False Mermaid

“Your sweatshirt. It’s from Galliard College, in Maine.”

“Is it?” He opened his coat wider and she saw the full word, just as she had suspected. Harry Shaughnessy was walking around in a sweatshirt from the college where Marc Staunton and Peter Hallett had become friends, where the trajectory of her sister’s life—all their lives—had been altered. Nora found it impossible to keep her eyes off the dark stain. Its color seemed unmistakable when exposed to bright daylight.

“You don’t see many people with sweatshirts from Galliard around here. My fiancé went to school there.” The tiny voice in her head made the necessary red-pencil correction. Ex-fiancé.

Harry Shaughnessy glanced at the hot dog sitting untouched on Nora’s lap, and his face changed in an instant, befuddlement retreating behind a sudden, hard wave of paranoia and suspicion. He pulled his coat closer, despite the afternoon’s oppressive heat. “What do you want?”

She had no choice but to tell the truth. “I need a better look at your sweatshirt. I can explain everything—please, it’s very important.” She put out her hand—a mistake. Shaughnessy was off like a shot, cutting in front of the pack of preschoolers, so that when Nora gave chase she got caught in the line and pulled several of the children to their knees, frightened and wailing.

She shouted after him: “Mr. Shaughnessy—wait, please!” Apologizing as she extracted herself from the preschoolers, she beat a path to the corner. But Harry Shaughnessy was already more than a block away. All she could do was watch as he rounded the corner and disappeared from view. She stopped to catch her breath, holding on to the arm of a bench.

“Might as well give up, girlie,” said a strange voice beside her. Nora glanced up. The speaker was a rail-thin crone dressed in a billowing powder-blue evening gown with a satin sash embroidered in flowing metallic script: “Princess of the North Star—1974.”

“Nope,” the princess muttered, her mouth a wry twist. “Nobody can catch ol’ Harry when he don’t want to get caught.”

“I just wanted to talk to him.”

“Well, it sure looks like he don’t want to talk to you.” The beauty queen eyed her suspiciously. “You a cop? You don’t look like a cop.”

“No, I’m not. Do you know Harry Shaughnessy?”

“Sure. Who don’t know Harry?”

“Do you know where I might find him?”

“I might. But I sure could use some smokes—they always help my concentration.” She tapped a wizened finger against her temple, and Nora finally realized what the woman was asking. She dug in her pocket and brought out a twenty-dollar bill. “Please, just tell me where to find him.”

“Hold your horses, hold your horses—” The princess made an elaborate production of slipping the twenty into a secret place within the folds of her sagging bosom. “He’ll be at the camp down below the old power plant. Sooner or later. Same as me.”

12

Cormac emerged into the corridor outside Casualty after his second meeting with the doctors. He sat down on one of the hard chairs along the hallway, and Roz came and sat beside him. “Any news?”

“They’re keeping him sedated until the swelling subsides. We probably won’t know anything until tomorrow at the earliest.” It was nearly ten o’clock in the evening now, and they’d been at the hospital all day. Cormac was still in his rowing gear. Roz looked worn out. “You should go back to the house, try to get some sleep,” he said. “I’ll stay.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“All right then, tell me more about this Mary Heaney case. How did the locals take to having a selkie in their midst?”

“Well, at first they were a bit leery, naturally—but I suppose they got used to her, in a way. The stories began to take on a life of their own. There were reports of her going up to the headland above the village while Heaney was out fishing. She’d sit there for hours, just staring out to sea. I think I mentioned that people heard her singing in a strange language. Some said that seals swam up onto the rocks when they heard her voice.”

“And all of that played into the rumors, I suppose.”

“How could it not? People began to believe that Heaney had some sort of power over her.” Roz paused for a moment, and looked at him. “You don’t have to pretend, you know. To be interested, for my sake.”

“I’m not pretending, Roz. I genuinely want to know. Where did the stories come from, do you suppose?”