A World I Never Made (13 page)

Pat shook his head. That explained the train ticket in Megan’s wallet. But it did not explain why the exquisitely selfish Megan Nolan would, after three abortions, go through the trouble of a full-term pregnancy—while in hiding from some obviously grave danger—only to give the child up almost immediately after it was born.

“Who is the leader of your tribe, Doro?” Catherine asked.

“My uncle, Corozzo:”

“Ah, Corozzo, with the eye patch and the gold tooth:”

“Yes.”

“And the black heart:”

If Doro was surprised by the fact that Catherine knew who Corozzo was, he did not show it. Gypsies and police all over the world danced perpetually to the music of mutual suspicion and often deep hatred.

“Will he know where these people are?”

“He knows everything about his tribe:”

“Where is he?”

“The last I heard in the Czech Republic:”

“Can we contact him?”

“He would never speak to you. I will contact him.”

“And if he knows where Megan is?” Pat asked. He had gotten up from the couch and was now standing behind it, his hands resting on the carved wooden edge of its backrest. “She will not help you,” he continued, “unless I am involved.” This was a bluff, but he doubted Doro had any knowledge of his tortured relationship with his daughter.

“You cannot come with us,” Doro answered.

“You can reach us at this number,” said Catherine, reaching into her bag for a scrap of paper and and a pen, and then writing quickly. “Ask for
mon
petit oncle. Speak only to him. He will reach me.” She handed Doro the paper, which he looked at carefully before handing it to Ephrem.

“I make no promises. Your daughter may not be with the same people. She may have gone off on her own:”

“Doro,” said Catherine, “bin-Shalib—or whoever is behind him—wants Megan dead. They will stop at nothing. They will kill anyone who gets in their way.”

“Yes, Mademoiselle Detective, I understand. But I am a gypsy. I am cunning by birth. I will draw Monsieur bin-Shalib to me and I will cut off his fingers and crush his head as he did to Annabella:”

“Bien. Bonne chance.”

“Merci,
and what will you do?”

“I believe Monsieur Nolan will want to go to Lisieux, to see his grandson.”

“Yes,” Pat said, “that will be our first stop.”

After the boys left, Catherine went out to get food for dinner. While she was gone, Pat brought in more wood and used it to feed the stove in the living room and to build a fire in the large and deep fireplace in the kitchen. He tried to take a shower, but there was no hot water. He searched the house until he found the electric hot water heater in a back closet and saw that its temperature gauge was set too low and that its connections to the main circuit box were loose and covered with dust, mouse droppings, and spiderwebs. He cleaned and reconnected them and set the temperature to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. While waiting for the tank to heat, he poured himself a half glass of bourbon from a bottle he had found earlier and sat before the wide brick hearth in the kitchen to drink it. He gulped half of it down before permitting himself, for the first time since hearing the jarring news of her death, to recall the wrinkled, incongruously kind face of Annabella Jeritza, who had been so brutally killed because she had made room in her heart for Megan. He did not know just how anxious he had been until the whiskey, strong and hot in his throat and stomach, brought some relief. Death, dead bodies, and now a birth. A child of Megan’s. Blood of his blood. Thank God for Catherine, who had convinced him that, once he had seen his grandson tomorrow, it would be best to leave him with the nuns in Lisieux.
He will be safe there, she said, until this danger you are in has passed and you, or Megan, can claim him.
He had fought her, but she had been right. How could they track down Megan with an infant on their hands?
It is likely that you will be dead soon in any event, that we both will.
She had not said this, but it really didn’t need saying.

He brought another half tumbler of bourbon upstairs with him and sipped from it before, during, and after his shower, which was hot and steamy and which, along with the whiskey, helped put him in a comfort zone that, though he knew to be temporary, was nevertheless very welcome. He had dressed and was standing at the railing of the loft bedroom, drying his hair, when Catherine, carrying two sacks of food, swung open the front door, bringing some of the rain and wind in with her. Her hair was in some kind of transparent kerchief that she must have bought when she was out. She stopped on her way to the kitchen as if she had been struck by a sudden thought or heard something that didn’t sound right. Rain water glistened on her kerchief and on the strands of hair around it.

“I’m up here,” Pat said, not loudly, not wanting to frighten her. She turned and looked up and smiled.“I took a shower,” he said.

Catherine took off her head cover before answering, shaking it out and throwing it on a nearby end table.“You have made hot water?” she said.

“Yes.”

“It has not worked for months:”

“American know-how.”

“Come down. You can start dinner while I shower.”

In the kitchen, Pat flipped on a small shortwave radio on a shelf above the sink and turned the dial through a lot of static until he heard a woman singing something operatic. He turned the volume up a notch and began cutting and chopping the vegetables that Catherine had bought. Peppers, eggplant, onions, carrots, and more from a pile she had made on the hardwood countertop after rinsing them thoroughly in the deep enameled sink. He chopped, sipping his bourbon and listening to the radio and to the thrum of the shower in the upstairs bathroom. When Catherine came down, she was wearing a pair of worn corduroy pants and an oversized denim shirt with its cuffs rolled up to her elbows. She poured herself a glass of wine from one of the two bottles she had bought and stood next to Pat, watching his hands as he finished the job of cutting up the vegetables.

“Her lover will not return,” Catherine said.

“Whose lover?” Pat asked, holding the fat old knife in midchop for a second, puzzled by this statement.

“Madame Butterfly. Maria Callas. You have picked a very sad moment in her story for us to listen to. And very beautiful:”

“I didn’t know what it was,” Pat answered,“but you’re right, it is very sad and very beautiful.” He had been absorbing the music without thinking too much about it while working. They listened for a moment, side by side, to Callas’s unbelievable voice, filled with the courage and pathos of every woman who refuses to believe that she has been wronged, that her heart will be broken.
You can start dinner,
Catherine had said. Such a simple, domestic,
intimate
thing to say, as if they had been friends or lovers or both for many years. The warmth of the fire spread over them, as if to confirm Pat’s thought, which didn’t need confirming.
You look lovely,
he wanted to say, but didn’t, remembering this morning and Catherine’s nonresponse, the odd look on her face, that sadness again when he told her she looked beautiful. Tonight, without makeup, her face flushed from the hot shower, her long brown hair still damp and glistening, she looked even more beautiful.
I won’t say
it, he thought, and then she touched his hand as it rested on the worn wooden counter and he smiled without looking up.

They ate their ratatouille with French bread and drank the bottle of wine that Catherine had opened at the small kitchen table near the fireplace. Pat did not realize how hungry he was and thought the hole in his stomach could not be filled. The ratatouille with its al dente vegetables and savory sauce and the delicious hearth-made bread finally did the job. They brought the second bottle of wine into the living room, where they spread a blanket on the floor and sat in front of the stove, which was glowing and which by now had heated virtually the entire house. Pat could easily have slept, but there were questions on his mind and he could still feel the spot on the back of his hand that Catherine had touched in the kitchen.

“I am not your enemy,” Catherine said, preempting him.

“How can I be sure of that?”

“I see your point. There could be double-dealing within double-dealing. I could be a master of deceit:”

“You could be:”

“My father used to tell me to listen to my heart.”It will not lie to you,” he said:”

“Is that your husband’s shirt you have on?” Pat had not meant to ask this question, but there it was.

“Yes, why?”

“No reason. Tell me about him.”

They were both sitting against the couch that faced the stove, their legs extended, the bottle of wine between them. Catherine drew her legs to her chest and rocked slowly for a moment or two on her haunches, looking away from Pat. Then she got to her knees and reached over to the woodpile Pat had made, picked out a small log, and put it into the stove, pushing the door shut with another log. Still kneeling, she faced Pat.

“I hated him,” she said.

Pat took this in, suspended in that place where there are no thoughts and certainly no spoken words.

“I’m not in mourning,” Catherine continued.

“Why did you hate him?” Pat asked, finding his tongue.

“Because I didn’t love him and he refused to see it, refused to let me go. I hated his obtuseness, his incessant desire for me:”

“And now you’re guilty?”

“Yes.”

“So this is really happening?”

“Yes.”

Outside, the rain was finally stopping, the patter on the tin roof slowing to a few isolated pings. The wind, which had been rushing against the house with force, was now only sighing. In the sudden quiet, Pat could hear his heart, his wordless inner voice. The course of his life, it told him, would turn, pivot on his decision to trust the handsome, despairing woman sitting next to him.
Let it,
he thought.
If her vulnerability is false then she is the loser, not you. But it isn’t. Yes, this
—
and more
—
is really happening.
Catherine had let go of her knees but not fully reextended her legs. He watched her, tracing her profile with his eyes as she leaned back against the sofa and stared at the fire burning in the stove, giving him space and time to think his thoughts, which now turned from the profound to the practical.

“There must be someone you can go to,” Pat said. “Someone in law enforcement or the government that you can trust:”

“That sounds logical, except that Charles Raimondi is in the top echelon of our government, high in the Foreign Office and very close to the DST if not DST himself. And he is the one who brought a known terrorist, a beheader, down on you. No, we will go to Cap de la Hague tomorrow, after Lisieux. Uncle Daniel will advise us:” She had told him of Daniel Peletier over dinner, that he was the one who had run the prints taken from the Arabs in Volney Park. Uncle Daniel whom she loved and trusted.

“I was jealous,” he said.

“Jealous?”

“Of your husband. That’s why I asked about the shirt.” Pat let his eyes drift over Catherine’s chest as he said this. Though the shirt was loose-fitting, he could easily see the outline of her large breasts and had no trouble imagining that they would be soft and touchable and perfectly formed. He had decided when he first met Catherine—he could not believe it was only two days ago—that he would not look too closely at or think too much about her beauty. But that decision was made long ago, by another Pat Nolan in another life, the Pat Nolan who thought his daughter had killed herself to spite him, who had looked into the face of despair and saw that it was his. That decision could now be rescinded. Looking up, he saw that Catherine was smiling.

“Shall I take it off?” she said, and, after a slight pause, continued, “and put something else on?”

“No,” Pat said, shaking his head and smiling in turn.“I’m not so jealous now that I know ...”

“That I hated him?”

“Yes.”

“It sounds awful, doesn’t it?”

“No.”

“He was a quite ordinary man. A little arrogant, a little insecure, that’s all. Not someone to be hated. It was myself I hated.”

“And you still do:”

“Yes, at times I do:”