excerpt
“Sit down, Michael.”
Finn’s unfriendly voice sparked the fire of fear in Michael’s heart, like flint on stone. He felt the old man’s gaze grip him as he pulled a chair out from under the table and sat down. In front of Finn a breakfast plate of bacon and eggs and fried soda bread stood cold, and his knife and fork were undisturbed. His cup of tea remained undrunk.
“Where is she?” Finn asked at last.
“Who?”
Finn slapped the table hard and loud with the palms of both hands. “Hell’s curse on you, Michael!” he shouted. “Who do you think? Caitlin.”
“I don’t know.” Michael’s voice broke as he spoke.
Michael was telling the truth. When he had come out of the water after his icy plunge from the rocks, Caitlin was gone. Only his belt and a couple of buttons from her dress lay on the grass. Michael would have apologised to her then and begged forgiveness. He would have done anything she asked of him. Anything at all. But she denied him that chance of redemption. Michael had rushed home to the cottage to change his wet clothes and then hurried to the MacLir house to offer his life to Caitlin. But she had not come home. The only one in the house appeared to be Finn, morose and silent and staring at the cold, congealed food on his plate.
Finn sank back into his chair. He ran his open hands across his eyes and through his curled, grizzled hair. He held his head in silence for a moment. Then he lowered his arms with a deep, sad sigh. And so he sat, his arms by his sides, his legs stretched out, his head sunk into his hunched shoulders as if he were trying to draw it down into the shell of his body like a turtle. Only the regular rise and fall of his massive chest showed that he was still alive and breathing. A long time passed. The slow ticking of the clock counted out the seconds with a changeless beat that struck, struck, struck Michael’s brain like blows from a club.
Then in a tired voice Finn said, “Caitlin went out last night. Where, I don’t know. But she didn’t come home. Her bed wasn’t slept in.”
Libros Libertad 