Learning to Swim (28 page)

His shoulders seemed to crumple with the weight of the accusation. For the first time I realized how old Mr. Hall must have been. Comparable to Mrs. O’Leary’s age, however old that might be. Tall with a thin face and a large pair of round glasses, I’d always seen Mr. Hall as something akin to a professor. But now—now he looked weak, as though he couldn’t hold up his head any longer.

“I found her out on the beach just now, pacing and talking nonsense,” I said, softer this time.

Mr. Hall’s face registered shock. “You found her on the jetty?”

What?
I tried to mask the shock on my face.
The jetty?
He said it as if it belonged to someone besides me. Someone besides Rory and me. “How do you know about the jetty?”

Mr. Hall looked me in the eye, once again giving me the feeling that he was sizing me up, deciding what to tell me and what to hide.

“You spend a lot of time with the O’Brien boy,” he said.

“So?” I demanded, my anger rising again. “What does that have to do with
anything
?”

“He swims there every morning,” Mr. Hall says.

“I know.”

He took a deep breath and retreated behind the counter. “Lia used to spend hours upon hours out on that pier. Looking for her little boy. First Ronan—then the second baby.”

My blood ran cold. So she had been there before.
How had that never come up in our conversations, this whole summer?
My favorite retreat was Mrs. O’Leary’s old stomping ground. A terribly sad, depressing stomping ground.

“People thought she was crazy,” Mr. Hall went on. “She’d be out there all day, sometimes all night. Those who thought she’d done it herself, well they thought she was just trying to cover it up. Pretending to search for them. Pretending to mourn. But I always knew she didn’t kill them.”

My heart was beating so fast, I thought I’d faint. He had come right out and said it. People thought Mrs. O’Leary had murdered her own babies. They thought she was nuts—not because she told fairytales—but because they believed she had drowned her own infant sons.

I could bear it if they thought her stories were insane and the jabber of an unstable woman.
But her own children?
How could they believe that kind, sweet old woman had murdered her own children?

“People will talk about whatever entertains them,” Mr. Hall said, as if in response to my thoughts. “There were some who were on her side. But even then, a baby—returning from the ocean? Everyone knew she wasn’t right in the head. Seamus paid the best doctors in the area to convince her that the boys were gone. But she never stopped. Whenever Seamus was gone, even after the second child died—in fact, more often after the second child died—she would sneak to the jetty and wait until Seamus went and dragged her back home. After Seamus left, she nearly lived out there. Except those days when she would search that house frantically. She tore it apart from foundation to roof. She would have died on that jetty if we hadn’t dragged her back to land to eat every once in a while. I did my fair share of dragging. For years after Seamus left.”

I knew Mr. Hall was trying to prove that he
had
cared for Mrs. O’Leary. That he’d done his fair share of watching her. But there was one thing he’d said that blotted out everything else.

“Seamus …” I was nearly speechless. “Seamus
left
?” The room was hot and sticky all of a sudden. I could only whisper. “I thought he was lost at sea.”

“Many people do,” Mr. Hall said.
Many people.
Including Rory.

“He
left
her?” My initial reaction of a brokenness inside of me was becoming rapidly replaced with anger. It was welling inside me. “You knew that all along? You know her past, you know everything she’s been through! Why won’t you help her? Stay with her? She’s sick, she’s not—she doesn’t make sense anymore!
Why
do you ignore her?” My hysteria was increasing with each word, quickly reaching an alarming note. “Why, for Christ’s sake,
why
won’t you help her?”

“Because I promised I wouldn’t,” Mr. Hall said simply.

The world stopped. Everything was quiet. My mind grasped hopelessly at all the things Mr. Hall had ever told me.

“Promised who?” I spit out, afraid of the answer.

“Seamus. Before he left, he made me promise I wouldn’t tell her where to find the skins. I think I was the only one who knew where they were. But even I never learned where the third one was. And then Seamus left and … well, I stayed away.”

“Where to find—the—the what?”

“I think Lia has told you what she is,” Mr. Hall said, his shrewd eyes squinting behind his glasses, as if to better see into my head. He took a deep breath and went on quickly. “You’ve heard the legends—what awful pining the women have for the sea. How hard it is on them. But you never hear how hard it is on the man. The man who takes one for his wife. To watch something so natural as a fisherman falling in love with the sea—when it goes wrong, it’s painful to watch. After Seamus left, I couldn’t stand to see her anymore. I think we’re all guilty of that. Not easing someone else’s pain because we’re afraid it would increase our own.”

My own mother had said exactly the same thing to me. But I couldn’t stop to draw conclusions, to make some sense of the disorder in my mind. Mr. Hall was in a kind of frenzy, words spilling from his mouth.

“I thought he was crazy when he told me what she was—what he’d done. But then she became pregnant and I’d never seen two happier people. And that’s it, isn’t it? What drove them apart in the end. When she told Seamus what she’d done with the children, why, I’d never seen him like that. He was fit to murder.”

“What did she do with the children?” I demanded.

“That’s why Seamus hid the sealskins in the end,” Mr. Hall barreled right on. “After he left, he didn’t care if she went back. But he knew she loved those boys. She didn’t know where to find the littlest, but her firstborn, she loved from afar. And Seamus knew that if she found her skin and went back, there was nothing that could keep her from taking that boy with her.”

I shook my head.
No.
No. “They drowned,” I said softly.

Mr. Hall’s eyes squinted farther. “They say it’s the woman who can’t take the yearning for the sea any longer and eventually leaves, but we saw a different story here. The woman, tied to the land, and the man fleeing. Quite the opposite story.”

Those unsettling eyes. They were looking at me like that again—like he was taking the measure of my mind. Like he was trying to decipher what I understood. What I’d do. I realized all of a sudden that I’d unconsciously taken a few steps backward. He was waiting to see what I’d do next.
What would I do?
I turned and sprinted out of the shop to the tune of the little bell.

An Selkie

The Selkie

I went straight to find Rory. I felt wild, my heart bumping around inside my chest without control, and I was sure my face looked just the same.
Rory!

But it was Aidan who I found first.

“Aidan, where’s Rory?” I demanded.

“I’ll get him.”

Thank God for Aidan’s disinterest in conversation
, I thought. The last thing I could do right now was string together some niceties.

“Rory!” I nearly screamed when he emerged from the resort office.

His face fell when he saw me. “What’s the matter?”

“What did you do with the animal skins? The animal skins from Seamus’s shed? On the Ritz estate, you showed me an animal skin! That day I went to the shed with you! Where is it?” I knew there were so many things I had to tell him. So many things he didn’t know! But I had to find those skins. They belonged to Mrs. O’Leary. I knew nothing would be right until Mrs. O’Leary had them back.

Rory’s hands were black with oil and he was trying to wipe his fingers clean with a dirty rag. “I—I gave everything to Mr. Hall that day. The whole trunk. Mr. Hall has it all.”

“
Mr. Hall
?”

“I took it down to the antiques shop that afternoon. He said he’d sell it.” Rory looked nervous. “He said he’d sell what he could and give the money to Mrs. O’Leary. Why? What’s the matter?”

“He had them,” I said to myself. “He had them the whole time! He was standing there
talking
to me with them right there in his shop!” What was he planning on doing with them?

I spun around. Aidan stood silently, watching. I just saw the flash of his confused face as I turned on my heel and ran. I ran faster than I’d ever run in my life.

“Cora!” Rory shouted after me.

“I’m sorry!” I spun around and yelled, without stopping. “Just wait here!”

So Mr. Hall had held the skins in his hands as Mrs. O’Leary scrambled through the dark shed on the Ritz estate. He had watched from afar as she scurried around like a criminal. And he had them now. And he’d lied about it. Or had he? I had never thought to ask him if he had them in his possession.

I slammed to a halt at the door to the antiques shop. The closed sign was still up. I banged on the door, but nobody responded. I tugged at the door as hard as I could, but it was locked. There didn’t seem to be anyone inside.

I need to find him. I need to find him!

I didn’t know what would happen when I did. Would I demand he give her skin to her? Or would I demand he hide it forever? Let her die, an old lady, in peace? I didn’t know, but whatever I decided, it would be demanding. I’d had enough of this man and his cryptic loyalty to Seamus. And the other skin … and the one that was lost. Those were for … her sons …

But that didn’t make sense! It had been many, many years since Mrs. O’Leary had been young. Her sons would be grown.

But I couldn’t think about that now. I had to find those damned skins! It occurred to me then, just like the flick of a switch. What if I was underestimating Mr. Hall? What if …

I ran to Mrs. O’Leary’s little yellow house as fast as my legs would carry me. People stared and shot interested glances my way, but I ignored them and ran no matter how my calves ached.

I leaped up the front steps of the little yellow house and banged on the door with both fists and a foot.

Mr. Hall opened it too quickly to have been doing anything other than guarding the door.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” I stuttered. I had this tiny niggling feeling that the man was every bit as ill as Mrs. O’Leary, and though I tried, I couldn’t convince myself otherwise. “Where is Mrs. O’Leary?”

His face was calm, serious, but the hint of a smile was on his lips. “She’s gone,” he said. His eyes didn’t leave mine.

“Gone?” I repeated.

Captain Harville appeared then through the narrow arched hallway. My eyes flitted between the two of them. “Where is she?” I asked again, wildly. There was no sign of the doctor from earlier.

“Cora, come inside,” Captain Harville said. He spoke carefully and calmly in stark contrast to my inability to control anything—my words, my breathing, my shaking legs. “Cora, she made a will. She left everything to you and Rory.”

I didn’t know precisely why, but there was a sinking feeling in my stomach.
A will?
“When did she make a will?”
She’s known me less than three months
.

“She made it a few weeks ago,” Captain Harville said. “She’s been ready to go for some time. You know this. I only convinced her to prepare for the … concrete side of things a few weeks ago. I called Rory O’Brien but he wasn’t there; I left a message with Aidan. I called your house, too, but you weren’t there, of course. Always one step ahead of us.” He chuckled softly. “Cora, don’t be upset. She was ready to go. She
wanted
to go.”

“To go?” I said limply. “You were in on this? I called you here!” I stared at Captain Harville. How much else was going on that I didn’t know about? What if this was just the tip of the crazy-freaking iceberg? I couldn’t process all this right now! I was supposed to leave Oyster Beach
today
. It was … it was August eighth … it was …

“Spring tide,” I said breathlessly.

“I brought her the sealskins,” Mr. Hall said. “Right after you came to see me today. It had gone far enough. I haven’t always been there for Lia, but you convinced me that in the end I had to be.”

Something still wasn’t right.

I felt weak. I needed to sit down. I stumbled to one of the couches and collapsed. A tiny cloud of dust puffed into the air.

“She left you all her books,” Captain Harville said softly. “And she left the house to Rory.”

“Why us?” I said pathetically. My eyes were welling.

He shrugged. He looked to Mr. Hall who looked back at him, but made no such denial of understanding.

“She knew Rory was going to Ireland, why would she leave him the house?” I said. I flung my eyes wildly around the room where they were met on all sides by books. “And the books …”
Are filled with money
.

My eyes fell on
The Selkie Folk
, which stuck out at an odd angle from the time I’d cracked it open and had not pushed it back in properly.

…
the human part of him will not age until he walks again on two legs
… My stomach grew queasy as fragments of the old woman’s voice filled my aching head. Mr. Hall was watching me intensely. His eyes were boring into mine. He was willing me to understand something, but I just couldn’t quite see what. Or I didn’t want to.

I made a movement to get up, to go crack open every last one of those books, but then something occurred to me.

I can watch the rest of the scene in my head as if it was yesterday. I can hover above, near the cracked ceiling, and watch the pieces tumble into place. I was so confused then, down there in that dusty room. From above, it’s all so clear. Like a movie.

“Mr. Hall,” I say breathlessly. “Where’s the other skin?”