Now You See Her Page 0,30
asleep, the eventual disappearing act.
It didn’t take Marcy long to learn the signs. She got very good at predicting when her mother was about to take off. “It’s happening again,” she’d say to Judith. Invariably she was right.
Except once.
“Okay, enough of that,” Marcy said, pushing herself out of her too-soft bed and flipping on the overhead light. She should have brought a book with her, she thought. Who goes on holiday and doesn’t take a book? Something—anything—to keep her mind occupied, to keep the ghosts of the past at bay. She’d buy one as soon as the stores opened. Along with a new cell phone, she decided, walking to the window and staring through the dusty lace curtains at the closed blinds of the room across the way. She was still standing there, still staring, when the night sky began to brighten and the bells of St. Anne’s Shandon Church announced the start of a new day.
AS SOON AS the stores opened, Marcy purchased a new cell phone and called Liam.
“Did I wake you?” she asked, hearing the sleep still clinging to his voice. What was the matter with her? Why had she called him so early? Why had she called him at all, for God’s sake? He’d said to check in periodically, not first thing the next morning. So what was she doing? Just because he’d sat with her for the better part of twenty minutes yesterday afternoon didn’t mean he was truly interested in her problems. A natural flirt, he’d only been humoring her with his attention. He didn’t really care about her or her daughter. He just felt sorry for her. “I’m so sorry to bother you,” she said.
“Has something happened? Have you found Audrey?”
“No. I … I … bought a cell phone,” she blurted out, quickly rattling off her number. “I’m so sorry for disturbing you. I just thought this way you could call me—”
“The instant I see her,” Liam said, finishing the sentence for her. “Promise,” he added, as if understanding Marcy’s need for reassurance. “So what are the plans for the day?”
Marcy told him about her intention to check out the university.
“Good luck,” he said, hanging up before she could apologize again.
I’ll need it, Marcy thought, dropping the phone into her purse and setting out for the university campus.
ACCORDING TO THE brochure the Visitors’ Centre provided, University College Cork was established in 1845 and was currently one of Ireland’s leading research institutes. Located on a hill overlooking the valley of the river Lee, the campus was a pleasing blend of the old and the new, an attractive quadrangle of colorful gardens and wooded grounds interspersed with old, Gothic-revival-style buildings and modern concrete-and-glass structures. More than seventeen thousand students attended the four main colleges: one college for arts, Celtic studies, and social science; one for business and law; one for medicine and health; and one for engineering, science, and food science. The university was also home to the Irish Institute of Chinese studies, which Marcy decided probably explained the high number of Asian students she’d been seeing since setting foot on campus.
Knowing it was highly unlikely that Devon would have enrolled in anything to do with medicine, business, engineering, or law, Marcy decided to concentrate on the arts. Her daughter had always been drawn to drama. From the time she was a little girl, her dream had been to become an actress. As a teenager, she’d spoken often of going to Hollywood. Marcy had tried to dissuade her. “It’s a lifetime of rejection,” she’d said.
She should have been more supportive, Marcy thought now, marching along the brick and concrete pedestrian road that ran through the campus, glancing at the clusters of students dotting the white concrete benches that lined the path. Would it have killed her to be more encouraging?
“Why do you always have to be so negative?” she could hear Devon demand.
“I’m just trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need your protection. I need your support.”
“Excuse me,” Marcy said now, stilling Devon’s angry voice with her own and showing her photograph to a group of young women who were walking by. “Do any of you recognize this girl?”
The three girls took turns looking at the picture. “No,” the first one said, her two friends nodding in quick agreement.
“Don’t know her,” they said, almost in unison.
“Thank you. Excuse me.” Marcy continued in the next breath, quickly approaching a young man balancing an armload of books. “Have you seen this girl? Her name is Devon.…”
“No, sorry.”
“You may