threw crazy shadows on the unpaved road. The place looked like Pompeii, like some archaeological discovery preserved to let tourists wander through it-openmouthed and neck-craning, trying to picture the disaster that had wiped it bare of life-for a brief few years, until it collapsed to dust, until anthills grew up in the middle of kitchen floors and ivy twined around light fixtures.
I closed Emma’s door behind me, gently. On the landing floor, next to a coil of power cable running into the bathroom, Richie’s precious video camera pointed up at the attic hatch and blinked a tiny red eye to show that it was recording. A little gray spider had already built a hammock of web between the camera and the wall.
Up in the attic, the wind poured in at the hole under the eaves with a high fluttering wail like a fox or a banshee. I squinted up into the open hatch. For an instant I thought I saw something move-a shifting and coalescing of the black, a deliberate muscled ripple-but when I blinked, there was only darkness and the flood of cold air.
The next day, once the case was closed, I would send Richie’s tech back out to collect the camera, inspect every frame of the footage and write me a report in triplicate about anything he saw. There was no reason why I shouldn’t have flipped up the little built-in monitor and fast-forwarded through the footage myself, kneeling there on the landing, but I didn’t do it. I already knew there was nothing there.
Fiona was leaning against the passenger door, staring blankly at the skeleton house where we had talked to her that first day, with a cigarette sending up a thin thread of smoke between her fingers. As I reached her she threw the cigarette into a pothole half full of murky water.
“Here are your sister’s things,” I said, holding up the bin-liner. “Are these what you had in mind, or would you like anything different?”
“That stuff’s fine. Thanks.”
She hadn’t even glanced over. For a dizzy second I thought she had changed her mind. I said, “Are you all right?”
Fiona said, “Looking at the house reminded me. The day we found them-Jenny and Pat and the kids-I picked this up.”
She brought her hand out of her pocket, curled as if she were holding something. I held out my palm, cupped close around the bracelet to shield it from watchers and from the wind, and she opened her empty one above it.
I said, “You should touch it, just in case.”
She clasped her hand around the bracelet, tight, for a moment. Even through my gloves, I could feel the cold of her fingers.
I said, “Where did you get this?”
“When the policemen went in the house, that morning, I followed them. I wanted to know what was going on. I saw this at the bottom of the stairs, like right up against the bottom stair. I picked it up-Jenny wouldn’t want it getting kicked around the floor. I put it in my coat pocket. There’s a hole in my pocket; this went down into the lining. I forgot about it, till now.”
Her voice was thin and flat; the ceaseless roar of the wind scudded it away, into the raw concrete and rusted metal. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll look into it.”
I went round to the driver’s side and opened the door. Fiona didn’t move. It wasn’t until I had put the bracelet into an evidence envelope, labeled it carefully and tucked it into my coat pocket that she straightened up and got into the car. She still didn’t look at me.
I started the car and drove us out of Broken Harbor, maneuvering around the potholes and the straggles of wire, with the wind still slamming against the windows like a wrecking ball. It was that easy.
The caravan site was farther up the beach than the Spains’ house, maybe a hundred yards to the north. When Richie and I had walked through the dark to Conor Brennan’s hide, and back again with him between us and our case all solved, we had probably crossed over the spot where my family’s caravan used to stand.
The last time I saw my mother was outside that caravan, on our last evening at Broken Harbor. My family had gone up to Whelan’s for a big farewell dinner; I had made myself a couple of quick ham sandwiches in our kitchenette and I was getting ready to go out, to meet the gang down at the beach. We had flagons of cider and packets of cigarettes stashed in the sand dunes, flagged by blue plastic bags tied in the marram grass; someone was going to bring a guitar; my parents had said I could stay out till midnight. The smell of Lynx Musk deodorant hanging in the caravan, the low rich light through the windows hitting the mirror so that I had to duck sideways to gel my hair into careful spikes; Geri’s case open and already half packed on her bunk, Dina’s little white hat and sunglasses thrown on hers. Somewhere kids were laughing and a mother was calling them in to dinner; a faraway radio was playing “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” and I sang along, under my breath in my new deep voice, and thought of the way Amelia pushed back her hair.
Jeans jacket on, running down the caravan steps, and then I stopped. My mother was sitting outside, in one of the little folding chairs, her head tilted back to watch the sky turning peach and gold. Her nose was sunburned and her soft fair hair was falling out of its bun from a day of lying in the sun, building sand castles with Dina, walking by the waterline hand in hand with my father. The hem of her long skirt, pale-blue cotton dotted with white flowers, lifted and swirled in the breeze.
I shot a token glance at the sky.
I should have known. But she had seemed so happy, all those two weeks. She was always happy at Broken Harbor. Those were the only two weeks of the year when I could be just a normal guy: nothing to guard against except saying something stupid in front of the lads, no secrets prowling the back of my mind except the thoughts of Amelia that turned me red at all the wrong moments, nothing to watch for except big Dean Gorry who fancied her too. I had relaxed into it. All year long, I had watched and worked so hard; I thought I deserved this. I had forgotten that God, or the world, or whatever carves the rules in stone, doesn’t give you time off for good behavior.
I sat on the edge of the other chair and tried not to jiggle. Mum leaned back and sighed, a contented, dreamy sound.
She didn’t notice.
