Page 35 of Whale Harbor

“No,” Mac said. His head was splitting.

“I’m saying you don’t know him as well as you used to.”

That’s not true, Mac thought, but he didn’t want to argue.

“I understand wanting to be there,” PJ added. “When my mother told me, I had half a mind to go myself.”

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS they made two different trips to the Western Union to speak to someone from home. The first time they couldn’t get a connection but the second time, a day later, the postmistress came on the line and had a kindness in her voice that Mac didn’t remember. And then Barry came on the line. The connection was noisy and his voice sounded distant and muffled. They’d dredged the shallow bodies of water for a body, Barry reported. They’d sent divers around Illeaneeragh and Crow Island, and Coleman and their grandfather had watched them from the rise. But there was so much water—at every turn was a cut—that they couldn’t possibly get to every one of them. The neighbors all went and walked the bogs. It was on the local radio station to be on the lookout. Mac asked if they’d checked the booley house and Barry said they had. They’d checked the other booleys as well, plus every shed and barn in Connemara, or so it felt. Macdara pictured his father twisting his eyebrow.

“How’s Cathal?”

Mac heard a rustle and was afraid the line had disconnected. But then it cleared. “He went tearing up to Conroys because he’s convinced they know something. They fought, Cathal and Rian.”

“Fought over what?”

“The color of the sky, probably. You know those two.”

I do, Mac thought. “And the Conroys. What would they know?”

“Ach,” Barry said, and in that sound were the years Macdara had missed. Too much to explain and catch up on, certainly at the per minute rate they were being charged.

“What do you think yourself?” Mac asked.

“There was a van that left for England around the day we noticed him gone, a couple of Conroys among them, and Rian’s friendly with them. They were taking the ferry over to Holyhead and then to England from there and Cathal thinks maybe they asked him to go along, though why would they? He’d only be a nuisance. My own feeling is he stowed away. Can’t you see it? I bet he tucked himself into the boot of the van and stayed quiet as a mouse. He did it to them once before when they went to Donegal for a game. They didn’t realize until they saw him in the stands, waving at them. I’d say they were talking about England in front of him and he got ideas.”

“He’s not drowned,” Macdara said. “I’d know it in my bones.”

“I’d say you would.”

Silence. The entire price of a horse being shod ticked by.

“Him and Nuala,” Barry said finally. “He never gave her a chance.”

“He was a nine-year-old boy whose mother died while she was making his breakfast.”

“Well, now he’s thirteen and we all lost her, didn’t we? What did Nuala know about children? Nothing. She has the small ones praying for him now.”

“What do they call her? Eamon and Seamus, I mean.”

“Ah, I dunno,” was all Barry said, and with that answer Mac knew they called her what any child calls his mother. She would be the only mother they’d ever remember.

“And Vincent? Do you see him?”

“Oh, he’s fine, doing better than any of us. I seen him not too long ago at the Fair with Rose’s husband.”

“Did he know you?”

“He’s only small, of course. And Cathal wasn’t with me, so I didn’t know if I should say hello. I don’t know what—” Barry sighed. “He has hair that grows heavenward like the rest of us. He looks just like Coleman, actually, except—”

Except without Coleman’s innocent expression was what he didn’t say. Except he was sharp in his mind.

Mac remembered how neatly his mother held Vincent tucked into the crook of her arm the day after he and Rian spent the night in the booley, the morning the village woke up and discovered the whale. Which reminded him.

“How’s the whale?”

“The price of this and that’s what you want to know! He’s grand, I’m sure. I’ll tell him you were asking for him.”

“So what now? What’s the plan?”