Molly, weighing in at sixty pounds, got between Maeve and this wolf.
“Leave her alone!” Molly yelled. She kicked him in the shin, and he swatted at her. Molly ducked and pushed him in the belly. A fierce little thing, their father called her. O’Kane took two steps backward, almost with a laugh. But it was the extra step, a heavy stumble into the railing, the crackling of wood. O’Kane busted through, grasping at air, disappearing into the hollow. Then, the pumpkin thud of a heavy skull.
Her mother was caught halfway up the stairs like she’d stepped in cement.
Molly took a step toward the broken railing like a siren called to her, her hands out as if they were smeared with blood. Shock ran through Maeve like she’d been struck by lightning. She yanked Molly back, wrapped her arms around her. Everything from there was a blur—her mother bounding into the entryway, her sickening yawp. Then her shocked father appeared in the doorway. Maeve pulled Molly closer, pinned her sobbing sister against her body.
“William! The girls!” Her mother was on the floor. Maeve caught her eyes as she looked up. Her face was a galaxy of emotion.
And then their father was with them, and Maeve could breathe again. He was Atticus and she was Scout, and he would make everything okay. He backed the girls into Maeve’s bedroom, sat them down, and told them not to come out, no matter what.
Chapter Sixteen
1979
Faye stared at the broken railing as the door to Maeve’s bedroom closed. That moment, stuck in a loop: Molly, defiant in a worn flannel nightgown, a hand-me-down from Maeve. Her foot kicking out, the villain swiping at her children, the shove—so righteous and powerful coming from something so small.Atta girl!Then, surreal horror. A failed railing, a flailing man.
Like a ship captain’s wife in a widow’s walk, Faye had lit every lamp in the house when William left in search of their daughter. She’d wound herself up, fearing something terrible had happened to Maeve while also replaying that woman’s accusations. “Your daughter is unnaturally attracted to mine. I’m worried she might have absconded with her.” Faye had been too shocked to respond, much less defend Maeve from this ridiculous accusation.Unnaturally attracted!Still. She’d kept that part from William, only telling him there’d been an accident, that a friend of Maeve’s was missing, and that the girl’s mother was worried.
That all fell away now. Conor O’Kane was sprawled on the fringed rug in the narrow vestibule, one leg twisted strangely at the hip. The air around him seemed charged, life and death in conversation about what was there for the taking. Blood oozed over his tobacco-stainedteeth, and Faye had the strangest memory of him as a boy when those teeth were fine and white, the way he left his shirt unbuttoned after they dipped in the bay, the way he spread his legs when he talked to Fiadh. His hand juddered and twitched. His eyes pleaded with her as he breathed in ragged gasps soggy with blood. She did not think he could move his head.
One word sniveled out of him, suffering and clipped. “Help.” His hand flopped near hers, a fish on land.
Faye picked at her lip. They had been children together, briefly, long ago, far away. But she did not owe him anything. She could not save him. She would not try.
She backed away, out of his reach. She did not want to feel his touch.
“Du hättest...Du hättest...” Faye said. It was the language she’d spoken as a child, but it would not come back to her. “You should not have come here.”
His eyebrows flicked, and he grunted. “Fiadh.”
Faye could not see the images that flashed before Conor O’Kane’s eyes then—the green paths, the mossy shore, stones in a churchyard, pebbles that rattled in crashing waves, Fiadh’s blush when he’d dared to touch her cheek. She could not see Conor’s mother, Theresa, waiting at a white gate. She could not feel his anger and resentment fall away, ribbons of a heavy robe untied, a burdensome yoke lifted.
His furtive eyes closed, his breathing stopped. A bloody bubble popped into drool.
Faye sunk back on her feet, the knots on the fringed rug digging into her knees. She screamed at the world of her making that had brought them to this place.
William rushed down the stairs. He stopped in his tracks as he took in the scene—splintered wood, stunned wife, dead man. In the pause, Faye imagined rolling Conor’s body up in the rug, wrapping it with rope, weighting it with stones. She could almost picture it, her and William rowing out in the darkness in the yar little boat she’d made him haul away, how they would hurl Conor overboard into the deep greensea, that same sea where her own story ended and began, let the currents ferry him to wherever he would rest.
William eased toward her, breaking the spell. “Give me your hand.” Faye took it, let him pull her to standing. “Now, step over. Yes, like that.” She was in his arms. Safe again. The tears came, fear and sorrow falling from her onto William. “There now. No, don’t look at him anymore. Look at me.”
Faye lifted her eyes. “Are the girls okay?”
“Tell me what happened. Quick now.”
Faye wanted to shroud O’Kane, but William said they shouldn’t touch anything. She told William the story that Maeve told her. “He had the photograph. He must have come to apologize. But Maeve was scared and ran from him.”
“He tripped then, on a loose rug. On his way to the bathroom.”
“No! William. Molly pushed—”
He pointed his finger, cut her off. “No, you listen. He tripped on the rug. Honey, he tripped on the rug. He was drunk, he had to use the bathroom, he tripped on the rug. The girls didn’t see him. They didn’t see anything. No one did. Do you understand? You go up there, and you make them understand and then we are done with this. Done with Conor O’Kane.” His face was hard, his eyes wide and certain.
While William was on the phone with the sheriff, Faye climbed the stairs, armed with the story. She bumped up the runner in the hallway, made a lump a person could trip over. She opened the door and found Maeve and Molly huddled on the bed, Maeve’s bedspread wrapped around them. It gave Faye a start, these sisters next to each other, so unsure of what would happen next. A flicker of memory, arriving in the barracks in Ireland, trembling on a cot with Elisabeth. She crouched in front of Maeve and Molly, put her hands on their legs. She couldcontrol this for them. She could make certain they wouldn’t be hurt by this one terrible, troubled night.
“This has nothing to do with you, not with either one of you, you understand? Not a single thing. This was an accident had by one man and one man alone. He was a bad man. He was drunk. He tripped on that runner,” Faye said, pointing to the open doorway. “That’s what happened. If anyone asks, you didn’t see it. No one saw it. Conor O’Kane was heading to the bathroom. You heard a noise. That’s it.”
Maeve sat up, wrapped the bedspread back around Molly. “But Mom, earlier tonight ...”
