Splintered Silence

by Susan Furlong

  What? “I don’t understand . . . told you . . . ?”

  She leaned in closer. “The rape.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “All these years and I—”

  “But you knew.”

  She shrunk back. “No.” Her eyes rounded. “No, child. I didn’t know.”

  “But I told Gramps.” I clutched my stomach. “I told Gramps! And he said you . . .” As her bewildered eyes searched mine, I realized, no, she never knew.

  “I said what?”

  “He said you . . .” I clenched my stomach. “You weren’t home. Remember? You were at Aunt Tinnie’s that month. It was right after Uncle Donal died. You were gone.” She nodded. “Gramps said he called you the next morning. Said you were upset that . . . that I was disrespecting the clan’s ways. That whatever Dub did was . . .” I couldn’t finish.

  She raised her chin, her gaze settling on the door behind me. Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, he called me. Only said you wouldn’t marry Costello. I asked to talk to you, but he said you didn’t want to talk. I didn’t push it, figured we could talk when I got back, we’d sort it out.” She looked back at me, her eyes glistening with emotion. “But you left before I got back. Enlisted. Gone off to the settled world, just like your mother. It ’bout broke my heart.” Tears now traced the lines in her cheeks. “But all I knew was that you didn’t want to marry Dublin. Were sick of our clan ways. I never knew what he’d done to my baby. If only you’d called me when it happened.”

  “I’d come home bloody and crying, told Gramps. He’d been angry, but angry at me, said it was my fault. That I’d led Dub on. That I was like my mother.” I looked down. “I was . . . confused. Ashamed. It was true I wanted out. Maybe if I hadn’t gone to his place that night. Or worn those jeans or—”

  “No!” Gran gripped my shoulders. “None of it was your fault. You’ve got to believe that.” She gave me a little shake. “Listen to me, child. I would have never blamed you. I just didn’t know what he’d done to you. If only you’d still been here when I got back, we could have talked.”

  If only. But I’d gone away right after it happened. So confused, so angry and full of . . . what? Spite? Fear? Determination not to be like my mother? Or to be like the woman I envisioned her to be? All I knew for certain was that I wanted to get out of here. As far away as I could. And the Marines offered that.

  I’d practically lived on the streets until I got through MEPS and shipped to Basic. “I tried to call you. Gramps said . . .”—my lip quivered—“you didn’t want to talk to me. That you agreed it was my fault.”

  Her face crumpled. “I didn’t know you called. And I was so hurt that you’d abandoned me. Just like your mother did all those years ago.”

  A year passed. I deployed, got my first combat patch, saw things, felt things that made that rape seem like child’s play. I became edgy, almost non-functional. Eventually, a chaplain set me up with a morale call home, and I reached Gran. We talked. And talked. But never about the reason I’d left, my abandoning the clan’s ways, and never about Costello. Or the rape. By then I’d just wanted to forget it’d ever happened. Gran had cried on the phone, told me she loved me, and I’d cried too. We’d buried the past, a past neither of us wanted to face.

  And now here we were.

  The hiss of Gramps’ oxygen machine pierced the silence. I listened to his steady, rhythmic drag punctuated with coughing spurts and glared at the shut door. “He did this.” An angry flush washed over me. “Damn him. Why . . . why?”

  She wiped off the tears from her cheeks. “I don’t know. Maybe to protect me. I just don’t know. We’ll never know. His mind is too far gone now.”

  My muscles tensed. “I hate him.”

  “No!” Her stern look, the look of the woman who’d scolded me as a child, glared at me. “Hate’s going to destroy you. I already watched my Mary destroy herself with booze and drugs . . . and I can’t have that for you.”

  I opened my mouth to object but couldn’t bring myself to lie. Not anymore. “I’m just like her. I am.” Anguish racked at my chest, pulled the air and words from my lungs.

  “No. No, you’re not. Listen to me. It’s not your fault. All these years, all the things left unsaid, all the lies. Lies have a way of twisting people’s lives. I know that now. There’s been too many lies in this family. The lying stops. It stops now.” That flicker in her eye returned, and I understood—the lies had to be finished between us. Here and now. “Do you hear me?” She paused, then began again, as the whole story came forward. “After your grandfather told me about the rape the other night, I became infuriated. I went outside, looking for you. You weren’t in your car. I didn’t know where you were.”

  Because I was in Doogan’s bed.

  “I wanted to talk to you. Get the story. When I couldn’t find you, I went looking for Dublin instead. I confronted him. Things turned ugly. He laughed at me, laughed about what he’d done to you, and then he got violent.” She shivered. “Oh God. I was so scared. I imagined how scared you must have been that night. The night he raped you.”

  A childlike trembling threatened to overtake me even now as the scene came back. I could only nod.

  “He came after me. But I found courage, Brynn. Courage for both of us. I had my pistol with me, like always. And when he came for me, I shot him. But he kept coming, and I shot him again. Over and over. I couldn’t stop. I was so frightened, but angry too. It’s like the years of hate came out of me . . . I kept thinking, an eye for an eye, a life for a life. He robbed you of your life, Brynn. Of our life together as a family. I wanted him dead.”

  “No! Don’t say that, Gran. It was self-defense. Self-defense. No one could blame you. It was you or him.”

  Her face fell. “I don’t know, child. Maybe only God knows. I’ll wait for my judgment.”

  “Gran. God knows you. You’re innocent. Go to the police. Tell them what happened. I know Pusser. He’s a good man. He’ll stand by you.”

  “We’re Pavees.”

  “No. Pusser’s a fair man. Deep down. I know he is. He’ll help us.”

  “But he won’t help Kevin. He’s got a record.”

  “Doogan? What do you mean?”

  “Kevin was outside his trailer, smoking. You know how he did from time to time. He heard the shots. I was so upset. So scared. And shaken.”

  I understood. “The voices Gramps heard outside the window. It was you and Doogan. Where is he? Where’s Doogan?”

  “I don’t know. He helped me get cleaned up. Then he said he was going to put the body somewhere that it’d never be found.”

  “Then he burned the place.”

  She shrugged. “I never saw him after that.”

  I let it all sink in.

  She continued. “So you see, while the settled law might understand why I killed a man like Dublin Costello, they’d never forgive Kevin’s part in the crime.”

  She was right.

  “Listen, child, we Pavees have always taken care of these things ourselves. It’s always just between us and God. The settled law doesn’t really matter. Not for us.” I saw the look of desperate appeal in her face, the desire—no, the need—to break through so that I understood.

  Law: retribution, punishment, and justice. Where did they fit and make any sense for us Pavees? It was a kindness that Doogan helped Gran, to keep this elderly woman from enduring the world of settled justice, even if it would have likely gone in her favor. And for his kindness? Settled law would mete out his punishment. Yet . . . I’d been the settled law. “But it does, Gran. It does matter.”

  Her hands dropped from my arms. Her lips pursed; then a look of resignation crossed over her expression, and bits of sadness clung to the edges of her eyes. “Then you’ll have to figure it out for yourself, Brynn. You’ll have to decide where your loyalties lie. Who you are: Pavee or settled. As for me, I’m right with God. Father Colm just saw to that.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Colm stood as I approached. “Brynn.”

  I looked
at the floor and rubbed my fingers over my scar. “Gran said you came to see me.”

  “I did.” He stepped closer, and as I raised my face, his eyes filled with concern as he took in my swollen nose, bruises, and blackened eyes. He gasped. “Are you okay?”

  I brushed my hair forward, hating that he was seeing me this way. “It looks worse than it is.”

  He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “Can we go somewhere private?”

  I motioned him through the front room and kitchen and out to the back steps. Wilco followed. “We can sit here.”

  He yanked up his coat collar and sat down on the steps. I sat on the same step. Wilco inserted himself between us. The yellow porch light cast shadows of our three hunkered forms.

  We sat in awkward silence for a few seconds, until I blurted, “If this is about the other day . . . I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  His eyes met mine. “No, you’re right. It won’t happen again.”

  I swallowed hard and looked away. Wilco leaned into me. I wrapped my arm around his back and dug my fingers into his fur. Down a ways, a neighbor revved his bike’s engine, eliciting a full-out bark fest from all the neighbors’ dogs. Wilco didn’t even flinch.

  “This isn’t about us, Brynn. It has to do with your mother.” Colm hesitated. I waited. “I told you that Father Don had become agitated when that letter arrived from your mother.”

  “Yes. But you said that he’s not well. My grandfather’s the same way. He’s confused all the time. And has a temper. Sometimes he’s uncontrollable.” Again, I thought about those scratches on Gran’s arm. I’d assumed they’d been inflicted by Gramps. Now I knew otherwise.

  “Watching our loved ones suffer is a difficult cross to bear.” He looked out over the backyard. He still held the folded paper between his fingers. “Father Don remembered something today. A package that your mother left in his care a long time ago. I wanted to talk to you about it before the police tell you.”

  “The police?”

  “Yes. I called them right away.” He handed me the paper. I held it up to the porch light. The handwriting was large and loopy, feminine. I looked at the signature. “My mother wrote this.”

  “It’s a photocopy of the one included in the package Father Donavan was holding in his room. The box contained the video surveillance tapes from a robbery that took place years ago.”

  I looked up from the paper. “The drugstore owner was killed in that robbery.”

  “That’s right. It’s a confession. Your mother and her boyfriend, Billy Drake, and another man—”

  “Hank Styles.”

  Colm squinted. “You already knew?”

  I looked back at the papers. Two long pages, front and back, and the photocopy quality was poor. I couldn’t read it fast enough. “No. Not all of it. Tell me. What do these say?”

  “According to your mother, Styles worked at the drugstore. He had a key and would go in at night, take some pills, and change the numbers in the books. Then they’d sell the pills to local kids.”

  Even back then, he was a drug dealer. Then again, so was my mother.

  Colm was still talking. “In the letter, your mother admits that she and Billy Drake were in on the drug dealing.”

  “I’m sure she was desperate for money. Her situation was impossible. A single mother, no support from home, no education, no way out.” Excuses, Brynn. Excuses.

  “Styles had taken to carrying a gun. He thought it made him look tough and came in handy when kids tried to stiff him for money. He was carrying it that night when the three of them keyed into the drugstore for more pills to sell. They didn’t realize the owner was in the backroom. He caught them in the act. Threatened to call the cops. Styles panicked and shot him. They tossed the place and cleaned out the cash to make it look like a robbery.”

  “The surveillance tapes?”

  “Styles knew about the security cameras. He took the tapes and told Billy to destroy them.”

  “I don’t understand. Why’d Billy keep them?”

  “I think that was your mother’s doing.” Colm leaned forward. “Prior to this crime, when she first got pregnant, your mother was scared. I mean, a Pavee girl, pregnant out of wedlock. And by a boy outside the clan.”

  “I can imagine she was terrified.” A shiver hit me. That could have been me—pregnant with Colm’s child, abandoned and alone. What would I have done?

  I saw Colm swallow. Hard. Were the same thoughts in his mind as well?

  He continued. “Father Donavan seemed to remember your mother quite well. I think she’d been coming by the church to visit with him for some time. Confiding in him. The details are mixed up in his mind, but he did mention a baby. I think he was trying to help her, counsel her.” He adjusted his collar again. “I’m just assuming that last part, of course. I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure. But he remembers that she was concerned about you.”

  I blinked back the tears forming along the edges of my eyes.

  Colm continued, “She explains in the letter that Styles went after Billy, and she was worried that he’d come after her too. And her family. She couldn’t confide in your grandparents because she knew it would endanger them.”

  “And she couldn’t trust the law.”

  “No. The letter talks about how afraid she was of the law. The prejudices the Pavees faced at that time from the settled folks.”

  “Still do.”

  Colm frowned. “She feared what she’d done would affect the whole clan. Especially your grandparents.”

  “She must have felt desperate.”

  “Yes. Disappearing must have seemed like her only choice. She left the tapes and the letter with Father Donavan as a safeguard, in case anything ever happened to her. So someone would know the truth.” He looked my way. “So you would know the truth. The truth about her. What she’d done.”

  We sat in silence as I put the pieces together in my mind. My grandfather’s pending death prompted my mother to come home. She must have checked into the motel where I now worked and left behind the article I found in the laundry. Styles said she’d confronted him, wanted him to repent, wanted the truth out. But there was no statute of limitations on murder. And she had been the one person left who could point the finger at him. “And in the end, it was the truth that got her killed.”

  “I believe so.”

  “She wasn’t all bad.”

  “No, Brynn. She wasn’t. She made a lot of mistakes, mistakes that she regretted, but she loved you. So much so that she left Bone Gap and everything she’d ever known to protect you. It must have been the hardest thing she’d ever done.” He reached out and ran his hand along Wilco’s back, his fingers briefly brushing against mine, then retreating.

  Colm started, “If you’d like me to—”

  “No.” The answer came fast, harsh. I wasn’t even sure what he offered—a blessing, prayer, confession, whatever—but it didn’t matter. “I mean, thank you for telling me, but . . . I just need some time.” He hesitated, then nodded, rose and stepped softly back up the porch, the screen door squeaking as he went inside.

  Gran had made her peace with her sins: As for me, I’m right with God. Father Colm saw to that.

  A confession away from peace? Not for me. Questions skittered like searing shrapnel across my tired life. And somewhere in the midst of all the pain and death and regrets and mistakes, the biggest questions lodged in my war-torn mind:

  Had I misjudged my mother all these years? Or killed my own father? Alienated myself from everyone who mattered in my life . . . and all for what? What was my truth?

  You’ll have to figure it out for yourself, Brynn.

  My feet belonged to the settled world, even if at times prejudice tainted my path. Yet I lived in my mother’s world, the Travellers’ world, even when its loyalties battered our lives.

  Wilco and I sat with our silhouettes outlined in the golden glow of the porch light. Wilco shifted, looked up at me with that qui
rked eyebrow he used as if questioning me or maybe trying to tell me something. I could never be sure. In the distance, a dog howled, but Wilco held me in his stare. He heard nothing, saw nothing but me.

  “It’s okay, boy.”

  I felt tears in my heart, but I couldn’t cry. My family loved me—my mother enough to leave me behind, my Gran enough to—

  Wilco’s wet nose nudged my face. I leaned in, wrapped my arms around my dog, and buried my face in his fur. I knew where I belonged.

  Right here.

  Acknowledgments

  The making of a book is a collaborative effort, and I have the following people to thank for being part of the team. My agent, Jessica Faust. My editor, Michaela Hamilton. My publicist, Morgan Elwell, and all the hardworking people behind the scenes at Kensington Publishing. I’d also like to extend a special thank-you to Sandra Haven, freelance editor, friend, and the best pair of second eyes around. I am grateful to the following people who have provided me with the expertise needed to write this story: Sergeant Matt Eberhart, USMC; Sergeant Leanna Miller-Ferguson, USMC Disabled Veteran; First Sergeant David Scott, U.S. Army; Kathy Chiodo Holbert, owner of Chiodo Kennels and former civilian HRD canine handler, Iraq and Afghanistan; and Amanda Bourg, PhD, psychologist. And thank you also to Mike Wilson, Eastern Illini Electric Cooperative, for his valuable insight on electrical grids. All these people are experts in their fields. Any mistakes made within these pages are mine and mine alone.

  As always, my most heartfelt gratitude to my husband and our children for their continuous support and encouragement.

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  SPLINTERED SILENCE

  Susan Furlong

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  The suggested questions are included to enhance your group’s reading of Susan Furlong’s Splintered Silence!