Chapter 13

Pilar Diaz’s house was a low-roofed single-storey house in the middle of Crystal Avenue, a quiet cul-de-sac about a twenty-minute walk from Watson Drive. The front door stood to the extreme left of the house with two long windows to its right, set low on the beige clapboard wall. A small wooden gate opened onto a narrow pathway to the door of the house and a two-vehicle carport sat to the side. Two children’s bikes lay abandoned beside a small herb gardenon the right of the uncut lawn. From where he stood on the opposite side of the road, Brendan could see a man pouring oil into one of the cars in the carport. It was a pale green Ford and was parked beside Pilar’s small blue car. Brendan focused on the man and decided he must be her brother. He had followed in his father, Emilio’s, footsteps and was dressed in a New Jersey police uniform.

Brendan stood a while longer, embarrassed to be carrying the small bunch of flowers that had seemed like a good idea until he actually arrived on Pilar’s street. He clenched his shoulder blades back and heard his tense vertebrae crunch. He moved his head from side to side until a similar crack occurred in his neck. He had not felt so tense in a long time and he couldn’t believe he was actually going to ask this man for permission to ask his sister out.

When the man suddenly moved from the carport and looked his way, Brendan almost lost his nerve. Guido Diaz was a not a tall man but he was well built and Uncle Frank had joked with Brendan one night that he had better bulk up if he decided to face Pilar’s brother head on.

He threw the flowers onto the grass verge and began to nervously massage the mole on his cheek. He put one foot onto the road but lost his nerve and was turning back when a child called out to him in Spanish. The girl was about six years old and was standing there holding the flowers he had thrown down.

“Shoo!” Brendan said.

She laughed and began to call across to Pilar’s brother – probably her father.

“Get lost!” Brendan said but Guido was looking directly at him and had moved down the car port to greet him.

The girl stuck her tongue out at Brendan and followed him across the road, holding the flowers and placing one foot in front of the other like a bride.

“¿Puedo ayudarle?” the man asked.

“No hablo español,” Brendan said and for the first time he understood why so many Hispanic people found this amusing. When they looked at him, they saw a fellow Hispanic, not an Irishman.

Guido Diaz looked him up and down for what seemed to Brendan to be an eternity.

“I said – can I help you?”

“I’m . . . I’m Brendan. Brendan Martin. I’m here to see Pilar . . .with your permission.” He cringed as he said those last few words. If the lads in Murphy’s could see him now!

“You the DWI guy?” Guido asked in a broad New Jersey accent.

Brendan sighed.“Yes.”

“You do time for it?”

“Eight days,” Brendan replied in humiliation.

“And you want to see my sister?” He spoke as if the very idea was ridiculous.

Guido Diaz finished wiping the oil off his hands but did not move his gaze from the visitor who had begun to sweat in the sweltering summer heat. Guido moved back to his car and threw the rag onto the ground.

“Listen, man,” he said, “if it were up to me, I’d send you packing right now, but Pilar makes her own decisions.” He looked him up and down again. “Well, come on in.”

Guidoled him into a narrow tiled hallway. He opened a door to the right and introduced Brendan to a heavily pregnant woman who was sitting under a fan trying to cool herself.

“This is my wife, Isabel.”

Brendan shook the woman’s hand and followed Guido out of the room and down the long, dimly lit hallway. He glanced quickly at the paintings on the wall. A small oil painting of the Virgin Mary hung to the side of a large tapestry of the Last Supper.

“You Catholic?” Guido asked when he caught Brendan staring at them.

“Yes,” he replied even though he hadn’t been to Mass even once since he had come to America.

“Good.”

They entered the small kitchen at the back of the house.

Brendan lowered his head to enter the room and found Pilar sitting at the kitchen table feeding a little boy in a high chair. She stood and blushed.

“You’ve got a visitor,” her brother said sourly. He turned to Brendan. “You don’t look nothing like Frank.”

“I know. I’m half Mexican.”

It was the first time he said it yet the words rolled off his tongue like they had always belonged there.

“Huh!” Guido said while Pilar’s mouth dropped open.

Brendan wondered if this would change anything, if being half Hispanic would gain him any brownie points with Guido or with Pilar herself.

“Well, I’ll leave you two alone. I’ve got to go to work in a few minutes.”

Brendan understood his meaning. Guido was telling him that he’d better be gone by then.

Guido walked out of the room but glanced back at Brendan and gave him a look that said ‘don’t mess with her’. Brendan understood it. If he had a sister he would do the same thing himself.

He stood awkwardly in the room and waited for an invitation to sit but Pilar stayed standing and crossed her arms around her body. She was wearing a light cotton dress with purple flowers and was barefoot. Her hair, which was normally tiedup tightly, hung loose around her shoulders and fell down to her tiny waist.

“Are you really half Mexican?”

“Yes, I just found out today that my father was Mexican. I . . .haven’t even absorbed it yet. It strange to know that there is a half of me that I know nothing about.”

Pilar nodded pensively. “Is that why you are here? To tell me that?”

Brendan could hear an unusual intonation in her voice. She sounded annoyed but he had no idea why.

“I . . . just wanted to see you.” His instincts told him not to mention his conversation with her brother.

“Where did you go with John today?” she asked in the same tone.

Brendan blew out. Sothat’s why she’s annoyed, he thought to himself.

“Just . . . just . . . well, I’m trying to help him find out where he’s from.”

Pilar raised her eyebrows in surprise. “What? Do you know how dangerous that is for him? Do you know how – how affected he will be when you find nothing? He is sick, Brendan. John is mentally ill. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Brendan glanced down and then moved his eyes to the kitchen window. An invisible mosquito buzzed outside the fly screen as it tried to find a way in.

“I’m just trying to help him,” he said.

“Then leave him alone. Brendan,I’ve seen you with him and you care for him. That’s good, really it is, but you don’t know anything about him. Maybe you’re interested in him because of your own background. You just said that it was strange not knowing anything about your father.”

“I don’t care about my father. I was referring to my background,” he replied sharply. “And what do you know about Jonathan?” It was rhetorical because he didn’t believe she knew anymore than he did.

“How much do I know?” she shrieked.

He had never heard her raise her voice before.

“I know that when he was found he was half starved and that he had old injuries that showed he had been beaten for most of his childhood. He had three fractured ribs and a broken arm that had never received medical attention. Some of his teeth were missing. There were marks on his back that proved he had been beaten with a belt. He had a form of rickets called antirachitic. That means that he saw very little sunlight because he was probably kept locked indoors for most of his life. Brendan, John doesn’t remember his past because he has blocked all of that out. His family must have been responsible for that. What other explanation is there? Have you considered that those evil people thought he was dead? That he escaped and he is now safe? And you want to help him find them? If they did know that he was alive, the reason they never came forward and claimed him is because they knew they’d be charged with child abuse.”

“You don’t know that. He’s told me lots of stuff. He has a lot of happy memories with his brothers and sisters.”

“Jesus, Brendan! It’s all fictitious. Don’t you know that? None of that is real.”

A voice came from the other room.“Don’t blaspheme!” Guido shouted.

Pilar glared at the wall separating her from her brother and then sighed. “None of it is real, Brendan. Please believe me. Please promise me that you won’t encourage him.”

Brendan looked away from her. He did not want to give up on Jonathan. His friend’s quest had got into his bones and made his blood pulse through his veins like it hadn’t done in a long time. But he couldn’t refuse her, even though he already knew that he would not keep his word.

“Okay. I promise.”

A door slammed and Pilar’s brother came into the kitchen. He had his gun on his hip and was letting Brendan know that his time was up. Brendan couldn’t take his eyes off the weapon and swallowed hard.

“Well, are you going to turn him down and make me happy?” Guido joked. “What’s your answer? I have a right to know – isn’t that so, Brendan?”

Brendan cringed.

Pilar looked from Brendan to her brother.

“You came here to ask for my brother’s permission to ask me out! In 2013!” she bellowed. “¡El permiso de mi hermano! ¡Estamos en 2013! ¿Cómo se atreve? ¡Yo decido con quién salgo!”

“Pilar!” Brendan pleaded. “Please speak in English. I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

“You don’t ask for my brother’s permission. It is 2013 and I decide who I date!”

“I’m sorry. Frank said –”

“Frank!” she growled. “Probably that was how it was when he worked with my father a long time ago, or maybe how it is in Puerto Rico now, but not here, not in America!”

Guido laughed and made his way out of the room. “Too bad, man – you heard her.”

Brendan heard the front door slam and the car rev up in the driveway.

“Look, I’m sorry. I can see I’ve made a mistake. Forget I ever called.” He was already wondering how he would face Pilar in the shelter the following day. “See you.”

Brendan left the kitchen, walked down the hallway and opened the door to let himself out. He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment on the pathway with his face buried in his handsin embarrassment. He’d had plenty of rejection before but it was always in a dark crowded pub and he’d usually have had too many drinks to fully remember the details the following day.

As he walked down the pathway he could hear Isabel and Pilar talking in raised urgent voices as if they were arguing. The door opened and he turned to see Isabel pushingher sister-in-law out and closing the door loudly behind her. Pilar stood rooted to the spot and did not raise her eyes to meet his. Her face was burning red.

“Brendan . . . I’m . . .”

“Look, you could have just said no. End of story. No need to make an opera out of it!” he said angrily.

She kept her eyeson the ground.“I’m sorry. If you were here to ask me out . . . you should have asked me directly, that’s all.”

Brendan sighed. He hadn’t been sure what to expect when he came here but he hadn’t expected this. He felt like a fool now and it would take him a long time to get over the humiliation. He looked at his watch. It was ten to six and he had to get to the shelter for Eileen. He thought about how beautiful Pilar had looked when she was so angry, shouting at him in Spanish. He looked at her now, all cool and calm. She had returned to the Pilar he knew.

“Pilar,” he said.

“Yes?”

“When you’re angry or – or afraid, do you speak in English?”

She frowned at him. It was not the question she was expecting. She thought about it for a moment.

“It depends but, I guess, no, I usually speak in Spanish.”

“Because it’s your first language?”

“Yes,” she replied, confused.

“Pilar?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you think in Spanish?”

Pilar screamed. “Sí, sí, pienso en español. ¡Ahora lárguese!” she roared, reverting angrily to her native tongue. “Get out!” she screamed again in English to ensure he got the message.

Brendan frowned, unsure why she had become angry again. As he opened the gate, the hinges squeaked loudly.

“That needs oiling,” he said.

Pilar lifted a small ceramic pot plant and threw it at him, narrowly missing his head.

“¡Agghh, bastardo!” she screamed.

“I understood that!” he shouted as he headed out of the cul-de-sac towards safer ground.

As he walked towards the shelter, Brendan thought about the first time he had seen Jonathan up close. He remembered how the strange man spoke in Spanish as he cowered in fear on the steps of the shelter. As though it was his first language. But none of Jonathan’s stories mentioned his family speaking Spanish. It was yet another mystery surrounding the man who had had become so important to him, another mystery he was determined to solve.

Chapter 14

“You sure Alice said we could go all the way to Mountain Park?” Jonathan asked.

Brendan nodded and stopped to catch his breath. He bent over and placed his hands on his thighs. He had no idea he had become so unfit until he attempted the steep incline through the forest walk of the park’s Blue Trail which would lead them to a magnificent lookout over Dover town.

“The view from the top is supposed to be nice,” he said.“Think you’ll like it. I think you’ll feel more relaxed talking up here.”

After twenty more minutes of hard ascent, the pair arrived at a large open area which was too rocky for trees to grow on. Together they walked to the edge of the rock and looked out over the entire town.

“Wow, that sure is pretty!” Jonathan said.“I’ve never been up here before.”

Brendan placed his backpack down and sprawled on a large boulder to the side of the rocky outcrop and panted loudly.He thought of Alice and how each day she seemed more out of breath. On more than one occasion, he had almost asked her what was wrong. It was clear that she was sick but he decided that if she wanted to tell him, she would have done so, and that she was obviously keeping her illness to herself for a reason. He took out two bottles of water and threw one to Jonathan.

“We used to come to a place like this when I was a boy,” Jonathan began.

Brendan took a large swig of water and sat up to listen.

“Once a year we’d meet on this high point of the mountain and give thanks for the harvest. It was like our own private Thanksgiving. I think my great-great-great-great-grandfather started the tradition and the family kept it going. He was a pioneer from the old country. We’d meet up with our cousins, aunts, uncles. Everybody would be there and we’d bring honey-glazed hams, sausage, fresh pies and potatoes. We’d stay there from sunrise to sunset, my two favourite parts of the day. When I was small, I loved to see the sunrise. I loved to watch its red and yellow glow light up the land and spread out across the sky. I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Always felt sorry that Cassie couldn’t see it but I’d try to tell her what it was like and she’d smile and thank me. That big yellow sun would go down right before our eyes at the clearing. My daddy said that clearing was there long before us Nelsons settled there. He reckoned it was an Indian place of worship and I could see how it would be. It sure was beautiful. It’s one of the first things I’m going to do when I get home – climb that ridge and look out in time to see that sun rising. I’ll take Cassie with me and explain it to her like I used to.”

Jonathan stopped speaking and squinted into the sun as it climbed over the town. He raised his hand over his eyes to shield them from the glare.

“You can only just about hear the wind up here. It’s so quiet. I love the quiet, don’t you?”

Brendan shook his head.“No. I can’t stand it. It . . . it makes me . . . nervous.” Brendan didn’t want to talk about himself and the heavy silence his mother had raised him in. He preferred to hear about Jonathan’s incredible life, to listen to his extraordinary stories.

“I need the tranquillity, the peace that silence brings to my heart when I am alone with my thoughts,” Jonathan said. “Sometimes at night it takes a long time for the men in the dorm to go asleep and I lie there and wait for the silence to rise up from their roomsand settle in my head. When it finally comes I think about my family and imagine where they are, maybe keeping the tradition going in that clearing and wondering where I am. Maybe they set a place for me. I think they would do that. Yes, the quiet lets you see into your heart, into your soul, lets you listen to your thoughts so you can know who you really are. You can’t do that if you fill your life with noise.” He paused. “That’s what I miss most of all, you know, the things that I know were important to me. Like big family get-togethers around the table, sharing a meal and talking about the day.”

Brendan thought about this for a moment. He looked at his friend. Jonathan was wearing his old woollen vest with the orange diamonds and the same faded corduroy trousers. His pale face and clear blue eyes gave the man an air of innocence but there was a depth of maturity behind those rimless glasses. He was a man who had experienced a lot of things, but which of those memories were real and which were, as Pilar put it, fictitious, was anyone’s guess.

“I’d like to know more about how you speak Spanish.”

Jonathan shrugged. “I told you. I always spoke it.”

“Always?”

Jonathan nodded.

Brendan stood and threw a stone over the edge of the rocky outcrop as he tried to think of more questions.

“When you were found, did you speak English?”

“Yes.”

“And read and write English?”

Jonathan frowned. “No. I remember someone would come to the hospital and teach me to read and write. A lady. She was real nice. Then I was sent to a foster home, four actually, but none of them really worked out for me.”

“Why?”

“I kept running away, looking for home. Couldn’t see how I needed a foster home when I had my own family to get back to.”

Brendan bit the side of his lip as he absorbed this.

“So you went back into that hospital, the one Dr Reiter was at?”

“Yes, until I was an adult because I couldn’t run away from there. Everything was locked. When I left, I just drifted around looking. When I finally settled at the shelter, Dr Reiter agreed for me to stay on in Dover because he was sick of me running off and felt I’d be a lot happier there.”

“And you definitely couldn’t read or write English when you were found?”

“Definitely.”

“What else do you remember?” Brendan asked, anxious for more.

“Well, that clearing I was talking about, I went up to there on my own one day. I was about fourteen and I was upset. Can’t remember what it was about now. Seems like I can never remember the things that made me sad. I just know that they’re there, somewhere in my mind but something just won’t let them come out. Maybe I’m lucky to be that way. I don’t know. Anyway, I made my way to an old shack and it was empty. I didn’t really plan on going there. I just found myself outside that hut and I let myself in. I knew it was empty cos the old Indian woman who died there, well, she was the last of her people. I wonder what it is like to be the last of your people, to be the only one left. Well, I slept there for three whole days and just ate whatever I could find around the small clearing she had dug out for herself. At night I swear I heard her moving around, making her medicines and humming the way she used to. My momma said that old Indian had a cure for snakebite, said she saw her save a man when she was a young girl. But I wasn’t afraid. I was more afraid of going home.”

Brendan wondered if he should ask Jonathan if he was sure about his age in this story. The newspapers reported that when he was found he was anywhere between the ages of eleven and fourteen so he must have been younger in the story than he remembered. He decided not to interrupt the flow of the story and made a mental note to ask him about it later.

“You were afraid to go home? Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were you afraid that your father would beat you?”

“Oh, my daddy never beat me. No, sir! Now Virgil and Clay, they got tanned lots because they were always looking for it. But me, no, sir, I stayed out of the way and did as I was asked.”

Brendan took a blade of grass from the ground and began to chew on it.

“Jonathan?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Did Virgil and Clay look like you? I mean, a lot like you?”

“Guess so. Why?”

Brendan leaned back and propped himself up on his elbows and thought about the upset his suggestion might cause Jonathan.“No reason.”

“What did happen when you went home?”

“I don’t remember.” Jonathan looked away and squinted into the sun again. “I love the sun.” He began to rub the side of his head the way he did when Brendan’s probing became too much for him.

Brendan stood and walked over to the edge of the rocky surface, aware that it was time to change the subject.

“There’s a big lake down there. Do you fancy a swim? It might cool us down.”

“Sure.”

Together they slowly negotiated the steep descent and stripped down to their underwear.

Brendan walked slowly into the lake to gauge its depth. He looked back at Jonathan who was still standing at the water’s edge.

“Careful, it’s cold and real deep!” Brendan shouted and waded on through the ice-cold water.

He glanced back. Jonathan was still standing at the edge.

“Come on in!” Brendan shouted, and dived into the water.

He swam vigorously across the lake which was about three hundred yards wide. When he got to the other side, he turned but could not see Jonathan anywhere.

“Jonathan!” he called out but there was no reply.

He swam back to the middle of the lake but still could not see his friend. He shouted again and could hear his voice echo off the rocks surrounding the lake. He swam back towards the water’s edge.

About twenty yards out he put his head under the water and swam around in circles, looking to see if Jonathan was mischievously hiding under the water to frighten him.

He swam closer to the shore, in line with the place he had last seen his friend, dived under and swam forwards a little. He came up for a breath and dived again.

And then he saw him – floating lifelessly in the water.

He came up for air, then dived again. Placing his arm around Jonathan, he dragged him upwards before pulling his limp body to the water’s edge.

Brendan laid him on his face on the rocky surface and gasped at the sight of the long, narrow scars that ran the length of Jonathan’s back. He turned his motionless friend over and checked but he was not breathing. Brendan tried to remember the lifesaving he had learnt during school swimming lessons and winced at the thought of putting his mouth over another man’s. He shivered, opened Jonathan’s mouth and blew air into his lungs. He repeated the sequence until Jonathan began to splutter, his hands instinctively rushing up as he tried to push Brendan off him.

Brendan turned him over and helped him to his knees. A gush of water flowed out of Jonathan’s mouth and ran onto the silvery rocks as he coughed up the fluid from his lungs.

Once he was sure his friend was okay, Brendan lowered himself onto the rocks and sat motionless in shock.

“I thought you could swim!” he gasped. “You said you swam in the lakes at your home!”

“I thought I could too,” Jonathan replied weakly.

“What? What the hell does that mean?”

Brendan placed his head in his hands and groaned loudly as he imagined himself telling Eileen that her reason for living had drowned in his company or telling Pilar who had no idea that he had even taken Jonathan out for the day.

“I saw it. I saw myself swimming,” Jonathan finally said.

“What?”

Jonathan moved his lips as he tried to speak and explain himself.

“Jesus, never mind,” Brendan said as he rose to his feet. He quickly dressed himself.

Jonathan tried to stand but stumbled forward, falling onto the rough rocky ledge. Brendan moved to steady him and squirmed again as he stared at the disfigured flesh on Jonathan’s back.

“Did your father do that to you?” he asked.

“No!” Jonathan yelled. “My daddy never raised his hand to me. I already told you – he is a good man. Why don’t you believe me?”

“Then who did it? Who did that to you?”

“I can’t remember.”

“You can’t or won’t?”

“I can’t.”

Brendan stared at his companion for a moment and the irritation he felt slowly evaporated.

“Jonathan, you must remember something about it. Even if you’ve suppressed it, there must be some trace of memory there. Can you remember anything about it? Anything?”

Jonathan put on his trousers and pulled his shirt and woollen vest over his wet body. He fumbled around the rock in search of his glasses and squinted as he pushed them tightly up the bridge of his nose.

“I’ve tried. Each year of my life, I have tried. Dr Reiter would show me photos of when I was found and he’d say ‘Tell me what you see’ and I saw nothing. All the things I am afraid of, Dr Reiter felt they were connected to what happened to me but even exposing me to those things didn’t make me remember.”

Jonathan shook his head. He leaned on a rock as he put his socks and shoes on.“Sometimes I think it’s useless,” he said.

Brendan had never heard his friend sound so despondent.“Don’t give up, Jonathan. Something will happen, you’ll see.”

As they made their ascent back up to the forest pathway Brendan stopped to catch his breath.

“The mountain, I don’t suppose you remember its name?” he asked doubtfully.

“No, but it was about a five-mile hike uphill. I know because I had to haul some of that food up there from our house.”

“What did your house look like?”

Jonathan stalled and stared out at the view. Brendan took a rest and stood behind him, waiting.

“I told you – it looked a lot like the shelter. Guess that’s what made me stop there. Seems like I always had the name of this town in my head, like Dover should mean something to me, so I came here – looking. I walked the length and breadth of the town and, just when I’d almost given up looking, I found myself on Maple Street and there it was – my home. Least, it looked a lot like it. Our house was made of white clapboard too but it didn’t have the attic room. It was at the end of a long driveway and, until you drove up that dirt road, you couldn’t even tell there was a house in there. The first thing you saw when you got to the top of that driveway was an old tyre swinging from a huge oak tree. My daddy said that tree was as old as the Declaration of Independence. He built a tree-house in it just for me and I’d sit there for hours listening to the birds singing and sometimes I’d see an airplane flying slowly through the clouds over my head. There was a row of old apple trees in the middle of our lawn. I can remember someone lifting me up in a little yellow coat I wore and letting me pick a red apple from its branches. I remember that the house had a screen door that always squeaked when you opened it and that it had a pretty wooden porch that wrapped the whole way around the house. It had a swing that was suspended from the porch roof by two chains and Cassie and I used to fight over it. There were hens and I remember a black-and-white cow and a cat that didn’t drink milk and spat at you when you passed. But the house I’ve described is like a million other houses and Dr Reiter thinks I saw it in a book or something. I didn’t though. It is real. I am sure of it.”

Brendan moved forward and looked into Jonathan’s face.

“Maybe you were very young when you left there which is why you don’t remember the names of places. Maybe you were taken somewhere else to live and something bad happened there,” Brendan offered.

Jonathan shrugged. “That’s a lot of maybes.”

“It would explain why you have such good memories at age four and why you cannot remember anything from then until you were a teenager. Wouldn’t it?”

Jonathan shrugged again.“I’m tired,” he said as he began to climb again. “Can we talk about it tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Brendan said, disheartened.

They reached the forest pathway and began their descent of the mountain.

“Don’t tell Pilar that you almost drowned,” Brendan said. “Or Eileen,” he added.

Jonathan turned and grinned. “You promise that you won’t give up on helping me and I promise not to tell Pilar. I won’t even tell Eileen that you kissed me!”

Brendan let out a huge laugh. He raised his hand and touched Jonathan on the shoulder. He noticed that for the first time his friend did not recoil from his touch.

“I promise.”

Chapter 15

“Come in, son!” Frank hollered from the lounge room where he was sitting alonein the dark.

Brendan entered and sat down facing his uncle who had not come to dinner and who, according to Coleen, had been moping about all day.

Frank had a small glass of amber liquid in his hand.

“I’d give you one if you were allowed,” he said.

Brendan waved his hand dismissively. “It’s fine, really.”

His enforced sobriety had not bothered him as much as he’d thought it would. He didn’t know anyone in Dover with whom he could go drinking anyway.

“I don’t drink much but I’ve got a lot on my mind,” his uncle said.

Brendan could hear the slurring of his speech which suggested Frank had been drinking for the better part of the day.

“Oh?”

“Just your mother. I’m worried – worried that it’ll all come up again. I mean, I don’t want to see Eileen hurt.”

“My mother knows what happened to Eileen?”

“I had to write and tell her. Felt she ought to know. Told her I’d handle it. She phoned me all upset, crying.”

Brendan couldn’t imagine his mother crying about anything and wondered why his uncle felt the need to tell her about it.

“Well, just tell her not to mention it,” he said matter of factly.

“Ha! You ever try to tell your mother to do anything? She’d do the goddamn opposite to what I say. You’ll see. She’ll start trouble in this house. Won’t agree with how I’ve managed things.”

Brendan looked away and smiled to himself. The whiskey was obviously causing his uncle to exaggerate. His mother had very little interest in her own son, never mind poking her nose into Frank’s family affairs. He stretched his feet out onto the deep pile carpet and wondered if this would be a good time to ask for his uncle’s help.

“Frank, did you ever come across any live John Doe’s in your time on the force?”

“What the hell do you mean live?”

“I mean people who were found by the police alive but didn’t know who they were.”

Frank thought about this for a minute.

“Yes, there was one case. I remember. This pedestrian, oh, it happened further along on the highway out of town. Emilio and I were called out to it. She was out walking and was run over by a car. Hit and run it was. She didn’t have any identification on her – seems her handbag was stolen – and when she woke up in the hospital, she had no idea who she was. We checked the area, brought her photo around and no one knew her. We had to put her photo in the newspaper here.She had a New York accent so we put it out there too. Anyway, her sons identified her, said she was passing through Dover on her way to visit a friend but that her rental car broke down in the dark. She had phoned one of her boys from the highway but she must have got run over shortly after that. It ended up okay. They came and took her home.

“There was this other one. Oh, this is much more interesting. There was this guy from Cleveland down here on business. Well, while he was here, he hired a boat and took in some fishing on Lake Hopatcong. The water was a bit choppy and I guess he fell in and hit his head off the side of the boat as he fell.Lucky for him another boat was passing and pulled him out. When he woke up in the hospital, we thought he was on holiday here because he woke up talking with a sort of British accent. It was the strangest thing. Difference was, when he was well enough to talk to us, he was able to say he was American and knew all his details, address, phone numbers etc. The doctors said it was some kind of rare brain damage from the knock he got. Oh, some specialist came down from New York to see him. Boy, when his wife arrived she thought it was strange hearing him talk like he was a tourist. I wonder if he ever got his own accent back? Guess we’ll never know.”

Brendan looked out of the window and thought about this. Maybe Jonathan was wrong about the state he was from. Maybe his accent was also brought on by a blow to the head and he had been looking in the wrong state for all of these years.

“Did you ever find anyone . . . like a child . . . that no was looking for? You know, that no one ever claimed?”

“A child? God, no! I’ve heard of a few cases in the big cities but, no, I never saw anything like that here. Every child’s got a mother, right?”

Brendan nodded.

“Why are you asking me about this? Is this about your father? Are you wondering about him?”

“No.”

Brendan’s answer was so immediate, so resolute, he began to wonder why he had no inclination to find out about his father. He knew he should be longing to know more or should even want to meet him, but he had looked as far into his heart as he knew how to and found that that longing simply wasn’t there.

He stood and closed the lounge door to ensure Eileen didn’t hear him. He was running out of ideas and felt he had no option but to use Frank’s expertise in the search for Jonathan’s family.

He pulled his chair closer to Frank and he told his uncle everything he knew about Jonathan Doe, with the exception of his relationship with Eileen.

When he finished Frank poured himself another whiskey and thought about it.

“Seems to me like you have to go back to the scene of the crime,” he said.

“Which is?” Brendan asked.

“Goddamn it, Brendan. Good job you didn’t go into the force. Embarrass the life out of me. That house in New York, of course. Take the man there. See where it leads.”

Brendan nodded. It seemed like a really good idea. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before.

“It’s good to have a man-to-man chat like this,” Frank slurred.

“Coleen wants you to come in for your dinner,” Brendan said, only now remembering why he had come looking for his uncle in the first place. When he didn’t answer, Brendan moved closer and heard a low wheeze emanating from his uncle’s nose. He grinned at his sleeping uncle and took the whiskey glass from his hand, then took a blanket from the sofa and threw it over him.

Okay, he said to himself, New York, here we come.

Chapter 16

Brendan was already showered, shaved and waiting in the kitchen when Eileen came downstairs.

He had phoned Alice the night before to ensure she was on the following morning. Brendan had not seen Pilar since their row and was relieved that she would not be on day shifts for another few days. It would give them both a chance to cool down and hopefully put the sorry event behind them. When Eileen arrived in the doorway, she was wearing a green cotton dress and fashionable sandals. The dress, which had long sleeves, made her grey eyes look green and set off the red in her hair in the sun-filled kitchen.

Brendan stood up.“You look lovely,” he said.

She smiled shyly and sat beside him.

“I haven’t worn this dress for years. I took it out the night we had our talk and I’ve been looking at it hanging on the wardrobe door ever since. Brendan, you were right when you said I was covering myself up and you were also right that I don’t need to do it anymore. But . . . I wasn’t doing it because I was ashamed or embarrassed about myself. I did it to shut the world out, to protect myself, and it occurred to me that in a way I was helping Dad to shut myself away, to block out the world. I’m not going to do that anymore. What’s more, I am going to Alice’s party.”

Brendan put his coffee cup down and stared at his cousin.“How are you going to talk Frank into that?”

Eileen took a deep breath. “I am going to ask and, if he says no, then I’ll go anyway. If you’re going, he might be happy for you to escort me. You are going, aren’t you?”

Brendan nodded. “I was hoping to ask Pilar but . . .”

Eileen grinned. She had known that her cousin was interested in Pilar but wasn’t sure if he had taken it any further.

“Will I be in the way?”

“No, she threw a pot plant at me so I doubt she’ll be interested in going anywhere with me.”

Eileen laughed. “That doesn’t sound like Pilar!”

“Well, you should have been there.”

Brendan looked at his watch. It was nine and he would need to hurry if he was to catch the 10.07 train which would get him and Jonathan into Penn Station a little after eleven thirty. He hurried Eileen and walked as quickly as she could keep up with him.

When they arrived at the shelter, Kuvic was signing for a delivery of wood in the hallway. He looked at Eileen from head to toe and wolf-whistled as she ran down the hallway to the laundry.

Brendan reached forward and caught him by the throat, pinning him to the wall and sending the delivery dockets flying about the hallway.

“You ever look sideways at my cousin I’ll kill you,” he said.

Kuvic sneered and jerked free from Brendan’s hold, pushing him with full force across the hallway.

“How many weeks you got left here, Paddy? Might have to tell Thompson to cut them short. I can keep a closer eye on Eileen for you then. Or Pilar. I see the way you look at her but, don’t forget, I saw that little border-hopper first.”

Brendan lunged forward and grabbed Kuvic by the shirt collar, pushing him hard into the wall again.

“She’s Puerto Rican, you stupid bastard. That means she’s an American citizen.”

Kuvic raised his arms to loosen Brendan’s grip and punched him, knocking him into the hall table. Brendan lunged forward and punched Kuvic in the face, sending him flat into his back on the polished tiled floor. He stood over him and was about to punch him again when he heard Alice shouting from the landing.

“Stop that!”

He looked up and backed away from Kuvic who clambered to his feet and dabbed his bleeding lip with a handkerchief.

“See what he did?” Kuvic asked Alice who glared down at them.

“Kuvic, where is Zeb?” she demanded.

Brendan grinned as the smile on Kuvic’s face slowly faded.

“I had to throw him out last night. I warned him about fighting but that dumb son of a bitch just kept on starting rows. Couldn’t get a moment’s peace.”

“That’s a lie!” another voice called from the upper floor.

Jonathan walked down the stairs, followed close behind by Alice. His blue eyes were ablaze with anger.

“Zeb was shouting allright but you didn’t give him a chance to settle down. Said he was interfering with your favourite TV programmes. I heard you from my room. You just dragged him down the stairs and threw him out. The other men were afraid. There was hardly a word in that room until morning. They were even afraid to come out to use the bathroom.”

Kuvic looked at Alice who was now standing in the hallway with her arms folded about her body.

“Are you going to believe this nutcase over me?” Kuvic asked in disbelief.

“Don’t you dare ever refer to any of the clients with those words again!” Alice replied. “Do you hear me? I won’t only be going on what John says. I’ll be asking the other men this evening and I’ll ask Zeb when he comes back tonight. If what they say is true, you’ll have some explaining to do. Don’t forget, I am the manager here.”

“Not for much longer,” Kuvic murmured as he turned on his noisy heels and walked away.

Alice sighed and stood for a moment in the hallway. Brendan noticed that she looked deflated, spent.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes, but you two get on out of here now. Time is running out.”

As they took their seats on the train, Jonathan squinted nervously out of the window and remained in a trancelike state for the next twenty minutes of the journey, occasionally glancing at Brendan with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

“Aren’t you going to ask where we’re going?” Brendan said at last.

“I can read!” Jonathan responded sharply.

Brendan leaned forward and touched Jonathan’s knee.“What’s the matter?”

“Why are you taking me to New York? I want to go to Newsart, Virginia, not New York City!”

“Do you trust me?”

Jonathan looked out of the window and swallowed. “Are you taking me to see Dr Reiter? Cos if you are, I’m getting off at the next stop. I mean it, Brendan. He can’t help you anyway. He only knows what you know.”

“I’m not taking you to Dr Reiter.”

“You promise?”

“Promise.”

Brendan flushed when he noticed several amused-looking passengers had become interested in their conversation and were staring at them. He quickly took his hand off Jonathan’s knee and leant back into his seat for the rest of the journey. He relaxed to the sway of the train as it made its way noisily along the tracks and began to imagine the two of them standing outside that old rundown house in Harlem. He could see Jonathan standing there, remembering everything about how he came to be there, remembering who he was and where he had come from. He imagined himself returning victorious to Pilar who would apologise, tell him he was right all along and might even go with him to Alice’s party. More pleasing than any of these thoughts was a vision of himself standing on thatmountain clearing in Virginia with Jonathan, looking out at the Blue Ridge Mountains and walking through the orchards. He could see the old Indian woman’s hut, the mountain lion with her cubs and the swing on theporch of the homestead Jonathan had so vividly described. He didn’t expect Jonathan’s parents to be alive but he could hear his brothers and sisters thanking him for bringing their brother home and he would sit at their table as they explained how Jonathan had become lost to them and put the last piece of the jigsaw into place.

When the train pulled into Penn Station, Brendan led his companion outside into the bustling city. He noticed Jonathan become ill at ease in the noise and confusion of the crowded city and mused over how two very different men could become good friends. Brendan relaxed into the hustle of the noisy crowd and moved with them, dragging Jonathan along as he went. Twice he gently pulled Jonathan’s hands from his ears as he tried to block out the noise of voices shouting and of traffic beeping.

Then a traffic cop blew his whistle at jaywalkers, causing Jonathan to rush inside a diner to hide.Brendan followed him and, knowing it was useless to try to move him for a while, ordered coffee and pastries, and they sat looking out at the crowd as they ate and drank.

“We have to go back out sometime,” Brendan said at last but Jonathan did not answer him and kept his eyes focused on two Latinos who were standing outside the window, smoking.

“Are you afraid of those guys?” Brendan asked.

Jonathan nodded.

“Do you know them?” he asked hopefully.

Jonathan shook his head and placed the diner’s large menu on the window ledge to block them from his view.

“Then why are you afraid of them?”

Jonathan looked frantically around the busy diner and did not answer. Brendan noticed his friend’s hands had begun to shake and sweat had begun to bead on his forehead. A feeling of panic began to rise up in him as he contemplated the possibility of Jonathan having one of his outbursts in the restaurant but he focused his mind on the purpose of their trip and the happy ending he knew that this journey would achieve.

“I want to know where we’re going,” Jonathan demanded.

Brendan sighed. “You won’t know where it is until you get there. I mean, you won’t recognise the name until you see it. Trust me.”

Jonathan began to tap the salt-and-pepper set on the table nervously.

“I need to use the bathroom,” he said. He left his seat and made his way down to the end of the long narrow diner.

When he returned Brendan had paid the bill and was standing with the door open to encourage Jonathan to rejoin the crowd.

The pair walked to the bus stop and caught the M10 to Harlem which would take them down Frederick Douglas Boulevard.

“Tell me when you recognise anything,” Brendan said.

“I’ve never been here before, Brendan, and you want me to tell you if I recognise anything?” Jonathan replied, exasperated.

“You were here, Jonathan. This is where you were found, this is where you were in the hospital – and what about your foster homes? They were all in New York, weren’t they?”

Jonathan nodded and looked around himself doubtfully.“I don’t see anything that I know.”

“You will,” Brendan promised.

As the bus approachedWest 125th Street, Brendan signalled to Jonathan that they would be getting off.

They continued their journey on foot down Martin Luther King Boulevard then swung right down Lenox Avenue. Brendan took out the map he had printed off the internet and rechecked how many of the small side roads they’d pass before they’d reach Parkview where he hoped the house would still be standing.

When they arrived there, the street did not look at all as Brendan had imagined. He’dthought that the old city houses would have been mostly replaced by high-rise apartment blocks but the narrow street was still lined with a long terraced row of four-storey houses. The top three floors of the stone houses were fronted by large windows, each with mounted air-conditioners suggesting that the large houses were now divided into smaller apartments. Black wrought-iron railingsran along the front of the basement areas which were accessed through a small gate. Some of the houses had removed the basement railings and used the little gardens inside as parking spaces.

Brendan turned to look at Jonathan whose face registered no emotion.

“Do you see anything to recognise?”

“No. I – I don’t remember any of this,” Jonathan replied anxiously.

Brendan began to walk faster down the long narrow street, anxious to stand in front of the house and watch his friend remember. He glanced back at Jonathan as he stumbled along with less enthusiasm.

Brendan stoppedhalfway down the street where workmen were renovating three of the houses simultaneously. The railings of the houses had all been removed to make way for three large skips and long tubes ran from the top floor to the skips which the construction workers used to dispose of rubbish.

Brendan stopped and peered at the numbers on the doors: 50 . . . 52 . . . 54.

It was the last of the three houses.

Brendan moved Jonathan forward and stood him squarely in front of the house which looked like it had been abandoned for years. He moved his body sideways so he could watch Jonathan’s face as he began to remember.

“Well?” Brendan asked.

“Well, what?”

“This is the house that you brought the police to, the night they found you in the park. You told them that your grandmother lived here.”

Brendan waited and watched Jonathan’s face crease and fold as he tried to make sense of the sight in front of him. He looked up to the top floor and slowly moved his eyes down the house. Brendan thought he saw a flicker of recognition as Jonathan trained his eyes on the basement but then his friend closed his eyelids tightly and stood motionless on the pavement.

“Anything?”

Jonathan opened his eyes and shook his head. “No. I told you. I’ve never been here before!”

Brendan moved closer to the house and sighed. There had to have been a reason for Jonathan to bring the police to that house. He looked into the open basement door. There didn’t appear to be any workmen inside. He shouted up to a worker on a scaffold in the next house.

“Hey! I used to live here!” he lied. “Mind if we take a look inside?”

An Irish voice replied, “No problem, but help yourself to two of them hats there and don’t be long. The boss’ll be back soon.”

Brendan took two hard hats from a box beside the skip and handed one to Jonathan. He inched his way past the huge skip which almost blocked the driveway and headed towards the basement. He looked back to find Jonathan still standing on the pavement outside the house.

“Come on!” he said.

The basement of the house was remarkably small considering the overall size of the building and consisted of two small rooms and a tiny bathroom. The first room was completely empty. The walls were painted in dark blue paint which hung loose in sections in the damp, musty room. Across the hallway, a tiny bathroom with a small round window faced out to the front of the house and had an old-fashioned shower cubicle, sink and broken toilet bowl.

Brendan moved to the second room which was slightly larger and faced out onto the back of the house. An old wardrobe stood inside the door and a wooden kitchen counter, rotting with damp and mould, sat under the window. He peered through the filthy glass and could see the tall trees of Marcus Garvey Park in the distance. The walls of the room were stained with grease and the ancient floorboards creaked under his feet as he moved about the room, looking for what exactly he didn’t know.

He returned to the front room where Jonathan stood, looking out the window. He searched Jonathan’s face but his friend was in a trancelike state. Brendan raised his arm to touch Jonathan but he flinched and raised his hands to his head.

“It’s me, Jonathan, it’sBrendan! I’m not going to hurt you. What can you see?”

Jonathan turned to stare at him as though he had been woken from a dream.

“No me escaparé otra vez. Abuelita ayúdeme. Abuelita. No lo haré,” he said in agitation.

Brendan moved backwards. “Jonathan, what’s happening to you? Tell me!” he asked, more urgently now.

“No me lastime,” he whimpered. “¡Seré bueno!”

“I won’t hurt you, Jonathan. I’m your friend. Please, please, tell me what you can see?”

But Jonathan was locked in some memory, lost in some dark, murky place in his mind. He waved his hands in the air as though he was trying to open something that once stood by the window. Brendan moved forward to try to calm him.

“I’ll get in, I’ll get in,” Jonathan said in English.

“Get into what?” Brendan asked.

Jonathan was now cowering under the window.

“Jonathan, calm down!”

He needed to wake Jonathan from his memory, he needed to know what he could see.

“Tell me!” he demanded.

He saw the terror increase in his friend’s eyes.

Jonathan stood and backed slowly into the corner of the room. His eyes looked huge and wild, as though he feared for his life.

“Please,please!” he begged as snot and tears ran down his face.

Brendan moved forward again. “Jonathan,” he said gently.

But Jonathan’s eyes darted sideways and focused on the open door. He ran, knocking Brendan over onto the dusty floor, and fleeing onto the street.

Brendan jumped up and chased after him. The skip slowed him down as he tried to inch his way down the narrow driveway. He heard the screech of a car and a loud bump.

“Jesus, Jonathan!” he yelled as he squeezed past the end of the skip and ran out to where a car was stopped in the middle of the road.

“Did you see that?” the driver asked as Brendan stood panting at the car. “Some maniac just ran out in front of me. I hit him hard but he just got up and kept running!”

“Which way?” Brendan panted and ran in the direction the man was pointing. When he reached 5th Avenue, he stopped and tried to catch his breath. He leant against a building and looked right as hordes of people left their office buildings for lunch. He looked to his left where the street, which led to the park, was much quieter. But his friend was nowhere to be seen. Jonathan was gone.

Chapter 17

Brendan ran his hands through his thick dark hair and tried to calm his breathing as he stood on the corner of 5th Avenue and 119th Street. He tensed the muscles in his legs as he tried to control the tremor that had begun to move in painful waves up his body.

“Jesus!” he said, shaking his head at the hopeless situation he was in.

He had no idea which direction Jonathan had gone, so searching for him would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. He glanced again at the crowds of people spilling out from their offices to his right and reasoned that it was unlikely Jonathan would have willingly run towards them. He looked left at Marcus Garvey Park in the distance. It was the place Jonathan had run to all those years ago. Maybe he had gone there now.

As he ran forward, he pushed several people out of his way and ignored their insults as they caught up with him at the pedestrian crossing. Sweat had begun to pour out of him, plastering his white T-shirt and his heavy denim jeans to his body.

Brendan tried to get into the park at the 5th Avenue entrance but there was a queueof parents and small children in front of him. He ignored the line and hopped over the small fence beside the monument. He pushed through the crowds, calling out Jonathan’s name. He stopped at a section of thick, overgrown trees and shouted out again.

He swung left towards the baseball arena and entered the recreation centre in the hope that his friend had taken shelter there from the searing New York heat but he was not there. In the distance he could see two mounted police but he did not want to report Jonathan missing yet. He stopped running for a moment and bent forward to catch his breath.

“Jesus, where are you?” he said aloud.

He checked his watch and it was almost two o’clock. Jonathan had been missing for nearly half an hour. He was pretty sure that his friend didn’t have any money on him so the likelihood of him returning to Penn Station to get home was nil. Also, he did not believe that Jonathan would have recovered so quickly from the stupor he had been in and felt that he was somewhere in this park, hiding from some memory that had been sparked off in that basement room.

Brendan sat down on a park bench to think. He tried to get into his friend’s tortured mind and figure out where someone like Jonathan would hide in this big park.

He returned to the gate and took a map from a teenage ranger whose voice had not yet broken. He studied it for a moment and walked quickly northwards to the pool area, hoping his friend had not jumped in. When he got there, all three pools were filled with screaming children. He walked along the side and stared in as he looked for an adult among the rubber rings and arm-bands. Several mothers, concerned by his agitated appearance, glared at him until he moved off towards the basketball courts. He had no reason to believe that Jonathan would be there but he was running out of options.

Only one of the courts was being used, by about five black youths.

Brendan stopped and wrapped his fingers around the green wire that surrounded the court.

“Did any of you see a tall white guy, about 6 foot, blond hair?” he asked. Brendan could hear the anguish in his voice, the sound of sheer panic.

The youths stopped dribbling the ball and came close to the fence.

Brendan swallowed as they stood close to him on the other side of the wire. They were all big and it had only now occurred to him that they might not welcome questions from a white man in their neighbourhood.

“Yeah, man,” one answered in a strong New York accent. “Came in that gate there and ran right through the court ’til he realised it was fenced all the way round. We tried to show him the way out but he looked like he thought we were goin’ to kill him. He was limping bad and his head was cut open. You chasing him? He do something on you?”

Brendan shook his head. “No. He’s my buddy. I’m just trying to find him.”

“Better do it fast. He’s bleeding down his face bad. Might be dead by the time you catch up with him,” another youth added excitedly.

“Which way did he go?”

Brendan frowned as two of the youths pointed westwards and another pointed north. The two remaining youths shrugged as they passed the ball to each other.

Brendan bit down on his lip as he decided his next move. He had already been down as far as the recreation area in the eastern part of the park and he had run through most of the northern section. He had entered the park through the southern gate.

He decided to make his way towards the centre and then follow the pathway to the western end of the park.

He walked along the long narrow pathway which was quieter than the other paths he had been down. He passed a tall metal tower on his way. He looked up at it and reckoned it was about fifty feet high. He remembered reading once that the hollow, iron-framed structure was built as a fire-watchtower in the mid-1800s when New York’s buildings were mainly built out of wood. He leant against one of the metal stanchions and thought about his next move.

Maybe Jonathan was no longer in the park and was somewhere on the streets of New York, alone and without any means to buy a drink in the cruel heat. He wiped the sweat off his brow and walked to a food cart to buy a bottle of cold water. He drank quickly and poured the remainder of its contents over his head.

“Where are you?” he said quietly to himself.

He looked at his watch and a whole hour had now passed since Jonathan disappeared. He tensed at the thought of what could happen to someone like Jonathan in the big city. According to the kids playing basketball, his friend already had a head injury that was bleeding heavily. As he left the park for 5th Avenue, he reddened at the thought of phoning the centre to tell them what had happened and decided that he would not give up yet.

He took the map out of his pocket and found his way back to the old house. Slowly, he began to comb the area in outwardly-moving circles, looking initially in small parks and diners and then anywhere else that his friend would think of hiding. With no success, he walked through Central Park in the direction of Penn Station, hoping that his friend might have calmed down and would be waiting there for him but Jonathan was nowhere to be seen. His friend had simply disappeared.

By six thirty Brendan had no option but to phone the shelter and come clean.

He sat on a park bench and stared at the public phone on the corner of 33rd and 8th and thought about what he would say. He slowly made his way to the phonebox and, unsure what the call would cost, he jammed several fifty-cent coins into the slot.

He almost hung up when Pilar answered but took a deep breath and told her what had happened. When he finished, her silence cut through him much worse than if she’d hurled another one of her pot plants at his head.

“Pilar?” he said.

“Go back to the park. You’ll find him in there, probably near the tower – or up the tower.”

“This has happened before?”

“I told you, Brendan. I told you to leave it alone.When you find him, don’t try to talk him around. And if he is on the tower, do not go up after him. Do you hear me? Do not climb it. He may panic. Just stay with him. I’m on my way. I’ll have to get Kuvic to come in and cover for me – Jane is here but she wouldn’t be able to manage on her own. Cathy is away this week and Alice is out looking for Zeb. It’s best that she doesn’t know about Jonathan anyway until we find him.I’ll phone Dr Reiter and organise to have him taken to him when we’ve found him.”

“I promised him I wouldn’t take him to Dr Reiter,” Brendan said worriedly.

“It’s a little late for keeping promises,” she replied curtly and hung up, leaving Brendan standing on the sidewalk with the receiver in his hand.

He felt like an idiot. Why hadn’t he listened to her and to Eileen? Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone? Jonathan was out there somewhere, alone. He could hear Alice’s voice telling him that Jonathan wasn’t made for the streets and Eileen’s remark that Brendan was living his life through the man’s amazing stories and it was true. He had endangered his friend and all he could do was hope that no harm would come to him.

Brendan was not a praying man but he looked upwards and promised that if Jonathan got out of this unharmed, he would never again try to find out the man’s identity. As he replaced the receiver, he longed to give in to his exhaustion. He felt like he could lie down there right on the pavement and sleep and found himself looking longingly at the grey concrete. His shoulders ached and his stomach growled from hunger.

He hailed a cab back to Marcus Garvey and, despite his exhaustion, he ran quickly through the park which looked ominous in the fading light. He looked upwards to the sky which was still bright but the tall buildings surrounding the park blocked out the sunset and dipped the lush green area into premature darkness.

He made his way to the tower and looked up at its immense columns.

“Jonathan?” he called softly even though the park was now almost empty save for a couple of homeless people lying on nearby benches.

He looked up but he could not see anyone on the metal structure. Brendan lowered himself down onto the dirt and leant against a tree where he sat motionless for an hour and a half until Pilar arrived.

She did not look at him but walked directly to the tower and touched the cold steel with her hand.

“Jonathan,” she said softly. “Por favor, baje. No pasa nada. Ahora está a salvo.”

Brendan came to her side. “What are you saying?”

“I am telling him to come down, that it is safe.”

Brendan could see her eyes moisten and he looked away, painfully aware now of the hurt he had caused and the damage he had done.

“¿Abuelita? ¿Es usted abuelita?” a voice called out from the lookout at the very top of the tower.

Brendan winced as he realised how high Jonathan had climbed.

He saw Pilar tense and look to the ground as though Jonathan’s words caused her pain.

“What?” Brendan asked frantically.

“This is not good. He thinks I am his grandma,” she replied.

She answered Jonathan in Spanish, in soothing words of comfort.

After a while she walked about twenty feet away and took out her mobile phone. Brendan had never owned one. He hated the thought of people being able to reach him wherever he went. He moved closer to her and heard her speak to Dr Reiter in a low urgent voice and listened as she used terms like ‘psychosis’ and ‘psychotic episode’, words that made Brendan’s blood turn cold. He heard her giving Dr Reiter directions so that an ambulance would be waiting outside the 5th Avenue entrance when Pilar managed to talk Jonathan down. When she was finished, she put her phone away and moved back to her spot by the metal pillar.

“Jonathan?” she called. “Please come down and I will take you away from here. I won’t let anyone hurt you!”

Brendan noticed that she called Jonathan by the name he preferred, a name he had never heard her use before.

A silence fell as they held their breath and waited for him to reply. Slowly, they heard the sound of his feet on the metal steps. They heard him cry out in pain. Brendan looked away from her, aware now that he would have to tell her about Jonathan’s accident.

“He got hit by a car – I think he hurt his foot. His head is cut too.”

Pilar glared at him and he looked away. Guilt overwhelmed him and he could not return his eyes to Jonathan until the man had made it painfully down the last rung.

“Pilar?” Jonathan said.

A smile washed over her face and heavy tears flowed down her face. She wiped them quickly away and moved towards him.

“I heard my grandma,” he said.

Brendan was moved by how childlike his friend sounded in the dark, empty park.

“Yes, but she had to go and asked me to take care of you. Is that okay?”

Jonathan looked around himself and appeared perplexed by his surroundings.

“How did I get here?” he asked.

“We can talk about that later,” Pilar replied.

They walked together towards 5thAvenue. Soon they could see the blue flashing lights of the ambulance waiting at the park’s exit.

“Jonathan, we need to get a doctor to look at your foot. Okay?” Pilar asked.

Jonathan tensed and moved backward away from them. He began to shake his head furiously and narrowed his eyes at Brendan.

“You promised!” he pleaded.

Brendan looked away and focused on the neon lights of the bar on the other side of the street.

“It’s okay,” Pilar said. “I will be there too. I will drive to the hospital behind you in my car.”

As they waited at the door of the ambulance, one of the paramedics prepared an injection for Jonathan.

“No!” he pleaded as they pulled his sleeve up.

“What’s that for?” Brendan asked but Pilar did not answer him. He turned to face her and saw that her eyes had once more filled with tears.

As the paramedic injected the long needle into Jonathan’s vein, his eyes glazed over.

“I’m sorry,” Brendan mouthed but his friend’s eyes had already closed and his body slumped forward. “I’m sorry.”

Chapter 18

The New York State Psychiatric Institute on Riverside Drive was an enormousstructure of reinforced steel which dominated the city skyline off Henry Hudson Parkway. The exterior of the eleven-storey building was clad with large panels of green aluminium and huge panes of toughened glass on both sides of the semi-circular building. Pilar swung her car onto the off ramp and parked quickly in the hospital’s staff car park. She opened the door and ran to the hospital’s emergency department with Brendan following as close behind as he could. When they arrived at the emergency desk, Jonathan had already been taken to X-ray.

Pilar sat down on one of the chairs in the waiting area and put her face in her hands. Brendan sat beside her but decided not to try to comfort her – she had not uttered one word to him on the rushed journey down the highway.

She clasped her hands together as though she was praying.

“He called me Pilar when he came down. That’s good,” she finally said aloud though Brendan knew that she was talking more to herself than to him.

Half an hour later, Jonathan was wheeled by on a trolley by two stern-looking orderlies followed closely by a nurse. Pilar jumped up and went to him. Brendan followed her and they stood looking down at their friend with his half-closed eyes. The cut on his head had been cleaned and stitched. Brendan looked closer and winced as he saw that it was in the same spot as Jonathan’s old scar.

“His leg’s not broken. It’ll be right in a few weeks,” a nurse who seemed to know Pilar said.“Dr Reiter will be down shortly to assess him.”

The orderlies briskly wheeled Jonathan away.

Pilar returned to her seat and bent forward, hugging her body. Brendan instinctively put his arm around her and she did not pull away. She turned and buried her head in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said as she sobbed loudly, oblivious to the stares of people in the small waiting area.

“You can’t ever do this again,” she said.

“I won’t. I promise.”

Two hours later Dr Reiter arrived and stood over them. His cool eyes focused on Brendan. He beckoned for them to follow him into a small meeting room and sat at the head of the small, coffee-stained table. Pilar and Brendan sat quietly on either side of the tableand trained their eyes on the cheap veneer wood.

Dr Reiter cleared his throat and turned to Pilar.

“The sedative is wearing off so I was able to speak with him and find out what has been happening,” he said.

He turned his cold gaze on Brendan, placing his hands flat on the table.

“So, I take it you are the one who is going to help John get home?” he quipped.

Brendan swallowed and waited for the lecture he knew would follow. He looked at the doctor who he had not taken to on that first morning they met at the shelter. Reiter had an air of arrogance about him which Brendan detested. The flesh on his bony face was lined with long, narrow wrinkles which ran down his cheeks like streams and gathered around his neck in loose folds. His long bony hands which rested confidently on the table looked menacing, as though they might rise up at any moment and squeeze the very life out of him.

“Do you know what a paracosym is?”Reiter asked.

Brendan shook his head and looked at Pilar who did not move her eyes from the table top.

Dr Reiter leaned towards him. Brendan saw the faint glint of anger in his eye.

“Perhaps Ms Diaz will enlighten us? She is, after all, responsible for John’s care at the shelter.”

The disdain in his tone felt like a punch to the diminutive nurse. She swallowed and focused her eyes on her hands that were clasped tightly on the table.

“No? Well, allow me to do the honours,” said Reiter. “A paracosym is an imaginary world that is created by children.”

Brendan noticed that his voice sounded flat and emotionless as though he was reading the text from an autocue for a television documentary and not referring to a human being.

“Many children who create these imaginary worlds have experienced severe trauma and so they create alternative worlds, worlds that are safe for them to live in. This world can include imaginary people and places they’ve never been to. It may even involve the child speaking an imaginary language. In John’s case, it was, I acknowledge, a real language, but otherwise he presented as a classic case. Unfortunately he did not grow out of this paracosym and clings to the belief that the life he imagined he had was real when in fact it was not. This, young man, is what is known as psychosis – where a person cannot tell what is real from what is imaginary.”

Brendan felt an anger welling up in him, not only because of Reiter’s contempt towards him but because of his treatment of Pilar. None of this was her fault.

“He has given me clear detailed descriptions of his family and the stories he tells me never alter,” Brendan said. “How do you explain that?”

Reiter suddenly began to laugh loudly. Pilar lowered her head into her hands and shook her head. Brendan watched as the smile slowly faded from the psychiatrist’s face and was replaced with a scornful expression.

“What’s so funny?” Brendan snapped as he looked from Reiter to Pilar.

“They are imaginary,” Dr Reiter said. “All of it is – from his white-haired siblings to his blind sister to the apple-picking parents in Virginia. Believe me, the police left no stone unturned in their investigation and came up with nothing.”

Brendan shook his head.

“You don’t agree?” Dr Reiter smirked.

Brendan flushed with embarrassment. He knew the doctor was mocking him.

“No, I don’t. He must belong to someone!”

“Of course he does or once did belong to someone, but have you considered any or all of the reasons that nobody would come and claim him?”

Brendan flushed and looked away from the doctor’s piercing gaze.

Dr Reiter turned his attention to Pilar who slowly raised her head and met his glare.

“Ms Diaz, I helped secure that position for you on the grounds that you used your psychiatric training to inform and educate all people in contact with John at the shelter. You were specifically directed to tell people not to engage in his fantasies. Now, can I expect you to do your job or should I discuss this problem with the charity’s management body?”

“It won’t happen again,” Pilar said as she looked at Brendan who nodded simultaneously.

“I take it your investigation into obtaining more permanent accommodation for John is making progress?” Reiter said.

“Yes,” she replied.

He raised his eyebrows, waiting for more.

“John has appointments at the housing authority coming up. They’ll be showing him a couple of apartmentsin the locality.”

“And Mr . . . ?”

“Martin.”

“Mr Martin . . . will he be . . . ?” he began.

Pilar stood and appeared to return to her calm, aloof ways. She looked at Brendan, who thought he understood what Dr Reiter was asking for, something he wasn’t going to get.

“Brendan will remain on at the shelter but he won’t have anymore personal conversations with John,” she said.

Brendan flashed a look of gratitude at her and hoped that Thompson agreed with her when he found out what had happened today.

Reiter frowned and pursed his lips in disapproval. “Well, then. I don’t see that it’ll do John much good to remain here, even in the short term. It might in fact cause him to regress so I’m happy for you to take him back with you. I’ll be down to see him in a couple of weeks and I’ve prescribed him strong sedatives until he settles a little.”

He handed Pilar a white sheet of paper. She looked at it and for a brief moment appeared concerned by the prescription but said nothing and placed the paper in her pocket.

Dr Reiter opened the door and stood almost in their path, making it impossible to avoid his cold stare as they squeezed by him.

They took the lift to the second floor where Jonathan lay in a bed, still sleepy from the injection. They put their arms around his shoulders and raised him to a sitting position, then helped him out of the bed. Each taking an arm, they led him from the room and to the lift, Pilar making soothing noises all the time and assuring him that they were going home.

When they reached the car, they strapped himinto the back seat.

As they drove out of the car park, Jonathan half opened his eyes and began to murmur excitedly in Spanish. As she stopped at the traffic lights, Pilar looked behind her and murmured something to the semi-conscious man. She turned to Brendan with an expression of anger and hurt.

“I know,” he said.

“This can never happen again.”

As the car left the suburbs of New York and reached Route 78, Jonathan appeared to fall into a deep sleep and an uncomfortable silence settled inside the car.

Brendan leant forward to put on the radio but pulled his hand back when Pilar glared at him.

“He’s sleeping!” she hissed.

He sighed and looked out into the darkness on either side of the highway. He couldn’t see even one house on which to focus his thoughts, one house with a light that he could focus on and imagine the people living there and what they were doing up at this late hour. He checked his watch. It was almost one o’clock in the morning.

Hard as he tried he could not shake the image of Jonathan’sface as he trembled in the corner of that bleak, empty room.

“He was there before, Pilar, in that house. You should have seen his face. He was terrified.”

“Then why bring it up, Brendan, why torture him? Everyone knows that awful things happened to him and that no one is looking for him. So why? Why do you need to do this to him?”

Brendan did not look at her but kept his eyes focused on the darkness around him.

“Because I am no one,” he replied.“I thought finding his home would help me become somebody, help me find a place I could belong. Instead, I hurt him.”

Pilar took her eyes off the road and looked at Brendan as though she had never seen him before. She took her right hand off the wheel and placed it gently on his leg. He lifted his hand and placed it over hers.

When they at last pulled into the driveway of the shelter, Kuvic came out and tried to help Brendan to lift Jonathan from the car but the confused man’s eyes shot open. Jane followed close behind.

“Leave me alone!” he shouted.

Brendan moved forward and blocked Jonathan’s view of Kuvic.

“It is you he is angry with,” Pilar said gently to Brendan.

He moved back and tried to conceal his hurt as Kuvic rushed forward, smirking, to help Pilar move Jonathan from the car.

They led him inside the house and towards the stairs.

“I’ll manage from here,” Pilar said to Kuvic as she and Jane slowly helped the drugged man upstairs to his room.

When they were gone from view, Kuvic dug his hands into his pockets and began to laugh out loud. In the brightly lit hallway, Brendan could see his cut lip and grazed face from their little early-morning brawl. It was hard to believe that their tussle had happened less then eighteen hours ago.

“You’ve done it this time, Paddy!” Kuvic said.“Oh, and by the way, I haven’t forgotten about how you assaulted me. That’ll look bad when I report it to the police. Not something a guy on probation wants to happen. Or maybe I won’t say anything. That is, if you behave nicely.” He beckoned to Brendan. “Come in here. There’s something I want to show you.”

Brendan squirmed but followed him into the lounge to the left of the hallway. Kuvic had one over him now, so for now he would do as he asked. He looked around the pleasant room which was scattered with several comfortable armchairs and a brown leather sofa placed under the bay window. An oldtelevisionstood in the corner of the room on a wooden table. He had spent very little time in this room and had rarely noticed any of the clients using it.

“Want to show you something,” Kuvic said as he turned the television on and slipped a video into the dusty old VHS machine underneath the television. He pressed play and gestured for Brendan to sit.

“I borrowed this from my mom!” Kuvic laughed “I thought you’d like to see it.”

Brendan dropped down into the chair, exhausted, and watched thevideo programme which appeared to have been fast-forwarded to the end.

On the screen, five white-haired children stood smiling into the camera. Their clothes looked old-fashioned as if the programme was set in the 1930’s. One by one they stepped forward as their names rolled up.

Brendan squinted at the writing through exhausted red eyes.

Daniel Walker …………...Jonathan Wyatt Nelson

Joshua Hall ………………Virgil Nelson

Matthew Allen ………….. Clay Nelson

Laura Cooper …………… Mackenzie Nelson

Heather Cooper ………… Tyler Nelson

Brendan’s mouth dropped open as he stared in disbelief at the sight in front of him. It was a TV show. Jonathan’s whole life was a TV programme. He looked away as the parents jumped playfully onto the screen, Ma and Pa Nelson with their striking blue eyes and poor farmer’s clothes. The camera panned out revealing the family standing in a huge orchardon the side of a mountain. The show’s title flashed onto the screen, The Nelsons of Newsart, Virginia, as the theme tune of Appalachian music played.

Brendan turned to look at Kuvic whose face had turned bright red as he tried to contain himself.

“The look on your face – Jesus, it’s priceless!” he roared. “God, how I didn’t lose it listening in on him telling you all those stories about mountain lions and apple-picking. It was the best fun I’ve had since I came to work in this dump! Hey, how come you never saw it anyway? I grew up watching those re-runs. That show is ancient. My mother used to watch it when she was younger!”

He cackled as he followed a stunned Brendan into the hallway.

“Hey, come on now!” he teased. “Don’t you want to watch the next show? It’s the one about Virgil cutting down the tree wrong and almost taking Jonathan’s eye out. No? Well, guess you already know the ending!” He fell about laughing.

Brendan let himself out and walked down the steep driveway without closing the door behind him. He made his way home in a daze until he found himself outside his uncle’s house. He walked down the side entrance to his apartment and wrote a note for Eileen telling her that he wouldn’t be going into the centre that morning and pushed it under the patio door of the main house. He was sure his cousin wouldn’t be speaking to him anyway, not when he had broken his promise to stay out of Jonathan’s past or, more to the point, had got caught.

Brendan returned to his apartment and lay on his bed fully dressed. He closed his eyes tight and tried to force his mind to think of anything but Jonathan Doe but his mind would not obey.

He laughed bitterly as he lay there in the dark.

“Jonathan Wyatt Nelson, movie star!” he said aloud in the darkened room.

Hethought about what a complete fool he had been and wondered if he could ever face Jonathan again, not just because he had let down and encouraged the mentally ill man but also because of the lies Jonathan had told him, all the stories that he had felt a part of, stories about places where he felt a person could be really free. He too felt let down and disillusioned at the thought of abandoning the search for the life Jonathan seemed to have known, the life Brendan thought he could sample. Disillusioned. He pondered on that choice of word because the whole story had been an illusion, a fallacy, a myth and his neediness made him a willing accomplice to the deception.

He turned over and tried to count the number of hours he had left in his community service. He reasoned that it would be pointless to look for another place to finish it and that he would have no choice but to return to the shelter and keep out of Jonathan’s way. After that he could borrow money from his mother or Uncle Frank to get an apartment in New York where he would return to his life of blissful isolation, to the lonely yet pain-free life he had known.

He turned over again and looked out at the moon shining in through his open blinds. He shut his eyes and willed himself to sleep. As he drifted off he promised himself that he would never let anyone get so close to him again. Ever.

Chapter 19

Brendan heard her voice before he could see her. The loud southern twang bellowed down the pathway and in through his open window, causing his body to become rigid on his narrow bed.

“Alice?” he said to himself.

He jumped up and looked at his watch. It was a quarter past six in the evening so she must have dropped Eileen home. He could hear Coleen’s voice too and realised she was directing Alice down the pathway to his apartment.

He glanced in the mirror at his rough appearance. He had not shaved or showered in two days and had barely eaten except for the meals Coleen had forced an irate and uncommunicative Eileen to take down to him.

“Well, look who’s feeling sorry for hiself!” Alicewheezed as she opened his screen door.

Brendan flushed as he tried to pull on his jeans.

“Oh, don’t you worry ’bout that. I raised my own boy. Seen everything there is to see!”

Brendan watched as she gasped for breath in his doorway. He beckoned for her to come in and sit down. The apartment was baking hot as it had no air conditioning.

“What do you want?” he asked as he pulled a creased T-shirt over his head. He filled a glass of water and handed it to her.

“Oh, I know what I want!” she laughed. “Point is, what do you want?”

Brendan frowned and shook his head in confusion. “Alice, I tried. You should have been there. He was scared out of his wits. So was I!”

“Well, yes, you did try, granted . . . and you never know . . . something might still happen for that boy. You shouldn’t give up now.”

Brendan smiled for a moment. He reckoned that Alice was about sixty-five or so and Jonathan was somewhere between forty-five and fifty years old. It wasn’t like there was a huge age gap between them yet she referred to him as a boy.

“No, I’m done, Alice. It’s over. I promised Pilar I wouldn’t look into it anymore. It’s useless anyway.”

“Well, we’ll see – sometimes when we find what we were looking for, it don’t look nothing like what we set out to get.”

Brendan raised his eyebrows. He had never known anyone who could talk in riddles like Alice could.

“So, you coming back to us?”

Brendan tried to formulate an answer but found himself stuttering. He had intended to go back the day after they got back from New York but he knew now that the man had been badly affected by the trauma, not so much from what Eileenhad told him as from the icy glare she gave him when she brought down his dinner at night, and he found he could not face him. He could not go back and allow Jonathan to see the hurt he felt at his deception, even if it was unintentional.

“I didn’t think that . . .” he began.

“That what?”

“That I’d be welcome,” he admitted.

Alice took a sip of water and stood. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him with her large, brown eyes.

“You’re welcome. Don’t you know that? John will come back to himself in time. Pilar will cool down . . . or maybe heat up. That gal sure needs to warm herself somewhere!”

“Kuvic?” he asked.

He watched Alice’s expression darken.

“We found Zeb,” she said.

“Oh, I was going to ask if –”

She waved her hand to dismiss his belated enquiries.“He’s all right. He’s home now but he was in the hospital. Badly beat up.”

“Kuvic?” Brendan asked, alarmed now for Jonathan’s safety.

“Nah. He’s cruel all right but not like that. He likes to hurt with his words, to torture people when they’re vulnerable. He put Zeb on the street in the dead of night and that poor man had to go to the park to sleep. Some gang of kids beat him up bad.”

“Jesus!”

“I typed a report for Thompson. I hope he reads it well.”

“Saying what?”

“Saying that Kuvic is a danger to the clients and asking that he fire the son of a b-i-t-c-h,” she spelt out. “Course, I put it nicely. Mr Thompson’s kind of proper.Likes things put politely.”

Brendan raised an eyebrow.

“Things aren’t so good at the house, Brendan. Eileen’s moping around, John is drugged out of his poor mind with those tablets Dr Reiter give him and Pilar, somethin’s up with that girl. Can’t put my finger on it exactly. And that’s just the staff!”

She stopped speaking and looked around Brendan’s small apartment.

“We need you there, Brendan.”

Brendan smiled shyly. He was thirty-five years old and no one had ever told him they needed him before. “Yeah, okay, I’ll be in first thing in the morning.”

He saw Alice to the door and grinned at how easily she had manipulated him. So much for his resolution to only worry about himself from now on and get his life back to the simple existence he had enjoyed.

Brendan showered and shaved and made his way to the house. He climbed the stairs and knocked on Eileen’s bedroom door. When she opened it, he looked down at her outfit. His cousin was wearing one of the middle-aged dresses and the flat court shoes he thought he had seen the last of.

“You want a driving lesson?” he asked.

Eileen ran her tongue around her mouth as she thought about it. She peeked out the door and looked down the hallway.

“Where’s Dad?”

Brendan shrugged.“Does it matter?”

“I’m annoyed with you,” she said.

“I know. Come on.”

“How did you come to buy this?” he asked as they sat into the car.

She grinned. “I was supposed to be at the shelter but I went to the bank and got a cheque, walked to the dealership and told them I wanted this car. I had nothing else to do with my money and it was building up in the bank so I decided I’d get something I always wanted. I . . . I have a disability benefit.”

Brendan pretended that he did not notice her blushing.

“I had been in there so often. Jonathan, and I would wander around but I was only interested in this one.”

“Why?”

Eileen thought about this for a moment. “Oh, you’ll just laugh but in the showroom it shone so much more than the others . . . like it was . . . calling me.” She blushed again. “Guess it was just the colour but it looked to me like . . . like a new start. Like I could get in and drive that car anywhere I wanted to and that things would be different.” She looked wistful. “So I paid up and asked the salesman to deliver it.”

“Wow! Just like that!”

Eileen nodded and looked pleased at his reaction.

Brendan was relieved to see that the car was automatic. After spending some time teaching her to start, brake and indicate, he directed heras she jerked out of the driveway.

He guided her slowly down the narrow street where cars were parked on either side. He noticed how relaxed she was behind the wheel and was amazed that his normally anxious cousin did not appear nervous driving for the first time.

“What did Frank do when he saw the car?” he asked after a while.

She bit her lip and glanced down.

“Eyes on the road!” Brendan shouted.

“Sorry!He went nuts. He forbade me to drive it, said he was going to drive it back to the showroom himself. He brought me down there . . .” She looked to the side as she recalled the memory.

“Eyes!”

“. . . and he told them I wasn’t fit to have a car, that I had problems, that they’d taken advantage of me. He held me by the arm and yelled at the manager like he’d sold alcohol to a child.”

Brendan could see she was getting agitated and realised he shouldn’t have mentioned Frank when he needed her to concentrate on the road. “Okay,” he said, “you can tell me about it when we stop. Just focus on your driving now.”

She stopped talking and followed Brendan’s directions, turning into the car park of a shopping mall. She parked awkwardly and jerkily in an empty space, then sighed and turned off the ignition.

“Not bad,” said Brendan. “You’ll soon get the hang of it.”

Eileen shrugged and smiled.

“So, go on,” he said. “Tell me what happened when Frank took the car back to the showroom.”

“Well, the manager looked at me and it was like he understood me in that second. He said he wouldn’t take it back so Dad had to drive it all the way back here. It was before his heart surgery. He was so mad. Mom, of course, tried to pick up for me. Told him to let me keep it, so he sulked at us both for about a week. A few days later he came home looking really pleased with himself.”

“Then what?” Brendan asked.

“He said he’d been to all three of the driving schools in the town and had directed them not to teach me to drive, that I might cause myself harm.”

Her chin trembled but she straightened her spine and stared out the windscreen at passing cars.

Brendan placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“He said it was for my own good,” she went on without looking at him, “that he was never going to let any harm come to me ever again. You see, Brendan, Dad thinks he is protecting me. He thinks he is saving me from all the awful things in the world but he is killing me.”

Brendan exhaled loudly and the pair stared out silently for a while.

“Why didn’t you leave here, Eileen? Why didn’t you just take off?”

She looked at him for a moment and then rested her eyes on her hands which were clasped together firmly on her lap.

“And go where?” she asked sadly. “I knew my sisters wouldn’t take me in. They wouldn’t go against Dad. I’ve never worked so who’d give me a job? I didn’t even get to finish college.”

Brendan chewed on the inside of his mouth.“Come back to New York with me,” he said, taking himself by surprise.

Eileen looked up at him. For a brief moment, her grey eyes lit up with excitement. He watched as the light faded and disappeared as though someone had quenched the dying flame of a candle.

“I could never leave Jonathan,” she replied“But, thank you, Brendan. You being here, even for this short time, well, it’s meant a lot to me.”

Brendan exhaled and nodded.“If you ever change your mind . . .”

She nodded.

“Well, I guess I’ll be in Frank’s bad books tonight,” Brendan said.

Eileen looked at her watch.“No, we have twenty minutes to get the car back. He’ll be home from his bowling club then.”

“Do you want to talk about Jonathan?” Brendan asked.

Eileen pursed her lips for a moment. “Reiter has him drugged up. He can hardly speak. Pilar said it’s just for a couple of weeks until he gets over it but . . . it just hurts. I hate to see his beautiful mind all clouded over, see him losing his stories and just sitting there staring out.”

Brendan stiffened as he tried to imagine Jonathan like that. Tomorrow was going to be harder than he’d imagined.

“I told Frank about Jonathan,” he admitted. “I didn’t say anything about you. I just said he was a friend of mine from the shelter. It was Frank who suggested I go to New York.”

“I knew you wouldn’t stop looking – even though you promised,” she said curtly.

“Does he remember anything about that day in New York?”

Eileen shrugged. “Pilar sat everyone down the next day and told us all that no one is to engage him in conversation about his imaginary life. Even Henrietta was taken out of the kitchen to hear it. Pilar said it exactly like that. Engage in conversation. Why not say, ignore him, walk away from him, let him sit there alone, because Jonathan doesn’t know how not to talk about his stories. It’s what keeps him going, what keeps him alive!”

“I thought you didn’t want anyone interfering in his life?”

“I don’t want anybody to interfere but I want him to be able to speak to people about what he wants to talk about. They don’t have to do anything, do they? They just need to listen. I don’t want him to lose who he is!”

Brendan looked at his cousin and felt sorry for the situation she was in. It was clear how deeply she felt about Jonathan.

“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” he asked quietly.

She looked towards her feet and pressed lightly on the brake pedal of the stationary car.

“Yes,” she replied firmly. She turned her face to meet her cousin’s sympathetic eyes.“Yes, I am. I’ve never said that out loud before. Not many people know about me and Jonathan and those that do don’t take us seriously, so thank you for treating me like . . . a normal woman.” She took a deep breath and looked around at passing shoppers. “Everything is going to change soon though. I’ve felt it coming for a long time. Jonathan has too. We’re like that – sensitive, I guess. When Alice leaves, Kuvic’s going to force him into one of those awful apartments that he won’t last a week in. Jonathan says he’s never going back into one of those places. He’ll take to the road and I won’t ever see him again.”

“It’s not definite that Kuvic will be in charge. What about Pilar?”

“Pilar doesn’t think she has any hope of getting that job.”

“Why? Surely it’s not because . . . not because she’s Hispanic?”

Eileen shrugged.“There’d be some old fogies on the board that wouldn’t be too keen on a Hispanic manager, those who’dthink she’s not even-tempered or . . . easily controlled. You’d be surprised how people think. I’ve seen the way she’s changed, trying to fit into what they expect. She was more passionate when she first came to the shelter. She had good fight in her. But Thompsondoesn’t care about her background and he has the final say. It doesn’t help that he doesn’t like her though. When she first arrived, she spoke out a lot about things that were wrong with the service, about how they could offer better support for those that had mental illness, and it didn’t go down too well with Thompson. He’s under pressure to keep the shelter open. He promised his uncle that it would always offer a home to those that needed it but funding is tight and it’s getting harder for him to keep that promise. He’s a good manthough. He’s just . . .under pressure, I guess. Alice is better at getting people to do things without them even realising it. After a few too many disagreements with Thompson and a lot of advice from Alice, Pilar settled down and got quieter, but instead of being shrewd and choosing her battles like Alice does, she just got sad and . . .kind of sour.”

Brendan nodded slowly. He felt he now had a better understanding of the acerbic Latina and this new insight made her even more appealing to him.

Eileen sighed. “Anyway, what about you? Mom said you know about your dad now but that I shouldn’t ask you about it – so now I’m asking. How do you feel about it?”

Brendan looked out of the passenger window and thought about her question.

“I don’t know how I feel, is the answer. I . . . I guess it doesn’t change much. One minute he was an Irish waste of space and now he’s a Mexican waste of space. It doesn’t make any difference really. I just don’t know why my mother didn’t tell me. That part doesn’t make any sense.”

Eileen pursed her lips and brooded over her cousin’s words. “Are you going to ask Patricia about it when she arrives?”

Brendan shrugged. “I doubt it but . . . well . . . we’ll see. Come on, let’s get home before Frank skins us both alive.”

After some instruction, Eileen reversed the car nervously out of the parking space and turned the car shakily towards home.