Now You See Her Read Free Page A

of interest. She understood she was no longer on the radar of teenage boys, having seen that same vague look on the faces of her son’s friends more times than she cared to remember. For them she existed, if she existed at all, as a necessary pair of hands to make them a sandwich at lunchtime or a human answering machine to relay urgent messages to her son. Sometimes she served as an excuse—“I can’t come out tonight; my mom’s not feeling well.” More often, a complaint—“I can’t come out tonight; my mom’s on the warpath.”
    “Mom, mom, mom,” Marcy repeated in a whisper, straining to remember the sound of the word on Devon’s lips and picturing her own mother when she was young and full of life. She marveled that such a simple three-letter word could mean so much, wield such power, be so
fraught
.
    “Devon!” she called again, although not as loudly as the first time, and then again, “Devon,” this time the name barely escaping her mouth. Her eyes filled with tears as she circled back to the main road, wet curls clinging to her forehead. Seconds later she found herself at the busy intersection of St. Patrick’s Street and Merchant’s Quay.
    In front of her stood the hulking Merchant’s Quay Shopping Centre, an enclosed shopping complex that served as the city’s main mall. Marcy stood staring at it, thinking she should probably go inside, if only to escape the rain, but she was unable to move. Had Devon taken refuge there? Was she wandering through the various stores—or shops, as they were always called here—waiting for the sudden downpour to stop? Was she searching for racy underwear at Marks and Spencer or hunting for an old-fashioned, paisley-print blouse in Laura Ashley?What do I do now? Marcy wondered, deciding against going inside. Large shopping malls tended to make her anxious, even in the best of times.
    And this was definitely not the best of times.
    Instead, she found herself running down St. Patrick’s Street, her eyes darting back and forth, trying to see between the raindrops, to fit her daughter’s delicate features on the face of each young woman who hurried by. As she approached Paul’s Lane, she heard a tour guide explaining to a bunch of wet, fidgety tourists that until recently the lane had been a wonderful antiques quarter, but that virtually all the shops that had made the street unique were now closed due to high rents and the young population’s lack of interest in anything older than itself. In today’s world, he said, tut-tutting beneath his bright green umbrella, it was all about the new.
    St. Patrick’s Street curved gently, like a shy grin, into Grand Parade, a spacious thoroughfare where shops and offices mingled with charming eighteenth-century houses and the remains of the old city walls. Marcy continued south, her eyes scanning the now-empty benches inside Bishop Lucey Park. She proceeded to the South Mall, a wide tree-lined street that was Cork’s financial center, its Georgian-style architecture housing what seemed like an endless succession of banks, law offices, and insurance companies. No chance Devon would be here, Marcy decided. Her daughter had never been very good with formal institutions of any kind. She’d been even less good with money.
    Marcy shuddered, remembering the time she’d berated Devon for taking forty dollars from her purse. Such a paltry sum and she’d made such a fuss. You’d have thought Devon had stolen the crown jewels, for God’s sake, the way she’d carried on.
    “I was just borrowing it,” Devon had insisted stubbornly. “I was going to pay it back.”
    Marcy had protested in turn. “It’s not that. It’s a matter of trust.”
    “You’re saying you don’t trust me?”
    “I’m saying I don’t like it when you take things without asking.”
    “I just borrowed it.”
    “Without asking.”
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was such a big deal.”
    “Well, it
is
a big deal.”
    “I apologized, didn’t