The Wonder(54)

Lib tried to smile. She feared the effect was grotesque.

For a few minutes, while they walked, Byrne kept his mouth shut, as if to prove he knew how.

“I’m not myself,” Lib said hoarsely at last. “This case has… unsettled me.”

He only nodded.

Of all people to whom she shouldn’t blab—a reporter. Yet who else in the world would understand? “I’ve watched the girl until my eyes hurt. She doesn’t eat, yet she’s alive. More alive than anyone I know.”

“She’s half swayed you, then?” he asked. “Almost won you over, hardheaded as you are?”

Lib couldn’t tell how much of this was sardonic. All she could say was “I just don’t know what to make of her.”

“Let me try, then.”

“Mr. Byrne—”

“Consider me a fresh pair of eyes. If I say so myself, I know how to talk to people. Perhaps I can tease some truth out of the girl.”

Eyes down, she shook her head. Oh, the man knew how to talk to people, that was undeniable; he had a knack for teasing information out of those who should have known better.

“Five days I’ve been hanging around here,” he said, steelier, “and what have I to show for it?”

The blood swept up from Lib’s throat. Of course the journalist would consider all this time making conversation with the English nurse a waste and a bore. Not beautiful, not brilliant, no longer young; how could Lib have forgotten that she was only a means to an end?

She was under no obligation to exchange another word with this provocateur. She spun around and strode back in the direction of the village.





CHAPTER FOUR

Vigil


vigil





a devotional observance





an occasion of keeping awake for a purpose





a watch kept on the eve of a festival





The laundry was gone from the bushes, and the cabin smelled of steam and hot metal; the women must have been ironing all afternoon. No Rosary this evening, it seemed. Malachy O’Donnell was smoking a pipe, and Kitty was encouraging the hens into their cupboard. “Is your mistress out?” Lib asked her.

“’Tis her Female Sodality on Saturdays,” said Kitty.

“What’s that?”

But the slavey was running after one recalcitrant bird.

Lib had more urgent questions that had occurred to her as she’d lain awake this afternoon. Somehow, out of the whole crew, Kitty was the one she was most inclined to trust, for all that the young woman’s head was crammed with fairies and angels. In fact, Lib rather wished she’d taken more trouble to cultivate the maid’s friendship from the first day. She went a few steps closer now. “Kitty, do you by any chance remember the last food your cousin ate before her birthday?”

“I do, of course; sure how could I forget?” Kitty’s tone was ruffled. Bent in two, shutting the dresser, she added something that sounded like Toast.

“Toast?”

“The Host, she said,” Malachy O’Donnell threw over his shoulder. “The body of Our Lord, ah, under the species of bread.”

Lib pictured Anna opening her mouth to receive that tiny baked disc that Roman Catholics believed to be the actual flesh of their God.

Arms crossed, the maid nodded at her master. “Her very first Holy Communion, bless the girl.”

“’Twas no earthly food she wanted for her last meal, was it, Kitty?” he murmured, eyes on the fire again.

“’Twas not.”

Her last meal; like a condemned prisoner. So Anna had taken the Host for the first and only time, then shut her mouth. What strange distortion of doctrine could have impelled her? Lib wondered. Had Anna somehow picked up the notion that now she’d been granted divine nourishment, she’d no further need for the earthly kind?

The father’s face hung, uneven in the flicker of the flames. Some adult had been keeping Anna alive all these months, Lib reminded herself: Could it have been Malachy? She could hardly credit that.

Of course, there was a grey zone between innocent and guilty. What if the man had discovered the trick—his wife’s or their priest’s or both—but by then, his little pet’s fame had already spread so far, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to interfere?

In the bedroom, beside the sleeping girl, Sister Michael was already doing up her cloak. “Dr. McBrearty put his head in this afternoon,” she whispered.

Had everything Lib had told him sunk in at last? “What instructions did he give?”

“None.”

“But what did he say?”

“Nothing in particular.” The nun’s expression was unreadable.

Of all the doctors under whom Lib had served, this affable old man was the most difficult.

The nun left, and Anna slept on.

The night shift was so quiet, Lib had to keep pacing to ward off sleep herself. At one point she picked up the toy from Boston. The songbird was on one side, the cage on the other, yet when Lib twirled its strings as fast as she could, her senses were tricked and two incompatible things became one: a vibrating, humming caged bird.

Past three, Anna blinked awake.

“Can I do anything for you?” asked Lib, leaning over her. “Make you more comfortable?”