Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (45 page)

“Robin has siblings?”

“Had,” Casey corrected, “Bobbie was the oldest, an’ then there was wee Jo, his sister. She was three years younger, no more than a scrap of bones an’ skin, with a mop of hair like her brother an’ a pinched little face that had never known much more than unremittin’ misery. Bobbie adored her, tried his damnedest to protect her, but for all she’d been beaten down by the conditions of her life she’d still a spark in her, an’ it got her into trouble with her da’ a great deal. Bobbie would take her punishment for her when he could, but his da’ cottoned on to this an’ realized ‘twas harder on Robin to see the skin peeled off his sister’s back than have it taken off his own.”

“What happened to her?”

“Disappeared when she was twelve, no one knew it for a bit though. Ginny told people she’d gone to stay with relatives in the South.”

“But she hadn’t?”

“No, but at first there was no way of knowin’ any different. Robin an’ I were away playin’ rugby down in Wicklow at the time an’ when he came home his mam told him Jo’d been sent to stay with his Aunt Rita in Dublin for a bit. He was relieved, thought it’d be the savin’ of her. He even talked about sendin’ money for her keep so as his Aunt would let her stay with her an’ not send her back to that house. A month goes by though an’ there’s no word from Dublin, the aunt’s got no phone an’ he’s gettin’ a little worried. Then one day all the letters that he’s written his sister come back in an envelope an’ he knows somethin’ is very wrong. So he an’ I hitchhike down to Dublin an’ pay a visit to his aunt. She’s shocked by our turnin’ up on her doorstep, an’ says Jo’s not there an’ never was. Robin’s goin’ clean out of his mind by then. He knew somethin’ very bad had happened, but he wasn’t ready to admit it. I think his body knew though, he got dreadful sick right off, throwin’ up an’ runnin’ a fever. We found a ride out of the city, headin’ north in the back of a truck. He was next to unconscious at that point an’ I started to get real scared, wonderin’ if he was goin’ to die on me. I didn’t understand ‘twas the shock, his mind couldn’t handle what it knew, so his body took the force of it. Poor bugger, there was nothin’ he could do, but of course he had to try.”

“What happened?” Pamela asked, feeling slightly sick at the mere idea of such an enormous betrayal.

“I don’t know. Even Robin never knew the entire truth of it. All he knew was that his sister was gone, an’ his parents didn’t seem to care where or why. Rumors started to float round, as such things will, that Manny’d finally beaten the life right out of her. Robin went mad, goin’ from house to house, poundin’ on doors askin’ if anyone had seen her or might have any notion of where she’d gone, but of course no one did. The police, to give them due credit, tried to help him out, but there was no sign of her an’ nothin’ to lead to her whereabouts, dead or alive. Of course they had their suspicions, but they could no more prove them than Robin could. His mam said she’d put Jo on a bus for Dublin an’ had presumed she’d made it to her aunt’s safe an’ sound. Bobbie was only fourteen years old an’ it wasn’t long after that that his father disappeared as well.”

“Didn’t their mother care?”

“She was a timid thing, Ginny was, didn’t hang onto the backbone God gave her more'n a minute, an’ she drank like a fish. She was one of those women who are just victims from the minute they’re born, and men like Manny Temple can smell that sort of thing a mile off. If Jo’s da’ had killed her, Ginny’d likely stood by an’ allowed it to happen, maybe not realizin’ until it was too late but still not stoppin’ it. Have ye ever seen a rabbit, Jewel, that’s about to be killed?”

“No, I can’t say I have.”

“Well they get all glassy-eyed an’ paralyzed, as though they’ll just lay down an’ give their throat over to the knife. That’s what Ginny Temple looked like, as if she’d always felt the shadow of that knife an’ saw no way to avoid it. She just let things happen to her, if ye know what I mean, an’ I guess she let the knife fall on her daughter in the end.”

“So even now he doesn’t know what happened to his sister?”

“No, he doesn’t. ‘Twas a horrible time, seemed as if the whole neighborhood had a black cloud hangin’ over it, people talked less an’ hurried past one another in the streets. There was a sinister feel even to the air, an’ I think people were ashamed that they’d not paid more attention to wee Jo Temple.

“Truth be told I felt wretched myself. She’d just been Bobbie’s kid sister to me, an’ I’d not paid her much mind beyond rufflin’ her hair or givin’ her candy.”

“You were just a child yourself,” she said soothingly, feeling the strung tension that ran through his muscles as he spoke of Robin’s doomed sister.

“That doesn’t excuse me from doin’ something about it though.”

“And what exactly could you have done? Confronted his father and gotten yourself hurt in the process? You were a boy, Casey; don’t try to put the burden of a man on the shoulders of a child. It was up to the adults in the neighborhood and you know as well as I do that many people think other’s children are none of their concern. Surely people knew.”

“Well I knew, an’ I suppose most in the neighborhood had some notion of it, but ‘twasn’t unusual for any parent to raise a hand to their child, an’ maybe some thought ‘twas only a matter of degree. I didn’t really know the extent of it, I didn’t bring it up with Bobbie. I figured if he wanted to tell me he would, an’ if he didn’t it was hardly my place to mention it. Things like that have a way of puttin’ up walls between friends. Some secrets are better kept, aye?”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly, “wouldn’t it have been better if he’d told someone?”

“He was too humiliated. Bein’ male has its drawbacks ye know, pride bein’ one of the biggest stumblin’ blocks. Even though he was a wee boy he still thought he ought to have been able to stop his da’, or to take the beatins’ without fear. I know it makes little sense to ye Jewel, but it’s how a boy will feel, particularly if he’s made to be the man of the house in every other respect.”

“Obviously it came out at some point between the two of you.”

“Was durin’ one of them fights we’d provoked, lookin’ for feminine sympathy an’ such. He’d got the shirt ripped off his back, right down the middle in two pieces. Afterwards he was real stiff, goin’ to great pains to keep his front towards me as if there was somethin’ he didn’t want me to see. So I asked him if he was hurt, an’ he said no, just a wee bit bruised in the ribs. I nipped round him when he wasn’t lookin’ an’ then I saw it. It was a triangle, with its edges curved out, wide as the palm of my hand across an’ puckered on the edges. Inside of it the skin was real shiny an’ not the right color. Well I guess I must have gasped or somethin’ because he whirled round an’ I could tell right off he was mad, his eyes were like a gas flame, fairly blazin’ out of his head an’ he asked me what the hell I thought I was doin’.’

“There seemed little point in denyin’ what I’d seen, so I just asked him what had happened to his back. He was real quiet for a minute an’ I could see he was thinkin’ of maybe lyin’ about it but then he said ‘my da’ took an iron to my back.’”

“Dear God,” she whispered in horror.

“Aye,” Casey agreed, “an’ that wasn’t the worst of it. The man was a bloody sadist. He’d tortured the kids for years, an’ Ginny as well when the mood struck him. My da’ said such men were in the business of breakin’ those closest to them an’ there was little to be done about it short of killin’ them.”

Pamela, thinking of the Temple children and all they’d endured at the hands of the one who was supposed to protect them from the harsh realities of the world, was inclined to agree with Casey’s father.

“Was he angry that you made him tell you?”

“No, once Bobbie’d made up his mind to a thing he didn’t go back on it, an’ he’d not use the fact that he’d shared it against ye. In that way he was honest in his dealins’.”

“What on earth did you say when he told you?”

“I said I was sorry to hear it an’ handed him his shirt.”

“That’s it?” she said disbelievingly, aware—for not the first time in her life—that the ways of men were mysterious. Casey squeezed her hand.

“We were boys, Jewel, an’ so we dealt with it in a boy’s manner, went straight to the nearest pub an’ got completely legless. Mind ye, Bobbie had some odd behavior that reminded me now an’ again of what he’d told me that night.”

“Such as?” she asked softly, as he traced the outline of her hand against his chest.

“He’d burn himself with cigarettes, back of his hands, inside of his elbow an’ such. I brought it up once, thinkin’ I could maybe help but he just brazened it out, acted like he’d no notion of what of I was talkin’ about. So I let it lie, I’ve often wondered since then if I should have pushed him on it, found a way to stop him.”

“You can’t be responsible for everyone you know,” she said, stroking the side of his face.

“It’s a weakness of mine,” he said gruffly, “tryin’ to make everyone behave as I see fit, my da’ always said I meddled where I was most likely to get hurt. Damn man was always right.”

“Are you going to get hurt this time?” she asked, worried that it was already too late for such questions.

He looked at her in the dim light, expression rueful. “Yer not a woman for comfortable questions, are ye Jewel?”

“Don’t sidestep me Casey, are you?” she insisted.

“And yer pushy too,” he added, “an’ the answer is no, I’m a big boy now an’ I learned my lesson with Robin a long time ago.”

“That’s your head speaking, what does your heart say?”

He sighed. “That I still love the man like he was a long-lost brother.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it, then yawned. “Don’t be frettin’ on my behalf, Jewel, I can take care of myself.” He turned, punching up his pillow, making all the small motions she’d come to know as his pre-sleep ritual.

A moment later his breathing was deep and even and she thought him asleep when he spoke quietly, voice as soft as the dark that enfolded them.

“D’ye think, Jewel, that a man can haunt ye even though he’s alive an’ breathin’?”

“Yes,” she said, speaking both to his pain and her fear, “yes, I do.”

AS MOVING DAY APPROACHED, Pamela became increasingly aware that the issue of Lawrence would have to be settled. He’d taken over the small room off the kitchen downstairs, took his meals with them, and even obeyed the strict curfew laws Casey had laid down early in his tenure. In short, he’d made himself quite comfortable.

From the little she could gather, Lawrence had been on the street for the last six months. Sleeping in doorways through all sorts of weather. Before that he’d spent an unspecified amount of time in the boy’s home, a subject on which he maintained a guarded silence.

“If Kincora is where he went for sanctuary, then it was like leapin’ from the fryin’ pan into the fire,” Casey said when she spoke to him about the boy’s refusal to talk about his recent past. “There’s whispers about what goes on up at that place, an’ most rumors have a whiff of fact to them. If even a fraction of what I’ve heard is true, then it’s little more than a stable of young boys for men with a taste for such things.”

“What? But he was there for two years, surely...” her protest died on her lips at Casey’s raised brow.

“He’ll not know any different, Pamela. He’d been sellin’ himself before Kincora, an’ at least it came with guaranteed meals an’ a bed at night. That was more than he could be certain of on the streets. It’s what he knows, aye, an’ humans are likely to do what they know an’ understand even if it’s threatenin’ their life. If he decides to live with us, I’ll not allow him to go about as he pleases. I won’t have him falling back into that life.”

“If he decides to live with us?” she echoed, glad that she wasn’t going to have to broach the subject herself.

“Well,” Casey said, avoiding her eyes, “it’s only that it’s occurred to me that God meant for us to take him in because we’re not to have children of our own.”

His words opened up the hollow place beneath her ribs that she managed to ignore most days. Hearing him give voice to her own fears, however, made them harder to discount.

“That can’t be the only reason we offer him a home, though.”

“I know that Jewel, an’ mayhap the main reason is because it’s the right thing to do. I’d never sleep another sound hour were the boy to take to the streets again. I’d just as soon be able to check an’ make certain he’s in his bed at night. He needs us an’ I think that’s reason enough to do it.”

“Then ask him,” she said. “He needs to hear it from you to know that we really mean it.”

“Aye, I’ll ask. Are ye certain yer up for this? Teenagers aren’t the most charmin’ of creatures at the best of times.”

“I don’t think we could separate him from you without surgery at this point.”

Casey took her hands. “All jestin’ aside woman, it’s a big responsibility an’ just because the lad has taken a shine to us doesn’t lessen that burden. I wouldn’t blame ye at all if ye didn’t want to do this.”

“We can’t
not
offer him a home. Besides the right thing is rarely the easy thing, we both know that.”

“Well it’s rare that want an’ right come together, but despite my nerves I’m feelin’ the both things at present.”

“Good, then it’s settled.” She stood, her mind already moving on to what to make for dinner. But Casey still held her hands firmly in his own.

“And what of yer own wants? What is it that
you
want Jewel?”

“You,” she said simply, “and a baby or two. To occasionally take a picture that means something.”

“Well ye’ve got me, an’ ye’ve a rare talent with the wee box,” he smiled, an expression that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Don’t give up hope,” she squeezed his hands in return. “I still believe we’ll have a child.”

He brought her hands up and kissed them. He laid his cheek against her palms, stubble plush and soft on her skin.

“And what about you Casey Riordan, what is that you want man?”

“Just you darlin’. As long as ye love me, the rest will sort itself out.”