But he did. His head turned, he bent toward her so close that she could feel his warmth. He stopped. Pulled back, his expression stricken and guilty. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have… I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” she told him.
He shook his head. “It ain’t right, not when I’d leave here tomorrow if I could. Not after you took me in, let me stay with you. I’m really sorry, Caitlyn. I don’t want to make you feel threatened or bothered or-”
“Stop it,” she told him. “It’s fine. It’s…” … what I want too. I’m just so afraid of it and I don’t know if I can anymore, and… There were a dozen other things to say, but she couldn’t say any of them. “… forgotten,” she finished.
But she didn’t forget it. She remembered. It haunted her dreams for a long time.
“I hope you find your way home,” she told him.
Rathlin’s lone lawyer was also Rathlin’s Mayor, an elderly gentleman with long white hair that covered most of his body. His snouted face and prominent front teeth made him look like a large rodent; the delicate eyeglasses perched there, the wire rims tucked behind his ear flaps, magnified the tiny black eyes, and the suit he wore made him look like a cartoon character.. His hand were pink and wrinkled and folded on top of the newspaper that covered his desk.
Joseph Carrick: ‘The Rat of Rathlin,’ as he’d been dubbed by the Sun and other tabloids.
DISASTER AVERTED! the headline trumpeted. Then, in smaller type: BLACK TRUMP DESTROYED IN JERUSALEM. SENATOR GREGG HARTMANN AMONG DEAD.
“I thought… I thought that since Senator Hartmann was dead that the charges against me might be dropped,” Gary told Carrick.
Carrick’s whiskered nose twitched. “I’m afraid they haven’t. I’ve made the inquiries you requested: the charges against you stand, and I’ve been told by the authorities in Northern Ireland, Great Britain and your own country that nothing has changed-you will be arrested the moment you step foot off Rathlin.” Carrick traced the headlines with a slow forefinger. “I am sorry, Mr. Bushorn. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Mayor,” Gary said, a tone of desperation in his voice, “Look, Hartmann was just about my last hope. I gotta get back-you don’t understand.”
“Joseph, surely there’s something else you can do?” Caitlyn’s voice drew Carrick’s attention away from the paper. His tiny lips, in the shadow of the snout, pursed in a tight moue of annoyance. Joseph Carrick had once openly courted Caitlyn, in the months after her mother’s death and before her flight from Rathlin. Caitlyn knew he’d considered her departure a personal insult-she’d heard him say it to others: “She think she’s too perfect to be touched by the likes of a joker… ”
“I’ve done all I can,” he answered tartly. “Surely you’re not totally disappointed in the news, Miss Farrell, since that means your ‘house guest’ will be staying.” Caitlyn’s cheeks went hot-she started to answer, but Gary had already risen from his chair. His forefinger stabbed the paper in front of Carrick.
Around the finger, white smoke curled away. “You,” Gary said, “will apologize to Caitlyn. I don’t care if you’re the fucking Mayor, I don’t care if you call Constable McEnnis and have him drag me off the island as a result.” His hand went down flat on the newspaper. The smell of ash and burning paper rose. Tiny flames leapt around his hand. “You know nothing about her, or you would have kept your mouth shut just now.” Fire crackled around his wrist. “Do I make myself clear?”
Carrick’s tiny eyes widened more than Caitlyn thought possible. He nearly squeaked as he pushed his chair back from his desk. “Aye, I understand,” he said hurriedly. “Caitlyn, I’m apologize. I certainly didn’t mean to imply…”
Gary swept the paper onto the wooden floor and stamped out the fire. The photo of the crater in the midst of Jerusalem was now a smoking hole. “I believe Caitlyn asked you a question just now.”
Carrick was staring at the ruins of the newspaper alongside his desk. His head jerked back to Gary, then Caitlyn. “I suppose I could contact a few people I know in your state department. Perhaps some sort of amnesty could be arranged now that the Senator is dead and the crisis over. Why don’t you come back in a few weeks or so…”
He did come back. Every week. And every time the answer was the same.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bushorn…”
DECEMBER, 1995
There was wrapping paper strewn over the front room of the cottage, and Moira was sitting happily near the fire playing with a rag doll and a chess set. Caitlyn had given Gary a short-sleeved shirt woven from the wool of their sheep. “You don’t exactly seem to need a sweater,” she told him. “So I thought…”
“It’s lovely,” he told her, and the way he looked at her made the smile widen on her face. “Here,” he said, handing her a package. “This is for you.”
He set the small box on her lap. Awkwardly, she opened it-her elbows had tightened severely since the onset of winter, and she could barely move them. She stripped away the bow and the paper, and opened the lid. She could feel him watching her.
Inside, in a nest of tissue paper, was a pocket watch. She could hear it ticking. She stared at the watch, shimmering through sudden mist in her eyes. “Where did you get this?” she asked. It was all she dared to say.
“I found it, out in the back shed when I was looking for some tools. I cleaned it up, took it apart. I traded Motormouth down in Church Bay some work on his cycle in exchange for ordering the parts I needed from a repair shop in Dublin. They said it was an expensive watch, an old one. Gold over silver on the casing, and well worth the time and money to fix it. The inscription said ‘To Patrick, Love Shannon.’ I showed it to Moira; she said she’d never seen the watch before, but that you’d told her that Shannon and Patrick were the names of her grandparents. So I thought…” He paused. His head cocked inquiringly toward her. “Do I do something wrong?”
Caitlyn tried to shake her head. It moved slowly left, then right. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s..” She stopped. She still hadn’t touched the watch. She didn’t dare. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her. “Is it your watch?”
Another slow nod. “Aye. Patrick was my da; he drew the black queen and died in ’62; Máthair gave him the watch on their first anniversary. The watch came with us to Rathlin after… after the Relocation. Funny, it worked fine in Belfast, but once we got here, it never did. Something broke inside it, I guess, jostled loose.”
“The mainspring,” Gary said. “It snapped. Probably wound too tight, or it had gotten rusty over the years.”
Caitlyn reached down and touched the face of the watch. “I took the watch with me when I left Rathlin, after she died. He… Moira’s father, that is-”
“Does this man have a name?”
“Robert,” Caitlyn answered. It had been ten years since she’d spoken that name. It still hurt. The word was an incantation, summoning up all the pain and anger she’d felt, and she could feel muscles pulling uselessly at the smooth expanse of her face. She let out a breath, trying to exhale the poison within the memories. “The watch…” Another exhalation. “It was another broken promise in a long string of promises: the promise that he loved me, the promise that he’d stay faithful, the promise he wouldn’t drink, the promise that he wouldn’t hit me, the promise that he’d take care of our child, the promise she wouldn’t have the virus…” She stopped, hearing the bitterness rising in her voice and hating the sound of it. “He had an ace, the ability to enchant with song, and when you heard his voice, you couldn’t move or leave and he could twist your emotions about, make you cry or laugh or shout or fall in love. But the talent was wasted on him, lost in the drink, the temper, the skirt-chasing and the ego. He knew what the watch meant to me. I gave it to him, not long after we became lovers. He said ‘Sure, Caitlyn, I’ll be getting it fixed for you.’ I kept asking him about it afterward, for weeks that turned into months, and he’d always tell me that, aye, he’d taken it to the jewelers, but that some part or another was on backorder and that he’d be going to check on it tomorrow…”