56 Days

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  “Did they say how long?”

  “Anywhere from one to six months was his best guess.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. It is that.”

  Ciara gives her sister’s hand a squeeze before letting go.

  Siobhán straightens up, collecting herself, and turns her attention to the menu—God knows why, because they meet here once a month and they always order the same thing: two club sandwiches with fries, two Cokes, a pot of tea for two after. When the waiter appears and starts reeling off the specials, another ritual is played out: Siobhán silences him with a hand and says, “We know what we’re having, thanks.”

  After he’s gone, Ciara asks, “Do you ever think about it, Shiv?”

  “What?”

  Ciara is unsure of what to call it. She settles on, “Back then. That day.”

  “Why the fuck would I do that?”

  Her sister picks up the water jug, pours two glasses. Ciara lets her take a sip, watches her swallow, makes sure she has so she doesn’t start to choke when she says, “I’ve been thinking, lately, about Oliver St Ledger.”

  Siobhán freezes, then lifts her head to glare at Ciara, stone-cold.

  “I don’t want to hear that name,” she says.

  “He’s out there, somewhere—”

  “I said, I don’t—”

  “—living his life, being normal, getting to do all the things—”

  “Acting normal, Ciara. Acting.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “It doesn’t do anything to me, because I refuse to let that cretin take up even a single molecule of oxygen in my life. Which is why I’m not having this conversation. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Did they ever tell you what actually happened?”

  “Something else else.” But then Siobhán frowns. “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Mam and Dad.”

  “Seriously? The woman who hasn’t even said his name for nearly twenty years and the man who was so traumatized by it all that he tied a rope around the banister outside my childhood bedroom? Why yes. We talked about it all the time. Cozy fireside chats, they were, as I recall.”

  “I could do without the sarcasm, Shiv.”

  “And I could do without this whole conversation.” Her sister sits back, folds her arms. “What’s this about? What’s going on?”

  “It’s just that . . . I only know what’s on the internet. Which is what was reported, back then.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s what the public were told,” Ciara says. “But he was my brother. If you only know what was reported too, and Mam didn’t tell you anything, well then . . . time is running out to ask questions, isn’t it?”

  “To ask Mam questions? Don’t you fucking dare do that.”

  “I wasn’t going t—”

  “We know what happened.”

  “In general, yeah, but I mean, like . . .” Ciara searches for the right words. “The ins and outs.”

  “The ins and outs?” Siobhán repeats in a loud enough voice to attract a couple of head turns from surrounding tables. “He’s dead, Ciara. Nothing’s going to change that. We can’t bring him back. Why would you even . . . ? What is wrong with you?”

  Over her sister’s shoulder, Ciara sees the hostess turn toward their table with a frown on her face.

  “People are looking, Shiv.”

  “So what’s new?” Siobhán twists around to throw their nearest audience members—a middle-aged couple two tables away—a filthy look.

  “I do remember one thing,” Ciara says. “From back then.”

  “Just the one? Aren’t you lucky?”

  “I remember Mam saying, over and over, that it couldn’t have happened the way they said.”

  All this earns is an eye roll from Siobhán.

  “Look, I’m not trying to upset anyone here, Shiv. Quite the opposite. What if we could get something for Mam, some information, that would make her feel better? That would give her some peace before she goes?”

  Siobhán scoffs at this. “Like what?”

  “What actually happened.”

  “We know what—”

  “Maybe we do,” Ciara says. “But maybe we don’t. The woman has been tortured, for years, by that one afternoon. Even all these years later, she can’t understand what happened to her son. The official story, what that detective said in court—it never answered her questions. And what the newspapers wrote, they say what happened before and what was found afterward, and that the two—that the boys had conflicting stories about what went on in between. But that’s it.”

  “Because no one wanted the gory details of what two children did to another child. Because they were normal. Unlike you, apparently. And you’re wrong about it not answering Mam’s questions. The problem was she never got answers she liked.”

  A beat passes.

  “I know what you’re doing,” Siobhán says then, her tone gentle now. “Trust me. I’ve done it myself. But you’re looking for something that isn’t there. Yes, their stories contradicted each other. But they were twelve. They were in more trouble than they even knew. And the ending of both stories was exactly the same: murder. That’s what matters. Not the gruesome details.”

  “That wasn’t what—”

  “You can’t bring him back from the dead, Ciara. And do me a favor: stop pretending that this is about Mam.”

  A waiter arrives with their Cokes, his eyebrows rising slightly as he seems to catch the end of what Siobhan said. After he leaves, she announces that since she’s spent the morning inspecting biohazard waste facilities at the Bon Secours hospital—Siobhán works in medical waste management—it’s probably no harm for her to wash her hands one more time before the food arrives.

  “And when I come back,” she says, “we talk about something else.”

  As Siobhán walks off toward the bathrooms, Ciara turns to look out of the window.

  The nose-picker is counting out coins for a tip with the same hand he’d been picking with.

  Anywhere from one to six months.

  It’s hardly any time at all. Almost certainly not enough to get to the truth of what happened that day at Mill River—those five, ten minutes seventeen years ago that would rob her of a brother, her father of his will to live and, according to Siobhán, the mother Ciara would have had otherwise.

  But she has to try.

  Siobhán is right: Ciara wants to be able to set their mother’s mind at some semblance of ease before she goes, but she needs the truth too, for herself.

  The question is . . . how to get it?

  23 Days Ago

  He dares look at her, wanting to find her eyes, to meet them with his and use them to show her that he is still him, still Oliver, the man she knows, the one who feels like his heart is too big for his chest every time he looks at her, who thinks he could be falling in love with her, who wants nothing more than for her to stay because she is the only thing that has ever truly made the pain go away.

  But Ciara’s eyes are in her lap. She’s as still as a marble statue. With the blood having drained from her face, she’s the color of one too.

  “It was just a normal day . . .” There’s nothing else to do now but keep going, to rush it all out before she leaves, to try to explain before what might be his only chance to comes to an abrupt end. “I was walking home from school with this other boy from my class, Shane, and . . . It was all over something so stupid. And we were stupid. But in just a matter of minutes, everything got completely out of hand.”

  He blinks back tears, thinking of it.

  He’s spent the last seventeen years trying not to.

  “There was this boy,” he says, “in Fourth Class. A couple of years younger than us—we were in Sixth. He lived next door to Shane—we all lived in Mill
River—and he would sometimes follow us home, asking us questions and trying to tag along. He was annoying but . . . I think he just wanted to hang around with us. He was the only boy in his family and I never saw him out around the place with any other kids from the estate.”

  He’s going to have to say his name. He can’t very well tell the story without it, so he takes a deep breath and pushes it out even though the words feel like sharp, pointy objects that slice open the inside of his cheeks.

  “Paul Kelleher. He was . . . he was ten.”

  Ciara’s head is still down, but he sees her shoulders start to shake—with shock, or maybe even fear. The idea that she would be physically afraid of him makes his chest constrict.

  But it’s too late to stop now.

  He has no choice but to keep going.

  “So on this particular day, Paul is following us home like he usually does, but he’s being more annoying than he usually is, calling out our names, over and over and over. And then he . . . Well, for some reason, probably because we were totally ignoring him, he starts throwing things at us. Pebbles. Most of them miss, but a couple hit our schoolbags and then Shane gets one square in the back of his head. And he like, reels around on Paul, and I think he’s going to roar at him or something, but instead he says, ‘Okay, fine. You can come with us. We’re going down to the water to skim stones.’ And then he gives me this look, like . . . Follow my lead. And he takes off running. Paul follows him. I do, too.”

  Oliver tries to take another deep breath, even though it feels fruitless, even though it feels like his airways have permanently closed for business and all he has is what’s in his lungs and however many minutes it will take him to exhaust it.

  “The estate was built on the bank of the river,” he continues, “that’s where it got its name. The houses kind of sloped down to the water, and then in order to actually get to it, you had to climb through some trees . . . So once the three of us were down there, we were pretty much hidden from view. And that’s when . . .” He swallows. “That’s when . . .”

  Now, finally, Ciara lifts her head.

  “That’s when Shane just starts, like, pummeling Paul. That’s the only word I could use to describe it. Shane had been kept back a year, he was nearly thirteen by then, and Paul was small for his age . . . I don’t remember everything but I remember Shane towering over Paul, and Paul looking up at him”—his voice cracks—“like—like—”

  He can see him now, as if they’re all here, in this room.

  Paul’s eyes, not pleading, but questioning.

  Why are you doing this to me?

  Oliver is struggling around sobs now, but there’s no point trying to stop it, he just has to get the rest out and then he can talk to Ciara, try to assess the damage, try to start fixing things.

  He will do anything to fix this.

  To keep her.

  To keep them.

  “At first, I didn’t intervene. I just stood there. But then Shane was like, come on, and Paul was kind of squirming, trying to get away, and he’d started to cry by then, so I went and I”—his voice cracks again here, goes up a pitch—“I didn’t intervene. I joined in. I held him. By the arms. In place. So that Shane could keep . . . So that Shane could—”

  Ciara looks away; she can’t look at him anymore and he can’t blame her.

  He swallows hard, twice, trying to force the lump in his throat out of the way so he can get the last bit of horror out.

  The worst bit.

  78 Days Ago

  How do you find someone who doesn’t want to be found?

  Having exhausted the search bar of every social media network, news site, and internet search engine she can think of, all to no avail, Ciara resorts to typing this very question into Google.

  How do you find someone who doesn’t want to be found?

  A list appears at the top of the first page of results, a preview of an article that’s been linked below.

  1. Full name, nicknames, family names.

  2. Date/city/state of birth.

  3. Hometown/last known/current city/state.

  4. High school and/or college names.

  It’s clearly aimed at people who are looking to find Americans who don’t want to be found and who have access to things like census information and government databases.

  And so, for her, it’s absolutely useless.

  Ciara goes to close down the window—she’s at her desk at work, the club sandwich she had with Siobhán sitting heavy in her stomach—but then she sees the next two items on the list and stops.

  5. Former and recent employers.

  6. Friends and family members.

  Friends and family members.

  Oliver had had an older brother, didn’t he? He’d have been Siobhán’s age . . . But what was his name?

  Ciara drums her fingers on the desk, trying to remember.

  Oliver and . . . Oliver and . . . Oliver and . . .

  Richard.

  Richard St Ledger. She types this name and “Ireland” into the Google search bar and hits Enter.

  The top result is an Instagram account.

  Ciara checks the coast is clear before picking her phone up from the desk and opening the app. It’ll be easier to navigate there than on a computer screen.

  She starts scrolling through his posts.

  She only has the faintest memory of what Oliver looked like, let alone his brother, so she can’t tell just by looking at him if this is the right one.

  This Richard St Ledger is living in Australia, with his wife and two small kids. He seems to spend a lot of time at the beach and standing in front of mirrors at the gym. But there’s a recent photo of a thirty-first birthday cake (right age) and an Irish flag in his bio (so he’s Irish), and the only time she’s ever encountered a St Ledger was seventeen years ago, so it could be him.

  She wonders why he didn’t change his name, but then why would he? He didn’t do anything and his brother’s name is protected by law.

  Still . . .

  She keeps scrolling down, careful not to double tap any of the photos—if this is the right Richard, then he’d know her name for sure—until she comes to one taken much closer to home. It’s of Richard with his back against a waist-high glass railing, his head turned away from the lens as he looks out over the bird’s-eye view of London behind him. The location tag says, “Sky Garden,” which Ciara knows sits atop the skyscraper known as the Walkie Talkie.

  The photographer’s legs are reflected in the glass and Ciara stares at them for several seconds, wondering if she’s looking at Oliver St Ledger’s chino shorts, muscular calves, and white Vans. But then she touches a finger to the image and finds the legs tagged as @balfeyboi91.

  She follows it to the corresponding account: Ken Balfe, whose bio is also sporting an Irish flag.

  Ken Balfe.

  Ciara puts down the phone and goes back to her computer, opening up Facebook. She’s already logged in. She types Ken Balfe into the search bar—and finds the corresponding profile easily.

  There’s no evidence that he’s been active on the site recently; the top post on his page is from nearly a year ago. But the “About” section has lots of useful information, most notably that he went to secondary school at St. Columba’s Community in Naas, Co. Kildare.

  She silently thanks him for filling it in.

  The primary schools in the area were segregated by gender, but the secondary was mixed. St. Columba’s is where Siobhán went for a couple of years, and where Ciara had been supposed to go until they’d left the area a month after her father’s death, when their mother announced she just couldn’t stand to be there, suffocating in memories, for a single moment more. So it’s entirely plausible that Ken Balfe and Richard St Ledger have been friends since school, since before everything happened.

  Which wou
ld mean that Ken would know about Oliver.

  Which might mean he’d know where he is now.

  But what good is this information to her? What’s she supposed to do with it? Send him a message asking if he would kindly provide contact information for his friend’s younger brother, the convicted child murderer?

  She couldn’t do that any more than she could send Richard St Ledger a message on Instagram and ask him a version of the same thing.

  How do you find someone who doesn’t want to be found?

  But that’s not really the right question, Ciara thinks now. What she should really be asking herself is, How do you find a child who was convicted of murder now that he’s a grown man and his name is protected by law?

  Ciara only knows of one case where young children were convicted of murder; it had happened in England before she was born. Those boys were now men who lived under assumed identities, guaranteed lifelong anonymity—because their names were made public, they had to shed them immediately after the trial.

  As she scans the case summary on Wikipedia, looking for any details that may help her in her search, she studiously ignores the shards of horror that jump out at her like glinting knife blades.

  . . . blown his cover several times by sharing his true identity . . .

  . . . in possession of child abuse images . . .

  . . . returned to prison . . .

  Maybe this is a mistake.

  Maybe she shouldn’t be looking for Oliver St Ledger.

  What if she finds him, and somehow gets him to talk, and what he says only makes everything worse?

  Ciara takes the half of the British pair who hasn’t reoffended and puts his original name into Facebook’s search box, just to see what comes up. There’s a handful of profiles with exact-name matches, but of course none of them can be him. She feels a pang of sympathy for those men and wonders why on earth they don’t go by nicknames or something. She scrolls down the page until she sees that a group has been returned in the results.

  Justice, Not Protection! has almost eight thousand members.

  Ciara feels compelled to turn around and make sure no one is standing silently behind her, looking over her shoulder. She’s in a small, open-plan office, but the only other occupied desk right now is on the far side of the room. She should be safe.