Swan Boat Souvenir
by
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A sliver of daybreak shot through the cracks of Fiona Carney’s bedroom blinds. The light fell disjointed across her cheek. Fiona’s eyes flew open. Particles of sun made prisms of her green irises. She stared straight up, into and through the arrow of light. There was fear written in her stone gaze; damn dreams. Remaining motionless, Fiona attempted to travel backward into the place where she had been an instant before waking.
Boston Public Garden; she remembered the location. The atmosphere was bleak and threatening. Every tree was bent in homage to the wind’s strength. Fiona was barefoot standing at the edge of a pond. She could hear shrieks out in the darkness. Her heartbeat hard against her breasts and the pounding shook Fiona’s soul. She fell to her knees and rolled onto her back. The night sky was wrapped in a cumulus blanket. Fiona’s teeth chattered; she put a hand to her mouth and one on her exploding chest. Who is out there? She repeated the question to herself, as she sunk deeper into the wet earth under her body. Dear Lord save me Fiona prayed. The utterances seemed distorted and she wept in despair. Heavy clods of muddied grass weighted her limbs. Fiona raised weak fingers from her lips and begged the black sky to listen. A cloud slid off the full moon and the murky water became a mirror of oak and maple. Out in the center of the pond was a swan boat. Except for a solitary figure on deck, the boat seemed to be moving without the efforts of a captain. The droning wails were coming from the winged vessel. Fiona could not identify the lone passenger, but she realized the cries were those of a child. Her lungs felt pinched, she called out only to have her words swallowed by another squall. When she awoke, as the shaft of light severed her tie to that caliginous place, Fiona felt heartsick. Undone by the eerie picture, she now fought with the new day’s sun by clamping her hands across her face.
“Mamma--are you awake?” Shamus, her son, called to her. Fiona dragged her fingers along the flesh of her closed eyes forcing the last images of the swan boat to fade. Fiona knew the power of dreams. Perhaps this dream was a premonition of something waiting to happen. How could she unravel the meaning of this foreboding message?
“Mamma’s awake sweetheart. I’ll be right down.” She said. Her voice held the remnants of an Irish brogue. Her long legs swung free against the side of the bed. She flexed her bare feet and let them dangle, quietly. Inching one big toe out of repose, Fiona felt around the floor for her slippers. Offering up a prayer, she decided that the best she could do was make peace with the nightmare.
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About the Book
Swan Boat Souvenir is a story of abduction and murder, a story of twin souls and dreams. The book is unique in its approach to the painful subject of a child’s kidnapping. Readers will explore the Boston Public Garden, the back roads of Connecticut and the Pacific Coast highway as they travel with one soul on its incredible journey. The unsolved 1975 disappearance, in Boston, of a six-year-old boy, changes the lives of families and strangers forever. Sixteen years after Shamus Thomas Carney’s abduction a plane lands at Logan Airport with a man named Angus T. Roarke on board. He is a businessman impatient to be done with a family celebration, a man who is about to become an unwitting player in a lost child’s rebirth. Angus T. Roarke will spend one night at the exclusive Charles River Plaza Hotel over looking the Boston Public Garden. The consequences of his actions, on an October evening in 1991, sets off a seven-year chain of events which will lead a handful of characters through a labyrinth of paradox. The web of fate will be flung across their lives, drawing them all into a blind bargain with destiny.
About the Author
Linda Merlino spent her childhood in the Boston area and for the past twenty-six years has lived in southern Connecticut raising her three children. Her many interests and avocations include being a nationally, certified, astrological consultant, as well as a free-lance writer. She also has a monthly, newspaper column with More Sugar Publications in New York. Swan Boat Souvenir is Linda’s first published novel. In her book the author writes about the abduction of a child. It is a fictional account of twin souls that was composed to honor the profound, innate wisdom of children, and to remind us of our connection to the universe.