False Mermaid by Erin Hart Page A

to see Roz coming out of the house one morning about two weeks ago, and decided on the spot she’d call in? To see how was I getting on, she said. But what was she doing, only sniffing around the place, jumping to all sorts of preposterous conclusions! ‘At your age,’ says she, ‘you ought to be ashamed.’ I told her there was no need for me to feel shame, since she obviously fetched up enough for the whole parish. You should have heard her, the sanctimonious, Holy Mary carry-on. Wages of sin, all that auld shite. When you think of the suffering it’s caused in the world—” He stopped himself, but only momentarily. “Not to mention the sheer bloody hypocrisy of it—Roz may have neglected to mention it, but that flahoola of a landlady above in Portnoo happened to be Geraldine Foyle’s first cousin. At any rate, a few more words were exchanged.” He waved a hand. “I may have passed some intemperate remarks about the late Mr. Foyle’s untimely exit.” Cormac could see the old man was still feeling less than apologetic; on the contrary, he seemed rather pleased with himself. “She hasn’t put her beak in since.”
    “Why drag me all the way up here over nothing?”
    “Well, Geraldine Bloody Foyle wasn’t getting satisfaction from me, obviously. She had to create some pretext so that you’d come rushing up here to break up the love nest. Ah, don’t ask me how her mind works—the woman is sick.”
    Cormac considered for a moment. “I hope you’ll forgive an indelicate question, but is there anything for me to break up?”
    Joseph’s eyes flickered over to the kitchen door, beyond which they could hear Roz humming absently. His demeanor softened. “Are you serious? Roz Byrne may be a kindhearted woman, but she’s not completely daft.”
    In the end, they’d agreed Cormac should stay on another few days, to spare him the long drive back to Dublin after he’d just arrived, and to be doubly certain that his father was suffering no ill effects from the “spell.”
    As he looked out over the silent waves below Slieve League, Cormac realized that the time had come to make a decision: head back to Dublinin the morning, or catch a plane to the States. He had felt Nora deliberately keeping her distance when they’d last spoken on the phone, but was it because they were finished, or because she didn’t want to burden him with troubles that were not his own? Either answer, he realized, was unsatisfactory. He looked at his watch. Just after nine Irish time; she must have arrived at her parents’ place in Saint Paul by now. At least he’d assumed that’s where she would be staying; she’d offered no confirmation.
    The setting sun slid down below a bank of gray clouds, a solid orange mass defying him not to stare. Out here on the headlands, each day mirrored the cycle of life. That was the way the ancients had seen it. Every new day was a resurrection, every nightfall a little death. How many more times must the mighty chariot driver perish in the sea before he stopped his dithering and actually did something?
    He had simply appeared on Nora’s doorstep once before, fourteen months ago, and everything had worked out then. Beyond all expectations, really. He could make it to Saint Paul in a day or two, if he could only convince himself that she would welcome him. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to ask for help, but she couldn’t refuse it either—could she? He’d been going back and forth like this for days, trying to read into her words what perhaps wasn’t there. He didn’t even know how he could help her, only that he felt an overwhelming desire to try. Climbing to his feet from the damp, rocky ground, Cormac looked out over the choppy waves and considered everything he’d given up to be here, all because of Geraldine Foyle’s priggish puritanical streak. The curse of fuckin’ Jaysus on her, indeed.
    Standing at the edge of the precipice, looking down hundreds of feet to the dark sea below,