Read Chapter 5: A NAME IN THE PROGRAMME

The 2009 letter mentioned a programme.

I saw your name in the programme and bought a ticket though I knew you would not be on stage. Your arrangement of the old air was the best thing in it. I wanted to wait afterward. I did not.

You see the pattern.

T.

Evelyn had taught music. They searched concert archives, school programmes, church recitals, arts listings. Julian had access to digitised newspaper databases; Maeve had the stubbornness of someone avoiding her actual accounts.

On a Tuesday afternoon she found it.

A review of a community choral concert at the National Concert Hall in March 2009 listed an arrangement by Evelyn Keane, née Byrne.

“Keane,” Maeve said.

Julian pulled his chair beside hers.

The review described Evelyn as a teacher and arranger based in County Wicklow.

They searched further.

A school newsletter from 2011 thanked Mrs Evelyn Keane for twenty-two years of service.

A death notice from 2001 gave them Liam Keane, beloved husband of Evelyn, father of Anna and Michael.

The room went quiet.

Maeve stared at the screen.

“So Liam was her husband.”

“Yes.”

“And he died in 2001.”

“Yes.”

“Tom kept writing for twelve years after.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he contact her?”

Julian leaned back. “We don’t know that he didn’t.”

“The letters suggest he didn’t.”

“The letters suggest he believed he shouldn’t.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Possibly.”

Maeve stood and began shelving books with more force than necessary.

Julian watched her for a moment. “You’re angry with him.”

“I’m angry with people who turn fear into principle.”

The words landed between them.

Maeve froze.

Julian’s face did not change.

She shoved a Roddy Doyle paperback onto the wrong shelf.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your eyebrow did.”

“My eyebrow is innocent.”

She gave him a look.

He returned to the computer.

An hour later, Maeve’s former boyfriend walked into Bellwether.

Conor Walsh had changed his glasses and grown a beard. Otherwise he looked unfairly familiar.

Maeve’s body recognized him before her mind did: the brief tightening behind her ribs, the urge to move toward him and away at once.

“Hi,” he said.

Julian looked up.

“Hi.” Maeve’s voice sounded flat.

“I heard about Nora. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.”

Conor held a paper bag. “I brought those ginger biscuits she liked. Then remembered…” He looked embarrassed. “Well. I suppose you can have them.”

Maeve almost smiled.

They had lived together for two years. He had known where she kept her passport, how she took coffee, which nightmares woke her after her parents’ deaths. He had wanted a future spoken aloud. Maeve had wanted the relationship to remain safe by never naming what came next.

Eventually he had stopped waiting.

“This is Julian,” she said. “He’s helping with some shop archives.”

Conor shook his hand.

Something in the exchange was so civil that Maeve wanted to throw a book.

Conor looked around. “You’re keeping the place?”

“Selling.”

“Right.”

He did not hide his disappointment quickly enough.

“What?” Maeve asked.

“Nothing.”

“People keep saying nothing in very expressive ways.”

Conor sighed. “Nora loved this place.”

“Nora is not here to pay the rates.”

“I know.”

He lowered his voice. “I just thought maybe it would be good for you to have something that doesn’t move.”

Maeve went cold.

“You don’t get to diagnose me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

Conor’s face closed in the old way. Not anger. Weariness.

“I came to say I’m sorry about Nora.”

“I know.”

He nodded.

At the door, he turned. “For what it’s worth, she was proud of you. Even when she complained about you.”

The bell rang as he left.

Maeve stood perfectly still.

Julian packed his papers.

“You don’t have to go,” she said.

“I have a lecture.”

“You don’t.”

“No.”

She looked at him.

He put his scarf on. “But I think you might want the shop to yourself.”

The kindness of it hurt more than interrogation would have.

After he left, Maeve ate half the ginger biscuits and found a box beneath Nora’s desk containing old postcards.

One showed Bray Head under a blue sky.

On the back, Nora had written:

Evelyn — if Tom ever asks, tell him she moved to Greystones after Liam died. I am done carrying messages for cowards.

Maeve sat down hard.

Nora had known where Evelyn was.

Which meant, very possibly, Thomas had asked.