He’s finished. I need one more thing, though.
“Did the necklace and the scarf come off when you were on the ground?” I ask him.
“No. I … I found the scarf later. And her ID. I put it in the, the second grave. I didn’t see the necklace. Later, when you told me you found it, I realized.”
“She dropped them for me,” I tell him. “She dropped them as a message to me.”
“What…?” He’s done with his story. He’s drained now. In just a second he’ll realize what he’s done. He’ll get angry. Scared. I have to be ready.
“The scarf. I gave it to her. It was a message. And the ID. She was trying to tell me to pay attention. Father Anthony gave her the necklace. He knew about what happened. I think she told him the night we found her at that house. She told him. And he was willing to testify. He was willing to report it. He wrote a statement, acknowledging what happened. He gave it to her. She hid it in the box with the necklace. She was telling me to look there, but I was … I didn’t realize. When I found the necklace. She was telling me to go look in the box. His letter told me everything. It told me about Frank.”
Brian looks up. In the low light, his eyes are dark and empty.
Footsteps.
I keep eye contact with him. Very slowly, he moves his hand out from behind his leg and that’s when I see it; my Glock. He’s gotten it from the gun safe.
“Dad?” Lilly’s standing there on the stairs in her pajamas.
“Hi, Lil,” I call up, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. “I just got home.”
“Mom!” She starts to run down the stairs, but then she sees my face. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, Lil. Please go upstairs, okay? To your room. I’ll be right there.”
She stares at me for a minute, trying to figure it out. She knows something’s wrong. “Dad? Is everyone okay? Is Uncle Danny…?”
Before I can stop him, he’s up the stairs. He gasps, then makes a low moaning sound. He hugs Lilly, then takes her face in his hands. He says, “Lil, I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. You’re the best, best thing, Lil. The only good thing that I ever did. Never forget that.” I hear the Glock clatter to the floor and then he’s gone. I can hear his feet pounding on the kitchen floor.
“Call 911!” I scream at Lilly as I race after him. “Tell them I need at least two units and an ambulance.”
* * *
I know where he’s going.
I sprint the length of Bay Street, taking a shortcut through a backyard down toward the water. The pavilion looks sinister, looming in the tiny bit of moonlight. I sprint through, past the swing set and the lifeguard station and stand there, searching the beach in front of me, but I can’t see him until I do, a bobbing head out past the floats. I kick off my shoes and wade into the water. It’s still cold and I can feel numbness climb up my legs.
But I strike out, swimming straight for him, keeping an eye on the beach so I don’t get too far over. I can see him ahead of me. I’m closing in.
“Brian,” I call out. “Come back to the beach!” But he keeps swimming, straight out, toward Connecticut. He’s a good swimmer and I can see his arms breaking the water, hear the little splashes. I’m a good swimmer, too, though, and I’m closing the distance.
And then he goes under for a minute. I don’t see him at all. His head reappears, but only the top of it. We’re pretty far out.
“Brian!” And then I feel him there, next to me, the weight of him.
He thought he could keep going, thought he could just slowly sink under the water. But now his survival instinct is kicking in and he’s panicking as his body tires. He’s grabbing for me, trying to use me as a float and I remember my lifeguard training. I’ve got to get him to calm down, to let me tow him back to the beach.
“Brian, let me help you,” I shout at him, but he goes under again.
I dive, my hands out in front of me, feeling for him under the dark water, but he’s not there.
It’s only when I turn that my leg slams into something solid and I dive toward it, pushing him, pulling him up to the surface.
I get my arm around his neck and start swimming. It’s slow going. He’s so heavy, and though he’s stopped flailing, it feels like he’s working against me.
I drag him up on the sand, my back screaming at me. I’m soaked and just starting to feel the cold. But I get on top of him, pinning him down and I grab him by the ears and I hold him and even though the words mean nothing, even though I have no jurisdiction in this, I say, “Brian Giancarlo Lombardi, I place you under arrest for the murders of Erin Flaherty and Katerina Greiner. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
But he doesn’t say anything. His eyes are open. His body is limp on the sand.
Then she was quiet.
The sirens wail from up on Bay Road. I brush his hair away from his eyes and I lie down with my head on his chest to wait.
The morning he moves out, Brian and I lie on our bed one last time, staring at the picture on the bureau of Lilly as a baby. We’ve been talking about separating all night, yelling and accusing each other of things, fighting against it. And then I say, “I think you should move out for a bit,” and he says, “Okay,” and there’s nothing left and we lie there, embracing because it’s over.
“It was Erin,” he says after a long time. “That’s when it started to go wrong. It was always going to go wrong.”
I don’t understand what he means. I think he means it was Ireland, that it was always going to wrong once I’d been to Ireland, because of Conor, because I couldn’t love Brian when I already loved Conor.
After he leaves, I get under the covers and I cry, trying not to wake up Lilly in her room next door. And the bed feels so big and empty and I think of Erin, and the way she would drape an arm over me while she slept, the smell of her, her warm hand clutching mine.
And I long for her. I cry for the end of my marriage, for the failure of it, for everything it means, but I cry, too, for Erin. And I remember what she whispered to me the night my mom died.
“She’s not gone,” she said. “Can’t you feel her, Maggie? Can’t you feel that she’s here?” And I say that I can, that her love is like a cloud, always there, drifting in and out of sight.
“I used to think,” she said, “that because my mom left, it meant she didn’t love me. But I think maybe her love has been here all that time, even if she couldn’t be.”
She smoothed my hair from my forehead and I let the tears come and she held me tight and I could hear her breathing slow and even but still she held on to me, all through that night.
50
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2,
2016
Roly and I get the carvery lunch at the hotel in Glenmalure.
We eat well, roast beef and potatoes. A pint each since we have time to walk them off.
When we’re done, we hike up into the woods and then out onto the broad boggy expanse of the Mullacor Saddle.
“Nice shoes,” I tell him when we stop to look out across the mountains.
He looks down at the shiny leather hiking boots. “Thanks, D’arcy. Laura picked them up for me. You know, it’s really not good for the wingtips to be immersing them in mud all the time, sure it’s not.”