Splintered Silence

by Susan Furlong

  He continued, “What do you know about this?”

  “Nothing.” The cold, thin night air. The smoke . . . I coughed and sucked in deeply, but my throat was closing, my ears wooshing . . . I just couldn’t get a deep breath.

  Pusser didn’t seem to notice. “You were there yesterday when your boyfriend kicked the crap out of Costello. He would’ve killed him if I hadn’t stepped in.”

  “I don’t know anything about this, Sheriff. You’ll have to take my word on it.” Sweat broke out on my upper lip. Now Pusser took notice and narrowed his eyes suspiciously, probably thinking he was onto something, sweating the truth out of me.

  He was wrong.

  Panic consumed me. Exhaustion, the cold air, the smoke, the sounds . . . I needed to get out of here. Back to Wilco, back to Gran’s place, anywhere but here.

  “You okay, Callahan?”

  His voice was swallowed up by the buzzing in my ears. My heart kicked into jackhammer mode inside my chest. Clouds slipped over the moon, a breeze kicked up, and I shivered. From somewhere close by came the sound of a car door slamming. Then another, the noise echoing in the cold night air like the report of a rifle. I flinched. I was slipping again. My flashbacks were coming more often, getting worse . . . I shoved my sweaty palm into my pocket but felt nothing. My pills were gone. How many had I taken today? Relax, Brynn. Just a car door. I raised my hood to tuck the edges of my scarf closer to my neck, but it wasn’t there. I felt the gnarled skin under my fingers, felt exposed, naked. A chill seized me and ran over my body like an icy shower. A tightness gripped my chest, I felt the sensation of a black curtain descending, and I knew what was coming. Not here. Not now. Not in front of Pusser. I inhaled and exhaled slowly, one . . . two . . . three. Stay in the present. Stay in the present. But the curtain fell, and suddenly I’m outside Falluja and . . .

  I’m running. My heart pounds against my sternum, artillery fire hits all around me, the sound echoes through my skull, and debris pelts my skin. This area is supposed to be clear! Where’s my unit?

  “Kolwalski? Grady?”

  I dive behind a large rock and cover my head. I want to stay here until help comes, but Wilco pulls me forward.

  “No, boy. Stand down!” A mortar explodes. Dust blinds me; it cakes my nostrils and coats my tongue with an acid-tinged grit. I can’t get any air. My dog’s lead goes limp. “Wilco! Wilco!”

  “He’s here.” Pussers’s voice sliced through the fog. “He’s right here.”

  A familiar warmth pressed against my thigh where I crouched on the ground. I grabbed for my dog, worked his fur through my fingers. Reassuring him . . . reassuring me. “There you are, boy.” I placed my head against his. He ran his tongue over my face as if to lick my wounds, invisible wounds only he recognized. The ones I tried, but never succeeded, to keep hidden from the rest of the world.

  I realized that Pusser was hovering nearby. And another officer. “Sorry, Sheriff,” the officer said. “We were searching the trailer like you said, and the dog got out and bolted this way. Couldn’t stop him.”

  Pusser regarded me strangely. “It’s fine,” he said, waving the officer off. He shifted his weight, still looking at me, unsure of what to do, uncertain of what had happened. Good. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe what had seemed like an eternity in my anguished mind was, in reality, only a few seconds. I could never be sure. The best I was ever able to do was take my cues from those around me and try to cover my absences. “Sorry. I was surprised to see him, that’s all.”

  Pusser didn’t look convinced. “You okay, Callahan?”

  “Fine. Tired.” I shifted. “Actually, I don’t feel all that great. Tomorrow’s my mom’s funeral . . .” I swiped at my upper lip and let my words trail off. As cold as I was just minutes ago, I was sweating now. My scar felt like it was on fire. “I should get back home and check on my grandparents.”

  “Go ahead. I know where to find you. You see Doogan, call me. He’s wanted for questioning.”

  * * *

  The next day came all too soon. The day of my mother’s funeral. The day I would say good-bye yet again, only this time for real.

  I dressed with care, slipping on a simple long-sleeved black dress and a pair of lace-up ankle boots. I picked out a brightly patterned silk scarf and adjusted it around my neck, my thoughts drifting back to the day before, the way Doogan traced his fingers across my scar and the way I let him, without reservation and without shame.

  And then I thought about Colm, and how he’d accepted me as I am—damaged, broken . . . I stared at my reflection . . . ugly. But I’d seen it in his eyes. In that one stolen moment, before everything changed. He had wanted me . . . just as I am.

  I untied the scarf and carefully folded it across the top of my dresser.

  “Brynn.” I turned to see Gran standing in the doorway. Her dress swallowed up her small frame. Was it simply too big, or had she lost weight recently? “I need your help,” she said. “Your grandfather’s fallen.”

  I followed her a few steps down the hallway and into Gramps’ room. He was on the floor next to his bed, struggling to get to his feet, his oxygen bottle hissing, its tubes a spiderweb over his head.

  “Gramps!” I rushed over, knelt down, and touched his arm. “Hold on, we’ll help you.” I glanced back at Gran. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. He must’ve tried to get up without his walker.”

  “Someone get me off this damn floor!”

  My head snapped back to Gramps. His arms flailed about, slicing the air like he was swimming against an unseen current. I leaned in closer, trying to settle him, and took a blow to the jaw. The strike stunned me and, instinctively, my hand rose in retaliation. I stopped myself, cursing my knee-jerk reaction. Get ahold of yourself, Brynn. This is your grandfather.

  Gran stepped forward, shot me a scornful look that softened as she turned back to Gramps. “Calm down, Fergus.”

  Gramps opened his mouth to say something but coughed instead. He finished and collapsed weakly against the bed. I heard a wet gurgling sound from somewhere deep in his throat. Wilco shoved into our circle and sniffed at Gramps’ face. I gently pushed him away. “Where are the guys?” I asked Gran.

  “They’ve gone to the church, helping to set up for the luncheon.”

  I looked back at Gramps. “Are you hurt? Can you move?” He’d gotten his arm tangled in his oxygen line. I gently worked it free.

  He struggled, fighting my efforts. “Just get me the hell off the floor.”

  Gran stooped on his other side and together we hoisted him up to the bed. I tucked the sheets around his legs. He glared at Gran. “Where’d you hide my walker?”

  “I didn’t, Fergus. It’s right here by the bed.”

  His cloudy eyes wandered around the room. I jingled the bell attached to his walker. “Over here, Gramps. On this side. Gran always puts it on the right side. Remember?”

  He didn’t even look that way. Instead, he narrowed in on Gran. “I heard talking outside my window last night. It was you, wasn’t it? Talking to another man. Can’t even wait until I’m in the grave.”

  “Gramps!”

  Gran’s eyes rounded with concern. “You’re confused, Fergus.”

  “I ain’t confused. I know what I heard.”

  “It was probably Aunt Tinnie,” I said. “Talking to one of the fellows. All your brothers are here, you know. They’ve all come for the funeral.”

  His head bounced between us, his attitude swinging from anger to panic. “Funeral? What funeral?”

  “Mary’s funeral, Fergus.” Grans’s voice was barely a whisper.

  “Mary. Our Mary?” A deep purple flush settled in the hollows of his cheeks.

  Gran and I exchanged a look. Gran knew already, of course, she’d been with him night and day. But I’d not seen this part of his illness firsthand. As if the body’s painful dying isn’t bad enough, the mind slips out first, causing even more misery for both patient and everyone around him.

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nbsp; Gramps let out a little cry. “How can this be? How can this . . . ?” He pushed his torso a couple inches off the mattress, shook his head in frustration, then sank back into the pillows. He clenched his fists, clamped his lips tightly together, and, with flaring nostrils, drew deeply from his oxygen tube. I watched his chest rise and his lungs expand with air, only to collapse again in another spasm of wet coughs. I adjusted his pillows, trying to get him more upright, but my actions agitated him and spurred even more coughing. A glob of green phlegm oozed out the corner of his mouth.

  I stepped back.

  Gran snatched a nearby tissue and gently wiped at his cracked lips. “You need to calm down, Fergus.” She looked my way and dipped her head toward the dresser. “Get me his pills.”

  The dresser was littered with spent tissues and prescription bottles. I fumbled around until I found a prescription for morphine. I held it up.

  “That’s it. He gets two.”

  I emptied some into my palm, one eye on Gramps. Just the sound of rattling pills seemed to calm him. I handed two over to Gran and, as soon as she looked down, slid a few into my own pocket.

  “I’ve got your pills, Fergus,” she was saying. Gramps’ eyes eagerly searched the air in front of his face, and he opened his mouth like a baby bird eager for a worm. Gran popped them in. I grabbed his water bottle and bent the straw to his lips. Some dribbled out of his mouth. I dabbed at it with a wadded tissue and looked Gran’s way. She was hovering nearby, watching and wringing her hands. She knew, we both knew: Gramps didn’t have much time.

  Colm’s words echoed in my mind. Forgive him.

  But I couldn’t.

  I turned away and left the room, quietly shutting the door behind me. Gran came out a few minutes later. “He’s resting.” She glanced at her watch. “Meg said she’d be here by now. She offered to sit with him while we go to the funeral.”

  “I wonder what’s keeping her?” Although I thought I knew. Our argument the night before. She was still mad. No. That’s not right. Meg wouldn’t let a disagreement between us get in the way of helping Gran. Would she?

  Gran stared pensively at the family pictures that lined the hallway wall. Her and Gramps. Me as a child. A few of her immediate family and Gramps’ too. Any pictures of my own mother were absent, taken down and hidden away long ago. Maybe that would change now that there were no more lies between Gran and me. I hoped so.

  Gran reached up to straighten a lopsided frame. Her sleeve crept up her arm. I noticed a scratch. “What happened there?” I grabbed her arms and gently turned her wrists upward, revealing not just one, but several long scratches along the soft white flesh of both forearms. “Gran?”

  She chewed on her lip. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  “Did Gramps do this?” The scratches were deep, but thinly scabbed over.

  She shrugged.

  “We’re going to have to call in some help soon.”

  “Let’s get through today first. Then we can talk about all that.” She turned back to the pictures, her expression taking on a faraway look. “I was thirteen when I first met your grandfather.”

  “Thirteen?”

  “Yes. My mother and his mother were cousins. We’d come here to Bone Gap before them. My father wanted us kids to get some schooling, so we wintered over here, my brothers and me taking our learning at the schoolhouse. There weren’t many of us here at the time. After my First Communion had come and gone, my folks got to worrin’ about my future, so my mother sent a note to her cousin and told them about this place.” She smiled. “Afraid she might have painted a much prettier picture of what Bone Gap was really like. All in hopes of luring her here, you know.”

  “Because of Gramps.”

  Gran chuckled. “Fergus’s mother had five children. All boys, you understand. Mam was hedging her odds, betting that one of them would take a liking to me. She was right.” She raised her eyes to the window. “Fergus was almost ten years older than me. Handsome and strong. And quiet.” She looked my way. “He was the kindest, gentlest man I’d ever met.”

  Kind and gentle? Gramps? “Did your families arrange the union?”

  “Not exactly. My father had a different notion. He and Fergus’s father thought I should go to Fergus’s older brother. But Mam understood.”

  I raised my brows. “Understood what?”

  “That in my heart, I’d already chosen Fergus.”

  My jaw tightened. Where was that same understanding all those years ago when in my heart I’d chosen not to marry Dub?

  Gran continued, “Mam stepped in for me. Convinced my father to let Fergus and me get married.” Her gaze met mine. “Mam was a strong woman. Much stronger than I’ve ever been.”

  Something in Gran shifted, and a dark shadow crossed her face. This was all too much for her. My mother’s funeral, Gramps’ illness, the investigation. I reached out, touched her shoulder. “That’s not true. You’re the strongest woman I know, Gran.”

  The lines around her eyes deepened. “I haven’t always been strong for you, Lackeen. And I’m sorry. That’s changed, though. I want you to know that.” I waited for her to explain what she meant, but she didn’t. Instead, she glanced at her palms and changed the subject. “Quite the crowd gathered down the street.”

  “Mostly townsfolk,” I said. I’d seen them first thing that morning when I crawled out of my car to come in to get dressed. After the fire, I’d finished what was left of the early-morning hours trying to catch a few winks out in my car. But the lights, the smell of smoke from Dub’s burned-out trailer . . . all of it had affected Wilco as much as me. I’d spent most of the night trying to keep him calm. Not that I really minded. Sometimes it was easier to stay awake than to fall asleep and face the nightmares that lingered in my mind, waiting for the opportunity to nibble away at my sanity. “The fire will be in the paper today. And all over the news channels.” I’d seen plenty of reporters in the crowd, and a few troublemakers too. Namely Maybelle. “I’m sure this will stir things up even more.”

  “Did that musker know anything about Dublin?”

  “His name’s Pusser. Sheriff Pusser. And no. He didn’t know anything last night. I haven’t talked to him yet this morning.”

  Gran pursed her lips and turned away. I followed her to the front-room window. She pulled back the curtain and peered outside. “Where’s that Meg? I’ve got to be getting to the church soon.”

  “I’ll give her a call.” I went back to my room and found my cell phone. No answer. Irritation pricked at me. You can be mad all you want at me, Meg, but don’t take it out on Gran. I pocketed my phone, grabbed my keys and a sweater, and found Wilco. “We’re heading over to Meg’s place,” I told Gran on the way out the door. “I’m going to go see what’s keeping her.”

  The corners of Gran’s mouth drooped. “Do you think something’s wrong?”

  “Nothing I can’t fix; don’t worry. If you have to leave before I get back with Meg, have one of the neighbors sit with Gramps. I’ll meet you at the church.”

  * * *

  Meg’s trailer was on the other side of the mobile park, tucked back off the road on a double lot. When her husband was alive, the place was well kept and in pristine condition. Now weeds choked the front yard, and rust dripped from the corners of her metal window frames. Her car was parked on the concrete pad next to the trailer. I got out and moved toward her door.

  My cell phone erupted. It was Pusser. “Costello’s still missing, but there’s no sign of human remains inside the trailer.”

  “What about his vehicle?”

  “Parked next to the trailer. Not much left of it.” He paused. “An accelerant was definitely used. That gas can I told you we found in the woods behind Dub’s trailer was wiped clean, but we got a partial print inside the cap. It’s a match for your boyfriend.”

  My grip tightened on the phone.

  Pusser was still talking. “He’s wanted for arson.”

  “I understand.”

 
“I’ve put out a BOLO on him. I’ll find him. But if you know something about this, now’s the time to come clean.”

  Pusser didn’t trust me. Not that it mattered. The feeling was mutual. “If I knew something, I’d tell you. I don’t. I have no idea where Doogan is and . . .” I glanced toward Meg’s trailer. “I’ve got my own things to deal with right now.” I told him I’d be in touch and disconnected.

  I stomped through the weeds and banged on Meg’s door. “Meg! It’s me, Brynn. I need to talk to you.”

  Loud music thundered through the thin metal walls of her trailer: flutes, fiddles, and tin whistles. Despite my anger, I grinned. Meg was crazy for the traditional Irish stuff. When we were kids, she had lived for the parties, coming alive with the music, drinking and dancing, laughing . . . I banged louder. “Come on, Meg!”

  I gave up and tried the knob. It was open. I stepped up and inside her trailer. Maybe the outside looked trashy, but the inside was neat and tidy. “Meg! Meg!”

  Wilco had come in behind me. Now his nose twitched excitedly along the floor. He moved about, taking in the new scents. A kid in a candy shop.

  The place seemed empty. Maybe she had walked to our trailer, I thought, or maybe Eamon had picked her up in his car. But why would she leave the music on? I crossed to the stereo, flipped it off, and listened for any sign of Meg. Instead, I heard Wilco lapping at something. I looked toward the kitchen. Nope. No Wilco.

  I groaned. The toilet. Gross. I scurried toward the bathroom in the back of the trailer and, as expected, found Wilco folded into Meg’s tiny bathroom. I pushed inside, reached for his collar, but stopped short when my feet sloshed on the wet floor. The shower curtain was heaped in the corner of the shower. Water was everywhere, the bath mat soaked through, and the tiny mirror over the vanity was spotted with water marks. A shampoo bottle was on the floor next to the toilet.

  My gut clenched. I yanked Wilco by the collar and dragged him out, using my sleeve to shut the bathroom door. Ten steps later and I was inside Meg’s bedroom. “Meg! Meg!” My foot hit on something on the floor. A hairbrush. I bent down and picked it up. Long red hairs wound through its bristles. Red hair. My mind flashed back to my mother’s red hair camouflaged against the russet hues of fall leaves, and then the long thin hairs clinging to Sheila Doogan’s nearly skinless skull and now . . . Meg’s hair. I remembered the porn flicks Doogan had found in Dub’s trailer. Dub had a thing for redheaded women. A perversion. I knew him to be controlling, violent . . . and I knew firsthand what he was capable of when a woman disobeyed him. I thought back to that photo Doogan found of his sister at the Sleep Easy. Evidence of an affair? His red-haired wife had cheated on him—the ultimate betrayal. Enough to tip him over the edge and create a monster determined to make every redheaded Pavee woman pay for his wife’s sins?