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Diarmuid

 

 

 

I pulled up to the sidewalk in front of Saoirse’s apartment that Monday morning with a smile on my face, despite the fact that Ava and I had had yet another fight.

I didn’t like to play favourites with my kids but Saoirse was, although I’d never tell her. Her company gave me a sense of lightness. A sense of rightness. Of peace.

Saoirse trudged towards me with her head down against the light drizzle.

“Well, hey, sunshine,” I said.

She said nothing.

I helped her into the truck, but she slammed the door shut. Strange. She was in a right mood this morning.

I slid into the driver’s seat as she dropped her backpack into the space at her feet, her old crappy school bag with one arm strap broken and the other one frayed to hell.

“Weren’t you going to get a new backpack this weekend?” I asked.

She had told me at her party that’s the first thing she was going to buy with the birthday money I gave her.

She slumped in her seat and stared out of the window, saying nothing.

“How was your weekend?” I tried again.

Still nothing.

She was silent at breakfast, only eating half of her usual amount, pushing the rest of it around her plate. I studied her as discreetly as I could. She was pissed off about something, that much I could tell. Whatever was eating her, I was not going to pull it out of her. I had to give her space to open up to me.

She was in an even worse mood when I helped her into the truck that afternoon after school. Her brows furrowed into a V over her pale green eyes. She slammed the door behind her so it rattled in its frame.

“Careful there,” I teased lightly when I’d gotten in the driver’s seat. I rubbed my hand along the dashboard of the truck. “She’s a fragile old girl, and you don’t know your own strength.”

Saoirse burst into tears, covering her face with her hands and pulling her knobby knees to her chest.

Oh fuck.

“What’s wrong?” I tried, my heart tearing into pieces with every sob.

She just kept crying, her tears a language I had no chance of reading, slipping through her fingers like braille.

What was wrong? What was wrong, for fuck’s sake? If she would just tell me. Whatever it was. I could fix it. She just had to tell me what was wrong. It was all I could do not to shake the problem out of her.

“Saoirse. Tell me, goddammit,” I growled. I didn’t mean to sound so gruff, so harsh. But a brute such as me was never made to soothe gentle creatures.

She just sobbed harder, her body shaking in the seat.

Fuck.

I felt utterly helpless. Useless. A failure.

What the hell was I supposed to do now? I had no experience with crying girls. None. I tore at my hair.

“Please,” I begged, desperation clouding my voice, coating my voice box, “tell me what to do. How do I make it better?”

To my surprise she turned her body towards me and reached out to me with her arms. She hardly ever instigated touch between us.

My chest constricted. She was reaching for me now.

I slid my arms around her gently, picked her up and placed her, still curled in a ball, on my lap. She wrapped her arms around my neck and cried into my shirt, her tears soaking the fabric, her body shaking in my arms like a broken bird.

I would kill the person who hurt her. So help me God.

I reached out and gingerly stroked her hair, which was as soft as down.

I was grasping at straws now, desperate for a way to calm her. I suddenly remembered how my mother used to calm me when I was very, very young.

Eveline Brennan.

I never let myself think of her. It was always too painful, the wind still echoing across the gaping hole that she left in my heart when she died. But the pain was worth it now.

I did what my ma did, copying the ghost of her in my memories. I ran my hand across Saoirse’s hair and over her back, her tiny body like a doll made of twigs.

I began to speak in a low voice, barely a whisper, just for her.

“Once upon a time, on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, there lived a fisherman by the name of Kagan. He had good friends and a nice little house. He always brought back just enough catch to sell at the markets. But at night when the wind howled its ancient song over the dark sea, he was lonely, for he had no family, his parents having died suddenly many years earlier.”

Perhaps it was me, but I could swear that Saoirse’s sobs were growing farther and farther apart. I kept going, bolstered by this tiny sign that perhaps she was calming.

“One day when Kagan was out fishing, he spotted what looked like a woman’s head bobbing up and down upon the waves. He ran to the front of the boat to get a better look, but the creature was already swimming away. He could only catch glimpses of the silvery tail of what looked like a seal. He followed it until he lost sight of it, ending up in a part of the ocean he’d not been before.

“Before he could turn back, his lines began to tug frantically. When he pulled back his net, he found the largest, fattest fish he’d ever caught, enough that he’d earn what’d usually take him a week! He turned back to the ocean, searching for the seal-creature to thank her, for he knew she had led him there. But he could not see her.”

Saoirse’s breathing had slowed, her sobs fading. I could feel her listening intently to me, her body alert.

It was working.

Thank you, Ma, I sent up to her.

I continued, “When Kagan returned to his small bay near his hut and pulled his boat onto the shore, he found a woman, naked, lying on the beach. He ran to her, praying she was alive. He flung himself at her side and pressed his fingers to her slender neck and to her lips. Thank God. There was a pulse. She was breathing.

“She opened her eyes and he was caught in her stare, a stare so hypnotising that he knew he’d never be let go. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Long blonde hair, eyes like the greeny-blue waters off Galway Bay. And her name…was Saoirse.”

Saoirse lifted her chin to peer at me through her wet lashes. There she was.

I smiled. “He fell in love with her radiant smile and her tender heart. He married her in a small ceremony by the sea. Little did he know that he had married a selkie.”

She sniffed. “What’s a selkie?”

“You’ve never heard of a selkie?”

She shook her head.

“It’s an old Irish legend. A selkie is a seal who can take off their seal skin to become a man or woman. They can live as a human for many happy years but will stare longingly to the sea. Once they return to their seal form, they can never become human again. They say,” I leaned in closer as if to share a secret with her, “that if a man takes a female selkie’s skin, then she is in his power and is forced to become his wife.”

Her fingers curled into my shirt. “You’ve got my skin,” she whispered.

My heart melted. I felt her slipping deep into the recesses of the iceberg that had been my heart. I knew I’d never get her out.

“And you’ve got mine, my little selkie,” I promised.

The last of her frown dissolved. Even edged in tears, her tiny smile reached into my chest and squeezed. This little girl held my battered heart in her tiny hands. I wondered if she knew how much power she had over me in that moment.

“Then what happened?” she asked, nudging me.

“Kagan and Saoirse lived happily and in love for many years…until…” I trailed off.

I remembered my mother’s smile fading when she told me the ending.

“Until?”

I shook myself. “It’s a sad ending. Maybe for another day.”

Saoirse snorted. “I can take it, Diarmuid. Tell me.”

I looked down at this fragile girl-woman. She didn’t deserve to be patronised, which is what I’d done. She deserved to hear this ending, no matter how sad it was.

I nodded. “One day, when it was almost winter, when it was too late in the year, Kagan set out to fish despite his wife’s pleading with him not to go. He was trapped out at sea in a fierce storm, unable to find his way home. His wife shifted into her seal form and swam out to find him.

“Kagan, huddled and freezing in his boat, was clutching on for dear life and praying. He spotted the familiar silvery form in the water, and he knew it was the seal-woman from before. The seal-woman kept waving at him but Kagan couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. Did she want him to rescue her? Was he to jump into the ocean to her?

“Finally, overcome with desperation, Kagan threw over a rope to the seal, hoping she would catch it so he could pull her in. The seal-woman grabbed the rope and began to tug his boat. On and on she swam, through the violent waves and the howling winds and the whipping rain. On and on, until the boat reached the safety of a cove. Kagan tumbled out of the boat, scrambling for the shore. He spotted the seal-woman out in the waves and waved his thanks, before running home, thanking God that he’d been saved.

“But when he burst into his hut, Saoirse was gone. That’s when he knew what she was and what she’d done. She’d sacrificed her happy life as his wife to save his life.”

Silence descended in the cab of my truck. I tucked Saoirse in tighter against me. She rubbed her tiny fingers across my chest as if she was consoling me, not the other way around.

The end of this story had always made me sad. I wasn’t sure why I even liked it so much.

Perhaps this was what I’d always been looking for: a love worth sacrificing for.

Saoirse mumbled something, snapping me out of my morose thoughts.

“What was that, honey?” I asked softly.

Saoirse pulled her face back, her eyes rimmed with red, her nose wet. Her lip trembled and I knew she was on the verge of crying again. “S-she took my money. Y-your present.”

What? Fury rose in me and crystallised into an arrow. It just needed a target. Who the fuck would dare steal a birthday present from a fourteen-year-old girl?

I would get to the bottom of this. I would make it right. But first…

I leaned over, being careful not to jostle her, and pulled a tissue out of the glove box. I handed it to her and she wiped her face and blew her nose.

“Who took it?” I asked, trying hard not to let the venom into my voice, unsure if I succeeded. I didn’t want Saoirse to think I was angry at her.

“My ma. She went through my things and took my money.”

Her own fucking mother stole from her?

Saoirse continued to ramble, “She gave me her last twenty to buy her smokes—”

My eyes widened. Her mother did what?

“—and I was gonna do it the next day, I was, but not that night because it was my party. But she thought I’d taken it for myself. I only take money from her to buy food, I swear, because she forgets all the time. So she went looking for it and found my money and she went and spent all of it on dr—” Saoirse cut off, her eyes going wide as if she was about to say something that she wasn’t supposed to.

I saw the state of their apartment. I could see Saoirse’s mother’s eyes were dilated when I’d met her. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Saoirse was about to say. But as she’d said before, I ain’t no rat. She wouldn’t rat out her mother even if the bitch deserved it.

How the fuck could a mother steal money from her own fucking daughter?

“We’ll just get it back from her,” I said through gritted teeth. If I had to shake each and every euro from her…

Saoirse’s eyes widened. “No! You can’t tell her I told you.”

I understood. To tell the cops anything was the worst sin in a household where one parent was already in jail. I was a cop. I was the enemy. Saoirse’s home life was already shit but it could get much worse if she crossed her mother.

Dear God, did I want to confront her mother.

But not at the risk of making Saoirse’s life at home even more of a hell.

I let out a sigh. “Okay, we won’t confront her.”

Saoirse looked me straight in the eye, giving me a stern look. This close I could see the flecks of gold in her irises. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

Her lips pressed together, studying me as if she was trying to decide whether I was trustworthy. I didn’t say anything. I lowered my defenses so that I was as naked as a babe. I just let her see me.

She gave me a small nod. Relief and a swirl of warmth went through my chest.

I had finally earned her trust.

Saoirse climbed back into her seat, letting out a long breath. “You can take me home now,” she said in a small voice.

She thought I was going to just let this go with just that? No friggin’ way.

I pulled away from the curb, turning the truck around opposite from the usual way that we went. “I’m not taking you straight home just yet if that’s okay with ya?”

She sat up in her seat, wiping the last of the moisture from her cheeks. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

I drove us to Charleston shopping centre where I knew there was a specialty store that just sold bags, all kinds of bags. I told her that she could pick out a backpack, any backpack she wanted. I watched her discreetly pulling out the tags and glancing at the prices.

When she did it again, I covered her hand and the price tag with mine. She glanced up at me, her mouth slightly parted.

“Don’t worry about the prices,” I told her. “Just pick out one you like. One that will last you the rest of your schooling.”

“But some of them are over—”

“It’s your birthday present, Saoirse. Let me worry about the money, ok?”

Her eyes got wet and glossy. I thought she might start crying again. I could see she was fighting against it.

I pulled my hand away from hers and cleared my throat, taking a step back. “You, um, you just tell me when you’ve picked one.”

She picked out a cherry-red backpack. It was well made, with reinforced stitching and waterproof, a must for living in Ireland. I approved.

Saoirse strode out of the shop with the backpack slung proudly over her shoulders, the widest smile on her face.

I had put it there.

I did.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been happier.