Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (121 page)

He came to what seemed a long time later, a neighbor shouting in his ear. The car was still on fire, flames reflecting off the few windows that hadn’t shattered in the explosion.

Pain was there hovering way off, threatening to blanket him. He was on his back and amongst the stars that danced in his view, was a thick pall of black smoke coiling across the flawless blue sky.

With what seemed a ridiculous amount of effort, he managed to roll over onto his stomach and lever himself up onto his knees. The neighbor was pulling at his coat now, trying to stop him but he ignored the hands and pushed himself toward the car. Burning fragments lay all over, flower petals coating the ground, blown from the daisies that only moments ago had nodded so prettily over the path. Daisies that Sylvie had planted in the spring.

The smell of burning petrol coated every breath, his lungs feeling as though they would shrivel and crack from the heat. There was a film across his eyes, like a heavy veil dividing the heaven that had been, from the hell that now was.

The doors had blown right off the car, the shell-shocked body of it twisted and rumpled like a rusted tin can, a hundred different colors in the fire that consumed it. Within that fire nothing moved. Still he crawled toward it, looking for a grain of hope on this infinite shore of tragedy.

More hands came then and pulled him away, pulled him back to where the grass was cool and wet, and then they held him down to keep him back from the fire.

He lay there, head pressed to the side, the air shimmering with heat and debris, alight with flaming ash. Through it floated a scrap of blue cloth, fancy-free, spinning, dancing small minuets with black ashes until it came to rest on the ground before his eyes. A few threads from the pretty Sunday dress she’d worn. It was all that remained to prove that she’d been there only minutes before. Nothing more. Not a bright blonde hair, nor a pair of brown eyes, nor the smell of lilac and lemon verbena.

And there he lay, amidst the burning wreckage of a life, and cursed himself for a fool.

For he had forgotten, in the cruel spring of his happiness, that even lovers die.

THE WALLS OF THE ROOM WERE FRESHLY PAINTED a soft robin’s egg blue, the chair rail that ran around the room at waist height, a pale cream. Pamela surveyed her handiwork with some satisfaction and no little weariness. She put the lid back on the pail of cream paint, and wiped her hands on a turped rag. She straightened up with a groan, the small of her back stiff and twinging slightly.

She had thrown herself, with grim determination, into fixing up the nursery. First the paint and then when she had a crib, she would put it under the whimsical little half-moon window, and make a rag rug for the floor. She would re-paint the pine chest she’d salvaged from Lewis’ barn in the blue and cream of the room and get Casey to build a changing table. She sighed and pinched the thought off. It might be that Casey wouldn’t be building anything for this room, and she needed to plan as though she were alone. Which, truth be told, she was.

She sat in the ancient walnut rocker that Casey and Pat had been rocked in as babies. Casey had placed it in the room when they’d moved into the house, and had been anticipating the arrival of their own baby. For many long months after she had lost the baby, it had sat still and empty, neither of them with the heart to move it. Now she’d taken to sitting in it to have a cup of tea, or to simply rest from the weariness of painting.

She stretched her legs out, feeling the pleasant burn of tired muscles relaxing. She nibbled half-heartedly at a cracker taken from a pile she kept handy in case she found an appetite between bouts of nausea. She quickly put it down in disgust. Everything made her queasy. Except, oddly enough, the smell of the paint.

She closed her eyes; the fatigue of early pregnancy was never far from her and she found herself dozing at odd moments, though sleep eluded her at night. Eluded her to the point that she had given up on it, and had taken to filling her nights with cleaning the house, which then graduated to readying this room for the baby. She’d also picked up her knitting and the wee hours of the morning were filled with the soft rhythmic clicking of her needles, the huffling snores of Finbar and the rumble of the Aga.

The sound of an expensive motor turning off the lane into their drive broke in on her doze what seemed only a minute later. She glanced at the small clock. She’d been asleep for twenty minutes. She yawned and stood, craning her head to look out the small window.

Late afternoon sun gleamed off the dark green flanks of Jamie’s Bentley. He was just now rounding the curve beneath the ash tree. She left the room, shutting the door behind her. She didn’t want Jamie seeing the paint and leaping to the obvious conclusion. She was to the landing, midway down the stairs when he called out. “Pamela, are you here?”

She froze in place; it wasn’t like Jamie to just walk in. The tone of his voice was of a shade she’d never heard before. She understood without another word or sound from him, that he had come bearing bad news.

She moved to descend the remaining stairs and was swept by a wave of dizziness. She sat down on the top riser and called out weakly, “I’m here on the stairs, Jamie.”

She wanted to say Casey’s name, to ask the question, but could not utter the two syllables that would destroy what was left of her world.

Jamie found her there and read her face. “It’s not Casey. It’s Sylvie. She’s been killed in an explosion.”

“Explosion?” she echoed, not quite understanding.

“There was a bomb planted under their car. I think it was meant for Pat.”

“Oh God—is he—”

“He’s alive,” Jamie said, “but that was all they knew for certain. He was taken to Altnagelvin. I’ve come to take you there. Do you have any notion where Casey is?”

“But I just saw her three days ago,” she said dazedly, “we had tea. How—how can she be gone?”

“Pamela, where is Casey?” he asked again.

“I—I’m afraid I have no idea. He left me over a week ago now.”

“What? Why on earth would he do that?”

She met the green eyes that looked at her with both confusion and compassion. “He had his reasons, Jamie. But I really don’t know how to find him. Is—is Pat going to die?”

“I don’t think so.”

Twice on the trip into the hospital, Jamie had to stop the car so she could get out and throw up in the ditch. She was reeling with shock, and simply wanted to lie down amongst the buttercups that grew wild in the tall grass, and close her eyes for a long time. She had not believed that after Lawrence’s death and Casey’s desertion there was any room left in her for more grief. But there was. An infinite capacity for it, apparently.

Somewhere under the immediate shock and anguish was relief. Relief that it was not Casey. And guilt that she could feel such a thing at all.

A doctor met them at the front desk on the ward.

“He’s concussed, and has a few second degree burns on his hands. Mostly he’s in shock, I think, and can’t hear that well just now. I don’t think there’s permanent damage to his hearing, but we won’t be certain for a few days on that score.”

A stern-faced RUC officer stood outside Pat’s room. He recognized Pamela, though, and let them in without any fuss.

Inside the room, it was very quiet. Pat was lying as still as if he were dead, swathed in bandages and with an IV line feeding out from his left arm. His hair was a dark splotch against the starched white linens. Both arms were wrapped in gauze from fingertips to elbow. His face was partially bandaged, the right side exposed. Every bit of visible skin was scraped, bruised and singed looking.

“Pat?”

The sound of her own voice seemed unnaturally loud in the terrible hush of the room. From the bed, there was no response, other than the smallest twitch of the index finger on his left hand.

She was at his bedside in an instant. The one eye that was uncovered stared up at her with a hazy intensity that was equal parts shock and drugs.

He rasped out a solitary word, “Jamie.”

“He wants you,” she said.

Jamie leaned over Pat, close enough that Pat wouldn’t have to exert himself beyond a whisper. He stood there for a long time, the fair head so close to the dark one, like spills of ink against the stark white sheets, one writ in black, the other in dark gold. The story they told one of unutterable grief.

Finally Jamie nodded, and said something in the affirmative that she couldn’t quite make out.

He came around the bed and took her arm. “I think we should leave him be for now.”

Once they were safely outside the door, she spoke the words they were both thinking. “I’m afraid for him.”

“He’s going to live,” Jamie said bluntly, “only he can decide if that’s a blessing or a curse.”

IT WAS VERY LATE and Pamela was light-headed with exhaustion. The fluorescent lights were harsh and hurt her eyes, which felt as though they were lined with fine grain sandpaper. She’d come to the waiting room to sit and fight away the worst of the dizziness. The smells of disinfectant and illness, however, were stirring her incipient nausea up again.

Jamie came and sat beside her. Just his presence allowed her to let go a little of the breath she was holding in. He handed her a paper cup full of tea as well as a plain bun wrapped in a napkin.

“You’d better eat,” he said, “you’re looking rather pale.”

“Thank you,” she said, cupping her hands around the heat that radiated through the thin-walled cup.

“Were you this sick last time?”

She gasped in shock, and then realized she shouldn’t be surprised by his knowledge. “Damn you, Jamie Kirkpatrick,” she said wearily. “Taken up midwifery in your spare time, have you?”

“No,” he returned calmly. “I’m just not blind, nor trying to be; besides, you’ve nursery blue paint specks all through your hair. Does Casey know?”

She shook her head miserably. “No, I barely knew myself before—” she made a futile gesture with her free hand, “all this happened. It hardly seemed the time to tell him,” she said ruefully. “I—I—”

“Didn’t want him to stay for the wrong reasons.”

She nodded. “He would have stayed, and then I would always wonder if it was only because of the baby. I don’t want him on those terms. Do you think that’s silly or vain at this point?”

“No, it’s just who you are, you won’t compromise, even if not compromising breaks your heart. I can sympathize with that.”

“I may end up raising this child alone as a result, though. I’m a little frightened by that prospect.”

Jamie looked at her in a straightforward manner. “Even if he doesn’t come back, Pamela, you won’t be alone.”

Green eyes looked long into their kind and saw something there that had neither beginning nor end, something that would not fail and could be counted upon no matter how hard the outside world was brought to bear.

She took his hand and squeezed it gently. “I know, and I thank you for it. Still, I think Belinda might have a thing or two to say about it.”

“I rather think Belinda won’t care, all things considered.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “She’s gone, jilted me and run off to Italy. She said there was nothing left here to keep her.”

“What? Why? She was mad for you, Jamie, anyone could see that.”

He gave a grim smile. “Well, I believe her exact words were that if I’d even once looked at her the way I look at you, it would have been reason to stay. But that as I never had, she wasn’t going to settle for being a poor second fiddle.”

“Oh Jamie, I’m so sorry,” she said, and found that despite the jealousy she’d often felt for the woman, she really was sorry. Jamie deserved to love and be loved freely. “Are you certain—”

Jamie shook his head. “No, she was right. I was cheating her by thinking a half cup would be enough to build a life around. I couldn’t give her what she needed, she was wise to go. And I think perhaps it’s time for the cripple to try walking without his sticks. And while I have lost a dear friend and lover, Pat has lost his wife.”

“What do you mean—
wife
?”

“Yes, his wife. They were married on Friday. I think they were going to announce it at lunch today. That’s where they were headed when the car blew up—to my house, for lunch. He told me before they sedated him.”