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  “Oh, dear.” She cupped her fist to her chest. “You scared me. Whew! Hello.”

  Kathleen smiled up into the stormy green eyes of the housekeeper, Mrs. Walsh. There was no cheery “Good morning” from her, though. Not a word. What was wrong with Mrs. Walsh?

  Chapter 68

  EVERYTHING WAS GOING as bad as it possibly could. Worse! Now Mrs. Walsh was against her too.

  Kathleen’s heart was thumping hard. She shot her eyes away from Mrs. Walsh. She was scared and she didn’t want the housekeeper to know it.

  She sat on the bench in front of her vanity mirror. Fumbling with her woolen socks, she began the exceedingly awkward job of getting her feet into them.

  She welcomed the diversion. Was it all her imagination? Or had Ida been acting really weird around her lately? Had the housekeeper come to talk it out now? Maybe to explain what was wrong between the two of them?

  The upstairs part of the house was particularly quiet and still. It made things even more uncomfortable between them, Kathleen thought. The woolen sock resisted her, tangling and frustrating her efforts, refusing to be a sock.

  “I’ll be out of here in just a minute. Two seconds,” she said.

  Why didn’t Ida speak to her? Kathleen thought and began to perspire.

  God, what could I have done to her? Mrs. Walsh has always been a dear friend, more of a mother to me than my own mother could ever be.

  A flicker in the mirror caught her attention.

  Kathleen looked up again at the older woman. It took a long, extended second to understand what she saw.

  Ida held a double-edged knife in her right hand. It was a nasty-looking fillet knife, one used to slice and gut fish in the Beavier kitchen.

  The housekeeper let out a harsh guttural rasp and shouted, “In the name of the Holy Father, I chase out Satan and his fiendish child!”

  Then she slashed down hard at the bulging mound of Kathleen’s stomach.

  Pure shock and reflex made Kathleen twist away from the flashing, razor-sharp knife. The long blade drove deeply into the wooden vanity, missing her by inches.

  Kathleen jerked herself away from Ida Walsh even as the crazed housekeeper furiously struggled to pull the knife free.

  Kathleen slid by into her bedroom.

  “Ida, stop! It’s me, Kathleen. What are you doing?”

  “You’re not one of God’s! You’re not even Kathleen!” Ida Walsh screamed at the top of her voice. “You are Satan.”

  Her face was screwed up, livid, her eyes blazing with hate. The muscles of her arms were tense and bulged. Kathleen barely recognized the woman she had known since childhood.

  “Ida, no. Please. I am Kathleen! See, look, it’s Kathleen. It’s me. And my baby!”

  The girl’s screams echoed off the pink walls of the bedroom.

  “Someone please help me! Oh, God. Please help me.”

  Kathleen ran awkwardly for the stairs, ricocheting off the doorjamb as she passed through. She caught the finial of the banister flanking the staircase.

  She had gotten one foot firmly onto the tread when she felt a mighty shove at her back. Then came the awful, terrifying feeling of weightlessness.

  Kathleen screamed again, a long looping wail, a sound she barely recognized.

  She reached for the banister, but her falling weight was too much for her tenuous grasp. Her arm wrenched in the socket, and she had to let go.

  Oh, God, no. The baby.

  She fell forward, her shoulder slamming solidly into the banister. Wood cracked, then gravity dragged her down. The pain in her arm was excruciating.

  The steep stairs were like a chute filled with boulders. Kathleen began to roll. She cracked against every step, feeling every sharp dig. Shooting pains went through her elbows and shins.

  The wind went out of her as she took a powerful blow to the stomach. She feared for the baby.

  Dear God! Oh, please, don’t let it end like this.

  Lancing pain radiated from a blow to her right ear.

  Kathleen was aware of everything. She wouldn’t let herself black out. The landing rose up and smacked her hard across her swollen breasts. She didn’t care. She couldn’t let Ida get to her again. Levering herself up painfully, she got to her knees.

  Kathleen knew it without looking. Ida Walsh was breathing hard, lumbering down the stairs, coming fast behind her. She still held the murderous knife.

  “Satan!” she screeched. “He is inside you! It’s Satan himself. You can’t deny it any longer.”

  Chapter 69

  I HAD DUG MYSELF a snug windbreak among the small hunchbacked dunes rising and falling along the beach behind Sun Cottage. I was flat on my back on a plaid wool blanket, feeling the brief and sudden appearance of autumn sun on my face.

  I breathed in the clean, crisp October air that lashed at the grasses and the dark blue water and listened to the distant scream of a seagull.

  Glorious, just glorious.

  That oddly plaintive cry made by laughing gulls.

  I was pondering how perfect the moment was, how perfect nature could be. Then I was thinking about Justin and those thoughts warmed me.

  I didn’t have the foggiest idea where the two of us were headed — if anywhere — but I felt that we were doing it the right way this time. I had to admit that the more I saw of him, the more irresistible he became. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he in love with me? Was Justin questioning his vows as a priest? Or were we fated always to be apart?

  I reveled in the luxury of just plopping down here for a few moments, sunbathing in my clothes, letting the ocean breeze refresh me. It was still very early, but soon I was going to town. I had meetings set up with two of Jamie Jordan’s best friends.

  I listened to the distant crying seagull again and heard the blast of a horn from a ship.

  But something about that gull was wrong. With a jolt of unwelcome cognition, I got to my feet.

  I looked around, suddenly nervous and afraid.

  The cry came again.

  A piercing cry that seemed to be coming from Sun Cottage. It increased in intensity, then cut off abruptly.

  And a chill snuffed out all the warmth for miles around.

  The cry hadn’t come from a bird.

  It was Kathleen!

  Then I saw her. She was climbing out on a side roof of Sun Cottage.

  Chapter 70

  KATHLEEN RAN BAREFOOT, bruised and bleeding from her fall, into a second-floor bedroom. She pushed the rattling window wide open. There was no time to think about this. Ida Walsh was close behind her with the knife and the strangest, scariest inhuman gleam in her eyes. She had gone mad.

  Kathleen stepped down hard on the steep roof jutting out over the main dining room.

  “You are not one of God’s!” She heard the shout behind her. “You are Satan! I see through your tricks. Your disguise!”

  “Go back!” Kathleen screamed back at her. “Leave me alone. I am Kathleen. Ida, please, it’s me!”

  She tottered above the flagstone patio that seemed to pulsate with her own heartbeat. Her bare feet clung tenuously to the cold roof shingles.

  “Help! Somebody please help,” she called into the fierce, cold wind.

  Her voice trailed away from the roof like smoke from a chimney. Nobody seemed to hear her. Where was everybody?

  She heard sounds behind her; she swung her head around and saw what was happening.

  Ida Walsh had squeezed through the bedroom window and now crab-walked along the steeply slanting roof, trying to grab Kathleen. Her arms and legs and hands seemed oddly powerful and strong.

  “You are not Kathleen!” she bellowed, her voice sounding almost like a man’s.

  Two groundsmen working below stared up at the roof in terrified disbelief.

  “Please help me!” Kathleen screamed to them. “She’s crazy. She has a knife!”

  Protect the child became Kathleen’s only thought. Protect the child. Nothing matters but the child. Not Satan’s ch
ild either. My baby!

  She stared back at the woman who had once loved her, braided her hair, said prayers with her, sang her to sleep. Where had that sweet woman gone?

  “You are not Kathleen! I know Kathleen! I loved Kathleen!”

  She inched across the tile even as Kathleen, injured and ungainly, moved away from her.

  Ida Walsh’s eyes were wide and blank and incredibly shiny. Her white hair fanned out in the wind in thick ropes.

  Kathleen finally saw Anne racing up from the beach, screaming, waving her arms wildly.

  “I’m here, Anne. Please help me,” she called down over the edge of the roof. She could easily fall now. She was so close.

  She saw her mother leaning out another window, not believing, trying to get outside too. Poor Carolyn. Curious and concerned, but never any real help. They would all be too late. There was no escape from Mrs. Walsh and her knife.

  Kathleen went out as far as she could, out to where the half-roof made a 90-degree turn around a corner of the house. She couldn’t take another step without falling. Tiles slid and rattled underfoot.

  She suddenly screamed at the housekeeper, “I command you to stop! I command you!”

  Ida Walsh’s bare white arm stretched out for Kathleen. Her hand scratched at the roof. The woman’s eyes were fixed in a hateful stare. The knife gleamed in the sunlight. “I know the truth about you. I know your dirty secret!”

  A figure suddenly ran down below the roof in the driveway. Kathleen was afraid to look away from Mrs. Walsh and the knife. She thought it might be Anne down there. How could she help, though? How could anyone?

  A loud noise cracked, then thundered away from Sun Cottage.

  Kathleen’s mouth opened wide in disbelief and horror.

  Blood sheeted from Ida Walsh’s neck. The woman moaned, her face frozen in hatred. Then her body dropped like a heavy stone from the roof. The woman’s body bounced once on the flagstone patio and lay motionless.

  It was quiet, except for the distant crash and roll of the sea.

  Kathleen’s eyes fell to where Anne stood. Her legs were spread in a shooter’s stance. She held a pistol in front of her.

  Anne had saved her life, and the baby’s.

  Chapter 71

  I WOULDN’T LET MYSELF go into shock; I couldn’t. I thought that I finally understood why I was at Sun Cottage. I understood, the way a soldier must finally understand when he or she fights in a war, that killing simply can’t be avoided.

  I remembered John Rooney asking me if I had a license for a gun. I’d thought at the time he was making a joke. Now I knew better. This was no joke. I wasn’t here just to investigate Kathleen; I was here to protect her.

  It was getting harder and harder not to believe in something. In Kathleen? In Colleen? In good? In evil? What had happened that morning was very real. I had shot and killed someone, a sixty-two-year-old woman named Ida Walsh. It was horrifying, obscene; it was the essence of evil. And now I understood evil in a new way too.

  Kathleen and I sat huddled together on the antique glider in the sunroom, staring blindly at the choppy sea.

  I was rocking a still-tearful Kathleen in my arms when I heard the phone ring downstairs. Now what? The Newport police had already been out here to question me. EMS workers had taken away the body of Mrs. Walsh.

  I had killed her. How could it have happened?

  Just before one o’clock, Father Rosetti called another of his famous meetings. The Beavier family, Justin, and I gathered in the library, where Rosetti revealed that he had received orders from Rome a short time ago. The shooting had apparently galvanized the Vatican. Or maybe there was something else we hadn’t been told about? Kathleen, along with a small entourage, was to leave Newport immediately. Sun Cottage was no longer safe, which was hardly news for me. But was anywhere safe?

  At one-thirty, three black Lincoln sedans skirted inside the elegant porte cochere at Sun Cottage. As the front gate swung open, a horde of shouting journalists stampeded up the long drive on foot.

  On signal, seven of us were escorted out of the house and into the three waiting cars.

  Windows up, doors locked, seatbelts tightly cinched, our small caravan shot toward the gate and streamed off the estate accompanied by the police escort’s penetrating sirens. We sped right past the surprised reporters.

  The ear-splitting noise and the speed summed up my mood perfectly.

  We hit Route 140 and moments later were traveling at more than eighty miles per hour. I turned to look behind us.

  Vans stuffed with frantic newspeople were already only a few carlengths away from our rear bumper.

  I hung on to the armrest and prayed that Kathleen, who was in another car, would be safe. I was afraid that the bumps and twists in the road might make her go into labor. Or that a wrench of the wheel could send the car careening into a tree or stone wall.

  There was an intersection of four roads up ahead. It looked dangerous at the speed we were going. The three drivers, who had been in constant radio communication, knew what to do. At least I hoped they did.

  One car peeled off to the west, another to the east.

  The third car, our car, headed north to Logan International Airport in Boston.

  I settled back in my seat for the journey. I shut my eyes, and I kept seeing Mrs. Walsh as she fell from the roof.

  “Kathleen, Kathleen,” reporters yelled as they swamped our car at Logan, hemming us in to the curb.

  I got out of the car and whisked off the black shawl covering my head. I tossed the pillow I’d stuffed under my dress into the backseat.

  “No, I’m afraid not. I’m not Kathleen Beavier,” I said and couldn’t hold back a smile.

  The furious and frustrated press howled their anger at this ruse. The disguise meant to throw them off Kathleen’s trail had worked. They had no idea that she was boarding another plane at a different airport.

  Justin and I were traveling together again. I wondered why. But then I gave in to sleep, which I badly needed. We arrived at Orly Airport in Paris at 10:45 A.M.

  We’d barely set foot on the ground when I caught a glimpse of Kathleen’s picture on the overhead televisions inside the main terminal.

  I paused to see the CNN report.

  Pictures flashed one after another on the overhead screen. Children stricken with aches and high fevers were streaming in droves to Broussair University Hospital in Paris. It was polio again. The epidemic had jumped the Atlantic Ocean and had launched itself against Western Europe.

  I felt faint and had to sit down. I remembered what I had seen at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A.

  Children were dying. There was no logical explanation. But it was happening. And it seemed mysteriously connected to Kathleen, or the child she carried.

  Chapter 72

  COLLEEN GALAHER AWOKE with a depression, or some kind of physical sickness that she couldn’t explain. Each day, each hour, it was getting worse, much worse than she could ever have imagined.

  She wanted to go to confession, to cleanse her soul. She needed absolution. Now.

  A blessing. Now.

  She wanted to do it for the child growing inside her. She wanted to do it to honor God. To show that her love and devotion were unwavering.

  “I want to go to church. I want to pray. Please.” She told this to Sister Katherine in a simple, powerful, indisputable way. The nun agreed.

  It was morning, and the glorious hills surrounding the Irish village of Maam Cross were shining through a misty curtain of gentle rain. On a stone wall–bordered path twisting down out of the hills, the virgin and the black-cloaked nun walked, their heads bobbing against a sea of lush green. God’s country.

  After thirty minutes or more, they reached the spare, rocky crossroads into the village. There, five villagers, gross products of the arduous life in the region, waited for the city milk truck from Costelloe.

  The men perked up when they saw the two women approaching.

  “Is the father
among us, Colleen?” One of the villagers called in his cruel odd-bird’s voice.

  “Won’t ya at least tell us that, dearie? Who’s the da for this kiddo?” asked the crinkled face under a bent Donegal cap.

  “I’d say she’s ready for the Abbey Theatre, with her fine actin’ performance there.”

  “I’d say she’s the Anti-God!” a huge, scary one shouted in a voice like a human bullhorn. “Anti-God, I say!”

  As Colleen and Sister Katherine Dominica got a few paces down the cobbled road, a heavy stone thudded, kicking up a volley of dirt at their feet. The stone could easily have felled either of them.

  “No harm intended,” one of the men called and laughed. “Sticks and stones won’t hurt ya.”

  “Yer little whore, yer!” came another shriek. “Colleen hussy!”

  Colleen whirled about to face the gang of men. She cast a fierce, damning look back at them, her hands over her belly protectively.

  “Yer all cowards!” she shouted. “Scoundrels and worse. I am a virgin! I am that! I am a good girl and always have been.”

  The Irish men continued to laugh loudly until one, then two, then all of them began to look at the sky above their heads.

  Everywhere, as far as they could see, there were large black birds coming together like a big, dark cloud, in a way they had never seen before.

  It made the Irish men as silent as the dead.

  Chapter 73

  THE BIRDS HAD GONE away as quickly and mysteriously as they had gathered, and Colleen continued into the town without further incident. She felt better, though. She felt protected.

  The Church of St. Joseph’s was a dignified stone edifice enclosed by a neat fieldstone fence. It sat at the village center, its immaculate tidiness contrasting sharply with most of the other ruined buildings.

  Colleen blessed herself with holy water at the entrance font, eagerly anticipating the Scripture readings and hymns that would connect her with the Father. She hoped the homily would transport her. She shivered and was parched for a benediction.

  The church doors opened as they arrived, and Father Flannery, the young village priest, appeared in the heavy stone archway. He was new to the parish, here only a few months. The priest stared for long moments at the girl, and she stared back at him. His black hair, freshly washed, was combed neatly to the left. Colleen shivered. She had thought him the handsomest man she had ever seen. But the priest who had come from America, Father Justin O’Carroll, surpassed him. Where was Father O’Carroll now? she wondered. Where was help when she so badly needed it? Why was she being left alone in this poor, backward village? God had to have a good reason.