Page 25 of 44.1644° North
“I see.”
I moved toward the cabin door. “Look, I’d love to chat, but Ican’tbe late.”
“Right.” Rory shrugged into his coat. “Where are you meeting Pat O’Donnell?”
“The family’s staying at the Blue Bear Lodge. Some people think that’s where Deirdre was heading that night. It would have been a hike, but she could have easily made it.”
“Okay, what’s your cell number? I’ll send you my contact info, and you can phone me when you’re leaving the lodge.”
We zinged our info to each other, our phones pinged, and Rory gave me a half-smile.
Which for some reason led me to press my phone to my chest and declare, “I shall treasure it always!”
I don’t think he knew what to do with that. He was outside the door before he came up with, “I bet you say that to all the FBI agents.”
“Oh no, only thespecialagents,” I told him, and shut the door.
Chapter Six
Pat O’Donnell had aged considerably since the last interview he’d given.
That had been back in 2019. Pat was eighty-two now. Shorter, thinner. His red hair had turned silver. His blue eyes had faded to the color iron. But his handshake befitted a lifetime steelworker, and his voice was as strong as ever. He was still a force to be reckoned with.
The first twenty minutes our “interview” consisted of me listening to Pat rant on his favorite topics: the ineptitude of Hastings’s police department, his rage at their refusal to release the (apparently little) information they had collected through the years, his disappointment with the New Hampshire Supreme Court for refusing to intervene, and his utter contempt for Peter Weber and his “so-called book.”
If Pathadbeen capable of murder, I was pretty sure Weber would have been six feet under years ago.
“Do you have children?” Pat asked at last when he had worn even himself out.
“No.” I’d wanted kids, but Eric had been adamantly opposed. As things turned out, that was probably just as well.
“I don’t know if anyone who isn’t a parent can understand what it’s like to lose a child. And this. The not knowing what happened. You can’t get over it. It’s like trying to live with a knife in your chest. Even if you’re lucky enough that you still have other children to love and take care of, you’re always,alwaysconscious of the one who’s missing. It’s hard to think of anything else. You can’t let it go. You have to go on and live your life, but you can never take a full breath again because that knife is in your chest.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“People tell me, no parent should have to bury their child, but I can’t even do that. We didn’t have her to bury.” He let out a long, shaky breath. “Sometimes I think that’s the worst part. But then I tell myself, Patrick, would you really rather have no hope at all?” He shook his head.
I said, “Doyou still have hope Deirdre’s alive?”
He stared at me. “I’m a lifelong Catholic. I believe in miracles.”
So yes. And no.
“Can I ask why you were willing to talk to me?”
He gave a grim smile. “My daughter Grania watched your videos. She liked what you had to say about Deirdre.”
Grania was the eldest of the O’Donnell sisters. A beautiful, fiftysomething blonde with piercing blue eyes. She’d opened the door to Pat’s room, introduced me to her father, and immediately made herself scarce.
“I see.”
“I stopped watching, stopped listening years ago. My God. The things people said. About me. About her. About our family. People who never knew her. Never knew any of us. Jesus Christ. All these cheap armchair psychologists. I guess they forget she was a real person. That we’reallreal people, not characters in some TV crime show.”
I couldn’t help wincing. In some ways I was as guilty of the armchair psychology as the next true-crime podcaster. I admitted, “Sometimes the internet makes it easy to forget that we’re talking and posting about people who can be truly harmed by our words.”
His scowl was as formidable as ever. “No. Don’t make excuses for him. If you’re a scumbag on the internet, you’re a scumbag in real life. You just hide it better because you don’t want to get punched in the face.”
Him.We were about to get derailed by another rant about Weber. I tried to head Pat off.
