J. Robb - Portrait In Death

He had a flash, the sights and smells of his childhood. The beer vomit and piss in the alleyways, the crack of a hand across a cheek. The air of mean despair. "If you knocked on his door in your social worker's suit, you were either brave or stupid."

"I was both. Back then, I was both. I could've been sacked for what I was doing, should've been. But I didn't care, for my pride was on the line here.My pride."

"Is that what you were after saving, Mrs. O'Bannion?"

His cool, and lightly amused voice made her wince. "I wanted to save her, and you, but aye, I wanted my pride with it. I wanted the package."

"Few were saved in that time and place. And pride was a bit dear for most of us to afford on a daily basis."

"I learned the truth of that, and Siobhan was my first lesson. A hard lesson. I had with me the letter that had come from her parents, and I fully intended to scoop the two of you up and send you off to Clare."

There was a bright burst of laughter, a child's laughter, outside the office, then the sound of feet running down the hall. A rush of female voices followed, and then there was silence.

She sat again, folded her hands on her lap like a school girl. "He answered the door himself. I could see right away why she'd fallen for him. Handsome as two devils. He looked me up and down, bold as brass, and I jutted my chin right up and said I'd come to speak to Siobhan."

She closed her eyes a moment, brought it back. "He leaned on the doorjamb there, and smirked at me. She'd run off, he said, and good riddance to her. Stolen fifty pounds of his hard-earned money and taken herself off. If I saw her, I was to tell her to keep right on going.

"He lied so smooth, I believed him. I thought she'd come to her senses after all, and gone home to Clare. Then I heard the baby crying. I heard you crying. I pushed my way inside. I must've taken him by surprise or I'd never have gotten past him. 'She'd never leave her baby,' I said, 'so where is she? What have you done with Siobhan?'"

Her hands unlinked, and one of them curled into a fist to pound on her knee. "A woman came out of the bedroom carrying you with as much care as you carry a cabbage. Your nappie was dripping, your face was duly. Siobhan, she tended to you like you were a little prince. She'd never have let you get into such a state. But the woman was a bit worse for drink, a florid-looking thing wearing nothing but a wrapper gaping open in the front. 'That's my wife,' he said to me. 'That's Meg Roarke, and that's our brat there.' And he slipped a knife from his belt, watching me as he flicked a thumb over the point. 'Any who says different,' he said, 'will find it hard to say anything after.'"

More than three decades later, in the cool haven of her office, Moira shuddered. "He called me by name. Siobhan must've told him my name. Never in my life have I been so afraid as when Patrick Roarke said my name. I left. If anyone left you there, with him, it was me."

"For all you know she'd gone home, or gotten away. Harder to travel with a baby on your shoulder."

Moira leaned forward. It wasn't anger he saw on her face, or impatience. It was passion. The heat of it blasted out of him, and turned cold under his skin.

"You were her heart and her soul. Heraingeal. And do you think I didn't check? I had, at least, the belly for that. I opened the letter. They were so relieved, so happy to hear from her. Told her to come home, to come and bring you home. Asked if she needed money to get there, or wanted her brothers, or her father to come fetch the both of you. They gave her family news. How her brother Ned had married and had a son as well, and her sister Sinead was engaged."

Overcome, she reached for the lemonade again, but this time simply rubbed the bottle between her palms. "I contacted them myself, asked them to tell me when she got there. Two weeks later, I heard from them, and they're asking me, is she coming then? When is she coming? I knew she was dead."

She sat back. "I knew in my heart when I'd been in the hovel and seen you, she was dead. Murdered by his hand. I saw her death in his eyes, when he looked at me and said my name, I saw it. Her parents, and her brother Ned, they came to Dublin when I told them what I knew. They went to the police, and were shrugged off. Ned, he was set on and beaten. Badly beaten, and rocks were thrown through the windows of my flat. I was terrified. And twice I saw him walking by there, he made sure I saw him."

She pressed her lips together. "I stepped away from it. Shameful as it is, that's what I did. Records showed Patrick and Meg Roarke were man and wife, and had been for five years. No record of your birth could be produced, but the woman said the babe was hers, and there was no one to say different. No one who dared, in any case. Girls like Siobhan came and went in Dublin town all the time. She'd turn up when she was ready, and I nodded and said that was so because I was too afraid to do otherwise."

There was a hideous weight on his chest, but he only nodded. "And you tell me this long, unsubstantiated story now, because…"

"I've heard of you. Made it my business to keep track of you, best I could even after I married and moved to America. I knew how you ran, much as he did. And figured those few months she was able to give you had been burned out of you, and he'd stamped himself on more than your handsome face. A bad seed, I could tell myself. You were just another bad seed, and I could comfort myself that way, and not be wakened in the middle of the night with that pretty baby crying in my dreams."

Absently, she picked up a small paperweight of clear glass shaped like a heart, and turned it over and over in her hands. "But in the last couple of years, I've heard things that made me wonder if that was so. And when Louise came to me, told me of this place, and what you meant to do with it, I took it as a sign, a sign it was time to speak of it."

She studied his face. "Maybe it's too late to make any difference to you, or to me. But I needed to say it to your face. I'll take a truth test if you want it. Or I'll resign as I said I would, and you can write me off."

He told himself he didn't believe her, not a single word. But there was pain under his heart, like a knife between the ribs. He was afraid it was truth stabbing at him. "You should understand that at least some of what you're claiming I'll be able to verify or debunk."

"I hope you'll do just that. There's one other thing. She wore a claddaugh, a silver claddaugh on her left hand-like a wedding ring, she told me, that he'd bought her when you were born. His promise that you'd be a family, in the eyes of God and man. When she came out of the bedroom, Meg Roarke was wearing Siobhan's ring. The ring that girl wouldn't take off her finger, even after he'd beaten her. The bitch was wearing it on her pinky, as her hands were too fat for it. And when she saw my eyes land on it, when she saw that I knew… she smiled."

Tears began to run down her cheeks now. "He killed her-because she left, because she came back. Because he could. And kept you, I suppose, because you were the image of him. If I hadn't pushed her so hard, had given her more time to heal. To think…"

She wiped her face, and rose to go to her desk. From a drawer she took a small photograph. "This is all I have. I took this myself of the two of you the day before she left the shelter. You should have it," she said, and handed it to him.

He looked down, saw a young girl with red hair and green eyes still bruised from a beating. She wore a simple blue shirt with that red hair falling over its shoulders. She was smiling, though her eyes were sad and tired, she was smiling, with her cheek pressed against that of her baby. A face that was still rounded and soft with innocence, but unmistakably his own.