Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (102 page)

“An’ what do ye think Casey would do, did he know?”

“Kill the man,” she said bluntly. Which she tended to think would be no bad thing.

“An’ that’s why he can’t know. I don’t want him endin’ up in prison over somethin’ I’ve done. He’s only just got his freedom back.”

“
You
haven’t done anything. It’s that bastard that has. You are not to go anywhere near him ever again, do you hear me? If you do, I’ll tell Casey directly and let the chips fall where they may.”

“Are ye threatenin’ me?” he asked, the unreliable voice pitching upwards to an indignant squeak.

“No, I’m making you a promise,” she said, making certain her voice carried a gravity the boy could not mistake. And though she had promised not to tell Casey, she had not made that same assertion regarding Jamie. Should Morris Jones disappear, she wouldn’t even ask so much as an uncomfortable question.

Lawrence frowned at her, as though he read her thoughts. His eyes were red-rimmed from exhaustion and fever, for he had not cried once while telling her of what amounted to a regular raping of his body over the course of months. He was also, despite his lack of tears, at his emotional limits.

“I think we both could use some sleep,” she said, feeling very tired herself, though it was a weariness that had little to do with physical fatigue.

“I—would ye mind lyin’ down with me just—just until I get to sleep?” he asked, voice uncertain. “If ye don’t think it’s inappropriate or anything.”

“Why would you think it’s inappropriate?” she asked.

“I’ve never had anyone lie with me to sleep, or for comfort, it’s always been for sex.”

“Not even your mother?” She felt a bone-deep horror for what his life had been. It made her want to weep for all they could not give back to him, and the things that no amount of love and security were ever going to erase.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t remember back that far.”

She cuddled next to the boy, putting an arm around his thin form and gathering him as close as he would allow. She was always very careful not to push past the boundaries Lawrence clearly had.

“Tell me about your dreams,” she said. It was a tactic her father had used to calm her before bed and put her mind on pleasant childhood fantasies.

“The sleepin’ ones or the wakin’?”

“Both.”

His voice started out strong, but soon faded and the distance between half-sentences stretched further and further apart. Considering what his life had shown him, his dreams were, for the most part, reassuringly normal: football, music, girls and tests for which he was not prepared. The darker ones gave her pause—forests he could not find his way out of, and a faceless man.

“Aye, I’ve had that one as long as I can remember,” he said in response to her question about the faceless man. “I don’t think I’ll ever see his face; any time I get close to him in the dream he turns his back. I’ve gotten a wee bit superstitious about it. I’ve a feelin’ that if he ever turns around an’ I do see his face, somethin’ truly awful will happen in the daylight.”

“We won’t let it,” she said fiercely. “You’re not going to have anymore faceless men in your life Lawrence.”

“Promise?” he said, the word stretching to several syllables. He was halfway asleep already.

“I promise,” she said, knowing that he’d heard her at least subconsciously, for his body palpably relaxed.

He muttered one more thing, barely audible, and she knew he was no longer aware of the words he spoke, but they sent a chill down her spine all the same.

His breathing became heavy; his temperature rising enough that she could feel the change in heat that presaged deep sleep. He mumbled a few words to her and then drifted off to what she hoped were dreams untroubled by evil and vice and the fear that he carried with him during his waking hours.

For long hours after he fell asleep, she lay awake staring into the darkness, where shapes were blurred as though covered in a layer of ash. And she saw in her mind the shape of the white box Pat had discovered in that charnel house that masqueraded as a respectable dwelling.

And inside it a small pair of pink ballerina slippers and the delicate bones of a child that had been born to dance. The remains of Robin’s sister and the beautiful satin slippers that Brian Riordan had anonymously given to her so that she might have a moment of grace in a life that had been exceedingly short on that attribute.

The box sat in her darkroom, firmly under lock and key. Even now, the other boxes were being photographed, tagged and loaded into police vans. She and Pat had called the police once they were a safe distance from the house. But this one box containing the bones of Jo Temple they had brought away. She would leave it to Robin whether to bury the bones of the past or to expose them to the harsh light of the justice system.

She curled tighter to Lawrence’s thin frame, a flood of protective rage and fear tingling all along her skin. And heard again the last words he’d said to her before drifting off into his uneasy slumber.

I dream that I am not alone.

A FIRE BURNED MERRILY in the hearth, pine knots snapping with the heady scent of resin. The flames reflected cheerily in the teacups on the sideboard, and in the highly polished glow of table and floor. It was a setting entirely incongruous with the sad event that was about to take place within it.

“Tea or whiskey?” Pamela asked, holding a bottle of Connemara Mist in one hand and the kettle in the other.

“Whiskey,” Casey said grimly. “I don’t think there’s a drink appropriate to this sort of news, Jewel. But whiskey might blunt the edge a little.”

“Should I stay or go?”

Casey eyed her silently for a moment, as though assessing the choice.

“Stay, Jewel. I’ve no notion of how he’ll receive what’s to be told, but it’s yerself that found the bones. I think it’s right you should be here when he sees them.”

She had awakened Casey in the wee hours, the morning after the discovery of all the boxes of bones. She had laid the box containing Jo Temple on a chair in the bedroom and then woke her husband.

It had taken several minutes, deeply asleep as he was and groggy with the cold, for him to understand what she was telling him. He had opened the box then, face blank with shock, and had stood for a very long time, staring down at the fragile skull and tiny bones that testified to the delicacy of the little girl they had once borne through the vagaries of an incredibly harsh world.

And then her husband, strong, stubborn, and able to bear a great deal, had leaned his head down beside the box and cried; a long silent shaking of his body that unleashed her own tears as she sat frozen on the edge of the bed, unable to move, feeling as though she would never again be clean after the things she had seen the previous night.

At long last they had lain down on the bed together, exhausted and beyond the physical forms of grief. And she told him the story in its entirety. At the end of the telling, Casey had taken her face in his hands and turned it toward him none too gently.

“No more, woman—d’ye understand? This has caused enough heartache already. I cannot lose ye—d’ye understand!” He’d given her a shake, causing her teeth to clack together.

“Ouch—yes, I understand.”

“Pamela, don’t lie to me, woman, nor placate me with words ye don’t mean. If I catch ye fiddlin’ about in these matters again, I’ll not be responsible for what I may do to ye.”

“I’m done,” she’d said, and meant it.

Casey had pulled her to him fiercely then, and held her for a very long time and so, at last, she had fallen asleep, to escape for a short while from the horror of the preceding hours.

Now, though, it had returned full force, as the two of them awaited the arrival of Robin.

They both heard the sound of a car turning in at the head of the lane, and started simultaneously. Casey took a deep breath and squared his shoulders.

It was a rainy twilight, and Robin’s chestnut hair gleamed bright as fire beneath the bare winter branches of the oak. The rain was coming down in a heavy drizzle and he ran toward the door, fist up to knock. But Casey had it open before he could.

Robin’s bright white grin slid off his face, as soon as he caught sight of Casey’s expression. “What is it?”

“What do ye mean?” Casey asked, ushering Robin in and taking his rain-beaded coat from him to hang by the fire.

Robin snorted. “What do I mean? The last time I saw that expression on yer face, ye were about to tell me I’d gotten Mary Tilney up the spout.”

“Will ye sit, man?”

Robin narrowed his eyes suspiciously in response to Casey’s grave tone. “No, I can stand an’ listen at the same time.”

Casey laid a hand on each of Robin’s shoulders. For a moment they were still, two big men who looked as though they might bear the brunt of the world on their shoulders together, if they must. They stood near the fire, and it limned them in deep red, touching a match to the flames in Robin’s hair and etching Casey’s bold features, as though he were inked against the air. And then Casey spoke and the still shattered.

“We’ve found wee Jo,” he said simply, knowing there was no easy way to break such news.

The oddest look flickered across Robin’s face, and Pamela saw clearly what he would look like many years hence, when age had laid its ungentle touch upon him.

“How—what—I don’t understand what ye mean.” Robin’s voice was constricted, as though a vice were around his throat, tightening with every breath he took.

“The box on the table—Pamela found it in a house where there were many such boxes. They all had skeletons in them—mostly boys—but this one had yer sister’s name on it. So she brought it away for ye to decide what ye will do with it.”

The room was so still that the ticking of the clock seemed grotesquely loud, the hiss of rain against the windows as audible as water running from a tap. Then suddenly Robin staggered forward, and Casey reached out to catch him, helping him to a chair. He made certain Robin was able to sit upright before pouring a hefty measure of whiskey into a glass and handing it to him.

“For the shock, drink it back, man.”

Robin threw back the glass, downing the whiskey in one swallow. He gasped and put the glass down with a thunk. He scrubbed his hands vigorously over his face, ruffling the chestnut hair over his brow. He gritted his teeth and reached toward the box, sliding back the lid as though a cobra were within, waiting to strike.

His hand hovered above the bones, trembling visibly. “I can’t—oh Jesus,” he breathed out, eyes riveted to the lambent glow of a small skull, where the grubby pink velvet that lined the box had fallen away.

Pamela took a deep breath, willing her own hands to cease their shaking.

“May I?” she asked.

Robin gave her a quizzical look and then nodded.

She picked the skull up, cradling it gently in her hands. Dark shadows stared back at her from the deep orbital sockets. The skull was a mottled brown, with patches of amber, ivory, and pale fleeting green near the base of the skull. The green was indicative of the remains coming into contact with a mineral contaminant.

She brushed the pad of her right thumb gently over the brow ridge. It was a smooth, high arch that molded down to fleet cheekbones, and flowed on to a delicately pointed chin, the face of a child who’d never had a chance to reach maturity. A child who’d not had a girlhood and had not yet been within sight of the bloom of mature womanhood.

“She’d have been lovely,” Pamela said softly, laying the skull back in its velvet bed.

Robin nodded, his hands spread upon the table; broad, capable hands that had been too small to come to the aid of his sister.

“Would that we knew how she ended up there,” Casey said softly.

Robin exhaled a heavy breath that he seemed to have been holding since his first sight of the white box. “I do know.”

Casey’s head snapped up in shock. “What do ye mean ye know?”

“Well I don’t know how her bones ended up in that house, but I know how she died.”

“You do?” Casey’s voice sounded slightly strangled. “Ye never said.”

Robin smiled wearily. “Aye, well we’ve not been in touch a great deal these last years, have we?”

He picked up the bottle of whiskey and re-filled his glass. The liquid glowed with small golden lights, capturing the flicker of the fire in the arc of the bowl. Pamela was quite certain that Robin was blind to his environment right now, though, and that his eyes were cast much further back, into a past that held no golden hues whatsoever.

“’Twas my father who told me. He left me a letter. Told me what her last days had been like, couldn’t spare me even that, the old bastard. But maybe it’s better to know, better to know than to spend the rest of my life imaginin’ what had happened, what might have happened.”

“Do you want to tell us?” Casey asked.

He stared at Casey, eyes lit like candle wicks, surprise evident in his face. “Why would ye want to hear it?”

“Because ye need to tell someone, man.”

He gave Casey a searching look, eyes a deep, un-blinkered blue. He had learned distrust at such an early age that it was simply in his nature to second-guess everyone’s motives now. Casey met his gaze calmly and clearly.

“We were away playin’ rugby,perhaps ye’ll remember.”

“I’ll never forget,” Casey replied, the gravity of his tone unmistakable.

Robin turned his blue gaze on Pamela. “The team was in an amateur knock-out tournament, meanin’ of course that if we won we kept on playin’. We were gone a full two weeks, an’ we were havin’ a grand time of it. We were a bit young, even for the amateurs, but we were big, fast an’ aggressive so they overlooked our years. Two weeks doesn’t seem like it ought to be enough to change yer entire world, does it?”

“Two minutes can change everything,” Pamela said with the unfortunate wisdom of experience. Casey’s hand found hers under the table and squeezed it in reassurance.

Robin nodded. “I’d a feeling ye knew well of these things yourself. It’s odd, ye know, I’ve always felt guilty that I’d had such a good time those two weeks, an’ yet it was really the last time that I felt a joy that was unclouded.”