1
“CALIN Farrell, you need a vacation.”
Cal lifted a shoulder, sipped his coffee, and continued to brood while staring out the kitchen window. He wasn’t sure why he’d come here to listen to his mother nag and worry about him, to hear his father whistle as he meticulously tied his fishing flies at the table. But he’d had a deep, driving urge to be in the home of his childhood, to grab an hour or two in the tidy house in Brooklyn Heights. To see his parents.
“Maybe. I’m thinking about it.”
“Work too hard,” his father said, eyeing his own work critically. “Could come to Montana for a couple of weeks with us. Best fly-fishing in the world. Bring your camera.” John Farrell glanced up and smiled. “Call it a sabbatical.”
It was tempting. He’d never been the fishing enthusiast his father was, but Montana was beautiful. And big. Cal thought he could lose himself there. And shake off the restlessness. The dreams.
“A couple of weeks in the clean air will do you good.” Sylvia Farrell narrowed her eyes as she turned to her son. “You’re looking pale and tired, Calin. You need to get out of that city for a while.”
Though she’d lived in Brooklyn all of her life, Sylvia still referred to Manhattan as “that city” with light disdain and annoyance.
“I’ve been thinking about a trip.”
“Good.” His mother scrubbed at her countertop. They were leaving the next morning, and Sylvia Farrell wouldn’t leave a crumb or a mote of dust behind. “You’ve been working too hard, Calin. Not that we aren’t proud of you. After your exhibit last month your father bragged so much that the neighbors started to hide when they saw him coming.”
“Not every day a man gets to see his son’s photographs in the museum. I liked the nudes especially,” he added with a wink.
“You old fool,” Sylvia muttered, but her lips twitched. “Well, who’d have thought when we bought you that little camera for Christmas when you were eight that twenty-two years later you’d be rich and famous? But wealth and fame carry a price.”
She took her son’s face in her hands and studied it with a mother’s keen eye. His eyes were shadowed, she noted, his face too thin. She worried for the man she’d raised, and the boy he had been who had always seemed to have…something more than the ordinary.
“You’re paying it.”
“I’m fine.” Reading the worry in her eyes, recognizing it, he smiled. “Just not sleeping very well.”
There had been other times, Sylvia remembered, that her son had grown pale and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep. She exchanged a quick glance with her husband over Cal’s shoulder.
“Have you, ah, seen the doctor?”
“Mom, I’m fine.” He knew his voice was too sharp, too defensive. Struggled to lighten it. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“Don’t nag the boy, Syl.” But John studied his son closely also, remembering, as his wife did, the young boy who had talked to shadows, had walked in his sleep, and had dreamed of witches and blood and battle.
“I’m not nagging. I’m mothering.” She made herself smile.
“I don’t want you to worry. I’m a little stressed-out, that’s all.” That was all, he thought, determined to make it so. He wasn’t different, he wasn’t odd. Hadn’t the battalion of doctors his parents had taken him to throughout his childhood diagnosed an overdeveloped imagination? And hadn’t he finally channeled that into his photography?
He didn’t see things that weren’t there anymore.
Sylvia nodded, told herself to accept that. “Small wonder. You’ve been working yourself day and night for the last five years. You need some rest, you need some quiet. And some pampering.”
“Montana,” John said again. “Couple of weeks of fishing, clean air, and no worries.”
“I’m going to Ireland.” It came out of Cal’s mouth before he’d realized the idea was in his head.
“Ireland?” Sylvia pursed her lips. “Not to work, Calin.”
“No, to…to see,” he said at length. “Just to see.”
She nodded, satisfied. A vacation, after all, was a vacation. “That’ll be nice. It’s supposed to be a restful country. We always meant to go, didn’t we, John?”
Her husband grunted his assent. “Going to look up your ancestors, Cal?”
“I might.” Since the decision seemed to be made, Cal sipped his coffee again. He was going to look up something, he realized. Or someone.
IT was raining when he landed at Shannon Airport. The chilly late-spring rain seemed to suit his mood. He’d slept nearly all the way across the Atlantic. And the dreams had chased him. He went through customs, arranged to rent a car, changed money. All of this was done with the mechanical efficiency of the seasoned traveler. And as he completed the tasks, he tried not to worry, tried not to dwell on the idea that he was having a breakdown of some kind.