hand over his eyes, “I cannot say just now.”

  “Please,” she whispered, knowing it was futile, but unable to stop herself all the same, “please don’t do this. Casey I love you, you know that.”

  “I’ll thank ye not to say those words again,” he said very coolly, then returned to packing his clothes.

  He turned from the bag a moment later, a perfectly pressed white shirt still in his hands. “Do ye know all I could think of when Robin was putting the gun to his head? Do ye know?”

  “No,” she said quietly.

  “You,” he said, eyes a hard black that held her at bay, “all I could think was I’d rather crawl back to ye covered in another man’s blood than risk never bein’ able to see ye again. Do ye know what I did when he told me?”

  She shook her head, turning away from him, unable to bear the look in his eyes any longer.

  “I threw up, right there at his feet, that’s how much the thought of you lyin’ in Love Hagerty’s bed sickened me, an’ do ye know what the man did, he held me like I was a child in need of comfort. Do ye know what it does to ye to have someone tell ye such things an’ then watch them put a bullet in their head? Do ye know?”

  “No, I don’t know what it does to you, but I do know something, Casey. I know what it feels like to have a man inside my body that I loathe, and to have given him permission to be there. I know what it is to hate the man I love above all others in this world for putting me in that position. I know what it is to feel filthy all the time but to know that I’d do it again and again into eternity to keep you safe and alive. I’d do it now if I had to, even now when you look at me as though you hate me.”

  He was across the room before she was aware he was moving, pushing her back hard against the pillows, his hands pinning her to the bed. “Don’t—tell—me,” he said through gritted teeth, face a mask of pain, as though he’d aged a decade in the space of a few short hours. “As much as it must have hurt ye to do what ye did, I cannot hear about it right now. Allow me that much cowardice will ye?”

  She nodded, the movement causing the smell of lilac water to rise up from the linens around the two of them. The scent of it would sicken her for the rest of her life. The pressure of his hands had become painful and she couldn’t stop from squirming slightly.

  He blinked, then slowly released her, backing away as if he couldn’t understand how he’d come to be here. He turned back to the closet, taking the last shirt off its hanger. He stripped himself awkwardly of the coat and torn shirt he wore. His back was to her and in the pale light she could see just how badly he’d been hurt. He managed the left sleeve, though it was awkward, but couldn’t get the right. His shoulder was swollen and bruised, blood dark against his skin.

  She took the empty sleeve and brought it around to a height his arm could manage, careful not to touch him, knowing he was like tamped gunpowder right now. “Won’t you let me at least bind your ribs for you, maybe wash off a little of the blood?”

  He stepped away sharply as though she’d hit him, and shook his head. “No, I’ll not have ye touch me, for I’m afraid of what might happen were ye to do so. I’ve not much dignity left to me, but I’ll not hurt a woman.”

  He zipped the bag, dropped it by the doorway, and reached for clean shoes. He took the bloody ones off his feet, wrapped them in the ruined shirt, and placed them in a separate compartment. He stood up then, wincing as his shoulder moved.

  “One question,” he said, and his voice was very, very soft. “An’ ye’ll answer me honestly.”r />
  “Yes.”

  “Did ye feel anything when ye lay with him?”

  For several seconds she was silent, the time expanding to fill all the world between them. She could hear his breath, weary, as if even filling his lungs was very difficult right now.

  “I—I” she stuttered, and found she could not lie anymore, not even for his sake.

  “’Tis alright,” he said finally, exhaustion like smoke round his words, “the silence spoke for ye.”

  He moved slowly, pain evident in every line and movement of his body. She moved to the edge of the bed, worried that any sudden move might alarm him in his present state. She felt slightly dazed and not entirely real. As though she hung suspended above the dismantling of her life.

  “Where will you go?” she asked quietly, the scene before her eyes oddly surreal, the buckles on his bag seeming as large as fists, the teeth of the zipper brutally sharp and jagged.

  “Away,” he replied shortly, reaching for his coat, recoiling in revulsion when he touched the wet on it and then picking it up with grim determination.

  “Casey,” she said, not missing the way he flinched at the intimacy of his name on her tongue, “am I going to see you again?”

  The silence was like a hard, flat blow to her stomach. It took all the courage she had left to look up and see the answer in his face. It was the tenderness she found there that frightened her more than any sort of rage would have. There seemed no hope in such a fragile emotion.

  “I—I don’t know,” he said, voice betraying him only the slightest bit.

  She thought she might pass out from the sheer weight of the pain she could feel approaching with the force of a hurricane.

  “Can you do one thing for me?” she asked, her voice sounding very far away and muffled to her own ears.

  He nodded.

  “Go quickly,” she said, the three syllables breaking off from her tongue like seared iron.

  He put his shoes on, tying them with an abrupt economy of movement, then shouldered his bag. She closed her eyes, unable to watch him turn for the door. She felt his approach, and thought the smell of mint soap was the thing that finally broke her heart.

  He leaned down, kissed her softly on the top of her head and then, without a word, he left.

  Chapter Eighty

  The Butcher’s Bill

  SUNDAY LUNCH AT JAMIE’S HOUSE had become a longstanding tradition for Pat and Sylvie. Sundays they attended mass at Father Jim’s parish, where more often of late, Jamie could be found as well. Then they would regroup at his house for dinner. Others came and went. For months Pamela and Lawrence had joined them, Father Jim came at least once a month, and Belinda had been a fixture both before and after Pamela’s sojourn there. For the last two weeks, though, she’d been conspicuous by both her absence and Jamie’s silence upon that absence.

  Pat looked forward to these Sunday afternoons, for somehow all the troubles of the week fell away once seated at the long oak plank table. With good food and wine, and talk of books and music, and shoes and ships and sealing wax, and whether pigs had wings. The one rule that Jamie insisted on at Sunday lunch was that there would be no talk of politics. A rule that they all obeyed with some relief. For Pat those afternoons had become a way of decompressing from all the stresses of the week before.

  Today, though, he’d other things on his mind. His brother’s continued absence, Pamela’s stubborn insistence on staying at the empty house alone, and frankly, the thought that he’d like to lose himself in a long afternoon in bed with Sylvie.

  The woman in question, though, had baked a pie, and picked a sheaf of late summer roses for Maggie’s table, and wasn’t to be gainsaid from delivering either of these things.

  “Besides,” she said practically, “I need to ask Jamie for the time away.”

  “Will we tell him today, then?”

  “Aye, though I feel right bad not tellin’ Pamela at the same time.”

  “I’m not certain it’s right to do so at present, not with the state of things.”

  “She still hasn’t said why Casey left?”

  He shook his head frowning. “No, the woman knows how to keep her tongue still when she wants.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, watching him pat down his pockets down for the second time.

  “I can’t find my wallet,” he said irritably, “I could have sworn I’d left it in the kitchen.”

  “Try the bedroom,” she said dryly, “ye threw yer jacket an’ trousers willy-nilly when we came in last night. I’ll wait for ye in the car.”

  “Hey you,” he said as she stepped over the doorsill, just for the pleasure of seeing her turn to him with that particular light in her eyes. She was a picture, his woman, in a pretty summer dress, the pie on one arm, a light cardigan and the spray of roses on the other.

  “Hey yerself, boyo,” she retorted with some sass.

  “I love you, Mrs. Riordan.”

  She smiled, face flushing as pink as the tea roses that she carried. “I’m pretty fond of you too, Mr. Riordan.”

  “I’ll only be a minute,” he said.

  In reality he was about three, having finally located the wallet where it had fallen down behind his bedside table, jammed between the baseboard and table leg. Just as he was crossing the kitchen floor the telephone rang. He debated leaving it but thought it might be Casey, and didn’t want to miss his chance of finding out where the man had disappeared to. He picked it up, only to hear a garbled voice on the other end, obviously in a great panic.

  “Slow down, I can’t understand ye,” he said.

  “It’s Tom—the center’s on fire—ye need to get down here now!”

  The phone was slammed down, leaving a dead silence and then the fretful hum of the dial tone. Pat put the receiver back in the cradle and turned toward the open door, seeing beyond it the bright summer day, the sleepy heads of daisies nodding in the breeze over the garden path. He heard the car door open and shut and halted, glancing back at the telephone, a vague pricking in his spine.

  He shook his head. The center was on fire, becoming ashes even as he stood here. And yet, had the voice sounded like Tom—even a panicked Tom? Tom was the owner of the small engine shop that was just across the laneway from the Fair Housing Office. The vague pricking along his spine became more pronounced, a thought that would not surface, but was very close to the light. Then suddenly he understood and ran for the door yelling Sylvie’s name.

  The knowledge had come, as such things often do, too late. But still he ran, the entire universe stilling, the distance to the car seeming as long as the length of his own life.

  Sylvie was in the driver’s seat putting the key to the ignition. It happened in the blink of an eye and yet, in memory, it would always seem as though he’d had a small eternity to stop her and still had been unable to.

  He was screaming, but the sound seemed distant and feeble. She turned her head to look at him at the last second, just as she turned the key. An instant of eternity etched onto his brain and heart forever. She smiled, brown eyes filled with a question and then the world exploded out from its core and he was falling rapidly into the sky, and all he knew was a hollow echo at the heart of existence and a great and terrible burning.

  He came to what seemed a long time later, a neighbor shouting in his ear. The car was still on fire, flames reflecting off the few windows that hadn’t shattered in the explosion.

  Pain was there hovering way off, threatening to blanket him. He was on his back and amongst the stars that danced in his view, was a thick pall of black smoke coiling across the flawless blue sky.

  With what seemed a ridiculous amount of effort, he managed to roll over onto his stomach and lever himself up onto his knees. The neighbor was pulling at his coat now, trying to stop him but he ignored the hands and pushed himself toward the car. Burning fragments lay all over, flower petals coating the ground, blown from the daisies that only moments ago had nodded so prettily over the path. Daisies tha
t Sylvie had planted in the spring.

  The smell of burning petrol coated every breath, his lungs feeling as though they would shrivel and crack from the heat. There was a film across his eyes, like a heavy veil dividing the heaven that had been, from the hell that now was.

  The doors had blown right off the car, the shell-shocked body of it twisted and rumpled like a rusted tin can, a hundred different colors in the fire that consumed it. Within that fire nothing moved. Still he crawled toward it, looking for a grain of hope on this infinite shore of tragedy.

  More hands came then and pulled him away, pulled him back to where the grass was cool and wet, and then they held him down to keep him back from the fire.

  He lay there, head pressed to the side, the air shimmering with heat and debris, alight with flaming ash. Through it floated a scrap of blue cloth, fancy-free, spinning, dancing small minuets with black ashes until it came to rest on the ground before his eyes. A few threads from the pretty Sunday dress she’d worn. It was all that remained to prove that she’d been there only minutes before. Nothing more. Not a bright blonde hair, nor a pair of brown eyes, nor the smell of lilac and lemon verbena.

  And there he lay, amidst the burning wreckage of a life, and cursed himself for a fool.

  For he had forgotten, in the cruel spring of his happiness, that even lovers die.

  THE WALLS OF THE ROOM WERE FRESHLY PAINTED a soft robin’s egg blue, the chair rail that ran around the room at waist height, a pale cream. Pamela surveyed her handiwork with some satisfaction and no little weariness. She put the lid back on the pail of cream paint, and wiped her hands on a turped rag. She straightened up with a groan, the small of her back stiff and twinging slightly.

  She had thrown herself, with grim determination, into fixing up the nursery. First the paint and then when she had a crib, she would put it under the whimsical little half-moon window, and make a rag rug for the floor. She would re-paint the pine chest she’d salvaged from Lewis’ barn in the blue and cream of the room and get Casey to build a changing table. She sighed and pinched the thought off. It might be that Casey wouldn’t be building anything for this room, and she needed to plan as though she were alone. Which, truth be told, she was.