She laughed, a sound as bitter as her words. “After he left us for his pub floozy, I found the watch when I was packing to come back here. It was in one of his dresser drawers, still in the cardboard box in which I’d given it to him. He’d probably forgotten to take it with him that first time-it wasn’t really important to him, just as I wasn’t really important to him. And rather than tell me the truth, it was easier for him to make up the lies. Maybe he didn’t even remember where the watch was anymore. When I came back here, I couldn’t stand to look at it. It didn’t remind me of my parents anymore; it reminded me of him.” She wrapped the chain of the watch around one finger. She held it up to her ear, listening to the steady metronome of the mechanism inside.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now it will remind me of my parents again.”
She reached toward him; he leaned forward so that her hand touched his cheek, and he pressed it tight between head and shoulder, holding her. “You’re welcome,” he said. She was crying; she could feel the tears rolling hot down her cheeks, and he reached forward and blotted them away with a thumb. “Hey, it wasn’t that much,” he said.
“You can kiss her.” That was Moira, bounding across the room and wrapping her arms around Gary ’s neck from behind as he sat in front of the couch. “She’d like that.”
“Do you really think so?” Gary asked her, though his eyes were on Caitlyn. “I wouldn’t want to do anything that you or your mom would regret.”
“Oh, no,” Moira answered. “You can. She likes you.”
“Moira,” Caitlyn said reflexively. Gary was still watching her, his hands on the cushions of the couch on either side of her. She could feel their heat on her legs.
“Well, you do,” Moira answered. “I can tell. I’m not stupid.”
“Moira, I think that the decision to whether or not to kiss should be your mom’s, not mine.” He reached behind and pulled Moira around until she was sitting on his lap. “But I will kiss you,” he told her, and gave her a comically sloppy kiss on the forehead as she squirmed and giggled on his lap.
“She’s asleep?” Gary asked.
“Aye,” Caitlyn said softly. He was standing near the fireplace. She’d placed the watch there on the mantel, where she could see it and hear it ticking. She limped over to stand in front of him. “She says what she thinks, I’m afraid.”
“I never thought that was a bad thing. Keisha, my niece, she’s the same way. Adults should do it more often.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “I’d never make you a promise I wouldn’t keep,” he said. His head leaned down toward hers. His lips were soft fire against the slick ice of her skin, and she opened her mouth to him, the embrace suddenly urgent as his fingers tangled in her hair. His touch was a flame along her breast, a heat between her legs. “I don’t know,” she said, suddenly frightened. “It’s been so long, and my body…”
“Hush,” he’d told her. “I’m scared, too. Sometimes, the women I’m with, they say it’s too hot, that they don’t… and I…”
This time it was her touch that stopped his words. “We’ll go slow. We’ll help each other. We’ll figure out what works. If you want.”
“Caitlyn, the one promise I can’t make to you is that I’ll stay. I need you to understand that before anything happens. I’ll be your friend and lover, I’ll help you with Moira, I’ll never try to deceive you. But if and when they let me go home, I’m gone that same day. If that changes things, then let’s stop now. I don’t want to ever hurt you.”
“That’s not a promise I’d ask you to make,” she told him.
“Then this is what I want,” he answered. “I want it very much.”
MARCH, 1996
“Oh, God… Arnie, no, no…”
The sudden catch in Gary ’s voice made Caitlyn hold her breath. “Yeah, yeah, I understand… When did it happen? How?… Uhhuh… Wasn’t there anything they could do, something…? How’s Serena and Keisha taking this? You called Uncle Carl yet? Is there anything I can do… Yeah… No, let me see if I can arrange… No, not a lot of hope for it… I’ll call you back, and Arnie-I love you. Be strong, man… Yeah, see ’ya.”
Gary stood there after he put the receiver down, staring vacantly. Moira, reading a book by the fireplace, looked over at him also. “ Gary?” Caitlyn asked. “What’s wrong?”
“My mom,” he said. “She died.” He blinked, and tears rolled from his eyes. They steamed and sizzled as they reached his cheeks. “She died and I wasn’t there, and they’re burying her on Saturday, and I’m here. I’m fucking here.”
Moira’s eyes widened at the profanity- Gary was always so careful around her, but he didn’t seem to have noticed. “Oh, Gary…” Caitlyn started to rise-slowly, the only way she could-from the chair to go to him, but he waved her away.
“Just… just leave me alone. I need to take a walk.” He strode out of the house, then, without looking at either of them, steam wreathing his face.
“Máthair,” Moira said as the sound of the closing door seemed to echo through the room. “You should go with him. He needs you.”
“I walk so slow, Moira,” she protested.
“He needs you,” Moira repeated, but Caitlyn was already rising, moving as quickly as she could to the door, taking her shawl from the peg as she left. The sun was setting in the west, obscured by driving gray clouds, and fine mist dampened Caitlyn’s face. For a moment, she didn’t see Gary, then she caught sight of a dark figure, walking over the rolling hills toward the cliffs. She hurried after him. “ Gary!”
He turned. She saw him wave at her, gesturing her back. Then he turned again and continued to walk on. She hesitated, then followed.
He was standing near the edge of the cliffs above Bruce’s Cave, staring out over the water. The sun had set, the edges of the clouds behind them tinted the color of blood, though ahead the sky was unrelenting black and dark gray, streaked with squall lines out over the water. Waves broke a startling phosphorescent white on the rocks far below. He hadn’t turned as she approached, though she knew he had to have heard her. She put her arms around his waist from behind, pulling him into her; it was like embracing a woodstove, but she continued to hold him. “ Gary, I’m so sorry…”
“Arnie said that she must have had the stroke some time in the morning. He came to check on her when he couldn’t get hold of her on the phone, and found her unconscious. By the time they got her to the hospital, she was in arrest, and they couldn’t bring her back.” He spoke without looking at her; she felt more than heard his voice, her head on his back. “She wasn’t real good about taking her meds. I used to call her every morning just to remind her.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Maybe not. Or maybe it was.” He turned in her arms. “I’ll never know, will I?” His eyes were narrowed, eyebrows lowering above like thunderheads. He pushed himself away from her. “I won’t be there for the funeral, won’t be able to grieve with the rest of my family. The business I spent most of my life trying to build is gone along with my savings, and what little I had left I’ve spent trying to get out of here. I’ve written or talked to every damn representative, to every paper from the Times to the goddamn Jokertown Cry, and I’m still on Rathlin!” The name was a shout as he flung his arms wide. “This isn’t fucking jail; it’s worse.”
The words cut, lancing deep into Caitlyn’s core. She was crying, unable to stop the tears, cold against her cheeks, salt mingling with the fresh water of the mist. “ Gary…” She could say nothing, only stand there stricken and numb like the lifeless statue she was inevitably becoming, her arms still spread in the end of the embrace.
He was steaming in the mist, like a living cloud, and she couldn’t tell whether he were also crying or not, his features half-obscured. The droplets hissed on his skin like water spilled on a hot griddle. “I have to get out of here,” he said. “I’ve lost so much, and there’s no way I can ever, ever get it back again…” He stopped then, looking at her. “Caitlyn,” Her name was a sob. “Oh God, Caitlyn…”