Page 65 of Whale Harbor

“It’s still there.” Mary looked only to Mac, despite the crowded room. “We poked around in the grass. I think we found its jaw.”

“Yeah?” Mac said, genuinely surprised. He wished he’d seen, and now they were out of time.

ONE MORNING, NOT LONG AFTER they returned to New York, Mac was alone in the kitchen when Mary came in. Lillie had the other two at the mall getting haircuts. Mary usually flitted in and out, busy hatching plans with her friends or else she stayed upstairs in her bedroom with her headphones on, but since Eamon’s funeral and the trip to Ireland she’d been more interested in sitting with them. She didn’t rush off from dinner. She didn’t sigh and leave the room when they entered. She’d just been accepted to the nearby Catholic high school on a full scholarship, and they were caught by surprise. They knew she was bright but they didn’t know she was that bright. She’d tested better than 99 percent of the other students and would start in September. She sat down across from Mac and spread butter on her toast.

“Are you doing okay?” she asked after a while. He was reading the paper and thinking about the week ahead.

“Me?” Mac looked up.

“Do you think about Eamon a lot?”

“I do I suppose. Do you?” He realized they hadn’t been careful about discussing it. Maybe the kids had been listening and were all worried they’d inherited this thing too.

“A little. If you die, will you be buried in Galway or here?”

“I’m not going to die.”

“Ever?” Mary smiled.

“I mean of this. You don’t have to worry. We’re all getting tested.”

“No, I mean eventually. When you’re a hundred and three. I was just wondering where you’ll want to go.”

“I hadn’t thought about it, honestly.”

“Do you consider there your home, or here?”

“My home is wherever you girls and mom are.”

“But to be buried. Permanent. If you had to decide.”

“I’ll be dead. You’re the one who’ll have to decide.”

Mac realized then that he’d always pictured ending up in the same cemetery as his mother and now his brother, but that was silly. If he lived to a great age as he hoped, why would he have them go to the trouble? He’d have lived most of his life in America.

“I was thinking about the fact that he was so much younger than you and you left home when he was so small. I don’t remember anything from when I was three.”

Mac remembered their mother carrying Eamon and he remembered when he was born, when they found out his name, when he stood up one day and they all clapped for him. He remembered him pulling baby Vincent out of the cradle the day their mother died and trying to care for him like he’d seen the adults do. He remembered warming his small feet against his belly that morning on the beach, while they waited for Vincent to be born.

“He was my brother. We came from the same parents. That makes people close.”

“But—” Mary seemed to be searching for the right words. “The other mother raised him, didn’t she? The one whose funeral I went to?”

“She did,” Mac said, studying his daughter closely.

“And you didn’t like her.”

“Why would you say that? I didn’t really know her.”

“But you didn’t like her.”

“I don’t think I ever said that,” Mac said.

“Okay, well, I’m not stupid, Dad.”

“Indeed you are not.”

“Has anyone gone to get tested for this thing yet?”