Alright, so much for getting this wrapped up within a year. Still, we press on! No faking the dead for your one in America. Not yet anyway.
Bit of a mopey chapter for me, even if the canon character I've killed off is a very minor one. (Refer back to the battle of the bars for a refresher on McLogan.)
Margaux's latest is a nice constrast, with lots of humour and excitement! I trust you're already reading it.
Father Clifford, now in suit and collar, carried a box of white votives to the heavy main door of St. Luke's, balancing it in the bend of his elbow as he reached for the handle.
"Oh, thank goodness," grumbled Mrs. Stone from the altar guild. "Father Randall took off on a constitutional with a stranger ten minutes ago. We've quite a queue forming. They need you in there."
Peter nodded. "Sad news today."
"Oh, terrible." She patted his arm and accepted the box. "I'll arrange these. Off you go."
BALLYKISSANGEL
Michael had connected once more to the internet stream of the French news, but he couldn't follow it, couldn't stay focused. The sense of overwhelm had left him knackered.
He lapsed into an unrestful kip, disjointed images of war and crisis flooding his brain.
The knock on his door drew him out of a hopeless battlefield surgery.
Niamh's eyes were swollen, red. Her voice was increasingly shrill:
"You know, somewhere in America right now, someone was late for a plane, or an appointment at the Pentagon, or something. And they're saying, 'This is it. This is my chance to start all over. New wife. New best friend. New everything.' But do you know something? They can pretend they blew up. Vapourised. They don't need a doctor to play along and hide them under a sheet!"
She shook him at the shoulders, then drove her sobs into his clean shirt, his silk tie.
"Only weeks ago I transported a dog across the sea!" she wailed, pounding his chest from within the embrace. "A favour for you! How could you do it?! How could you let it happen on your watch when you couldn't even save my stupid anorectic mother?!" The weeping intensified now, interfering with her breathing. She took stilted yawns to compensate. The strength leaked out of her, and she dropped her arms at her sides.
"All right, now," Michael whispered. "Let's talk."
He arranged her on the loveseat and poured a cognac. She acquiesced to both.
"Niamh, your mother might have survived that day only to be a vegetable. And it's remarkable it didn't happen sooner. On autopsy her potassium levels were the lowest I'd seen. That heart attack would have hit a typical patient long before. She was lost by the time I saw her - by the time you saw her.
"But I regret it every day. I regret not getting through to her. Not tricking her into some sort of rehabilitation, somehow.
"With Assumpta, I was a coward. She took a sedative, and my efforts to blow her cover didn't get through. Father Clifford may never forgive me either; I can't blame you if you don't.
"As for Ambrose...he even had me fooled, for a bit. Something must have bunched beneath his arm as we turned him over to check for signs of life. I couldn't find a pulse, at first. I thought of all I'd heard in the weeks before, about him and you and Sean, and I really did suppose he might have given up. When I noticed him breathing, he squeezed my hand, and in that moment I became a coward again.
"I'm sorry, Niamh."
Niamh had emptied her glass. "Some days lately, I've been so tempted. Give them a taste of their own medicine. Let it be completely obvious. I don't care. Let Ambrose and Frankie raise Kieran. Let Sean have something else to mope about. Run away to Rio to be with Daddy. I'm no moral pillar; what would it matter?"
Michael shook his head and paced the room. "Your generation really is one for the books, isn't it? Do any of you ever pause to consider that you might in fact be wanted and needed where you are? Or do you all simply move town?"
Niamh looked up at him. "It's what you're about to do, isn't it?"
Michael dropped his eyes. "How'd you know?"
Niamh nodded to an envelope on the table. "Brought in your post. Médecins Sans Frontières?"
Michael looked away.
"When're you leaving?" she whispered.
"Couple months. Maybe sooner, given what's happened...and what will surely happen. I've been preparing for quite some time.""
Niamh looked betrayed.
"Niamh, I've seen enough bogus weddings and fake funerals in this town. There are places in the third world where those things happen for real, to innocent children. If I can save one baby with iodine deficiency…"
"Or help a child bride disappear?" she realised under her breath.
Michael broke eye contact. "Niamh, I need to redeem myself."
She looked as if she might ask another question, but them simply nodded. "I'd better go. Kieran's still with Brendan."
She patted his shoulder once on her way out.
Brendan was indeed still with Kieran, and now thanks to Frankie and Ambrose he also had Aisling to look after. Siobhan hadn't answered her mobile. He didn't really want to think about why.
The rest of the children had gradually trickled out, so he'd turned off the television and beckoned his own charges back to his office.
It wasn't enough to get Kieran's mind off things.
"Why did it happen, Mr. Kearney?"
"Well, no one's quite sure yet, Kieran."
"I thought teachers knew everything."
Brendan sighed. "Definitely not, I'm afraid."
"What about priests?"
"No, indeed."
"Does anybody know everything?"
"No. Some people know a whole awful lot, but no one knows it all."
"What about God?"
"Well, you'll need to talk to your mother about that one, okay? Or Father Sheahan."
"What about Father Clifford?"
Brendan's head had begun to throb. He found himself grateful for his daughter's continued silence, but it was a shallow gratitude that carried guilt along with it.
CILLDARGAN
Superintendent Foley looked across his desk at the most diligent subordinate he'd known in his career - and at her predecessor, the second-most diligent. He couldn't make up his mind whether he'd been horribly duped three years ago, or just delivered a gift now.
"The world is changing," he said softly. "We have to change with it."
Ambrose's Adam's apple bobbed. Frankie pushed at her cuticles.
"Garda Sullivan, we need more like you among the ranks. Mr. Egan…" the superintendent inhaled and lowered his eyes. "We need you back."
Ambrose's nostrils flared. "I'm a criminal, sir. A fugitive."
"With three years' acting experience. And no one would ever believe we'd hire you back as a detective."
The blue eyes blinked twice. Three times. "Undercover work."
"Of a kind."
"Sir, I don't know-"
Foley pushed a manila envelope across the desk. "Details within. You've a great incentive to consider my offer."
The younger man nodded. The woman's eyes went wide as she came to recognise the threat.
Outside, Frankie kept a steady eye on her surroundings as they made their way back to the carpark. "You must be terribly tempted."
"Conflicted," Ambrose corrected her.
"You're a natural born detective, Ambrose."
It was a few moments' silence as they got back in the car.
"I thought of becoming a private investigator for time, back in England," he finally admitted as he pulled on his seatbelt.
"What, catching philanderers in the act and whatnot?"
He nodded.
"What stopped you?" she said, turning the key.
He looked straight ahead. "In my experience, married people don't really want to know if their spouse is cheating. They only think they'll want to know."
Passing McLogan's on their way out of town, Frankie noticed the electric signs had all been put off.
Inside McLogan's, a barman cupped the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered to his colleague, "They've confirmed it. It was the flight Aloysius was on."
"Our own boss."
"Indeed."
The colleague nodded, her eyes dropping, her mouth numbly half-open. "What's this mean to all of us?"
"Dunno. He'd relatives overseas."
"But no family in the country."
"None I knew of, anyway."
"No, you're right." The young woman watched the last of their customers clear out and liberated her flaxen ponytail. Turning off the television had indeed done the job. She looked back at her coworker now. "He did have a lady-friend, years ago."
"At his age?"
She cracked a tiny smile. "She wasn't his age."
"Oh." The penny dropped. "Oh!"
"I mean, not young, but not…"
"Hah."
"One day he stopped bringing her round. Never dared ask him why."
MANCHESTER
Father Randall smiled down at the setter as they rounded another corner, wondering if the dog was accustomed to so much talk from his mistress. It seemed to be the case.
The Irishwoman carried on. "Father, where I come from, these sort of acts are always the result of some zealot deciding his view of the world is the only worthwhile one."
"Not always in the name of God, Miss."
"No, Father, but you lot don't tell us to worship money."
"There're a few in the Vatican who might," Miles heard himself say.
The woman turned to him now with a wide-eyed stare, then an incredulous laugh.
"Sorry," he went on. "Sometimes we lot can confide in a sceptic in ways we can't confide in a sheep." Pausing for a Pelican crossing, he knelt to pet the dog. Rising again, he looked back at the woman. Something in her brow had softened. Time to move in for the goal: "That's why you're here, isn't it?"
"No," she breathed. "He, er...he doesn't know I'm here."
"Well, then." They had returned to the front of the church now. He nodded up the walkway. "This ought to be good."