by Lisa Alber
“I couldn’t sleep, so I picked this up for the lichen glaze.”
“I thought you’d bought that already.”
“I could have sworn I had. I’d forgotten that I’d forgotten.”
She dashed toward him, unheeding of the muddy ground that slathered itself all over her feet. The viscous moistness of it on her skin churned Nathan’s stomach. He swallowed against the pressure on his chest that had woken him before dawn. Panting and aching and his hand throbbing all over again. Vague nightmarish images of broken goldfinches and a sensation of restraints. His neck muscles had ached as if he’d struggled to sit up against an unseen force.
Despite his protests, Zoe pulled the block of chalk out of his arms. Slouching under its weight, she carried it toward the house. She spoke loud over the wind. “I’m still bothered by the detective. I don’t understand why he questioned you the other day.”
Nathan followed her muddy footsteps through the house into his studio. Zoe heaved the box onto the old desk next to the birdcage.
“Danny was doing his job,” Nathan said.
“Oh, you know him?” she said. “Outside his work, I mean.”
“Pub. He’s ‘Danny’ to me. No title.”
He opened up a fresh package of clay and sliced off a chunk with the cutting wire. His right hand ached, his knuckles swollen and oozing, but that didn’t stop him from slapping the clay down on a work surface and kneading the bubbles out of it. His body worked on autopilot while his mind drifted away. He enjoyed kneading clay.
“Dad?”
Zoe’s voice startled him out of his reverie. The light in the room had shifted. Zoe now perched on a box of clay that sat in the corner of the room. She held a cup of tea.
“I heard the detective mention Elder Joe before he banished me from the room.” Zoe spoke from the middle of a thought Nathan had missed. He shaped the clay into a squat round cylinder and centered it in the middle of the wheel.
“He wanted your alibi, didn’t he?”
Nathan’s hands froze within the plastic container of slip that stood beside the wheel. The clay slurry stung his raw knuckles. The burning sensation felt good, numbing him.
“You were in bed,” Zoe said. “I saw you myself when I woke up to go to the loo.”
He slept with his door closed, so to see him, she’d have had to check on him. He wasn’t sure which was worse: his daughter checking on him or his inability to remember whether he was in bed or not the night Elder Joe died.
He turned on the wheel and dribbled slip water on the clay as the wheel head gained speed. He cupped his hands over the clay, feeling its satiny smoothness. Malleable to the lightest of pressures. He narrowed the circle of his hands, pulling up so that the mound of clay rose into a slender cylinder. The clay was his to manipulate into a vase, a mug, a bowl. Whatever would serve him best.
He shifted his hands to assert downward pressure. The column flattened into a disk. He inserted his thumbs into the center of the shape and felt the clay part under their pressure. Easy now, use less force.
“You checked on me?” he said.
“Of course, I always do, because half the time you’re not asleep. Sometimes we talk. You really don’t remember?”
“No, but I am asleep. Please don’t talk to me when I’m in that state.”
“Don’t be silly. You hardly talk otherwise.”
He steadied his hands and forced himself not to dwell on the words that slipped out of his mouth while he was asleep. The fact of it scared the shite out of him.
He widened the hole in the center of the clay and eased out the sides. Easy does it. If he wasn’t careful he could stretch the clay too thin, too fast. Safer to use slow, consistent pressure.
“Danny was curious about something you said,” Nathan said.
“What an odd thing, these murder investigations. Poking around everywhere.”
Nathan lightened up on his thumbs. It wouldn’t do to push too deep. He dribbled more slip water onto the emerging bowl. “You mentioned secrets. He wanted to know what you meant by that.”
He placed one hand along the outside of the bowl and, using the thumb of his other hand, continued to hollow out the inside and raise the sides. Balanced pressure.
Zoe’s footsteps padded toward him. She stood behind his shoulder, monitoring his progress but careful not to touch him. He was off limits while at the wheel. He glanced at his drying shelves, filled with pots ready for their bisque firing. He’d been at the wheel more often lately.
“I’m sorry,” Zoe said. “It popped out. You’re tired and distracted, and you lose track of time.” She pointed to the magnesium carbonate. “And you’re forgetful.”
Nathan kept his hands in place, with no pressure. The sides of the bowl slid against his skin.
She sighed. “It would be best if we didn’t have secrets, that’s all.”
Yet secrets were the basis of their relationship.
He applied the lightest of pressures against the side of the bowl. “I understand, but there’s something else—about Bijou. The cut on her paw that you said was as good as new. You didn’t—?”
His thumb broke through the clay. The bowl collapsed. Too hard. Shite.
Her silence stretched out behind him, as thin as the clay that had split open. Nathan busied himself scraping the wheel clean with the wire cutter.
“Dad,” she said.
One word, but it was enough to convey her disappointment. She knew he was incapable of loving her as a father should. It was the secret that didn’t need revealing.
twenty
Danny marked time by Saturdays’ arrivals. The day marked the end of his week, a sabbath of sorts on which he took the children to visit Ellen. He led Mandy and Petey into the hospital as he would a church, hand-in-hand and with reverence. He waved at the grey-haired matron who manned the reception desk and let the children veer him toward the elevator for the one-floor ride up to Ward 2B.
He tried not to think about the investigation. He’d spent half his work week wrangling the health care system. After Ellen’s fever retreated, he’d fought for a transfer to the bigger Limerick hospital for a full battery of tests. Going into battle mode hadn’t dented the system. Her temperature had returned to normal, hence, all was well again.
“I get to push the button this time,” Petey said.
Mandy elbowed him. “Then I get to step out of the elevator first.”
Marcus followed them into the elevator. On the second floor, the elevator shuddered to a stop with a grind of pulley wheels. Danny held the door as Mandy pushed Petey out of the way so she could exit first. “You go on,” he said to Marcus, “I’ll be back straight away.”
Danny backtracked toward Ward 1A, where Cecil Wallace sat up in bed. A tray with scrambled eggs, toast, and orange juice perched on his lap.
“You again?” He stabbed his fork into the eggs. “You’d better hurry. Two out of three of my demon seeds will be here soon, and they’re none too happy.” Cecil grinned. A bit wicked was old Cecil.
Danny pulled up a chair and straddled it with arms resting on the seat back. “We had a nice dose of them yesterday at the station.”
“Ay, and yer nothing but fecking useless according to my youngest.” He forked eggs into his mouth. “What’s the craic?”
“Now that you’re—”
“Fully functioning? You can say it. Got my bolts screwed in? All my brain cells aligned?” He chewed and swallowed. “Go on with you.”
“Now that you’re the full shilling again”—Cecil hooted—“I’m hoping you remember more about the voices you overheard in the room next to yours. You heard Joseph Macy talking with another man?”
Cecil nodded.
“Did you hear him mention the other man by name?”
“Can’t say that I did, but they knew each other well, I could tell that much.” He sipped juice, thinking. “Joe threw a proper wobbler, he did. The mouth on him like to make me blush if I were the blushing sort.”
“Couldn’t tell you that.”
“About your kids—”
“Those saints, yeah?”
“What do you think of the idea of one of them killing Joe to protect you?”
Cecil cackled with his hand in front of his mouth. “Oh, that’s brilliant. Right this second I wager they’re fighting over who’s to take me in until they dump me into a rat hole of a care home.” Tears of merriment streamed out of his eyes. “The choicest bit is that they don’t know that I’ve decided to use the rest of my money on a first-rate clinic. Fecking hell, yeah, no more of this pinching to provide the ungrateful little sods with an inheritance. I knew what Joe was about with my money, but that wasn’t going to happen. He contented himself with overcharging me for meals and physical therapy. The price I was willing to pay to keep my independence like.”
Danny grinned. “You old bastard.”
“You know it. Papers are signed and a car will pick me up later today. What my children deserve for taking their sweet time and for never visiting.”
“Last question.” Danny stood. “Nothing to do with the investigation.”
“Eh?”
“You were sedated when you first arrived in the hospital. Could you hear anything?”
Cecil bit into his toast. “I’m not following.”
“Did you hear people talking while you were under?”
“Odd kind of question, but, no, I don’t remember a thing.”
Useless question anyhow. Cecil’s sedation and Ellen’s vegetative state were very different breeds of unconsciousness.
He wrote down the name of Cecil’s new facility and left the room feeling lighter than when he arrived. Cecil was one of the lucky ones. There were few good moments within a murder investigation, and Danny would take them when they came.
He returned to Ward 2B, where Marcus met him in the corridor. Mandy and Petey hung onto Marcus’s hands. Petey’s chin quivered.
Danny’s heart clutched hard, a fist of a heart punching his chest wall. “What happened?”
By way of answer, Marcus nodded toward Ellen’s room. “Now you’re here, I’ll take the wee ones down to the grab-and-go.”
Inside the room, a doctor and a nurse stood over Ellen. A new machine on a trolley sat next to the bed. The doctor raised a tube while the nurse injected something into one of Ellen’s IVs.
Danny stepped up to the doctor and stayed his hand. Ellen’s face was flushed and her breathing labored. “Stop.”
“This is preventative. Her fever returned, and we think there’s fluid in her lungs. Possibly a lung infection. We’ll have to transfer her to Limerick.”
“Now you agree to transfer her, that’s bloody magnanimous of you.” Danny took a breath and switched to Garda mode. All business and authority. “Explain, please.”
“I’m putting her on a ventilator to give her lungs a rest.”
“Why? What are you preventing?”
A nurse crowded in on Danny in an attempt to usher him out of the room. “We’ll stabilize her and transport her to Limerick within a few hours.”
Danny stepped away from her. “Stabilize?”
“Nurse, escort him out,” the doctor ordered. “Now.”
The nurse directed Danny out the door ahead of her. Behind them, Ellen gagged as the doctor pushed the ventilator tube down her throat. All the Garda authority in the world meant nothing here.
twenty-one
In forlorn Fox Cottage, Merrit already had the living room furniture pushed against one side of the room and the paint supplies set up. For the last couple of days she’d obsessed about her conversation with Danny. She’d managed to get her way—Danny promised to visit Liam—but her persuasive tactics were less than desirable. She lied when she said she wouldn’t meddle with Nathan. There was no help for it. Liam had his sights set on getting to know Zoe and Nathan better.
Oh, what did it matter anyhow? All the mental energy wasted.
This morning she’d jumped out of bed determined to think about something other than Danny and the nagging sense that she’d missed a point somewhere. Elder Joe and his barren view of a gravel quarry lurked at the edge of her thoughts.
Now, after a trip to the paint store, she was ready to begin her Fox Cottage beautification project. She pried the lid off a can of paint. After a vigorous stir, she painted a swath of soft orange-yellow called Afterglow over the hideous greenish-beige. It wouldn’t do to be too bright or too feminine. She stood back. Nice. Warm but not obnoxiously cheerful.
“Merrit?” Nathan said from the open doorway. “Sorry I’m late.”
Let the meddling begin, Merrit thought.
His appearance startled an “oh my god” out of her. A row of stitches decorated an angry bruise that covered the right side of Nathan’s forehead. Merrit had noticed the circles under his eyes before, but now they rivaled the bruise in lividity.
He answered her unspoken question as he entered the room. “I’m not sure what happened. I can’t remember—I was asleep, I think—and it doesn’t matter. Things happen.”
“Things happen?” Merrit said. “You were asleep? You think?”
“Maybe I banged my head against a wall. I don’t know.” He held up his bandaged hand. “For this one, I’m pretty sure I punched a wall. I know how it sounds, but until recently I’ve been doing well.”
“But still, that’s not good. Have you seen a sleep doctor?”
Nathan shook his head and picked up an unopened paint can. “Waterfall,” he read.
“That’s for the kitchen. You’re okay with helping me? If you’re not feeling well—”
“Won’t knock a bother off me. Besides, you’re paying me.”
She painted more Afterglow on the wall. “I haven’t been sleeping well, myself. I can’t get the image of EJ out of my head.”
Nathan coated his roller with paint and began on another wall.
“I found him,” Merrit said. “Horrible.”
Nathan continued layering on the Afterglow. She glanced at him but couldn’t read his blank expression. He moved, therefore he had to be awake.
“Why do you suppose someone would kill EJ? It’s all anyone’s talking about. Nathan?”
“Hmm? Oh, I never put it together about his other lodgers. I lived on his property. I should have realized.”
Lodgers? That was the first Merrit had heard about lodgers. “Realized what?”
“That they were sick and needed help. But I didn’t want to know, I think. Other things on my mind when I first came here.”
“It’s too bad Zoe wasn’t around to heal them.”
Nathan shuddered in a slow convulsion of tremors that ended with him dropping the roller on the floor. “Bollocks.”
Merrit tossed him a rag, and he wiped up the paint. “I shouldn’t have brought it up, but, to be honest, Zoe perplexes me.”
He froze at the sound of a mobile, then relaxed when Merrit grabbed hers out of her pocket. “Liam. I’d better check on him.” She knelt down next to where Nathan still stooped on the floor, now staring at Afterglow-colored paint stains on the rag. “Are you okay, Nathan?”
He twitched back from wherever he’d sunk to inside his head. “Effect of the painkillers.”
Maybe that was true, but maybe not. Merrit watched him, this gentle man who maybe wasn’t so gentle—at least toward himself, at least while asleep. He’d lost weight. The tendons and muscles in his arms flexed all too visibly when he pried the lid off a second can of Afterglow. Nathan was losing whatever battle he fought while he slept.
She left him to continue painting on his own and trotted down the track to the house. She caught sight of Liam as she approached. The pale sweep of hand in front of the window in greeting. The sun had decided to make a hazy appearance today. Its light waxed and waned as clouds whipped past overhead. They appeared to be gathering along the horizon. More rain later, but
for now, Liam enjoyed his sunny spot beside the front window. He’d agreed to let her move one of the recliners from the hearth. He lay under a mound of blankets, clutching a soggy handkerchief.
“Still short of breath?” Merrit said. “Maybe we should raise your chair?”
He shook his head. The movement caused him to cough in short bursts that looked painful. After catching his breath, he grumbled something that Merrit couldn’t hear. She sat next to him, trying not to worry about the raised vein patterns visible in his temple.
“On a scale of one to ten, what’s your pain level?” she said.
He snorted. “You keep asking that, and I keep telling you that the pain hasn’t started yet. Minor achiness is all.”
“We should see to your gimpy leg anyhow.”
“Pfft, nothing to do with the lung cancer. It’s improving on its own. I overdid it the last few days, is all.”
Merrit would have liked to believe that. “You’re a right narky old bastard today.” She smiled as she said it, liking the way the Irish slang rolled off her tongue. “Or maybe you’re an utter geebag. Or a poxbottle?”
Liam settled his head on a pillow, his breath easing. “Away with you. You could simply say ‘stubborn old fart.’”
“Okay, you stubborn old fart, you rang?”
“What’s that you’re doing with Nathan at the cottage?”
“Fixing it up.”
“Why?”
Because it’s lonely. “I need a project,” she said.
“Good timing,” Liam said, “because I have a brilliant idea for you.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“But first, ring that Annie Belden. She’s a good one. I could get fond of her.” He widened his eyes in a bad imitation of innocence. “I need a shower, and she can help me better than you can.”
He’d showered all by himself last night. “Mm-hmm, right.”
“Then she can fix lunch.” He handed her a slip of paper. “Here’s her number.”
“What, no Zoe today?”
“Not today. After my shower, you can invite Nathan over for more dessert.”