“Actually,” she said, “I’m putting school off for a while. I mean, I’m not Liam. It’s not like my grades are that great.”
“They’d probably be a lot better if you hadn’t been running a household of five,” I pointed out.
Marlinchen paused with the wineglass close to her lips. “These are extenuating circumstances, with Dad in the hospital-”
“Bullshit,” I said. “You’re balancing a checkbook, keeping a house clean, planning meals, cooking them, doing the grocery shopping. These are not things you learn to do in a matter of weeks. I have a feeling you’ve been doing them a lot longer than your old man’s been in the hospital, and even if your father makes a full recovery, things aren’t going to change much.”
She hesitated before speaking. “Family is important to me,” she said.
“That’s fine,” I said, pouring her more wine, “but Donal is 11 years old. By the time he’s 18 and ready to move out, you’ll be 24. Are you going to put off college until then?”
“College isn’t for everyone,” she said. “I bet you didn’t go.”
“I went for a year,” I said.
“See?”
“But it was long enough for me to find out I didn’t want what it had to offer,” I said. “You should find out too, before you’re too old for the dorms and Jell-O shots and all the things that make college more than just school,” I said. “Even right now there are things you should be doing with your high school years that you’re not. Like dating, or just going to the movies with friends.”
Marlinchen drank, mostly to stall for time. She was thinking up verbal evasive maneuvers. “You’re a friend,” she said after a second, her voice sweet. “You want to go to the movies sometime?”
“I’m not the sort of friend you should have at your age,” I said.
Marlinchen looked pleased, and I realized I’d stepped into a trap. “That raises an interesting point,” she said. “You’re out here, late at night, with a bunch of kids you hardly know. Why aren’t you out dating, Detective Pribek?”
“Because I’m-” I broke off. I really didn’t want to explain Shiloh to her.
Marlinchen saw my discomfort, and her newfound audacity drained away. “I didn’t mean to pry,” she said gently. “If you’re gay, Sarah, I’m totally all right with that.”
She was so sincere that I felt absurdly touched, but now I had to correct her misperception. “Well, gay people date, too,” I pointed out. “But what I was going to say was ‘Because I’m married.’ ”
Marlinchen’s mouth fell open slightly, in shock. “But… where’s your husband?” she finished.
“ Wisconsin,” I said.
“You’re separated?”
“Sort of,” I said.
Marlinchen wasn’t dense; she heard that I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. She played with the stem of her wineglass instead. “That’s too bad,” she said, and then nearly let the glass slip from her fingers.
“Careful,” I said, steadying it. “Let me weigh that down for you.” I poured again.
“You’re right,” she said. “The charm does become appear… apparent.”
“Stick with me, kid,” I said. “I’ll take you places.” Like Hazelden.
But I noted the high color in Marlinchen’s cheeks, and judged that she was ready for the direction I wanted to take the conversation. With a hundred-pound nondrinker, it didn’t take long.
“Since I’ve been out here, visiting you kids,” I said, “you haven’t mentioned Aidan to me. Not once.”
She spoke quickly. “I am sorry about the way I talked to you, the day that-”
I shook my head. “That’s not what I mean,” I told her. “I’m not angry about what you said, but the question I asked you that day still stands.” I paused, watching her face. She undoubtedly remembered what we’d been talking about, but I reminded her anyway. “Kids don’t get sent away from their families for no reason,” I said. “Good reasons, bad reasons… there’s always something.”
True to form, she didn’t answer.
“I get the feeling that there’s something else you’d like to tell me,” I said. “Do you trust me, Marlinchen?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s just that Aidan is a painful issue.”
“Sometimes, in my line of work,” I said, “I tell people they have to make their pain worse for a while on the way to making it better, or they’ll go on dealing with the same low-grade pain indefinitely.”
Marlinchen looked straight ahead, staring out into the blackness beyond the kitchen windows. She wasn’t ready to make the pain worse. I’d tried.
“Finish your wine,” I said, “and let’s go to bed.”
I very nearly shut myself into Hugh Hennessy’s bedroom before I remembered the loose knob. Leaving the door cracked, I felt a little frisson of anxiety. It was so dark and quiet out here, I felt like I had stepped into a Gothic novel, complete with trick doors that trapped you behind them. In bed, I missed the small city noises that would have helped me sleep.
Because I’d left the door open, nothing alerted me that someone else was in the bedroom until I heard movement. I rolled over quickly, judged from the shape of the shadow that it was Marlinchen, and relaxed. She was barefoot, dressed only in a camisole and boxer shorts.
“What is it?” I said.
“I want to talk about Aidan,” she said.
Finally.
Marlinchen came closer, to sit on the floor by the bed.
“I didn’t say anything against Aidan being sent away. I thought it was for the best.” She drew in a shuddery breath. “I was afraid of what would happen if Aidan stayed.”
“Why were you afraid?” I asked.
“He was beating Aidan,” she said. “Toward the end. But it started a long time before that.”
“Tell me,” I said.
21
Marlinchen Hennessy was her father’s little girl; she was bright and verbal, and her father loved to read to her and teach her new words and listen to what she was learning in school. No sound had been sweeter to her own ears than the nickname of “Marli” that only Daddy used, and it hadn’t been until she was perhaps 10 that she’d realized that Daddy wasn’t six feet tall, but only five-foot-eight.
Aidan, quiet as his twin sister was talkative, gravitated to their pensive, withdrawn mother. Like an astronomer, he studied her silences and her moods. When she seemed saddest, she’d draw him up into her lap and hold him, stroke his golden hair, kiss his maimed hand. Sometimes they’d sit together under the magnolia tree and look out at the waters of the lake. When he thought it would make her feel better, he’d bring the baby down to her, first Colm, whose weight had bowed Aidan’s small back, then later baby Donal. That was close, of course, to the end.
All the children had been stricken by their mother’s sudden death, but none more than Aidan. After the funeral, he’d lain under the magnolia tree and wept without restraint. Daddy had finally looked out the window and seen Aidan there, and his lips had narrowed to a thin line, and he’d opened the door and gone down the back steps and stood at Aidan’s side. Marli, watching from her bedroom window, hadn’t been able to hear his words, but Aidan wasn’t responding. Then Daddy had bent down and pulled Aidan to his feet, and when he saw Aidan was still crying, slapped his face.
Marli forgot her shock in a day or two. She was young.
She was busy, too. There was so much to learn. Daddy gave her a footstool so she could reach the table where she changed Donal’s diapers. She dressed the baby in the morning and put him down for his naps and to bed in the evening. In the weeks after Mother’s death, there were babysitters, but soon they faded away. “It’s our home,” Daddy said. “We’ll take care of it, like we’ll take care of each other.”
Marlinchen liked that idea. She thought of it as she poured cereal into bowls for her brothers and made their school lunches and washed up the dishes. She was not yet eight years old.