Mansions Of The Dead by Sarah Stewart Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

forgotten about Maura. For most of the day, while he’d focused on the murder case, he’d forgotten about what was waiting for him at home. He took a deep breath. He had to give himself a break. The doctor had said that he needed to leave her alone sometimes.
    As he drove through Davis Square, he hesitated for a minute, then pulled over and parked across from Easter 1916, one of the best Irish pubs in the neighborhood, locking the car and leaving his jacket behind. The inside of the pub was warm and close, with the usual Sunday-night crowd—neighborhood couples, kids on dates, a few old men scowling into their Guinnesses—ensconced in the front bar. From the back room, Quinn could hear the strains of the session, the clean dance of a fiddle bow on strings, the whine of the elbow pipes, the low thrum of the bodhran. He ordered a Guinness from the girl behindthe bar and made his way to the back, waving at the few people he knew along the way.
    As a kid, he’d often come along when his father played sessions—not at this pub, but at ones like it all over the city. He found an empty chair in the corner and settled in. His father had closed his eyes while he played, holding the bodhran like a baby, the playing stick moving over the skin in figure eights and stars. Quinn remembered feeling disturbed sometimes, watching his father surrender to the collective effort of the music. It was as though he’d lost him to drink for those hours while he was playing. Quinn had always felt relieved when his father had stood up and stumbled outside, ready to go home, still intoxicated with the music.
    They were just fooling around tonight, a couple of fiddlers and flute players, the bodhran player not keeping the beat very well. Quinn listened for a half hour and then, feeling guilty, got up and took his empty glass into the bar.
    The little house off Holland Street was dark and quiet. The day they’d gone to look at it, he remembered Maura saying that it reminded her of a cottage out of a fairy tale. It was a double-decker with a robin’s egg blue front door. The white vinyl siding was stained in places and the lawn needed a trim, but he was pleased overall by its appearance.
    They had planted bulbs along the little stone path the past fall, when they were full of hope and happiness, waiting for the baby, and in the streetlight he could just see the beginnings of the bright green stalks trying to catch up after the long winter. He had forgotten about them until that moment and they seemed somehow cruel, reminding him of their innocence, of their life before, of all their expectations.
    He hesitated for a moment outside the front door and listened. He turned his key in the lock and stepped inside, the stifling atmosphere of the house contrasting with the fresh, cool air outdoors.
    In the dim light from the kitchen, he could see Maura sleeping on the couch, the television muted and flashing the bright lights of a late night talk show. The room smelled stale, rodenty. He needed to do some laundry, but there had just been too much going on.
    He climbed halfway up the stairs to the second floor and listened. Everything was quiet, except for Maura’s sister Debbie snoring loudly in the guest bedroom at the top of the stairs. In the living room again, he tiptoed quietly over to the couch and looked down at his wife’s sleeping face. He knew he should wake her and convince her to go upstairs, but she looked so peaceful he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He turned off the TV and covered her with the afghan draped over the back of the couch. She stretched in her sleep and for a moment she looked almost happy. He stared down at her, trying to recall the person she had been. But it wasn’t that he couldn’t remember—their smiling faces in their wedding picture on the fireplace mantel provided a cruel point of comparison. It was just that it was a kind of torture to think of how she used to be.
    That morning as he’d left for work she had