Of course I looked for her. The first time I was left alone with a police computer, I ran her name and birth date through it: she had never been arrested in the Republic of Ireland. This was hardly a revelation-I hadn’t expected her to turn into Ma Barker-but I spent the rest of the day on a hard edgy high, just from inching that first step along her trail. As my contacts got better, so did my searches: she hadn’t been arrested in the North, hadn’t been arrested in England or Scotland or Wales or the USA, hadn’t signed on the dole anywhere, hadn’t applied for a passport, hadn’t died, hadn’t got married. I repeated all the searches every couple of years, sticking to contacts who owed me favors. They never asked.

Mostly, these days-I got mellower after Holly came along-I hoped Rosie would turn up under the radar somewhere, living one of those straightforward, contented lives that never hit the system, remembering me every now and then with a piercing little tug as the one who might have been. Sometimes I pictured her finding me: the phone ringing in the middle of the night, the tap at my office door. I pictured us side by side on a bench in some green park, watching in a bittersweet silence while Holly swung on a climbing frame with two little redheaded boys. I pictured an endless evening in some dim pub, our heads bending closer and closer under the talk and laughter as the night got later, our fingers sliding towards each other on the battered wood of the table. I pictured every inch of what she would look like now: the crow’s-feet from smiles I hadn’t seen, the softness of her belly from kids who weren’t mine, all her life that I had missed written on her body in Braille for my hands to read. I pictured her giving me answers I had never thought of, the ones that would make sense of everything, send every jagged edge sliding smoothly into place. I pictured, believe it or not, a second chance.

Other nights, even after all this time, I still wanted what I wanted when I was twenty: to see her show up as some Domestic Violence Squad’s frequent flier, in someone’s hooker file flagged for HIV, as an overdose in a morgue in a ruthless part of London. I had read the descriptions of hundreds of Jane Does, over the years.

All my signposts had gone up in one blinding, dizzying explosion: my second chances, my revenge, my nice thick anti-family Maginot line. Rosie Daly dumping my sorry ass had been my landmark, huge and solid as a mountain. Now it was flickering like a mirage and the landscape kept shifting around it, turning itself inside out and backwards; none of the scenery looked familiar any more.

I ordered another pint, with a double Jameson’s on the side, which as far as I could see was my only chance of making it to the morning. I couldn’t think of a single other thing that would wipe my mind clean of that image, the nightmare made of slimy brown bones curled in its burrow, trickles of earth falling onto it with a sound like tiny scurrying feet.

7

They gave me a couple of hours on my own, with a kind of delicacy I hadn’t expected, before they came looking for me. Kevin showed up first: sticking his head around the door like a kid on a hide-and-seek mission, sending a quick sly text while the barman pulled his pint, hovering and shuffling beside my table till I put him out of his misery and gestured for him to sit down. We didn’t talk. It took the girls about three minutes to join us, shaking rain off their coats and giggling and shooting sideways glances around the pub-“Jaysus,” Jackie said in what she thought was a whisper, pulling off her scarf, “I remember when we used to be dying to come in here, only because it was no girls allowed. We were better off, weren’t we?”

Carmel gave the seat a suspicious look and a quick swipe with a tissue before she sat down. “Thank God Mammy didn’t come after all. This place’d put the heart crossways in her.”

“Christ,” Kevin said, his head jerking up. “Ma was going to come?”

“She’s worried about Francis.”

“Dying to pick his brains, more like. She’s not going to follow you or anything, is she?”

“Wouldn’t put it past her,” Jackie said. “Secret Agent Ma.”

“She won’t. I told her you were gone home,” Carmel said to me, fingertips over her mouth, between guilty and mischievous. “God forgive me.”

“You’re a genius,” Kevin said, heartfelt, slumping back into his seat.

“He’s right. She’d only have wrecked all our heads.” Jackie craned her neck, trying to catch the barman’s eye. “Will I get served in here these days, will I?”

“I’ll go up,” Kevin said. “What’ll you have?”

“Get us a gin and tonic.”

Carmel pulled her stool up to the table. “Would they have a Babycham, d’you think?”

“Ah, Jesus, Carmel.”

“I can’t drink the strong stuff. You know I can’t.”

“I’m not going up there and asking for a poxy Babycham. I’ll get the crap kicked out of me.”

“You’ll be grand,” I said. “It’s 1980 in here anyway; they’ve probably got a whole crate of Babycham behind the bar.”

“And a baseball bat waiting for any guy who asks for it.”

“I’ll go.”

“There’s Shay now.” Jackie half stood up and flapped a hand to get his attention. “He can go, sure; he’s up already.”

Kevin said, “Who invited him?”

“I did,” Carmel told him. “And the pair of yous can act your age and be civil to each other, for once. This evening’s about Francis, not about you.”

“I’ll drink to that,” I said. I was pleasantly pissed, just heading into the stage where everything looked colorful and soft-edged and nothing, not even the sight of Shay, could grate on me. Normally the first hint of the warm fuzzies makes me switch to coffee, fast. That night I intended to enjoy every second of them.

Shay lounged over to our corner, running a hand through his hair to get rid of the raindrops. “I’d never have guessed this place was up to your standards,” he said to me. “You brought your cop mate in here?”

“It was heartwarming. Everyone welcomed him like a brother.”

“I’d have paid to watch that. What’re you drinking?”

“Are you buying?”

“Why not.”

“Sweet,” I said. “Guinness for me and Kevin, Jackie’ll have a G and T, and Carmel wants a Babycham.”

Jackie said, “We just want to see you go up and order it.”

“No problem to me. Watch and learn.” Shay headed up to the bar, got the barman’s attention with an ease that said this was his local, and waved the bottle of Babycham at us triumphantly. Jackie said, “Bleeding show-off.”

Shay came back balancing all the glasses at once, with a precision that goes with plenty of practice. “So,” he said, putting them down on the table. “Tell us, Francis: was that your mot, that all this fuss is about?” and, when everyone froze, “Cop on, will yous; you’re all gagging to ask him the same thing. Was it, Francis?”

Carmel said in her best mammy-voice, “Leave Francis alone. I told Kevin and I’m telling you: you’ve to behave yourselves tonight.”

Shay laughed and pulled up a stool. I had had plenty of time during the last couple of hours, while my brain was still mainly unpickled, to consider exactly how much I wanted to share with the Place, or anyway with my family, which amounted to pretty much the same thing. “It’s all right, Melly,” I said. “Nothing’s definite yet, but yeah, it’s looking like that was probably Rosie.”

A quick suck of breath from Jackie, and then silence. Shay let out a long, low whistle.

“God rest,” Carmel said softly. She and Jackie crossed themselves.

“That’s what your man told the Dalys,” Jackie said. “The fella you were talking to. But, sure, no one knew whether to believe him or not… Cops, you know? They’ll say anything-not you, like, but the rest of them. He could’ve just wanted us to think that was her.”

“How do they know?” Kevin asked. He looked faintly sick.