James watched as she put on her gloves, retrieved the objects from the sack, and placed them in a plastic tray on the table. James nudged the shell with a pair of long tweezers.
“Hard-shell clam of some sort, probably North Atlantic,” he said. He picked up one of the tiny pitlike seeds, then one of the round ones. “These are interesting. I’ll check my identifiers and get back to you. Will these likely be North Atlantic region as well?”
“Unsure,” she said.
“That clam will definitely be North America,” he said. “Maybe New England or Canada. How old are the seeds? They look almost petrified.”
She balked briefly. “Extremely old. About fifteen hundred years.”
All three of the men looked up at her.
“Where…” Rogers began.
“We’re staying in campus housing for a couple of days,” Anthony said as he grabbed a pen and paper from a desk. “Can you please give us a call as soon as you know anything?”
“Sure,” said Rogers, the shock lingering in his eyes. “We’ll let you know tomorrow if we find anything.”
“Can’t tell you how much we appreciate this,” said Anthony as he shook Rogers’s hand. As the three left the lab, Anthony turned to Carys.
“Well, you sure got their attention,” he said with a smile.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
The apartment would have been a lovely, relaxing place to read or cook a meal or take a nap. But Carys was keen to stay in motion. Without any idea where to go next, however, it was all just energy, turned inward and spiking her anxiety. Dafydd had finally agreed to part with her to go for groceries. Anthony was in one of the bedrooms talking to his wife. She sat on the living room couch reading the Morfran manuscript, looking for alternative translations of the Latin that might give her a hint of his final destination, all the while plagued by the thought that someone bad—she didn’t know who—was going to come crashing through the door at any moment.
When she heard Dafydd’s truck arrive outside, she stood, went to the window, and watched him coming up the sidewalk. He was on his cell phone. He was ridiculously handsome. She smiled. She liked the way his legs moved when he walked. They were long and lean, strong, bowed out slightly, but he walked smoothly, without the bobbing that most people have when they stride. He almost looked like he was prowling. The sun was setting across the green yard, and his dark hair shone.
He stopped halfway up the sidewalk. He turned away from the house, and when he turned back, it looked like he was upset at whoever was on the other end of the phone. His face—angry, upset, she didn’t know him well enough to know what he was feeling—took her by surprise, and her reverie crashed to a halt.
He hung up on the call, took a deep breath, shrugged his shoulders a couple of times, and disappeared from her sight as he came into the main foyer. She heard the door slam behind him, his footsteps on the stairs, the apartment door open and close, and the bag of groceries land on the kitchen counter.
“Honey, I’m home,” Dafydd hollered in a fake baritone down the central hallway. She smiled. Her father used to do that.
She went into the kitchen. Dafydd was unpacking the grocery bag. “Thought we’d have shepherd’s pie for dinner. They had nice ground lamb at the store.” An unbagged potato rolled lazily off the counter and thumped to the floor.
“Everything alright?” she asked as she bent over to pick it up.
“Aside from killing a guy?”
“Yes. Other than that. I just…I saw you coming in. It looked like you were angry with someone on your phone,” she said. There was a slight stiffening in his shoulders. He kept unpacking. After a moment, he turned to face her.
“I wasn’t going to tell you,” he said. “It seems counterproductive.”
“What?” she asked. “Tell me what?”
“Remember the young receptionist at the hotel in Aberdaron?” Dafydd asked. His eyebrows were furrowed.
“Of course,” she said.
“She’s a friend. I dive up there a lot. She just called me,” said Dafydd. “Someone was just looking for you, for us, at the hotel.”
The blood drained from her face.
“I know,” said Dafydd.
“What did she tell them?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “She said she didn’t like the looks of them…”
“There was more than one? Jesus.”
“She said she didn’t know who they were talking about,” said Dafydd. “Said it was so busy with the pagans that it was impossible to keep track of who was who.”
“So that goon knew that we were staying at the hotel. And he told his boss before the dive, and now his boss is back on the hunt because the goon didn’t check in today. How did that thug know we were staying at the hotel?”
“I have no idea,” said Dafydd. “But again, I think it’s an oddly hopeful sign that they’re trying to pick up our trail there. That means they’ve lost us.”
“What have I gotten you two into?” She turned and rested her hands on the counter.
Dafydd stopped unpacking, turned toward her, and grabbed her shoulders with both hands. He looked hard into her eyes. Why do men get lashes that long? she thought.
“Hear me clearly,” he said. “I’m in this. I’m not going anywhere. Got it?”
“Why? We have no idea how long it will take to find what we’re looking for. I assume you have bills to pay, family, friends, a girlfriend…. I don’t under—”
“We are not talking about this anymore,” he said, and turned to stow the milk and coffee in the refrigerator. “I bought wine and cheese so we could have a little snack before dinner. I’ll pour us some wine now if you’d like.”
She nodded.
Anthony emerged from his bedroom just as Dafydd uncorked the bottle of sauvignon blanc.
“Party?” he asked.
“Taking the edge off,” she said as she sipped, not bothering to wait for a toast. She couldn’t imagine what they’d toast to anyway. “How is your wife?”
“Mad and scared, but safe,” he said. “She’s demanding to know where I am and what I’m doing, but I just asked her to trust me that it was important and not to go back to the house until I tell her it’s safe. She wants me to come be with her right away. She’s really afraid.”
“Did you ask her if anyone strange had been hanging around your neighborhood?” she asked. Dafydd handed Anthony a glass of wine. “Did you tell her to keep an eye out for someone tailing her?”
“No. I didn’t want to make her any more concerned than she already was,” he said, then raised the glass to them both and took a swig. “Should I have?”
Dafydd and Carys exchanged a glance.
“Someone was asking about us at the hotel where we stayed,” she said. Now it was her father’s turn to go sheet white.
“Oh my god,” he said. “I have to warn her.”
“No,” she said. “That’ll just upset her even more. They don’t know where we are. That’s why they were asking at the hotel. I just wish I knew how they figured out we were staying there.”
“Do you think they know that guy is…?” asked Anthony.
“I can’t imagine how unless someone found his boat,” said Dafydd. “And it’s in the middle of the Irish Sea right now.”
The three of them stood silently for a few moments.
“I’m going to start cooking,” said Dafydd. “Get my mind off this. You go sit down. I’ll put some cheese and crackers together for a snack.”
Anthony and Carys sat on the couch next to each other.
“He’s sweet on you,” Anthony said.
“You think?”
“He’s making a cheese plate,” said Anthony.
She smiled.
“He seems a good bloke,” said Anthony. “He got any competition back home?”
“Your cat,” he said.
She turned to him.
“Priscilla Brennan keeps me informed of your comings and goings,” he said, “in place of firsthand contact.”
“I was so angry,” she said. “I still am.”
“I know,” he said. “You probably will be for the rest of your life. If you decide that’s what you want.”
“I didn’t decide to be angry,” she said. “You—”
“Yes, you did. You do. You decide every day,” he said. “So do I.”
“What have you got to be angry about?”
“I made some bad choices a long time ago,” he said, looking directly up into the ray of sunshine streaming into the room as water welled up in the corners of his eyes. So, that’s where I learned that trick, she thought. “I believed I had no alternative, but I did. I never forgave myself. I don’t expect I will, and I don’t expect you to either.”
“You don’t?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “What I did was unforgivable. I know. But you’re my daughter. Whether you like it or not. I just want to make sure that you’re safe and happy.”
“That’s a tall order,” she said.
“How did this all happen?” he asked.
“One thing has led to another and another, and now I’m here,” she said, resting her elbows on her knees and leaning forward. “I have absolutely no idea how to do anything other than keep going forward until we get to the end, wherever it is.”
Just then Dafydd walked in with a plate of cheese and crackers.
“I could use some help in the kitchen,” he said. “Carys, can you chop?”
“Love to,” she said, and hopped up off the couch.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Dinner was delicious. It had miraculously taken Carys’s mind off their predicament for two hours. They shared stories and drank wine. Anthony told of his first few years in America and meeting Carys’s mother, Patricia, at the Green Dragon on Saint Patrick’s Day—she was right; her mother had thought he was Irish. At first she wanted to lash out, tell him he had no right to speak of Patricia, to even think of her. But she couldn’t find the words, and so she just sat quietly and then at some point, without meaning to, she was listening.
Then, for the first time in her life, she could hear how much Anthony had loved her mother. He talked about the day Carys was born. His eyes shone at the memory. She wondered how anyone could leave a child—and how both her parents had made that choice.
Dafydd shared his stories of growing up on and in the waters of Wales with his siblings. They had all believed that the South Wales coastline was the entire world when they were young. He admitted that he had really never been anywhere outside of the British Isles, to this day. What he knew of foreign places came from listening to the stories his customers told him on their long boat rides out to dive on wrecks, and by piecing together the travels of the ships that he had dived upon or salvaged as part of his work. He said he longed to travel and experience something outside of Mumbles, a town that four generations of his family had called home. His parents were still both alive and kicking, and in love, and had never shown an ounce of interest in living anywhere but Wales, which they loved as much as their own children, he said.
“That’s why they charge a toll on the Severn Bridge to get into Wales,” said Dafydd with a grin, “but not out.”
Around ten o’clock, Anthony excused himself to go to bed. She and Dafydd found themselves staring across an unfamiliar table.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. “Any more of those pains?”
“I haven’t had any since the dive.”
“You need to get that checked when you get home. Is there anyone special there who…” He paused.
“A boyfriend, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” she said. “No boyfriend. Not much of anyone back in the States. But I’ve got my sister, Annie.”
“You have a sister?”
“She’s sort of my sister. Her mom took me in when my mother killed herself.”
She glanced up at Dafydd’s face. It didn’t budge.
“Anthony bolted when I was seven. My mother had depression, and he couldn’t handle it. He took off—abandoned both of us. You can imagine the effect that had on my mother’s depression. When she died, he never came back to get me.”
“No wonder you’re so angry at him,” said Dafydd. “But that has to be exhausting.”
“It is,” she said, realizing for the first time how true this was. “What about you? Girlfriend? Ex-wife? Wife?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” said Dafydd. “But there are a few nights that are fuzzy. Anything could have happened.” He smiled.
“I can’t believe you’re not married,” she said.
“Me either,” said Dafydd. “I’m quite a catch.”
“Humble, too,” she said. “But seriously, why? Why aren’t you married?”
“I just didn’t want to settle for what was available within arm’s reach in Mumbles,” he said. “I don’t mean that to sound snobby. There are lovely women there. Absolutely beautiful. Smart. Funny. Strong. Good mothers. Good people. Most of my friends married local girls. I just always thought I’d…I don’t know. I felt like my life needed to be bigger than that.”
She waited for him to continue, but he looked up at her and smiled.
“Tell me about your sister,” said Dafydd.
“She’s a very successful defense attorney,” she said. “Smart, loud, funny, takes no shit from anyone. She’s a force of nature. She’s actually been doing some investigating on the goon who—”
“Really,” he said. “Did she find out anything?”
“Yes. His name was Frank Marshfield,” she said. “Annie thinks he was some kind of an enforcer. Definitely not the mastermind type. She’s trying to figure out who was behind it all.”
She took another sip of her wine.
“Dinner was amazing,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Dafydd with a grin. She smiled back but was overtaken by a yawn.
“I should go to bed,” she said.
“You didn’t get much sleep last night, huh?”
“Couple of hours,” she said. “I was up reading the manuscript.”
“What’s it like?” he asked.
“This Morfran guy thought quite highly of himself,” she said. “He talked a lot about how his quick thinking saved the fleet. He spends a lot of time listing his daily grooming and eating habits. Unfortunately, he’s not very specific when it comes to where the hell he buried the actual body. You know, little details like what continent it’s on.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Dafydd. “I meant, what’s it like reading a book that old? Being able to read it.”
His eyes were glued to hers, and she could feel him waiting for her answer. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had been so eager to hear what she actually thought about something. She considered for a moment how to answer his question. She’d never tried to put it into words before. She’d never been asked to.
“It’s like…it’s like watching a movie. This world sort of drops away, and all you can see is this other world playing in your head.” She looked up at him. His eyes were riveted on her. “Latin isn’t like English. It’s very formal. People generally didn’t use it to express their emotions. There were so few people who could write back then that they normally saved it only for recording official things. But to find a personal journal—to find two of them—it’s like a magic window. Like climbing into the heads of people thousands of years ago. But mostly what you see when you read words that old is that humans haven’t changed a bit over all the centuries. I’m not sure if that’s comforting or disturbing. It’s all the same—pain, anger, fear, joy, pass
ion…”
Suddenly, Dafydd stood up and moved around the edge of the table. He put her head in his hands and brought his lips against hers, inhaling her as if he could draw her in. She threw her arms around his neck and stood up, pressing her body against his. Their mouths opened, their tongues entwined, and a hot flush ran up her body. Her breath caught in her throat. She held onto him as if she were clinging to a life raft.
7
Saturday, June 23
Dafydd went to his room just before the sun came up, leaving Carys exhausted in a warm bed. It was another night without much sleep. He’d been insatiable, demanding, tender, passionate, and he knew his way around her body like they’d been together forever. They would make love for an hour, then she’d fall asleep, but she’d awaken half an hour later with his hardness pressing against her hip. Again and again they replayed the scene throughout the night. She hadn’t pushed him away once or hesitated to take advantage of his enthusiasm for her. They connected again and again in a way that she had never experienced before.
She knew before the sun came up how badly she’d miss him when she went back home.
When she finally rolled out of bed and got into the shower, her entire body was aching and her most intimate parts were raw. It made her smile.
The two men were at the dining room table with tea when she got up. Dafydd smiled at her, and she lowered her head. Anthony glanced at them both.
“Sleep well?” Anthony asked. She grinned and walked into the kitchen. There was a pot of coffee already made, and a container of cream was on the counter. She poured herself a big mug and went back out to join the two. It was close to nine.
“I just got a call from the boys in the lab a few minutes ago,” said Anthony. “Apparently they didn’t get much sleep either.” He winked at her. “They ran tests on the seeds all night. Rogers said they were the oldest ones they’d ever seen. They want to know where you got them.”
“I’m sure they do,” she said.
They arrived at the lab a half hour later. The scientists were haggard, and the room had the funk of takeout Chinese and unwashed men.
“What do we have, then?” Anthony asked Rogers.
The Ghost Manuscript Page 28