“How is our kipepeo girl doing?” The rhythmic sound of his words revealed his African roots.
In confusion I looked to Helena, who was looking at the man in surprise, the surprise, I could tell, not for his sudden presence but for the words he had spoken. She knew this man and I assumed knew his words. I didn’t know what the words meant but I guessed the speaker of them, her husband. Our eyes met and I felt drawn to his gaze, trapped in his and he trapped in mine as though a magnet drew us together. He held a plank of wood in his large hands; sawdust covered his white linen clothes.
“What does kipepeo mean?” I asked the room. The room didn’t answer, but knew.
“Sandy, this is my husband, Joseph.” Helena introduced us. “He’s a carpenter,” she added, referring to the plank of wood in his hands.
My unusual introduction to Joseph the carpenter was interrupted by a little girl who entered the kitchen through Joseph’s legs, giggling while her curly black hair bounced with each childish skip. She ran to Helena and grabbed onto her leg.
“And who’s this, the Immaculate Conception?” I asked, the little girl’s shrieks sounding like wails in my pounding head.
“Almost.” Helena smiled. “She’s our daughter’s Immaculate Conception. Say hello, Wanda.” She ran her hand through the little girl’s hair.
A toothless smile greeted me before she shyly ran out of the room under her grandfather’s legs. I looked up from where she had disappeared, to Joseph’s eyes again. He was still watching me. Helena looked from him back to me, not with suspicion but with…I couldn’t quite figure it out.
“You must sleep.” He gave a single nod.
Under the gaze of Helena and Joseph, I placed the washcloth over my eyes and allowed myself to drift. For once I was too tired to ask questions.
“Ah, there she is now.” The sound of my father’s voice greeted me as though I was suddenly pulled up out of the water. Muffled sounds gradually became audible, faces eventually recognizable. It was as though I was reborn into the world, facing my loved ones from a hospital bed once again.
“Hello, honey.” My mother rushed to my side and took my hand. Her face appeared close to mine, too close for me to focus and so she remained a lavender-scented blur with four eyes. “How do you feel?”
I hadn’t yet had time to feel before I was asked, and so concentrated on it before answering. I didn’t feel very good.
“OK,” I responded.
“Oh, my poor baby.” Her cleavage dominated my view as she leaned over to kiss my forehead, glossy lips leaving my skin sticky and ticklish. I looked around the room after she’d moved and saw my father, scrunched cap in hand and looking older than I remembered. Perhaps I had been underwater longer than I’d thought. I winked, he smiled, relief written all over his face. Funny how it was the job of the patient to make the visitors feel better. It was as though I was on stage and it was my turn to entertain. The walls of the hospital had rendered everyone speechless and awkward as though we had met that day for the very first time.
“What happened?” I asked after sipping water through a straw from a cup that had been thrust at me by a nurse.
They looked nervously at each other. Mum decided to do the honors.
“A car hit you, honey, just as you were walking across the road from the school. He came around the corner…he was just a young lad only on his provisional license, his mother didn’t know he’d taken the car, bless her heart. Luckily Mr. Burton saw it all happen and could give the Gardaí an eyewitness report. He’s a good man is Mr. Burton,” she said as she smiled. “Gregory,” she added to me a bit more quietly.
I smiled too.
“He stayed with you all the way into the hospital.”
“My head,” I whispered, the pain suddenly entering my body as though hearing the story had reminded it it needed to do its job.
“Your left arm is broken.” Mum’s glossy lips glistened in the light as they opened and closed. “And your left leg.” Her voice shook lightly. “But apart from that, you’re very lucky.”
It was only then I noticed my arm in a sling and my left leg in a cast and found it amusing that they thought I was lucky even after being hit by a car. I started to laugh but the pain stopped me.
“Oh, yes, and you’ve a cracked rib,” my father added quickly, looking apologetic for the lack of warning.
When they had left, Gregory rapped lightly on the door. He looked more gorgeous than ever with his tired, concerned eyes and messy hair that I could imagine he ruffled as he paced with worry. He always did that.
“Hi.” He smiled walking in and kissed me on the forehead.
“Hi,” I whispered back.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been hit by a bus.”
“Nah, it was only a mini. Stop looking for attention,” he said as a smile tickled the sides of his lips. “You’ve heard the bad news, I assume?”
“That I have to do my final exams orally?” I lifted up the cast covering my left arm. “I think the guards will still accept me,” I said.
“No,” he said seriously and took a seat on the bed. “We lost Henry in the ambulance. I think it’s the oxygen mask that took him out.”
I started laughing but had to stop.
“Oh, shit, sorry.” He immediately stopped joking around at seeing me in pain.
“Thanks for staying with me.”
“Thanks for staying with me,” he replied.
“Well, I did promise.” I smiled. “And I’m not planning on disappearing anywhere anytime soon.”
20
Jack sat on the gravel surface beside what he assumed to be the now abandoned car. His overactive mind contemplated every possible scenario as to where Sandy Shortt was, why her car was in the middle of the trees in an old parking lot, why she hadn’t turned up for their meeting the previous day, and why she hadn’t returned to her car for the entire day. Nothing made sense to him anymore. He hadn’t moved from the car’s vicinity all day. A quick search of the surroundings showed no sign of her or of any other life for that matter. It was late now, the forest area was black, the only lights being those from distant ships out at sea and Glin Castle in the distance behind the tall pines. Jack could barely see past the end of his nose. The blackness of the night was thick and engulfing, yet he was afraid to leave in case he missed her, in case somebody towed the car away, which in turn would take away Donal and all possible traces of him.
The file sat on the dashboard. The mobile phone beside it was the only immediate source of light, flashing every few seconds to signal a dying battery. If Sandy wasn’t going to arrive at her car anytime soon, Jack needed to get his hands on that phone to see her recent call list and, with luck, trace somebody from her phonebook who would help find her. If her battery went dead it was possible he wouldn’t be able to switch it back on without a PIN code.
His own mobile phone rang again: Gloria looking for him, no doubt. It was eleven o’clock and he couldn’t bring himself to answer; he didn’t know what he could possibly say to her. He didn’t want to lie, so lately he had avoided conversation with her altogether, leaving the house before she woke, arriving home after she had fallen asleep. He knew his behavior would most definitely be upsetting her, sweet, patient Gloria, who never nagged as friends of his claimed their partners did. She always gave him the space he needed, and felt secure enough in herself to know that he wouldn’t betray her. But he was; he was betraying her patience now and perhaps even driving her away. Maybe that’s what he wanted. Maybe it wasn’t. All he knew was that Donal’s disappearance had brought an end to talks of family and marriage that had previously seemed so important to him, to them both. Right now he was putting their relationship aside and focusing on finding his missing brother. Somehow he felt that by finding Sandy, he would be one step closer to finding Donal, or perhaps that was just another excuse, another obsession to delay moving on with life, to delay confronting Gloria over a relationship he no longer knew how he felt about.