The Mill River Recluse Page 13

  “Mr. McAllister, you mustn’t blame yourself for this. Despite what you may believe, you are not responsible for Patrick’s behavior. There is no way you could have predicted that this would happen,” he said. For a long while, they had sat together in silence. Finally, Conor looked at him square in the eyes again.

  “Father, I need your help. If Mary lives, I want to be sure that she is cared for and protected for the rest of her life. Part of that I can do. All of my grandchildren have trust funds. Patrick’s currently contains a little over two hundred thousand dollars. As Mary will be his sole heir, she will be entitled to that money. In addition, I intend to bequeath to her another substantial sum. If invested properly, those amounts, taken together, should sustain her for the rest of her life.”

  “That is very generous of you, Mr. McAllister,” he said, but Conor continued.

  “But, I will not be on this earth long enough to ensure her security. Mary will be utterly alone if she survives. You know how close she and her father were, but he’s gone now, and I can’t imagine Elise will ever reach out to her if she believes that Mary had any role in Patrick’s leaving the house tonight. That is why I need you, Father. You are young, about the same age as Mary. You will be alive long after I’m gone. You can look after her for me,” Conor said.

  Father O’Brien remembered the feeling of realizing what had been asked of him. “Mr. McAllister,” he said, “of course I will do everything I can to ensure Mrs. McAllister’s well-being. But, you have to understand, she may choose to leave Mill River. The church may assign me to a different parish. So many things could change over which I have no control.”

  “I can talk with Bishop Ross about your situation and ask him to make a special exception for you. At least he could make sure you wouldn’t be transferred from Mill River. As for anything else that might come up, well, no one can predict the future, but I trust you, Father. I’ve trusted you ever since I met you, and I trust you will find a way to do this thing for me. You will, won’t you, Father?”

  He hadn’t had a chance to reply, for at that very moment, Bishop Ross burst into the waiting room.

  “Conor, I came as soon as I heard. I can’t believe it, and his wife is here too, injured?” the portly bishop asked, slightly out of breath. “Father O’Brien, it’s good of you to have come.” “Yes, she’s here,” Conor said, “but she is still unconscious. We don’t know much about what exactly happened with Mary yet. Stephen and Elise went back to the house a few minutes ago. Could you go to them, perhaps? I’ll follow after I speak with the doctor, and I think Father O’Brien should stay with Mary tonight, in case there is any change in her condition.”

  “Of course, of course. I’ll go immediately, and come back by in the morning,” Bishop Ross said, and hurried out the door.

  Conor turned to face him again, waiting for his answer. He didn’t know how he would do what Conor wanted, but he couldn’t refuse.

  “I will protect her as best I can, Mr. McAllister, for as long as I am able. That is the most I can promise.”

  And he had kept his promise to Conor, kept it for some sixty years, until today. He looked at the envelope and package on his desk for the hundredth time. Now that Mary was gone, he would do what was necessary to keep the last, secret promise that he had made to her.

  Part II

  “Give light, and the darkness will

  disappear of itself.” – Desiderius Erasmus

  Chapter 12

  The window of the dim hospital room was open a crack, and the ribbon of fresh air that slid inside cut through heavy odors of sickness and sterility. Mary lay in the bed, her petite form outlined under tight white sheets. A bandage around her head hid the swollen purple mass that was her left eye. She was still unconscious.

  Father O’Brien also slept. He had spent most of the night slouched in a wooden chair at her bedside. Now the ribbon of air brushed his cheek and whispered through his hair, and he opened his eyes.

  “Good morning, Father,” a nurse said as she entered the room.

  “Good morning, Miss....” Father O’Brien said, straining to make out the nurse’s name on her name tag.

  “Clarke,” said the nurse, as she took Mary’s pulse. She glanced up from her wristwatch as Father O’Brien shifted stiffly in the chair, rubbing the back of his neck. Her brown eyes were sympathetic. “Did you manage to sleep there all night?”

  “I was here all night. As for sleep, well,” Father O’Brien sighed and looked at Mary. “Let’s just say that I didn’t get nearly as much as she did.”

  “She still hasn’t come around, then,” said Nurse Clarke, reading Mary’s chart. “The doctor will be here soon to check on her.” She shook her head as she hung the chart back on the end of the bed. “If her husband really was the one that did this to her--”

  “Papa?” Mary groaned, and turned her head on the pillow. Her right eye fluttered open.

  “Mrs. McAllister, it’s Father O’Brien,” said the priest, jumping up from the chair. “Can you hear me?”

  “I’ll get the doctor,” the nurse said, and hurried from the room.

  Mary turned her head slowly toward the priest. “Can’t see,” she said, and raised her left hand toward her injured eye. Father O’Brien grabbed the hand before it touched the bandage.

  “No, you mustn’t touch it. You’re in the hospital. You’ve been hurt,” Father O’Brien said carefully. Her hand was limp and fragile. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  For a moment, Mary’s expression was one of confusion. Her mouth opened slightly as her sleep-numbed mind struggled to respond. Then she flinched, as if someone had startled her. Her body became rigid. The hand that Father O’Brien held suddenly clenched tight around his fingers.

  “He’s starving him,” she said, in whispered desperation.

  “Who’s starving who?”

  “Patrick,” Mary said, as she began to tremble. “Monarch. In the barn for weeks. Beaten and starving.” She pulled on the priest’s hand, attempting to sit up. “He’ll kill him, you’ve got to stop him.”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. McAllister, Patrick isn’t going to hurt anyone.”

  Tears began to flow out of her uninjured eye. “He’ll kill him, please Father.”

  A man in a white coat came into the room, followed by Nurse Clarke. He approached the bed slowly as the nurse went around to the other side.

  “Mrs. McAllister, I’m Dr. Mason. Do you know where you are?”

  Mary turned toward him, grimacing slightly. “In the hospital.”

  “Do you remember how you were injured?”

  Mary blinked, shuddered again, and looked up at the doctor. “Ebony, the miniature Ebony,” she said, in a faraway tone. She sucked in her breath sharply, her exposed eye racing from side to side, reviewing some unknown event. The doctor looked at Father O’Brien and raised his eyebrows. The priest shrugged.

  “Who’s Ebony?”

  “My horse. And Monarch. You have to keep him away from them.” Mary’s voice started to rise again.

  “Keep who away?” Dr. Mason asked.

  “Patrick, I already told him,” Mary said, turning again toward the priest, “Monarch needs help. You’ve got to call the veterinarian. His foot is infected, and he’s starving, please....” Mary was thrashing and babbling now, the right side of her face tear-streaked.

  Dr. Mason nodded at Nurse Clarke, who nodded in return and withdrew a syringe from her pocket. She quickly injected the tranquilizer into Mary’s upper arm.

  “You need to relax, Mrs. McAllister,” Nurse Clarke said softly, smoothing Mary’s hair away from her face. After a few minutes, Mary stopped trembling and lay quietly.

  “Mrs. McAllister,” said Father O’Brien, still holding her hand, “don’t worry about the horses. I’ll call Conor, and we’ll see to them.” His words seemed to soothe her, for she nodded and closed her eye.

  Father O’Brien stepped away from Mary’s bed, motioning for the doctor to follow him. “Do y
ou think she remembers what happened?” he whispered once they had moved out of earshot.

  “If she doesn’t already, she may remember in the next few days. But apparently, it is too stressful for her to handle right now, or she is more concerned about something else--the horses, I suppose.”

  “It’s good that she woke up, though?”

  “Oh yes, of course. Her speech and ability to move appear normal, which indicate that there may be no serious physical damage to her brain. But it will take longer for her to recover from the mental shock of the incident. And as for the eye, well, we know from the X-ray that her eye socket is fractured, but we won’t know the extent of any damage until the swelling goes down.”

  Father O’Brien looked at his watch. It was just after eight. As Conor had left last night, he had promised to come by first thing in the morning. Maybe Conor would be willing to go with him out to the marble house. Maybe they would learn what had happened, and what Mary had been unable to tell them herself.

  ~~~

  “Just be careful, now. I’ll have to ask you not to touch anything. We don’t want to disturb anything that could be evidence before we finish our investigation.” The young police officer who, with Father O’Brien, had discovered Mary the previous evening escorted Conor and Father O’Brien into Mary’s bedroom. “We really can’t stay too long, either. My boss said I’m just supposed to let you have a quick look around.”

  “We won’t be long,” Conor said, “and we do appreciate your letting us see the place. Do you have any idea as to how long your investigation will take?”

  “Not more than a few days, probably,” the officer replied. “I know two other officers are due out here this afternoon to gather up everything.”

  Only in the bedroom were there signs of struggle. The remains of a lamp lay shattered on the floor. The closet door was open and several items of Patrick’s clothing were strewn across the bed. Conor and Father O’Brien stepped carefully around the room. It was Conor who finally noticed the small marble figurine on the floor.

  “I wonder,” he said as he pointed to the miniature Ebony. “At the house last night, Elise was adamant that Patrick would never have hurt Mary. She’s convinced Mary’s injury was an accident, that Mary somehow hurt herself. She has never seen, had never seen the side of Patrick that I saw.” He paused, staring down at the black marble figurine. “I wonder if that was what he used....”

  “Maybe,” Father O’Brien said. “It’s small enough to be grasped in one hand.”

  Conor did not reply, but continued to stare downward. After a moment, the police officer cleared his throat.

  “I don’t know what more we could see here,” Father O’Brien said, nodding at the officer. “Shall we have a look in the barn? Mary seemed very concerned about the horses.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Conor said. “But do me a favor, would you?” he asked the officer on their way out. “Make sure that marble figurine on the floor gets fingerprinted, and have it returned to me once you’re done with it.” The officer nodded.

  If there had been any doubt in Father O’Brien’s mind as to Patrick’s true nature, it was erased once they saw the blood-bay horse in the barn. The whip marks and malnourishment were shocking. As Father O’Brien approached Monarch’s stall, the horse showed the whites of his eyes and bolted backwards, stumbling as he tried to avoid shifting weight to his infected hind foot.

  “Dear Lord,” Father O’Brien muttered, “who could do this to an animal?”

  ~~~

  Conor was at Mary’s bedside when she awoke again later that afternoon. Thanks to the injected tranquilizer, she was groggy but much calmer than she had been when she had first regained consciousness.

  “Grandpop?” Mary said, looking up at him.

  “Mary, dear, how are you feeling?” Conor replied, taking her hand.

  “Sleepy. My face hurts. My eye.”

  “I know it does, Mary. Your eye socket is broken, but you’re safe now.”

  “Safe,” Mary said, and then suddenly, “the horses--”

  “Are just fine,” Conor said. “Father O’Brien and I went out to the house this morning. The horses are fine. We called the veterinarian for the red one, and he’ll be taken care of, don’t you worry.”

  “Oh, Grandpop, it was Patrick. He beat Monarch, starved him, and I had no idea. Promise me you’ll keep Patrick away from all of them, please, Grandpop.”

  Conor hesitated before saying anything else. Mary’s one visible eye pleaded with him. He wondered how much he should tell her, how much she was capable of handling in her fragile state of mind. To someone who did not know her, she would appear to be perfectly rational, if a little sluggish. But he could see right through her calm demeanor, and Father O’Brien had told him what had happened when she had first awakened that morning. Mary was fighting to hold onto her sanity as a child might struggle to keep hold of a kite on a blustery day. It would not take much more to rip it away from her.

  “I promise, Mary,” Conor said. “And you mustn’t blame yourself about the red horse. You didn’t know. None of us knew.”

  Mary was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was reduced to a whisper. “Grandpop, I’m afraid of him.”

  “Of Patrick?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mary, I don’t want to upset you, but we need to know how you were hurt.”

  She paused. “It was the miniature Ebony. He hit me with the miniature Ebony.”

  Conor remembered seeing the small marble figurine on the floor of her bedroom. “Mary, do you mean the small horse statue in your bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Patrick hit you in the face with the figurine?”

  “Yes.” Slow tears slid from Mary’s right eye down over the curve of her cheek. “He was drunk, screaming at me, said I wasn’t a good wife.” Conor’s green eyes flashed. “I love him so much. I tried to be a good wife, but he wanted more. Always wanted more. Please, Grandpop, you won’t let him hurt me again, will you?”

  Conor looked into Mary’s bandaged, tear-streaked face. Her expression was one of great love and greater fear, inextricably mixed. He decided in a wavering moment that he would tell her of Patrick’s death. Her knowing would provide at least some of the security for which she pleaded.

  “Mary,” he began softly, taking her other hand, “there is something I need to tell you. Last night, after Patrick hurt you, he tried to leave town. There was an accident. He was already gone when the police found him.” Conor paused, watching as Mary’s expression shifted from fear to shock to disbelief. “They think it happened quickly. Mary, do you understand me?” Conor squeezed Mary’s hands between his own. “Patrick died last night, my dear. I’m so sorry. Mary?”

  Mary only looked at him, her visible eye glazed and bloodshot, and was silent.

  ~~~

  “For the life of me, Pop, I don’t know why you had to tell her about Patrick so soon,” Stephen said as he and Conor left Rutland County Hospital. “Twelve days without so much as a word to anybody. How much longer can she stay in that...that trance or whatever she’s in? A week? Two weeks? A month?” Conor did not reply as they got into the black Lincoln.

  Stephen slammed the door and inserted the key into the ignition, but did not turn it. For a moment, the two sat silently in the plush leather seats. Stephen gripped the steering wheel, started to speak, and stopped himself. He seemed to be wrestling with his words but decided to plunge ahead.

  “Pop, I think we should really consider sending her to Brattleboro--”

  “Absolutely not. We’ve already had this discussion, and you know I have no intention of shipping her away to some asylum.”

  “But, Pop--”

  “She’s your daughter-in-law,” Conor snapped. “Your family. And mine. The doctors say the best thing for her right now is to be near her family and people she knows. If it were Sara or Emma in that hospital room, you’d never think of Brattleboro.”

  “If I thought it
would help--”

  “Horseshit. You’d do nothing of the kind. And in Mary’s case, she’s so shy and fearful that moving her to a strange place would prevent her from ever recovering.”

  “I wish you’d thought of her recovery twelve days ago, before you decided to tell her all of what happened.”

  Conor sighed as Stephen finally started the engine. “Perhaps I made a mistake in telling her so soon, but at the time...she was terrified. I was only trying to calm her, to make her feel safe by letting her know Patrick couldn’t hurt her anymore.”

  “We don’t even know for sure that things really happened as Mary said they did. Given her current state, she could have been confused. She might even be inventing the whole thing.” Stephen glanced sideways at his father and saw immediately that he had gone too far.

  “What, then?” Conor roared. “Do you think she decided to crack her own skull? Decided she didn’t need sight in one of her eyes?”

  “No, Pop, but--”

  “She’s blind in that eye! Her eye socket will heal but the doctors can’t do anything to restore her sight.” A brilliant fuchsia crept over Conor’s face as he brandished his forefinger at his son. “No, I’ll tell you exactly where your line of thinking is coming from. I know Elise is having a hard time with this. We all are. But she won’t accept that Patrick did anything wrong. She’s blaming Mary for some horrific thing that Patrick did, that was his fault alone. And now, it sounds like she’s actually starting to convince you of that as well.”

  Stephen cringed behind the steering wheel.

  “I knew it!” Conor said. “And I’ll bet she’s also behind this renewed push to send Mary to Brattleboro! A simple way to get rid of the one reminder of what really happened. Of what Patrick did. Well, I’ll tell you, we’re the only family Mary has left. Her recovery and well-being are our responsibility. It’s bad enough that we had no idea of how he’d been treating her. We sure as hell aren’t going to abandon her now.”