I am sorry for such a delay. So much has happened in my life in two months. Four months of my senior year in high school and its crazy! Im sorry to neglect you guys, I love this story! Here you are with one of the longest chapters. Enjoy and please leave a review!
As she watched Elliot drive, certain memories pricked at her, nagged at her. She knew it might be months or years before they stopped. The thought, for example, that James might have taken money from her and Julia to give to another family was insupportable, and she could feel her blood pressure rising in the car. Or the fight, she remembered suddenly, that horrible fight for which she'd blamed herself. The gall of him, she thought now, letting her believe her own inadequacies had been the cause, when all along he was having an affair with another woman. Was that what James had been doing on the computer that time? Writing to a lover? Is that why he'd been willing to escalate to hostilities so quickly when he'd asked her if she wanted him to go? Had he been flirting with the idea?
Or the lines of poetry, she thought. Had James relaxed his vigilance and allowed bits of his relationship with Muire Boland to seep into his marriage with Olivia? Had Olivia's life been invaded in ways she'd never noticed? How many books had she read or films had she seen that Muire might have suggested? How much of the Irish woman's life had leached into her own?
Again, Olivia would never know.
Elliot turned off the main road, following the directions they'd been given to the most northwesterly point in Ireland. Astonishingly, the road became even narrower, no wider than her driveway. She wondered as they drove why she had never imagined an affair. How could a woman live with a man all that time and never suspect? It seemed, at the very least, a monumental act of oblivion. But then she thought she knew the answer even as she asked the question: A dedicated adulterer causes no suspicion, she realized, because he truly does not want to be caught.
Olivia had never even thought to suspect; she'd never smelled a trace of another woman, never found a smear of lipstick on the shoulder of a shirt. Even sexually, she'd never guessed. She'd assumed the falling off she and James had experienced was simply the normal course of events with a couple who'd been married for years.
She rolled down her window so that she could breathe the air — a curiously heady mix of sea salt and chlorophyll. The land around her, she realized suddenly, was extraordinary. The texture of the landscape — its rich green hues, its density — gave a feeling of solidity she'd not felt in London. She breathed evenly and deeply for the first time since Muire O'Brien had appeared at the hotel dining-room door.
They entered a village, and would have passed through but for a sight she'd seen before: Only the old fisherman was missing. She told him to slow the car and they stopped. She sat parked along a common ring with shops and homes. She could see where the cameraman must have stood, where the reporter had conducted her interview in front of the hotel. The building was white and smooth and clean. She saw the sign above the door: Malin Hotel. She thought that they should get a room for the night. Their flight back to London didn't leave until the morning. Maybe she ought to get something to eat as well. Elliot stepped out of the car and opened the passenger door, following her into the hotel bar.
It was several minutes before her eyes adjusted enough so that she could make out the scuffed mahogany of the traditional bar. She noted the scarlet drapes, the stools with beige vinyl tops, the dreariness of the room alleviated only somewhat by a fire at one end. Along the walls were banquettes and low tables and perhaps half a dozen people playing cards or reading or drinking beer.
Olivia sat at the bar and ordered a cup of tea. Almost immediately, a woman with blond sculpted hair claimed the stool next to hers. She sat between the woman and Elliot. Olivia turned her head away and examined the signs above the register. Too late, she understood that the people in the bar were reporters.
The woman's face was reflected in the mirror behind the bottles. She was flawlessly made up and looked distinctly American. Their eyes met.
"Can I buy you a drink?" the woman asked, speaking quietly.
Olivia realized immediately that the hushed voice was because the blond didn't want anyone else in the bar to know that Olivia was there.
"No, thank you," Olivia said.
Elliot closed in next to her, attempting to say something until the woman spoke again.
The woman gave her name, the call letters of her network. "We sit in the bar here," she explained. "The relatives sit in the lounge. Occasionally a husband or a father will wander in here and order a drink, but in terms of conversation, we've pretty much exhausted each other. We're all bored. I'm sorry if that sounds callous."
"I imagine even a plane crash can grow tedious," Olivia said.
The bartender set down Olivia's tea and the journalist ordered a half pint of Smithwick's.
"I recognized you from the photographs," the reporter said. "I'm sorry for all that you've had to go through."
"Thank you," Olivia said.
"Most of the bigger networks and news organizations will keep someone in place until the salvage operation is abandoned," the woman said.
Olivia made her tea strong and sweet and stirred it to release the heat.
"Do you mind if I ask why you're here?" the journalist inquired.
Olivia took a tentative sip, making eye contact with Elliot. The woman didn't seem to notice that they were there together.
"I don't mind," she said. "But I can't give you an answer. I don't know why I'm here myself."
She thought about her rage and the gravitational pull, about the newfound knowledge of the morning. About how easy it would be to offer to the blond all she had learned. How excited the reporter would be to have what would undoubtedly be the biggest story of the entire investigation, even bigger than the leak of the tape. And once the story was printed, wouldn't the authorities find Muire O'Brien? Arrest her and send her to jail?
But then Olivia thought about the baby who looked like Julia, about Siobhan.
"It wasn't suicide," she said. "That's all I can tell you."
Robert would have known all along, Olivia thought. He'd have been briefed before he ever came to the house. The union had suspected James and had asked Robert to keep an eye on her. Robert would have watched and waited for some sign that she knew about her husband's activities, could name the other pilots. Robert had used her.
She no longer had any interest in her tea. The urgency to reach her destination had returned. She got up off her stool.
"Look, can we at least talk?" the reporter asked.
"I don't think so," Olivia answered.
"Are you going out to Malin Head?"
Olivia was silent.
"You won't be able to get out to the site. Here."
The blond removed a card from her wallet, turned it over, and wrote a name on it. She handed it to Olivia.
"When you get there, ask for Danny Moore," she said. "He'll take you out there. This is my card. When you're done, if you change your mind, give me a call. I'm staying here. I'll buy you dinner."
Olivia took the card and looked at it. "I hope you get to go home soon," she said.
On her way out of the hotel, as she passed the lounge, Olivia glanced in and saw a woman sitting in an armchair with a newspaper on her lap. The paper hadn't been opened, and the woman wasn't looking at the type. Olivia thought the woman could not see anything at all in front of her, so vacant was her gaze. By a fireplace at the far end of the room, a man with a similar look stood with his hands in his pockets.
She recrossed the common and got into the car with Elliot. She looked again at the card in her hand.
She already knew what she would do. She could not control what actions Robert Shriver might eventually, or even immediately, take. But she could control what she herself would do. Indeed, she felt, in a quiet way, more in control of herself than she had been in years.
To reveal what she knew about the reasons for the plane's explosion would mean that Julia would discover James ' other family. And Julia would never get over that. Of this, Olivia was certain. She ripped the card into pieces and let them fall to the floor of the car.
Knowing her destination was not far, Olivia and Elliot once again followed signs for Malin Head. They passed ruined cottages, no more than toppled stones, the thatched roofs long fallen in and rotted. She saw velvet grass bunched along a cliff — an emerald green even in the dead of winter. On ropes strung from pole to pole, clothes stiffened in the sun, the abstract art of wash on the line. Good drying weather, she thought. As they rounded a corner, the horizon line of the North Atlantic surprised her. In the middle of that horizon line was a dark gray shape, a ship. A helicopter circled overhead. Brightly colored fishing boats hovered near the larger ship, like pups with a mother seal. The salvage boat, she thought.
This, then, was the place where the plane had gone down. Elliot parked the car and allowed her to get out first. Walking as far as she dared toward the edge of the cliff., she saw below her three hundred vertical feet of rock and shale descending to the sea. From such a height, the water looked stationary, a scalloped border on a distant beach. The spray hit the rocks below in star-bursts. A red fishing boat was headed in toward shore. For as far as Olivia could see, the water was a single color, gunmetal blue.
She doubted she had ever seen a more theatrical piece of coastline — raw and deadly, wild. It put a disaster in perspective, she thought, if anything could. There had probably been many disasters here.
She followed the fishing boat with her eyes until it disappeared behind the jutting peninsula that was Malin Head itself. Getting into the the car again, Elliot silent, they drove the narrow road, keeping the boat in sight when she could catch glimpses of it. It pulled into a small harbor formed by a long concrete pier. She made him stop the car and got out. Elliot followed her, going up behind her and handing her his wool coat. The mist from the ocean hit his face, constantly having him to wipe it away.
The boats tethered to the pier were shiny with primary colors — orange, blue, green, and yellow — making her think more of Portuguese vessels than of Irish ones. The boat she'd been watching maneuvered around the pier and then threw out her mooring line. Olivia walked toward the pier. There were uniformed guards at one end, and beyond them groups of men in civilian dress. As she walked, the fisherman aboard the red boat unloaded a piece of silver metal the size of a chair and placed it on the pier, where it immediately captured the attention of the men in civilian dress, who crowded around it. One of the men stood and beckoned to the driver of a truck, which backed onto the pier. The metal shard, presumably a piece of James' plane, was loaded onto the truck.
At the entrance to the pier, a guard stopped her. "Can't go beyond this point, miss."
Perhaps he was a soldier. A policeman. He held a machine gun.
Elliot took a step up, trying to intimidate the man the smallest way he could. Being an off duty cop right now with no gun wouldn't help the situation much.
"I'm a relative, and this is my brother, Elliot." she said, eyeing the gun.
Elliot looked at her oddly, but knew she needed to get past the man.
"Sorry for your loss, Ma'am," the guard said. "There are scheduled trips for the relatives. You can inquire about them at the hotel."
Like a whale watch, Olivia thought. Or a cruise.
"I just need to talk to Danny Moore for a second," Olivia said.
"Oh, well then. That's him there," the guard said, gesturing. "The blue boat."
Olivia murmured a thank you and they walked briskly past the man.
Avoiding eye contact with the officials in civilian dress, who were beginning to notice her, Olivia called out to the fisherman in the blue boat. She saw that he was preparing to leave the pier.
"Wait," she cried.
He was young, with dark hair cut close to the head. He wore a gold earring in his left ear. He had on a sweater that had probably once been ivory colored.
"Are you Danny Moore?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Can you take me out to the site?"
He seemed to hesitate, perhaps also about to tell her of the scheduled trips for relatives.
"I'm the pilot's wife." Olivia said quickly. "I need to see the place where my husband went down. I don't have much time."
The fisherman reached up and took her hand.
He gestured for her and Elliot to sit on a pair of stools in the wheelhouse. Olivia watched as one of the men in civilian dress strode toward the boat. The fisherman untied the mooring, came into the wheelhouse, and gunned the engine.
He said a word she couldn't understand. She leaned forward, but the noise from the engine and the wind made conversation difficult.
The boat, she saw, had been scrubbed clean and bore no signs of fishing. Why fish when there was this task to be performed, this work for which those in charge might pay good money? "I'll pay you," Olivia said, being reminded.
"Ah, no," said the man, looking shyly away. "I don't take money from family."
As soon as the boat rounded the pier, the wind began in earnest. The fisherman smiled slightly when she made eye contact.
"You're from here," Olivia said.
"Yes," he answered, and he again uttered a word Olivia could not make out. She thought it must be the name of the town where he lived.
"Have you been doing this since the beginning?" she shouted. "Since the beginning," he said and looked away. "It's not so bad now, but at first . . ."
She didn't want to think about what it had been like at first. "Pretty boat," she said to change the subject.
"It's grand."
She heard in his accent an uncomfortable reminder of Muire O'Brien.
"Is it yours?" she asked.
"Ah, no. It's my brother's. But we fish together."
"What do you fish for?" Elliot asked, shouting over the engine
The engine made a steady grinding sound through the water. "Crab and lobster," he said.
She stood and turned, facing the bow. Beside her at the wheel, the young man shifted his weight. She teetered some in her shapeless heels. "You fish now, in this cold?" she asked, clutching Elliot's coat around her.
"Yes," he said. "All weathers."
"You go out every day?"
"Ah, no. We'll make away on a Sunday evening and return on the Friday."
"Hard life," she said.
He shrugged. "It's fine weather we're having now," he said. "There's always mist at Malin Head."
As they drew closer to the salvage ship, Olivia observed the other fishing boats engaged in the operation — gaily colored boats, such as the one she was in, boats too festive for their ugly task. On the deck of the salvage boat, divers stood in wet suits. The helicopter continued to hover overhead. The debris, of course, would have gone down over a large area.
Behind the fisherman's head, Olivia noted the shoreline, the cliffs with their shalelike geological exposure. The landscape was gothic in its shape, atmospheric even in the good weather, and she could easily imagine this forbidding landscape in a mist.
"This is the loran reading where they pulled up the cockpit," he said.
"This?" she asked. And began to tremble. For the moment. For the proximity of death.
She left the wheelhouse and walked to the port railing. She peered over the edge at the water, at its surface, constantly shifting, though seemingly still. A person was not who he had been the day before, Olivia thought. Or the day before that.
The water seemed opaque. Overhead, gulls circled. She didn't want to think about why the gulls were there, either.
What had been real? she wondered as she studied the water, trying to find a fixed point, which she couldn't. Had she herself been the pilot's wife or had Muire O'Brien? Muire O'Brien, who had been married in the Catholic Church, who knew of James' mother and his childhood. Muire, who knew of Olivia, whereas Olivia had not known of her.
Or had Olivia been the real wife? The first wife, the one he had protected from the truth, the wife he wouldn't leave?
The more Olivia learned about James — and she had no doubt now that she would learn more, would find, among James' things when they were returned to her, other references to M — the more she would have to rethink the past. As if having to tell a story over and over, each time a little differently because a fact had changed, a detail had altered. And if enough details were altered, or the facts were important enough, perhaps the story veered in a direction very different from its first telling.
The boat rocked from another's wake, and she braced herself on the railing. Elliot stood and came up behind her, putting his hand on her back and taking hold of her arm. James' had been, she thought, only another woman's husband.
She glanced up briefly at the circling helicopter.
James' would have known his fate, she thought. In the last several seconds, he would have known.
He had called out Julia's name at the end, Olivia decided. She would believe that, and it would be true.
Again, she studied the water. How long had the fisherman been circling? She had lost the ability to perceive the passage of time as it was actually unfolding. When, for example, had the future begun? Or the past ended?
She tried to find a fixed point in the water, but couldn't.
Did change invalidate all that had gone before?
Soon she would leave this place and fly home, possibly ask Elliot to stay with her because she hated being alone. Olivia's life was with Julia. There could be no other reality.
She took her wedding ring from her finger and dropped it into the ocean.
She knew that the divers would not find James, that he no longer existed.
"You all right?" Elliot asked, tucking her into his arms. His forehead was creased, and he looked worried.
She smiled briefly at him and nodded.
To be relieved of love, she thought, was to give up a terrible burden.
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