Learning to Swim (13 page)

Most days I was there, Mrs. O’Leary would, at some point, ask me to find her jacket. One such day I took the opportunity to delve deeper into the mystery that was this bright yellow house. The living room was, as usual, tidy, though untouched.

For the first time, I walked right through the small entryway, through a low archway, and into the next room. It was darker, but bigger and the walls were also lined with shelves. Here, too, was a giant collection of books. There was a doorway on either side of this room. The one to the left held a closed door, but the one to the right appeared to lead to the kitchen. It was a tiny thing that caused me to shudder slightly. There was a little stove with burn marks on the top and a cream-colored fridge that was probably once white. Not the kind of place Joan would think suitable for preparing a meal.

Before I could venture any farther and maybe find the door to the attic, a small picture frame beside the doorway caught my eye. In the messy organization that was straight book spine after book spine, the old frame looked out of place. There were seashells and bottles of sand and all sorts of things littered about the books, but these were the first photos I had seen.

The frame was long and wooden, with three photos in it. All were of the same young man—standing on the beach with his hands on his hips, sitting proudly in a boat on the beach, arms spread wide, and then sitting in the front of this house. It was her Seamus. The way he sat on the steps and smiled easily at the camera made his face seem familiar to me, as though I had known him myself in some day long past. But what caught my attention was the thing grasped in the young man’s hand. It looked suspiciously like my recorders.

I moved back outside to ask Mrs. O’Leary about them, when a book behind the photos caught my eye. It was called
The Selkie Folk
, a big green volume with a dirty spine. This had to be where she got her stories. Maybe I would ask to borrow it. It was heavy, and balancing it on one arm, I cracked it open to flip through.

But to my utter astonishment, it was hollow. The middle of the pages had been carved out and inside there were two stacks of money. The bills were laid flat and neat in the great rectangle cut out from the pages. I stared in disbelief. There were ones, fives, and ten-dollar bills. How much could be in this great, big book?

I looked at the shelves around me that held so many innocent spines. How many were holding such treasure? Surely I hadn’t lit upon the only one by chance!

I heard steps from above and gave a great jump, slamming the book shut. Rory appeared in the kitchen from an unseen set of stairs.

Does he know?
I thought.
Is that why he helps her?

“Managed to find her jacket yet?” he muttered, barely pausing to watch what I was doing. “I have been trying for years, you know.”

I hastily pushed the book back into its spot on the shelf. It didn’t seem as though he knew what it contained. “Nope,” I said, following him outside into the sunlight.

“Have I told you about ashrays?” Today Mrs. O’Leary didn’t even wait to ask if I’d found her jacket before launching into her own world. I didn’t mention that she
had
told me about ashrays before. Instead, I listened obediently. So did Ronan. But he was hovering near the stairs and I was fidgety.

“They say they’re these clear creatures that live underwater,” Mrs. O’Leary went on. She was talking quickly, as if she could sense that we both wanted to leave and she hoped she could detain us. “You won’t find them during the day, they’re nocturnal. And they say that when you catch one and expose it to the sunlight, why, it will disappear! And all that’s left is a tiny puddle.”

“I have to go, Mrs. O’Leary,” Ronan said. The old woman’s face fell, and he seemed sympathetic, but continued his polite excuse. “I promised my mom that I’d man the desk for a bit. But I’ll be back tomorrow.”

She nodded her assent, and he disappeared without acknowledging me.

I left shortly thereafter, too, still full of wonderings. Wonderings about the possibilities of what on earth that woman was preparing her house for. It was very possible that she was simply a lonely old woman wishing to get her affairs and belongings in order before her death. Maybe one of those old-fashioned types that didn’t trust banks, kept money under the bed, in the floorboards. But books carved out and filled with bills? That was something you only saw in movies—the stuff of the very stories she’d carved out.

One particularly bright afternoon, I went to town, dragging Owen along at my coattails. I had been meaning to visit the antiques shop on Main Street, but Owen wouldn’t leave my sight, so I determined to go regardless of whom or what followed me.

He had offered to drive, and now we walked amicably down Main Street from the crowded parking lot. The two recorders were in my pocket. As we walked, Owen held my hand and I repeatedly considered pulling away, but it would be more trouble than it was worth. As long as I didn’t fall for him again, he was harmless, if not clueless. Owen was in the middle of expounding on some topic I didn’t care about when a familiar head of dark hair caught my eye.

Sure enough, walking toward us on the sidewalk was Rory. I had just made up my mind not to be the one to say hello when he noticed me and stopped. “Cora.” He seemed to say it out of surprise rather than any actual inclination to talk to me. I
had
appeared on his turf rather suddenly.

I pretended to have just seen him, as if I hadn’t been planning to ignore him. “Oh, Rory, hi.” He looked at Owen, and then back at me, and I wished with all my might that I would not have to introduce the two.

Rory was looking at me, interested and cocky, with that calculating look. It wouldn’t have been so disconcerting if I didn’t
still
find his huge brown eyes so incredibly gorgeous.

“I’m Rory,” he said, extending his hand to Owen. There was no avoiding it.

“This is Owen,” I heard myself say.

“Pleased, I’m sure,” Owen said quietly. It was all a blur. A blur of my wishing the three of us were not still standing in the middle of the sidewalk making awkward conversation. A blur of those damn eyes.

“How, uh, how do you two know each other?” Owen finally asked.

I was too confused to respond. “Mutual friend,” Rory said, jerking his head vaguely toward the beach. He looked very pleased at my utter lack of composure.

“Cool, well we have to get going,” Owen said, not to be outdone by this local boy. I wanted to sound cool and collected, but I had no smart parting words. Instead, I let Owen pull me wordlessly off down the sidewalk.

Just a few storefronts down was the antiques shop. I took a deep breath and forced myself not to look back.

There was a big metal sign that hung over the door of the shop. One of those old-fashioned ones, the red and white paint chipping. It said “Hall’s Antiques” in cursive and creaked softly in the wind.

The inside was dim and a bell over the door tinkled as I stepped inside, still dazed from our meeting with Rory. Owen was not exactly happy to be here, but visibly eager to please since the incident at the Ritz party and not about to complain. Disinterested, he hung back and fiddled with rusty metal car parts that filled a big old trunk.

An old man emerged from the back at the sound of the bell. I pulled the recorders from my pocket and walked purposefully to the counter. But before I could say anything, the man spoke.

“How are you doing?” He said it as if he was addressing an old friend, not a new customer. It took me a moment to place him. When I did, I felt all my muscles freeze.

“Fine,” I said softly. My hand clenched around the recorders and retracted a bit.

It was the man from the beach, the one with the metal detector. The one that had responded to my screams when I found the body of Rick Johnson. He was a bit more crouched than I remembered, with very crinkly skin, and his eyes looked especially pained.

“How are you?” I said. It was just to be polite, I didn’t want to know the psychological effects that evening had actually had on this old man, but I also didn’t want to seem another heartless young hooligan from the big houses.

“I’m doing well, thank you. It was a rough thing to see, though, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. My embarrassment might have registered as painful memory, because he looked sympathetic. “I’m sorry to bring it back up,” he said. “I hadn’t thought you would have known the family.”

“I didn’t,” I said.

He nodded, and there was an awkward silence in which I thought of fleeing the shop. But curiosity of the bloated body of Rick Johnson and his skinny, pretty sister Jen got the better of me.

“Did you?” I said. “Know them, I mean?”

He nodded. “Not the boy personally, but the family runs a great host of businesses in this town. A very big local family.”

I questioned myself for a moment, but decided to say it anyway, hoping it wouldn’t backfire and that he would tell me more. “I do actually know Jen,” I said. “A little.”

He nodded. “Wonderfully nice girl. They say she was a great comfort to her mother in the aftermath,” he said. “It was a hard thing, several families in the area lost their boys and their fathers, but there’s something particularly devastating about such a young man having life cut so short. You know, he was engaged. They were to be married in the winter, as soon as he could be landed for a few days.”

A chill went through me as my mind shot immediately to Mrs. O’Leary. How would it be to find the man you truly loved and then to have it be a man who worked at sea? An ever-constant agreement of man and boat. Each does its part—one to carry them safely, the other to guide them home each day. And to be the woman left at home
.
To wonder every day if the boat would do its part, if he would come home.

Or did she wonder at all? Maybe she never even considered the possibility.

And then one day, they didn’t come home. Neither man nor boat.

“The young woman wasn’t from here, the fiancée. I hear she’s moved away. She was here up until you—until the body was found. Then she moved on.”

Mrs. O’Leary; this young woman who fell in love with Jen Johnson’s brother. How many others had waited up all night to find in the morning that the boat had failed to bring him home? If you were lucky, some tourist would find the body weeks later. Otherwise, you would spend the remainder of your days, staring at the ocean like Mrs. O’Leary.

Was there a day when you finally stopped believing that he could possibly be alive?
There has to be.
But how long does it take?
Three months? A year? Twenty years? I was fairly certain Mrs. O’Leary had never stopped believing.

She still thought Seamus was coming back.

“Of course there were several other poor boys that were on that boat. Two still haven’t been found.”

I felt a prickling behind my face, and fearful of tears, I recomposed my features and said I had to go.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “But you did come for something?”

I followed his gaze to the recorders I still clutched firmly in my hand. “Yes,” I stammered. “I—I was just wondering if you could tell me what these were.” The man took the recorders from me and examined them. “Not that I think they’re antique or anything, I just didn’t know who else to ask. Nobody seems to know what they are.”

“Oh, they’re tin whistles,” he said.

I was taken aback at his easy answer. “What exactly …”

“Have you ever heard Celtic music?” he asked. I shrugged. “Well, they’re common in Irish and Scottish music. Very traditional sounding. Where did you get them?”

“I found them on the beach,” I said nervously. I felt as though it was admitting to stealing. Which was ridiculous, as I’d seen this very man combing the beach with a metal detector.

“The beach?” he repeated. He looked a little crestfallen. Or perhaps it was confusion, I couldn’t be sure.

“Well, I found one up near the big houses and the—”

“The big houses?” he repeated. He was starting to make me uneasy.

“Yes,” I said slowly, “do you know the Ritzes?”

He nodded almost imperceptibly. “I do.” He seemed to be thinking very hard.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

He shook his head quickly, and it seemed to shake the thoughts away. He smiled weakly at me and said, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

I shook my head and started to back away. “Thanks,” I said, motioning for Owen to follow me to the door. “For your help,” I clarified stupidly.

“I do want you to know—”

I paused as Owen passed me, out into the sunlight.

“I just want you to know,” the old man said again, “I think it was a good thing, how you found the body. Let’s that girl get on with her life.
You
helped her to do that.”

I was silent.

“There’s no sense in it all,” he said, “but it makes sense to move on. I think it’s a good thing that you found that body.”

“I think so, too,” I said softly.