Erin Hart - Lake of Sorrows

“Nice work, old son. Hunger is great sauce, isn’t it? I suppose you’ll be ready for your walk soon.” Lugh’s head lifted at the word “walk,” another of their evening rituals, so Ward fetched the lead and fastened it to the dog’s collar. Their customary path was out the road by the hurling pitch, to the crossroads, up the hill past the castle ruin, and back home again on the small road that ran along the Silver River. They both looked forward to it on an evening like this, when the long light stretched over the hills. But when Ward opened his front door, he found Catherine Friel standing on his doorstep.

“Hello, Liam,” she said, recovering quickly. “I hope you don’t mind my dropping in on you like this. Maureen Brennan told me where to find you.” She handed him an envelope. “I wanted to make sure you got my report as soon as possible, and—”

Lugh poked his nose out the door and nuzzled her free hand, looking for a scratch, and she stooped to stroke his soft ears and look down into his face. Ward had to admit he felt slightly unsettled. Why would Dr. Friel drive all the way out here just to deliver a report he’d have had in the morning anyway?

The dog moved in closer, appreciating the unexpected attention, and tried to lick their visitor, but she held him off. “He’s terribly affectionate. What’s his name?”

“Lugh.”

“Lovely name. God of light, victorious over darkness.” Her glance upward was quick, as if to gauge by Ward’s expression whether Lugh had managed to live up to his name. “My son has been lobbying hard for a dog for the past eighteen months. I’ve been telling him I don’t know. I’m away from home so much with this new job. But I suppose to him that’s as much an argument for having the dog as against it. I keep hoping he’ll give up and let it go, but he’s been very persistent.”

“What’s your son’s name?”

“Johnny—John, after his father. I keep forgetting that he wants to be called John nowadays.”

“What age is he?”

“Ten in October. Both his sisters are away at school, so he’s on his own a lot. I suppose it would be good for him to have a companion.”

“And what does his father say?”

A look of pure astonishment crossed her face, and she turned away slightly before answering. “I lost my husband, three years ago.”

“I’m sorry, Catherine—I didn’t know. I didn’t want to presume—” He looked down. “Not much of a detective, am I?”

She met his gaze with a wry smile that made his chest tighten alarmingly. “Nonsense. You’re a fine detective. You’ve had a lot to deal with these past few days.” She suddenly leaned down to give Lugh one last scratch behind the ears, evidently a gesture of farewell. “I really should go.”

Ward felt his chance slipping away. In a few seconds it might be gone forever, and he couldn’t let that happen. He heard himself say, “I had a wonderful time at dinner the other night.”

“I did too, Liam.”

Ward was remembering how much he had held back during dinner, how many times he’d struggled to keep his emotions reined in so that hope wouldn’t get the best of him. Now, faced with his first real opportunity, he was nearly paralyzed.

They both stood motionless in the open doorway, until she finally spoke again. “For a time after my husband died, I tried living my life backward. But I found that it doesn’t work. The only direction I can live is forward. It’s terrifying, but it’s the only option I can see.” She reached up and brushed her lips against his in a brief farewell, but let her face remain close to his, so that he felt the warmth radiating from her skin. He felt momentarily unable to breathe, to think. But when she began to pull away, he caught her arm with his left hand.

“Catherine—I don’t suppose I could prevail upon you to stay one more night, to have dinner with me again?” Something in her eyes lit the dry tinder of his soul, and he felt a slow flame, damped down and presumed dead for so long, suddenly flicker to life in his chest.

“You could, Liam,” she said. “You could indeed prevail.”

Charlie Brazil picked his way through the charred remains of the house in which he’d been reared, searching for familiar remnants, any bits of his former life that might be worth salvaging. But the destruction was complete; all he saw was singed upholstery, charred bits of chairs and wardrobes, broken glass and shattered concrete. The fire brigade said it had been a gas explosion. His mother had known exactly what she was doing. She’d turned the sheep loose herself to keep him away from the house and out of harm’s way. He’d been confused, but he now saw it as the proof that she had wanted him to live. He didn’t want to think about his father.

Where was his mother now? He tried to imagine her, contained within herself, casting a shadow that moved somewhere across the earth, and knew he’d never see her again. He wasn’t quite sure what he felt. Maybe the anger, the worry would come later. For now, he was just relieved that she had not been in the house. He wanted her to live, too. He dug a toe into the debris, turned over the blackened radio that had rested on the kitchen shelf since his earliest memory.

Now he had a reason for the feeling he’d always had about this house—that there was something wrong here. His father had always talked about the house being unlucky, but Charlie was convinced, more than ever, that it wasn’t the house, nor the ground it was built upon. And yet there was something to the claim. Some negative force resided here. Never once did he remember his father turning in at night without checking the doors and windows, without shaking holy water over the doorjambs and the fireplace, warding off whatever might come in. It was as if he had expected an invasion. No doubt he had known of all sorts of dangers, of which Charlie and his mother had lived unaware.

After the rescue workers had taken his father’s body from the apiary, they had removed the body of the man they said had killed him, a man called Desmond Quill. The corpse was wearing a collar and tie, but the object that caught Charlie’s attention was the tie pin, a simple bronze disc with three whorls. He looked back at the dead man’s pale face and saw it younger, nearly twenty years younger, smiling out of the window of a car that had pulled up beside him on the road. The man had said he was a friend, that Charlie’s parents had been called away on a family emergency and had sent him to collect their son, to take him out for supper while they were away, and then bring him home. Charlie had been afraid to go against his father’s wishes, so he had agreed. He remembered being mistrustful at first, but the man had done exactly what he said he would. They’d gone to a posh restaurant somewhere in the Slieve Bloom mountains. He remembered the drive into the mountains with the sun still high. It had been early summer, and the bushes on either side of the road had blushed pink with blossoms. He remembered the greed that had overtaken him at the sight of the food brought to their table; he had eaten extravagantly: roast beef and gravy, and two desserts, and all the while the man across from him had watched, smiling and smoking and saying very little. After dinner, with the man’s warm hand resting uncomfortably on his neck, they had phoned his father from the restaurant lobby, and he’d had to speak on the phone. But before he’d had a chance to tell about his magnificent meal, the man had pulled the phone away and spoken into it: You know what I want. I think it’s a fair exchange, he’d said. I just wanted you to know how easy it was.

Charlie remembered the sound of his father’s voice, no words, but the notes desperate and pleading. After that he’d been afraid on the ride home, but the man had dropped him at the gate and driven off without a word, the taillights of his car growing smaller and smaller and then disappearing into the night. His father had come out of the house then, shaken him by the neck and cuffed him, and told him never to get into a car with a stranger, no matter what, and never to tell his mother what had happened that evening, because it would surely kill her. He never had told his mother; and since no great harm had come of it, eventually the memory had simply faded away. It was after that extraordinary evening that his father had begun checking the doors and windows each night. Now he realized what grave danger he’d been in, and why his father’s reaction had been so extreme. But the question still remained: Why had Desmond Quill decided to spare his life?