Kendra blinks in surprise. And Aislyn’s father—who normally hates being called Matt—laughs and companionably whacks Conall again. “Trying to sweet-talk my wife, huh? What the hell, you.” Just like that, everything’s laughs again.
Aislyn looks at Kendra, without quite intending to. She’s learned over the years that she and her mother cannot appear to be allied, even if they are. But Kendra seems just as puzzled by the whole situation. She goes off to make up the guest bed, and Aislyn decides to beat a retreat as well.
Just before Aislyn completes her turn away, however, a flicker of movement snags her attention. She jumps and looks back sharply, frowning. Conall and her father have returned their attention to whatever’s on the tablet, and they’ve dropped their voices to continue talking. Just like best friends. All very abnormally normal. What was that movement, though?
There. On the back of Conall’s neck. Something long and thin and white sticks up from somewhere around the sixth or seventh cervical vertebra, and just above his crisp shirt collar. One of those weird little tendrils that the Woman in White kept putting on people and objects.
Conall glances up again, and raises his eyebrows at her stare. “Something wrong?”
“Nothing,” Aislyn blurts, and then she nods something farewell-like before hurrying upstairs to her room.
By 3:00 a.m. it’s clear to Aislyn that she’s not going to get any sleep. As she’s done with previous bouts of insomnia, she gets up and heads into the backyard. There’s nothing here but the family pool, which her father installed ten years ago, and which Aislyn’s swum in maybe twice. (It isn’t that she doesn’t like swimming. It’s that she can’t stand the fear that someone might be ogling her in her swimsuit—even though there’s a twelve-foot wooden privacy fence around the entire backyard. It’s not rational, but neither is her fear of the Staten Island Ferry.)
But even though the pool is useless for swimming, it’s not bad for meditating—if moping beside a pool while clad in jammies and her favorite Danny the Dolphin plush slippers qualifies as meditation. This time, however, she’s been out there for about five minutes, mournfully contemplating the distant, increasingly desperate call of the city, when something shifts beside her. She jumps and whirls to find her father’s houseguest Conall sitting in a poolside lounger not five feet away.
He’s been there the whole time, Aislyn realizes with some chagrin; she was just so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice. He’s muzzy-faced as he yawns now and blinks at her, and there are lines from the lounger’s straps on one cheek; he must have been asleep. There’s dried drool on one side of his mouth. Aislyn doesn’t laugh at this because she’s also a little appalled to see that he’s wearing nothing but a pair of her father’s old pajama pants. He’s double-tied them, but they’re still tentlike on him. As he’s without a shirt, she sees now that he also sports a farmer’s tan and a series of additional tattoos across his chest and belly that are a lot less ambiguous than the ones on his arms. One’s an older, nicely done Irish trinity knot over which the number 14, and a separate 88, have been etched in jagged, more amateurish lines. She remembers reading something about those numbers, and though she can’t recall what they’re supposed to mean exactly, she doesn’t think it’s anything good. A couple of the tats are semi-comprehensible outlines of what look like Norse gods? They’re very muscular. Part of Aislyn is mildly offended by the conflation of Nordic stuff with Celtic, because the Vikings were invaders—but it is the tattoo on his left pectoral that makes her tense up. There, right over his heart, is a thickly etched swastika. So maybe this isn’t really the time to quibble over mixed mythological metaphors.
Conall chuckles. “Well, you haven’t run screaming. Your dad did say you were a true daughter of the isle.”
“What’s Ireland got to do with…” Aislyn gestures at the swastika.
“Just that there aren’t enough girls like you out there making the right choices.” He reaches down, and belatedly Aislyn sees the bottles next to the lounger. Her father’s favorite beer brand. In addition to this, there’s a metal flask surrounded by several airplane-sized bottles of harder liquor. All appear empty. Aislyn cannot see the white tendril on his neck from here. Can the Woman in White watch her through it? Is she part of him, somehow? Aislyn is groping for a way to ask, Did she tell you her name, too? when Conall sets the bottle down and says, “Ever fucked a Black guy?”
“Wh—” Her thoughts freeze. The question doesn’t make sense on any level—that he would ask such a thing of a stranger, that he would ask it of her of all people, that he would ask it of a supposed friend’s daughter, that he would put that string of words together in that order. “What?”
“You know. Ever took a swing on the old jungle gym? Or made the beast with a wet back?” Then he laughs at her face. As if it’s the funniest thing in the world.
“I’m just saying,” he continues, “if your father’s trying so hard to set you up with me—which he is—I should know what kind of goods I’m buying, right? I mean, you’re a pretty girl, but you’re from Staten Island.” He grins as if this is supposed to mean something in particular. “I’m just asking who’s, uh, stretched you out. Broken you in.”
His eyes rove her body while he talks. Aislyn suddenly feels that her worn, oversized T-shirt and faded dolphin pajama pants are the height of indecency. She should have put on a robe. That’s why he’s talking to her like this, because she’s dressed like a whore. She should have—
He laughs again, and this time it’s lazy and friendly. “Calm down, calm down, I’m just fucking with you. I tried to tell your dad that you weren’t really my type, buuuuut…” He picks up the flask, which is open, and swigs from it, then grimaces as if its contents have burned his throat going down.
She needs to leave. He’s gross, and drunk. But the words are actually starting to anger her, now that her shock has given way to comprehension. She is here in her own home, he is a guest, and he speaks to her like this? “I’m definitely not your type,” she says. Then she turns her back on him—but does not leave, because she refuses to look like she’s fleeing from him, even if she wants to.
He snickers. It’s infuriating. “Aww, hey, hey, Aise, I’m sorry. Friends, okay? Let’s be friends. Hey, I wanna show you something.” When she deliberately does not turn, he shifts a little, making the lounger scrape the concrete. At this, she jumps and whirls because some part of her is abruptly afraid that he’s going to get up and… What? Now she’s being irrational. Her father is a cop, and a shout away; Conall wouldn’t dare. But Conall is still in the lounger. He’s sprawled out more, in fact, spreading his legs and planting his feet on the pool deck, and… and that isn’t a bottle tenting his pants. Aislyn flinches and starts walking away, hotfaced and disgusted.
Conall catches her hand as she goes past, to her astonishment. “Sure you wanna go?”
“Let go of me,” she snarls.
“Look, Aise,” he says. He’s dropped his voice into something low and persuasive. “We both know you’ll die in this house if some guy doesn’t marry you away.”