All the way down there, her heart had raced. What was he going to say? I have cancer, I’m dying? When they’d arrived, he’d been at a loss for words. He’d looked down at the ground and out at the lake, and finally told her about how much he’d loved her mother, how much he missed her, how important the kids were to him.
Still frightened, Marlinchen had hurried to say, I understand, Daddy, we love you. She hadn’t understood what he meant by it. Was he still depressed over Mother’s death? Could he be trying to tell her he was having suicidal thoughts? For nearly a month afterward, Marlinchen hadn’t been able to sleep through the night. She’d gotten up at least once to creep down the hall and look into his bedroom, making sure he was all right, his chest rising and falling under the bedspread.
Not long afterward, something happened that changed everything.
At school one afternoon, during PE, she saw Aidan on the other side of the chain-link fence. He raised a single finger to his lips. When she left the campus that day, he fell into step beside her. The school-bus driver didn’t notice as Aidan climbed aboard with everyone else.
For two days, Marlinchen hid him in the detached garage. She sneaked him food and brought him a blanket so he could sleep stretched out on the backseat of Dad’s old, defunct BMW.
The second day, she told Liam. After dinner, they brought Aidan his food, and afterward, the three siblings sat and talked. Mostly Aidan spoke, telling them about Aunt Brigitte, who had been nice, but almost too sweet and clingy. He said Pete Benjamin was okay, but he was a total stranger, and after two weeks, Aidan had been too homesick and lonely for his siblings to stay any longer. He told them the story of his late-night escape, funding a bus ticket with money he’d saved from an allowance Aunt Brigitte had given him, of the night highway unfurling under the bus’s headlights, of walking all day to Marlinchen’s school. In the twilit world of the garage, the miseries of Aidan’s life took on the character of adventures.
Then the door had opened, Colm in the breach. “What’s going on?” he’d said.
Three faces turned to him, and Colm’s gaze came to rest on his oldest brother. For a moment he was startled, then his face hardened, and he said, “I’m telling Dad.”
“Colm, no!” Marlinchen had jumped to her feet, but her younger brother was running for the house.
Their father was almost frighteningly still and quiet when he came to stand in the doorway, looking down at his estranged son, nodding as though he weren’t surprised.
“Dad-” Marlinchen began, trying to speak although her throat was turning to stone.
“It’s okay, Marlinchen,” Hugh had said. “I figured he’d turn up here.”
Then he’d addressed Aidan. “You’re going back in the morning,” their father had said. “Until then, come up to the house. You can sleep on the couch downstairs tonight.”
Relief had filled Marlinchen; she’d expected much worse. That night, she’d made up a bed on the couch for her brother, and fell asleep instantly upon returning to bed. The tension of the last few days, of hiding Aidan, had taken its toll on her. Now it was over, and exhaustion claimed her.
But only an hour later, she’d awakened to muffled, familiar sounds of anger, from downstairs. Chest tight with apprehension, she crept downstairs.
It had never been this bad. Aidan sat on the kitchen floor, back against the refrigerator, his face bloody from the nose down. He was trying to stem the tide of a bleeding, broken nose, and his eyebrow was split. Her father was on his heels next to him, a handful of bloody hair in his fist, his face alien with anger.
He spoke close to Aidan’s ear. Then he let go and stood.
With painful difficulty, Aidan got to his feet as well, and spit blood and saliva into his father’s face.
Marlinchen felt a surge of raw fear at what would happen next, but her father only wiped his face and walked away.
Marlinchen stumbled back into the darkness when her father passed by, and he never saw her. For a moment, she sat with her arms wrapped around her knees in the darkness and fought back tears. From her low vantage point, she saw something she hadn’t before. She looked into the forest of chair legs under the small breakfast table and saw shining eyes staring back at her. Donal. He was five years old. His face was blank with shock.
Immediately, she knew what had happened. Donal had sneaked downstairs for something he wasn’t supposed to have, probably a piece of the lemon cake Marlinchen had made earlier. He’d hidden under the table when he’d thought he was going to be caught. He’d been under there the whole time. She didn’t know what had sparked her father’s rage at Aidan, but she knew Donal had seen everything.
It was at that moment that Marlinchen made her decision.
It was for the best that Aidan was leaving in the morning, that he lived a thousand miles away. Otherwise, things would only deteriorate. The younger boys would witness things like this, and worse, and God knew Aidan wouldn’t be safe here, either. In Georgia he would. No matter what Pete Benjamin was like, he was better than this.
She came out from her hiding place, walked past Aidan, who had slipped back down into a sitting position, trying to stem the bleeding from his nose, and went to Donal.
“It’s all right, baby,” she said, “come on out.” Even though he was too big to be lifted up by someone her size, she managed it. Donal was limp and acquiescent in her arms. Marlinchen had expected tears, but he didn’t cry.
The young are resilient, she decided as she tucked him into bed.
She did not go back downstairs to Aidan.
A Rainbow at Night was published later that year to reasonably good reviews, and Hugh did lectures and signings. When he was on the road, he sent back postcards from every city, even if he’d only spent one night in a hotel room there. The following year, a movie studio optioned The Channel. From the proceeds, Hugh bought a cabin near Tait Lake, a place where he could get away and write, but first he took the whole family up there for a vacation. His ulcer and even his back pain seemed to improve. He seemed more at ease, talking and sometimes laughing at the dinner table. Following his lead, the boys were a little more relaxed as well. It was as if a corner had been turned.
Marlinchen never mentioned Aidan to her father again.
22
“You were a child,” I whispered, “it wasn’t your fault.”
After telling her story, Marlinchen had dissolved into quiet sobs and recriminations. “If anything’s happened to him,” she said, “it’s my fault. I stood by and let it happen. I didn’t do anything.”
“There was nothing you could do,” I told her, patting her shaking shoulders awkwardly.
In time, she dried her tears and gathered her composure. “I wanted to tell you,” she said, her voice steadier. “But with something like this, the beatings… the first time it happens you look away and pray it’s just a onetime thing. After that, it’s like… if you didn’t mention it yesterday, it’s harder to think of mentioning it today, and even harder the next day, and finally you reach a point where everybody knows that everybody else knows, but to say it out loud would be like…”
“Like breaking all the windows,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Like breaking all the windows.”
“What about Colm and Liam? Did the three of you discuss what you’d say when I asked why Aidan was sent away?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t have to tell them not to say anything. We never talk about it, even with each other.” Her pupils were wide in the darkness. “Where do you think he is, Sarah? Really.”
“I just don’t know,” I admitted. “And it won’t help to sit up at night theorizing about it. Go back to bed.”