by Henry, Jane
“Relax, Cormac,” mam says, but I wave her off, heading to the stairway that leads to the bottom floor, the workout rooms, the library. The interrogation rooms.
I dial Aileen, but it just goes to voicemail. She never has her phone with her anyway. We need to have a talk about that.
I trot down the steps, and head first to the workout room. Empty. Next, the library. I hear someone rustling through papers on the right side of the vast room, but when I turn the corner, I only see one of our staff with a dust cloth in her hand, her eyes wide.
“Have you seen my wife?”
She nods. “Aye, sir. An hour or so ago?”
“Where?”
“She was down here for a bit. Did some reading, then went off that way.” She points her cloth to the door that leads to the exit. And to the interrogation rooms.
I’ve never brought her in here before. She’s allowed to roam our grounds freely, but she’s never been to where we interrogate. Windowless and soundproof, the door’s closed except on days the ground floor is cleaned. Like today.
Damn it.
“Cormac.” Mam’s in the doorway to the library, still holding baby Seamus. “Take it easy, son. Probably went for a bit of a walk is all.”
“Stop telling me to relax,” I tell her. “She hasn’t been herself. Something’s on her mind.”
“Of course there is,” mam says, shaking her head. “The woman’s carrying your baby.”
“Exactly.” My body tightens.
“Cormac,” Caitlin says next. She clears her throat, and her cheeks turn pink when I look her way. “We talked last night, Aileen and I.”
My tone sharpens. “Did you?”
“Aye,” she says with a smile. “She’s just trying to find her place here is all. It’s hard enough carrying another human in your body. Complicates things a bit when that baby belongs to a man you’ve only just met, doesn’t it?”
“She can worry about the baby in her belly all feckin’ day, so long as she does it where I can see her.”
I stalk past them, ignoring the look that passes between them. They don’t understand. They don’t know how she’s been. How she’s walled off apart from me. How things have changed since her memory’s returned.
I walk to the interrogation room, my stomach clenching. I don’t want her in here. It’s where we perform some of the more base interrogations. It’s where I punished Tully days ago. Where we taught Lachlan the ways of the Clan, where he trained.
Soundproof, it’s where criminals come to die. It’s no place for a woman. No place for my wife.
I yank the door open, half expecting to see her, both hoping and dreading seeing her wide blue eyes and long blonde hair.
But it’s vacant. I turn to leave, when something catches my eye. I turn back toward the exit. This room can be entered either from the connected rooms on this floor, or from an outside exit, a useful construction when we have to drag a suspect in, or hell, a body out. We keep it tightly secured, and only inner circle members even have a key to access this room. Today, the exit’s left ajar, just slightly enough for a sliver of light to shine through.
I hear mam and Caitlin behind me, but I walk toward the exit.
“Everything alright, Cormac?” mam asks.
“I think so,” I tell her. “But I’m going to find out.”
I leave them both and head out the door. Just beyond the exit to this room lies the pathway to the greenhouse on the other side of our house, the pathway nearly hidden in shadow. I pause, frowning, and turn back to the door. Something’s amiss. I’m eager to get to Aileen, to find her, so I don’t investigate now, but make a mental note to come back to it.
Little pebbles line the walkway toward the greenhouse, and nearby, stacks of freshly-chopped wood wait for the late night fires we’ll build in the backyard, under the stars and moon, on a chilly spring evening. Some of the best nights of my life were spent under those stars. How I long to sit beneath that blanket of heaven with my wife and child. How I wish I could make her happy, bring her peace.
I walk past the greenhouse and garden, past the gate that keeps us apart from everyone else, down to where the rough, craggy rocks of Ballyhock lead to the cliff’s edge. Is this where she’s gone? If not, where else could she be?
Goddamn anywhere.
I grit my teeth and keep walking, when the sound of a lonesome song drifts my way. Hauntingly beautiful, I would know that voice anywhere, though I can’t make out the lyrics. My heart gives a great lurch at having found her, then squeezes at the pain in her voice.
Ahead of me lies the sea, tumultuous but beautiful, flecked with foam. The swirl of blue-green holds power and grace. Like my girl. My wife.
She stands on the cliff’s edge, staring at the water below. If she sees me approach, she doesn’t show it, her lilting voice now carrying the words that haunt me.
He quickly ran to her
And found she was dead
And there on her bosom
Where he soaked, tears he shed
My heart squeezes. She sings the song of Molly Ban, a tragic story of accidental loss and new love that ends in tragedy.
I want to call to her, to reach out and drag her back to me, but she stands too close to the cliff’s edge. If I startle her, she could fall.
I clear my throat to get her attention.
“Aileen.”
“Mmm.”
She closes her eyes as if to drown me out, and gives me a slight nod. All the anger I had at her disappears evaporates when I go to speak to her. My throat is strangely clogged. Maybe it’s because of the song, or the blessed relief that floods me when I see that she’s okay, but my voice comes out softer than I intend. I can’t remember the lecture I planned on delivering or the warning I wanted to give her, how she shouldn’t scare me like that, or risk her safety, or go wandering alone where I can’t find her. Instead, my tone is gentle when I speak.
“Y’alright, sweetheart?”
She doesn’t open her eyes, but nods. It’s then that I notice she’s carrying something, holding it close to her chest.
“I’m fine,” she whispers. She’s anything but.
I take a few steps toward her, careful not to startle her.
“Are you?” I ask. “Why are you out here all alone, lass?”
Wordlessly, she holds the folded newspaper out to me. “Found this,” she whispers, her gaze still fixed out at the sea. The paper falls from her hands, and a gust of wind swirls, but I snatch it just in time. If I were a superstitious man, it’d feel like an omen.
I take the paper from her, and within seconds, the calm I felt for a moment while looking out at the sea has vanished.
Taken
Daughter of one of the most powerful men in all of Ireland, Aileen McCarthy may be used to the ways of the Irish mob, as it’s the only way she knows how to cope, but it doesn’t mean she’s had it easy. Aileen represents a small, repressed group of women under the thumb of the underworld of Ireland: the vicious mob that rules with an iron fist.
Taken from the comfort of home, leaving behind her family and friends and all that matter to her, when the ink hadn’t yet dried on her college diploma, Aileen was bought by rivals and taken to be bred like her mother before her. Forced to marry Cormac McCarthy, to carry his baby, she now ignores anyone who questions her. She insists she’s a McCarthy and has no ties to the family she left.
A tragic loss, and hard to imagine that modern day Ireland still hearkens back to traditions from our forefathers, the women sold into mob life have no will of their own, no personal opinions save what their husbands believe, no say in their future. Mindless muppets under the control…
As I read on, my blood boils. I glance at the name of the writer of this article and don’t recognize it, but note fine print below the title.
Information in collaboration with Sheena Hurston of News Republic.
Has the woman no fear? No shame?
“Careful, Cormac,” Aileen says, her light blue eyes
cast to the sea in front of her. “You’re liable to pop a blood vessel.”
It’s then that I realize my hand is shaking and I’ve clenched the paper so tightly it’s crinkled like elephant’s skin.
“Where did you get this from?”
“I found it,” she says with a sigh, pulling her shawl tighter around to shield herself from the wind, but I imagine she’s shielding herself from me.
“Where?” She didn’t find it randomly. This was planted. Someone wanted her to see this.
She turns to face me, her eyes icy blue. Cold.
“In the library,” she says, her lips pursed. “Naturally.”
I want to shake her, until her pretty blonde hair comes loose from the knot on top of her head and tumbles onto her shoulders, until she loses that haughty, icy look of anger.
“You were in the library,” I state stupidly, still clutching the goddamn paper.
“Yes. I went down there this morning before you got up.” She sighs and looks back out at the sea. “Then I found the torture room.”
“The torture room?”
She purses her lips and shakes her head. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” she says through clenched teeth. “The room where you do evil things.”
The interrogation room. We met in a room just like that.
“This is nothing but bloody lies, Aileen,” I say, shaking my fist at the sea. I’d toss the paper to the cliffs, but I need to bring this to Nolan.
“Is it?” She turns to me so sharply, I’m afraid she’ll fall. I reach a hand out to steady her but she backs away to avoid me. Her foot catches on a loose pebble. With a shriek, she stumbles, falling. My heart takes a great leap but I move on instinct, reaching a hand out to grab her. I grasp fabric and skin and hair as I yank her back to me and we fall to the rocky ground. She bangs her head on my shoulder, and I hold her to me.
“Are you okay?” I ask, holding her shoulders to look into her eyes. “Did you hurt yourself? God, did you hurt the baby?”
She grimaces, reaching a hand to her head. Closing her eyes, she whispers, “No. God. I’m fine. And the baby’s fine.” But she can’t hide a tear that rolls down her cheek. She swipes it angrily away.
“Aileen,” I say. I draw her to me. Holding her. I hate that she’s hurt, that they’ve done this to her. “This doesn’t matter. None of it does, lass. They publish lies, and we ignore them.”
“Do they?” she challenges.
“Of course they do. You know that article isn’t true. It’s meant to sensationalize, but they don’t know about the real workings of our family.”
How devoted I am to her. How I’ll devote the rest of my life providing for her needs, and the needs of my family. How I’ll do anything within my power to keep her safe, protected, well cared for.
She nods with a sigh. “I’m hungry, Cormac,” she says in a little voice that tugs at my heart. “Can we go back?”
I nod. “Mam and Caitlin want to take you to the shops.”
Her eyes light up. “Oh?”
I stand take her hand, and lift her to her feet. “Only one condition, lass.”
“What’s that?”
“I come with you.”
Chapter 18
Aileen
Just when I think for one moment that I’m starting to heal from all this… that I can forget the past that haunts me, and welcome the present, accept this as my lot in life… something happens to remind me how wrong I am.
I wonder if I can leave, how that will go. What would Cormac do? Would he find me? Would he come for me? We’re bound together with this child growing in my womb, and yet still, I wonder…
Where would I go? Would I have the freedom I long for if I left this place? Is it even Cormac and Ballyhock I want freedom from?
He’s been good to me, I can’t deny it. At night when I wake from a terrible dream, the damn things that will keep coming, he’s there. He holds me. At first I didn’t understand it at all. Why would a man who’s so stern and domineering be all kind and gentle when it comes to me? I don’t know if I can trust it, trust him. I wasn’t sure, at first. I didn’t really get it.
Then Caitlin and Maeve took me out for a walk by the cliff one day and explained. They told me how seriously the men of The Clan take their responsibilities toward their women. The way Maeve talks about her late husband—a man I never met, but a man Cormac refers to with honor and reverence—makes me long for that type of earnest, heartfelt love that most women only dream of.
Maeve wears a thin locket around her neck and her wedding band, thick, solid gold with a Celtic knot dead center, to this day. When she talks of her husband Seamus, she spins that ring and talks in a distant voice, as if part of her heart was buried with him.
And Caitlin’s love for Keenan is nothing short of adoration. The way she speaks about him, you’d reckon the man hung the bloody moon. But he’s fallible. They all are. He’s good to her, though, just like Cormac is to me and Seamus was to Maeve. I’ll never want for anything. I know this.
“’Tis a matter of honor, lass,” Maeve said over hot tea in the library one afternoon. “He’ll never let you go without. Your every need will be met. But in turn, they have expectations.”
“Aye,” I said bitterly. “Don’t step a toe out of line, eh?”
She smiled. “No, love. Not quite. You’re allowed to speak yer mind and have your say, of course. But in time you’ll learn when and how to speak your mind. It’s all in the timing.”
“Right,” Caitlin said. “For example, when he’s lying in after a good night’s… sleep?” Her cheeks flushed pink as her eyes darted between me and Maeve, indicating it isn’t a good night’s sleep she’s thinking of. “Good time. On his way to do a job or mete out punishment to someone who’s defied the Clan or disobeyed an order? Not the right time.” She took an extra long pull from her tea to hide her flaming hot cheeks.
“Quite right,” Maeve said with a snort of approval.
I like these two. There’s a kinship between us I never had before. I miss my sisters, but these two fill a void in my heart.
Maeve smiled. “Life is like a cup of tea, lass, as the old saying goes.” She lifted her mug and took a long draught before finishing her sentence. “It’s all in how you make it.”
It’s all in how you make it.
Do I like it sweet and soothing, comforting and warm, so it slips down to my toes and warms me through? Or will I make it bitter and cold, tainted by bitter regret and anger?
I’m trying. God, I’m trying, but the weight of a child in my womb and his ring on my finger makes everything seem that much harder.
I’m eager to get out of here, to go with Maeve and Caitlin and work a little retail therapy out of my system. And yes, to see the way my husband’s eyes go dull and sullen when I drag him around the shops. I giggle to myself at the memory. Cormac McCarthy is many things; a shopper is not one of them.
I wish I could get that damn article out of my mind. It hounds me like a thorn in my heel, aching with every step that I take. If there weren’t truth in the article, it wouldn’t rankle so much.
But I bury it. I put it down. I’m here with my new-found family, and even though the pain I carry taints my interaction with them, I have to admit, I’m starting to feel as if I belong here.
“You ready to go to the shops?” Caitlin asks from the landing. “Megan wanted to come, but she had a shift at the hospital.”
Megan’s recently been hired as a nurse. It pleases Keenan, who thinks her services could come in handy. I’m disappointed I don’t get to see as much of her.
“Pity she couldn’t make it,” I say. I join her on the bottom floor. Cormac told me to go ahead and plan where I wanted to go with Caitlin and Maeve. I think he has some sort of foolish notion that if we plan ahead we’ll be quicker, but the truth is, planning ahead just means we’ll have more shops on the list to go to than we can possibly fit in.
“We’ll have to plan another outing wit
h Megan as well.” I like the brass, friendly cousin. And she knows things about the boys, having been raised with them. She tells us stories Maeve’s too classy to repeat, and they’re too proud to tell us themselves. A McCarthy by blood, she has an in with the Clan even Caitlin doesn’t.
Caitlin smiles. “She demanded you send her every picture of every outfit you buy. You know how she is about clothes. Look what she got baby Seamus.”
I bend down to the pram to see she’s got baby Seamus all dolled up in a little sailor outfit.
“Oh aren’t you the cutest little thing?” I croon at him. He’s got the McCarthy family wide green eyes above rosy cheeks. He shoots me a full, toothless smile. I turn when I hear Cormac coming down the stairs behind me, and the baby squawks to get my attention again. I turn back to the baby quickly. “What was that?”
“His father’s taught him well,” Cormac says. “Don’t let the lady’s attention wane. He’s got you trained already, auntie.”
I roll my eyes, and he bends and kisses my cheek, then leans into the pram and gently tweaks baby Seamus’ nose. “Aren’t you a cute little bugger? Good thing you inherited your mum’s good looks, lad, and not your crooked-nose father’s.”
“Cormac!” Caitlin chides. “Keenan’s nose is not crooked in the least.”
Maeve joins us, gives Cormac a playful smack on the shoulder, and we’re off.
He holds my hand and guides me to his side, so he’s nearest the road. I don’t question it. I remember what Maeve and Caitlin have told me, how the men of The Clan need to feel as if they can protect their women. He needs to be needed, I think.
But as we walk along the street toward the shops, I wonder.
What do I need?
What do I really, truly, need?
A good home. A place where I’m safe and welcomed. Something I never had growing up. Family to care for me, to tend to me… to love me.
Could the McCarthy family be that for me?