Page 82 of Whale Harbor

“Annie! Get Dad!”

There came the sound of the phone being set down, low talking, and quick footsteps.

Finally, he was there. “Mary?” Mac said. “Are you all right? What’s going on? Seamus called and said you took Cathal to Galway. He said—”

“Dad,” she interrupted. “I did something.”

“What is it?” Mac asked. He was so afraid that she was going to say someone was dead that when she actually told him he didn’t understand for a moment. He was quiet for so long that she asked if he was still on the line.

Then she heard him searching for a pen and paper. She heard the familiar sound of the kitchen drawer pulled out, the junk space that held pens, paper clips, thumbtacks, batteries, odds and ends.

“Where are you exactly?” he asked.

She told him the name of the motel and the address.

“Now,” he said. “If you think he’s in a bad way, you call 911. Don’t hesitate. Should I call Martin Lee to come to you? He could be there in an hour or two once I get hold of him.”

“No,” Mary said, looking at Cathal, asleep with his mouth open, his eyebrows drawn together as if he was having an upsetting dream. What had she done to him, her poor granda, who taught her that knotting a rope once will make it strong but a second knot will weaken it, a third weaken it more, something that hadn’t made sense to her and still didn’t but she trusted him to know things like that. And now here he was curled up like a relic from another world, asleep on top of the covers in a crappy motel four thousand miles from home.

“It might be that he just needs to sleep.”

“Stay right where you are. I’m coming.”

MARY WASN’T PREGNANT, LILLIE POINTED out. She hadn’t been kidnapped. She hadn’t robbed a bank or stolen a car. She wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t addicted to drugs. She was a good girl who’d hatched a plan with her extremely stubborn grandfather, that was all.

That was one way to look at it, Macdara said. Lillie had called the airlines, had scribbled all the information on the notepad they kept by the phone. A bag yawned open on their bed, and she was throwing Mac’s clothes inside. The next flight to Bozeman was from LaGuardia, but if he missed it the one after that was from Newark.

“You’ll have to hurry,” Lillie said.

“Will you see your brother?” Annie asked. “The other one?”

“We’ll discuss when he gets home,” Lillie said, shushing her. Then to Mac she asked, “Should I call around?”

Meaning should she call his brothers. Meaning should she let them know or find out if one of them wants to join him, either on Mac’s flight or the one after.

“Ah,” he said. “Leave it for now. I’ll call you when I see what the situation is.”

Mac had a passing thought that not only should he get all his brothers on the flight but they should bring their wives and children too. They should all show up at the damp little house Martin had described and overwhelm Rian with sheer numbers so that he couldn’t hide from them even if he wanted to. They’d carry Cathal in as a grand finale.

“Macdara, love,” Lillie said. “Are you ready? If you’re going to make that flight, you have to go.”

“I know,” he said.

“I’d go with you but I have to—”

“No. It’s all right.”

“Look at me,” she said. “If you need me, you call me and I’ll come. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

MAC THOUGHT IT MIGHT FEEL odd to look down from the small airplane window and see the plains and farmland of the Midwest give way to mountains and rivers. He thought it might feel disorienting to stand outside Bozeman airport in the same spot he had almost forty years earlier and take in the same view, only this time greened with summer. But it didn’t feel strange at all. In a different life, this would have been his home.

He found the motel without trouble, and when he arrived, Cathal was sitting on a plastic chair outside, eating a sandwich with a blanket draped over his lap despite the warmth of the evening. Mary had gone out to buy an electric kettle while he was sleeping and she felt proud of herself for remembering to stop for milk, but she forgot to buy a mug so she had to go back out and then back out again to inquire about a walker, which the pharmacy could have shipped but wouldn’t arrive for at least two days. She bought him a new cane with four prongs on the bottom—sturdier than his old one. She’d instructed Cathal to stay in the room while she was gone and showed him the button that would turn on the television, but when she came back from the pharmacy and found him outside she wasn’t surprised. He didn’t seem interested in wandering any farther for the moment. When Mac arrived, she’d gone back out yet again because although they’d landed early that morning and it was now around eight in the evening, she’d forgotten in all these trips to get something to eat for herself.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Cathal said when Mac approached, as casually as if he’d last seen him the day before.

“You don’t look like you’re on death’s door,” Mac said.