“Did anybody hear from her this week?”

“Nobody.”

“And that’s unusual?”

“Not entirely unusual.”

“I’ve been told by a few people that it’s not unusual for her to lose contact and just disappear for a while.”

“She disappeared all the time, but she’d still ring us from her hiding places. If there’s one thing Sandy is committed to it’s her work.”

“It sounds like it’s the only thing.”

“Yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s true.” Mary nodded. “Sandy gave, gives”-she corrected herself-“very little away. She’s a pro at not talking about herself. She never mentions family or friends. Not once, and I’ve known her for three years.”

“I don’t think she has any,” Jack said, sitting at the kitchen table with a fresh mug.

“Well, she has us.” Mary joined him. “You didn’t get anywhere with Garda Turner?”

Jack shook his head. “I spoke to him today. There’s really nothing he can do if relatives and friends are saying that this is normal behavior. Sandy’s not a danger to herself or others and there’s nothing suspicious about her disappearance.”

“There’s nothing suspicious about a deserted car with all her belongings left inside?” Mary asked in surprise.

“Not if it’s what she does all the time.”

“But what about the watch you found?”

“The link on it was broken, she apparently often drops it.”

Mary tutted and shook her head. “That poor girl is going to be punished for all her previous odd behavior.”

“I’d love to talk to her parents, see what they think about the whole thing. I have such a hard time dealing with the fact that five days without hearing from a family member isn’t something to be worried about.” Jack knew inside that this was all entirely possible. He hadn’t been particularly close to Donal or with the rest of his family, for that matter. Apart from Judith, they would often go for weeks without hearing from one another. It was his mother who had raised the alarm bells after three days.

“I have their address, if you want.” Mary left the table to rummage around in a kitchen cabinet. “Sandy quite surprisingly asked me to send something to her there.” Her voice was muffled from inside the press. “I think she was stranded with the family for Christmas one year and was desperately looking for some work to save her.” She laughed. “But isn’t that what Christmases are all about? Here it is.” Her head finally emerged.

“I can’t just drop in unannounced,” Jack said.

“Why not? The worst they can do is not talk to you, but it’s worth a try.” She handed him the Leitrim address. “You can stay here tonight, if you like. It’s far too late for you to be traveling to Leitrim and then on to Limerick.”

“Thanks, I might even stay in Dublin a bit longer tomorrow to see if Sandy shows up to another appointment she made.” Jack smiled, looking at a photo of a young Bobby dressed as a dinosaur for Halloween. “Does it get any easier?”

Mary sighed. “Never easier, but a little less hard, perhaps. It’s always at the forefront of my mind, every single waking and sleeping moment. The hurt begins to…not quite disappear, but it’s as though it evaporates so that it’s always there in the air around me, ready to rain down when I least expect it. Then when the hurt goes, anger takes its place; when the anger runs out of steam, loneliness steps in to take over. It’s a never-ending circle of emotions; every lost emotion being replaced by another. The same isn’t so for sons, unfortunately.” She smiled wryly. “I used to love the great mysteries of life, the uncertainties, the not-knowing. I always thought it was so necessary to our journey.” She smiled sadly. “I’m not so enthusiastic about that anymore.”

Jack nodded and they both got lost in thought for a while.

“Anyway, it’s not all doom and gloom.” Mary perked up, “Hopefully, Sandy will do what she always does and return home in the morning.”

“With Bobby and Donal in tow,” Jack added.

“Well, here’s hoping.” Mary raised her mug and clinked it with Jack’s.

37

Jack slept in Bobby’s box bedroom that night, surrounded by posters of sports cars and half-naked blondes. On the ceiling were miniature stars and spaceships that once illuminated brightly in the dark but, like Bobby’s presence, now merely emitted a faint glow. Stickers that had been stuck to the door and the discolored wallpaper had been torn off, leaving He-Man without his sword, Bobby Duke without his cowboy hat, and Darth Vader without his helmet. The earth’s solar system was displayed on the navy blue duvet cover, every planet and place to be seen but the one Bobby was in.

A writing desk was piled high with CDs, a CD player, speaker phones and magazines containing yet more cars and women. Few school books were piled up in the corner, their place of importance low on the scale. Above the desk, shelves burst with more CDs, DVDs, magazines, and football medals and trophies. Jack doubted anything had been altered since the day Bobby had left this room and never come back. Jack placed his hands on as few items as possible and tiptoed on the carpet, not wanting to leave his imprint behind. Everything in this room was precious and existed only as a museum.

Peeking out from between the posters of cars and naked glamour models was Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper. Just beneath the surface lay childhood with only a thin layer to separate it from adolescence. It was the room of someone no longer a boy but not yet a man; of someone in a place between innocence and realization, on the path of discovery.

Jack once again felt as he had earlier while in the house. He felt trapped in a time that wasn’t allowed to move on. The door plate reading BOBBY’S ROOM: KEEP OUT! had been heeded and the door had been firmly shut, leaving everything inside, all the treasured items locked away as though the bedroom were a safe. Jack wondered whether Bobby was elsewhere now, living his life, whether he had moved on from the image Mary was fighting to hold on to or whether his journey had ended. Was he forever to exist in time as no longer a boy and not yet a man, in an in-between place as an in-between person with nothing fully whole, nothing fully realized?

He thought of his own refusal to let go of Donal and what Dr. Burton had said to him about replacing one search, which had reached a dead end, with another. He supposed in theory he was refusing to let go, but he was adamant that it wasn’t due to an unwillingness and inability to move on. He shook away the thought that he was in any way similar to Mary, hanging on to memories and being stuck eternally in a moment that had long since passed. He pulled the duvet over his head and hid from the stars on the ceiling and galaxy above him. Realistically, his search for Sandy wouldn’t find Donal, but something in his heart, in his mind was driving him forward.

Tomorrow would be Friday, and Sandy, if she didn’t wander back into her life, would have been missing for six days. He needed to make the decision now whether it was the moment to pull back, to open the door of his life and allow the trapped time and memories to escape, to move on and catch up on all it had missed. Or he could go full steam ahead with this search, peculiar and out of the ordinary though it might be. He thought about Gloria at home, the nothingness he felt toward her, his life, and their future, and he decided that he, like the Bobby that still inhabited the room he lay in, was embarking on a journey of discovery. He heard Mary switching off the television and unplugging appliances in the kitchen. A gap in the curtains welcomed a sudden light to seep through into the bedroom, shining a ruler of yellow light onto a poster of a red Ferrari. Realizing it was the porch light, Jack was engulfed by a strange sort of calm and he watched the light on the wall until his eyes became heavy.