I wondered if I’d spoken too frankly; but honesty was overdue here. The Hennessys’ world had been short on it for too long.
The boys were still playing below us. If they’d noticed my presence, they hadn’t read the body language. They probably thought Marlinchen and I were having a civil conversation.
“Your father’s guilt, first over Aidan and then your mother, ate him up inside. Literally, in a way.” I didn’t need to remind Marlinchen of her father’s ulcer. “Did you ever wonder why the photo of your mother and Aidan bothered your father so much?” I asked her. “It was the real Aidan, at age two. Jacob didn’t know it, but your father did. It incensed him to have to see it every time he looked in that bedroom. It reminded him of how his plan worked out. Your mother never recovered from her guilt over it. She died of it, either by accident-” I cut myself off.
Too late. Outrage was heating Marlinchen’s delicate skin. “Or what, on purpose? Are you suggesting she killed herself?”
I was, but of course it was too much for Marlinchen to handle at this point. “No,” I said quickly, appeasing her. “No, I’m not saying that.”
Still too late. “I think you should leave now,” she said.
“Think what you asked me to do, when we first met,” I said, getting desperate. “You asked me to find your brother. That’s what I’m trying to do. You’re the legal head of the household now. If you won’t let me talk to your father, give me permission to dig under the tree and look for your brother. Like you wanted.”
“My brothers,” she said, pointing, “are all home. My father is home and getting better. We’re coming together and healing our wounds. That’s hard for someone like you to watch.”
“Someone like me?” I repeated.
“You were kicked out of your home by your father and raised by a virtual stranger. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be part of a real family.”
“I’m sorry?” I said, though I’d heard her clearly.
But if Marlinchen saw that she’d stung me, she didn’t ease up. “That’s why you can’t accept that we’re happy now,” she went on. “You’d rather my brother be dead, my mother a suicide, and my father in prison.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“Go away,” she snapped. “I’m tired of your morbid mind and your sick theories.”
There was nothing left for me to do here. She wasn’t going to cool off. I headed down the steps.
“Don’t come back.” Marlinchen threw the words after me. “I’ll call the cops if you come around here again.”
I wanted to say, I can come back with a warrant, but the truth was, I probably couldn’t. I didn’t have enough hard evidence. Besides, sometimes you have to relinquish the last word. I understood the root of Marlinchen’s anger. It was fear. If she hadn’t heard a glimmer of truth in my words, they wouldn’t have poured acid onto a vulnerable spot in her mind. Stiff-limbed, I climbed into my car and headed down the drive.
The top of the little rise at the end of the Hennessy driveway afforded me a good view of the field where the boys were playing, and I paused there before pulling out onto the road. I looked back.
Aidan, as I couldn’t stop thinking of him, stood conferring with Liam, holding the football in his hands. Exertion had raised a fine sweat on his bare chest and his face. The boys got into position, and Liam threw the ball to Aidan. Aidan caught it easily and started to run. His blond ponytail swung crazily in the afternoon sunlight as he ran. Colm, determined, raced to intercept him, but Aidan dodged easily and poured on the speed, outpacing his brother, heading for the unmarked end zone.
The high window was empty; Hugh was not watching, and for a moment I wished he were. Maybe for the first time he’d recognize something he’d failed to see for so long.
Hugh believed strongly in family. In his writing and his life, he’d pursued the ideals of the close-knit, loyal, and loving clan. He’d never been able to see it, but Jacob Candeleur, without a drop of Hennessy blood in him, represented the best of those ideals. From a young age, he’d had a strong instinct to protect those he loved. He’d pulled Marlinchen from the freezing waters of the lake, when she’d fallen through the ice. He’d fought with the bullies who’d picked on Liam. He’d come home from his new life in California to be with his sister and brothers.
With Colm on his heels, Jacob gained the ground of the predetermined, invisible end zone and spiked the ball. Colm, giving up gracefully, extended his hand and gave Jacob a low five, scooped up the ball, and went to regroup with Donal.
Jacob didn’t follow. He stood a moment, breathing hard. Then he dropped to his knees, and from there he lay down on the grass.
There was something evocative about that action, something that stirred a recent memory.
“Oh, God,” I said.
I put the Nova into reverse and backed down the driveway at 40 miles per hour, skidding to a stop ten feet from the deck. Marlinchen stared at me from her place at the grill.
“Call 911,” I yelled to her as I jumped out of the car.
I expected some kind of resistance from her, but she looked down at the grass, where Jacob was still not moving, and her brothers were standing around him, and believed me.
“What should I say?” Marlinchen called.
“Cardiac arrest,” I yelled back, plunging down the slope.
Maybe it had never occurred to Brigitte that the heart defect that killed her lover Paul, the father of her child, was hereditary. Or maybe she’d never found a way to warn the son who wasn’t supposed to know he was her son. Maybe she’d meant to, someday, but her own death had caught her unawares.
Liam, kneeling at his cousin’s side, said, “I don’t think he’s breathing.” He sounded puzzled, like he wanted to be contradicted, wanted someone to tell him that healthy 18-year-olds didn’t just stop breathing.
“Move,” I ordered, dropped to my knees, and rolled Jacob onto his back. I shifted the tigereye leather necklace off the hollow of his throat and laid my fingertips there. The great arteries did not pulse under my touch. I tipped Jacob’s head back, checked the airway. Clear. I closed off his nostrils, breathed for him. Pumped his chest hard enough to contuse the flesh. Breathed again.
When the paramedics came, they asked who was going to go with Aidan, as the kids identified him, to the hospital. I opened my mouth to volunteer Marlinchen, but she shook her head. “You go, Sarah,” she said frantically. “Please, please, you go with him.”
The furious defender of the Hennessy family, who’d chased me off her property, was gone. Marlinchen was a scared teenage girl again, and to her, I was Authority. She still believed I could help her brother when she couldn’t. Numbly, I climbed into the ambulance.
I stayed with Jacob Candeleur all the way to the ER. Among the hectically laboring doctors and nurses, nobody noticed as I trailed along behind them, stood against a wall, watching their futile efforts. I was there as they called the code at 7:11 P.M. and as they dispiritedly filed out.
The last one out, a male nurse, turned to look at me from the doorway. “You gonna notify the family?” he said.
I nodded assent. “In a minute.”
For some time, Hugh Hennessy had been hiding behind the wall of his illness and his privacy, hiding from the people he’d hurt. That ring of people just kept getting bigger. Aidan, whose death his carelessness had long ago caused. Elisabeth, whose suicide he helped bring about. Brigitte, whose child he had taken. Jacob, whose loss of identity had ultimately been fatal. In a way, even Paul Candeleur. Paul the loyal, ready fighter, who’d somehow given his son his values through blood alone, who’d never lived to see how his son’s life would go so wrong. I couldn’t believe this death didn’t hurt Paul, too, somewhere.