The Unknown Beloved(46)

He seemed very mindful of keeping his distance, never displaying any sort of physical affection or attraction, yet he seemed genuinely intrigued by her. She did her best to keep her hands to herself as well, her Midas touch in check, but she looked forward to the two mornings a week when she had him all to herself, even if she had to share him with the dead. And the dead provided plenty of distraction.

Their only “customer” that morning was a woman wrapped in a colorful patchwork quilt and nothing else. The tag on her toe told the address where she’d been discovered, and if her death had been ruled a homicide, she would not have been turned over to the indigent facility. She was relatively young and slim, and her hair, though unkempt, was bobbed at her shoulders, indicative of some level of attention.

Dani found something for her to wear and ran a brush through the matted strands before they unwound the quilt from around her gray limbs.

“What happened to her?” he grunted. The woman had no clothes to provide clues, and no apparent injuries.

“I don’t know, Michael. I am not a coroner,” she reminded.

“What does the cloth say?” he asked, no hesitation. He’d become used to her ways.

The quilt was tattered but not dirty, and Dani clasped the folds, allowing her mind to empty and her eyes to see.

“If this is hers . . . her name is Nettie. And she’s had this quilt since she was a girl.” She was quiet, watching the flickering images. Tears, shouting, hiding, holding, loving. Distance. The woman had taken the quilt from one day, one decade, to the next, and before that, the squares had belonged to a hundred different stories carefully stitched together by a freckled hand.

“There is care in the stitching. It is well made.” Dani’s eyes told her that much. She didn’t even need to touch the cloth. “When the world is dark, look at the colors, Nettie,” she whispered, hearing the echo of the words pressed upon the girl.

Malone cleared his throat, and Dani let go of the blanket. She hoped whoever had made a quilt of many colors for Nettie had welcomed her home.

She took up her log and made careful notes, engulfed by the sadness that often accompanied such glimpses.

“She’s naked. Is that what she did for a living?” Malone asked quietly.

“I think so. Yes.” She swallowed back the emotion in her throat. If she had been alone, she might have shed a tear, but Michael had seen her cry over too many, and it distressed him, though he usually scolded her to cover his discomfort.

“Is that what killed her?” he asked, grim.

“I don’t know. She didn’t know.”

“She didn’t know she was dying?”

“It doesn’t feel that way. No. She was . . . floating.”

He sighed. “Well that’s good.”

“We will dress her, but let’s fold the quilt and put it in her arms. She should have it.”

They finished in silence, and Dani made her obituary, tucking it into the folds of the quilt Malone had placed on the woman’s chest. It was not until they were walking back toward home that they spoke again.

“My father called my mother Nettie sometimes,” Dani said.

“Aneta,” Michael supplied. “Nettie makes sense.”

“Yes. Aneta Kos Flanagan. Aneta and George. What a pair.”

He said nothing, but he was listening, and she found herself falling into his attention. He always had the same effect on her.

“It didn’t fit. Nettie didn’t fit. She was too regal for it.”

“Ah. You must get that from her,” he said softly, and her heart warmed in her chest.

“Thank you. I don’t think my aunts agree. I think they worry that I have too much of my father in me.”

“How so?”

“He was wild. And strapping, I think, is the word one would use. He was loud. And jolly, and . . . passionate.”

“Were his eyes like yours?”

“One of them,” she shot back, not missing a beat. Her mouth quirked in a self-deprecating grin, and he laughed out loud, tossing his head back. The somber mood dissipated with the sound. She loved making him laugh.

“Ah, Dani. That was funny, lass. You got me. So which eye is your father’s?”

“He had blue eyes. My mother brown, though her hair was blond. A beautiful combination, I think. I got one of each, I suppose.”

“It’s not as uncommon as one might think, your eyes,” he said. “I’ve done a bit of reading on it.”

“Oh yes? Have you ever seen it before?” she said, wry.

“No,” he admitted. “Not like yours.”

“Ireland is a land of faeries. Daddy said I had fae blood. Mother always said, no. I have Kos blood.”

“You said he had an accent. When did he come to America?”

“He was born in Ireland and he came to the States when he was fourteen, though he lied and said he was eighteen. He talked about Cork. But not about his family. At least not to me. Mother and I were his family. I knew of no one else except Uncle Darby.”

He raised his brows in question.

“Darby. Darby O’Shea. His mother was a Flanagan too, I think, but I don’t know for sure. He was just Uncle Darby, though he wasn’t really an uncle, but a cousin. He and Daddy came to America together. I remember that Mother didn’t like him. She thought he was trouble. But Dad and Darby were close. He said he and Darby had always looked after each other, and they always would.”