False Mermaid

“The effects of GHB wear off as soon as it’s out of your system. There’s no way to prove she wasn’t taking it on her own. And the more I find out about what he did, the worse it gets.” Nora struggled to maintain control. “At first, Peter seemed horrified about the drugs. He told the police he was mystified, that their marriage was rock solid. He couldn’t imagine who had a motive to kill Tríona. But when they kept questioning him—”

“Let me try to help you, Nora. Please.”

“After several interviews, Peter broke down, and started telling stories about coming home from work and finding Tríona asleep, Elizabeth still in her pajamas. He told them that since the prior summer, Tríona had been going out at all hours, coming home with leaves in her hair, strange bruises, and no memory of where she’d been or what happened. He said for months he’d been at his wit’s end, wondering every night whether she’d come home at all. It was lies, Cormac, it had to be. That wasn’t Tríona—it just wasn’t. But he was so convincing—and there was no way to prove it hadn’t happened just as he described. When the police searched the house, they found not just the GHB, but the clothes as well—” She shut her eyes, trying to keep it together. “Tríona’s clothes, all torn and stained with dirt and—”

“What? Nora, tell me.”

She couldn’t speak above a whisper. “Biological substances—blood and semen. From multiple unknown donors, as the crime lab so delicately put it. Peter managed to make it look as if my sister had been neglecting her child, that she’d been going out and getting high, and screwing everything in sight—”

“So a murder could be down to her own risky behavior, and he looks perfectly innocent—”

“Not just innocent—saintly. You have no idea how devious he is. Destroying Tríona’s reputation wasn’t enough. He stole everything from her. She began to doubt who she was. She didn’t even know herself anymore. In her message on the tape, Tríona pointed me to some things she’d hidden away—a datebook, with certain days marked. I thought maybe those were the days she knew she’d been drugged. There were also some bloody clothes, and a whole raft of newspaper articles about a woman who’d gone missing a few weeks before. I think Peter murdered the other woman, and tried to make Tríona believe that she had done it. I think she woke up one morning covered in blood, with no idea what had happened. I think he set it all up, to make her believe she’d done something terrible. And some part of her believed it. She must have felt like she was losing her mind. But she didn’t get rid of the bloody clothes. She hung onto them, hid them away, told me where to find them. She’d been working, saving up money, and she sent Elizabeth away that weekend she was killed. I know she was walking out, Cormac, she was this close—”

“What stopped her?”

“I don’t know. All I know is what she said to me on the phone that night—”

“What did she say, Nora?”

“What I told you once before, that Peter seemed to get some strange pleasure from hurting her. I thought he was hitting her, but it turned out to be far worse than that. And—”

Cormac took her face between his hands. “Tell me, Nora, please.”

“She said that she had done things, too, unspeakable things—that she had lied and deceived everyone. That she had to find out the truth. The last thing she said was: ‘Isn’t it shocking, what you’ll do when you love someone?’”

“Oh, Nora—”

“She doubted herself more than she doubted him. That’s what drove her to the woods that night. It wasn’t the truth about Peter she was looking for, it was the truth about herself. She truly loved him, and he used that to destroy her. He goes on destroying her, in the eyes of her child, the eyes of the world. I can’t let him do it any longer. I won’t.”

“You’ve been carrying this alone, all these years?”

“Only one other person in the world ever knew as much as I’ve just told you.”

“Frank Cordova.”

“He was the only person who took me seriously—do you have any idea what it’s like, to be undermined and disbelieved for so many years? What it means to have one person stand by you? I didn’t mean for it to happen, that night with Frank. It was before I met you, Cormac. I just couldn’t go on—”

Cormac moved closer, but she pushed him away again. “Do you understand? I can’t—what we’ve had these past few months—I don’t deserve it, any of it. I should have listened to Tríona, I should have seen—”

But he moved in again, slowly, gently, folding her body into his. After a few moments, she stopped resisting and her head dropped forward, finally coming to rest against his chest.

Out beyond the harbor at Port na Rón, Ferghal O’Gara hit the switch to reel his nets in for the night. Another pitiful catch. He’d have to give it up, if things didn’t improve. But what would he do? Fishing was all he knew—the tides and banks, maneuvering a boat through rough seas, running the nets, negotiating a price for his catch—but it was all going by the wayside, with the corporate crowd taking everything over.