The Hunter

Three

Lena walks homewards in a morning that’s already hot and zipping with insects. Sometimes she leaves her car at home when she goes to Cal’s, specifically so that she can have this walk the next morning, sauntering lazily in her rumpled clothes, with the sun on her face and Cal’s smell on her skin. It makes her feel young and a little reckless, as if she should be carrying her shoes in her hand, as if she’s done something wild and enjoyed every minute. It’s been a long time since Lena ran across something wild that she actually wanted to do, but she still likes the taste of it.

She was planning to stay clear of Noreen for a while. Lena gets on well with her sister, mainly by letting Noreen’s flood of advice and suggestions wash right over her, but she would prefer to wait a while longer before she discusses Johnny Reddy, and Noreen has a low tolerance for waiting. Being nosy goes with Noreen’s job. Lena suspects that she married Dessie Duggan at least in part to get her arse behind that shop counter, the gravitational center to which is drawn every piece of information from Ardnakelty and beyond. When they were kids, the shop was run by Mrs. Duggan, Dessie’s mam. She was a big, slow-moving, heavy-lidded woman who smelled of Vicks rub and pear drops, and Lena never liked her. She was nosy, but she was a hoarder with it: she sucked up everything she heard and then kept it stored away, for years sometimes, bringing it out only when it could wield the most force. Noreen, by contrast, is generous-natured and gets her satisfaction not from stockpiling or using information but from dispensing it by the armload, to anyone who’ll listen. Lena has no quarrel with that—in her view, Noreen has earned every bit of satisfaction she can get, by looking after Dymphna Duggan, who is now massive, almost housebound from sciatica, a flat cold-eyed face at her sitting-room window watching the village go by. And it means that if anyone has an inkling of what kind of trouble Johnny might have picked up in London, it’s Noreen.

Lena stays out of other people’s business. She came to that decision the same day she decided to marry Sean Dunne. Up until then, she was planning on freeing herself from Ardnakelty’s mesh by the traditional method of getting the hell out of Dodge: she was going to Scotland to train as a vet, and not coming back except for Christmases. Sean, though, was going nowhere off his family’s land. When she decided he was worth staying for, she had to come up with a different way to keep the townland from poking its tendrils into every crevice of her. For thirty years she’s held it at arm’s length: no having opinions on Oisín Maguire’s planning permission, no giving Leanne Healy advice on her daughter’s dodgy boyfriend, no joining the TidyTowns or coaching the girls’ Gaelic football; and, in exchange, no giving anyone a single word about the farm’s finances, or the workings of her and Sean’s marriage, or the reasons why they never had children. Minding your own business isn’t a trait that’s prized in Ardnakelty, especially not in women, and it’s brought Lena a reputation for being either up herself or just plain odd, depending on who’s talking. She quickly discovered she doesn’t care. Sometimes it amuses her, watching how desperate people get for a handle to grab her by.

She doesn’t like the feeling that Johnny Reddy, of all people, is her business now. What she wants to do about Johnny is watch this place work itself into a tizzy about him until he hightails it out of town, pursued by the debt collectors or whoever it is he’s pissed off, and then dismiss him from her mind all over again. But there’s Cal, unsettled, and there’s Trey, with no choice about being smack in the middle of it all.

The dogs have bounded ahead of her towards home, working off the day’s first burst of energy. Lena calls them back with a whistle and turns for the village.

Ardnakelty’s two brief lines of square-set, mismatched old buildings have their windows open to catch breezes—windows that had been shut for decades have been pried open, this summer. Everyone who has the option is outdoors. Three old men, settled on the wall around the Virgin Mary grotto, nod to Lena and hold out their hands to her dogs. Barty, who runs Seán Óg’s pub, has been inspired by the dry weather to do something about the walls, which have needed a coat of paint for at least five years; he’s press-ganged a couple of Angela Maguire’s lads, who are hanging off ladders at precarious angles, armed with buckets of paint in a violent shade of blue and a radio blasting Fontaines D.C. Three teenage girls are leaning against the wall of the shop eating crisps, turning their faces up to the sun and all of them talking at once, all manes and legs like a bunch of half-wild colts.

Lena remembers the shop from her childhood as dark and never quite clean, stocked with drab rows of things that nobody actively wanted, but that you bought anyway because Mrs. Duggan wasn’t about to change her stocking practices to suit the likes of you. When Noreen took over, she marked her territory by scrubbing the place to within an inch of its life and rearranging it so that now, somehow, the same undersized space fits three times as many things, including everything you might need and plenty that you might actually want. The bell gives a brisk, decisive ding as Lena opens the door.

Noreen is down on her knees in a corner of the shop, with her arse in the air, restocking tins. “You dirty stop-out,” she says, identifying Lena’s second-day clothes with one glance. She doesn’t say it disapprovingly. Noreen, having introduced Cal and Lena with intent, takes full credit for their relationship.

“I am,” Lena acknowledges. “D’you want a hand?”

“There’s no room down here. You can tidy the sweets.” Noreen nods to the front of the counter. “Bobby Feeney was in buying chocolate. Mother a God, that fella’s like a child with pocket money to spend: he has to touch everything in the shop, to make sure he’s getting the best one. He has the place in tatters.”

Lena goes to the counter and starts realigning the chocolate bars and rolls of sweets. “What’d he get in the end?”

“Packet of Maltesers and one of them fizzy lollipops. D’you see what I mean? Them’s sweeties for a child. Grown men get the Snickers, or maybe a Mars bar.”

“See, I was right to turn him down,” Lena points out. Before Cal arrived, Noreen felt that Lena should consider Bobby as an option, if only so that his farm didn’t go to waste by being left to his Offaly cousins. “I couldn’t spend the rest of my life watching that fella suck fizzy lollies.”

“Ah, there’s no harm in Bobby,” Noreen says promptly. Noreen is still determined to put Bobby to use, if she can just find the right woman. “He has himself all worked up because of Johnny Reddy coming home, is all. You know what Bobby’s like: any change’d send him into a spin.” She throws a glance at Lena, over her shoulder. Noreen and Lena look nothing alike: Noreen is short, round, and quick-moving, with a tight perm and sharp dark eyes. “Did you see Johnny yet?”

“I did. He came strolling by to show off his tail feathers.” Lena swaps the Maltesers around to be front and center, so Bobby can get at them without ruining Noreen’s day.

“Don’t you go falling for Johnny’s rubbish,” Noreen says, pointing a tin of beans at Lena. “You’re well sorted with Cal Hooper. He’s ten times the man Johnny is, any day of the week.”

“Ah, I don’t know. Cal’s all right, but he never got a scarf off Kate Winslet.”

Noreen lets out a scornful pfft. “Didja see that scarf yoke? Wee bitta chiffon that wouldn’t keep a baba warm. That’s Johnny all over: anything he’s got looks lovely, but it’s pure useless. What was he saying to you?”

Lena shrugs. “He didn’t make his fortune over in London, and he missed the fields. That’s as far as he got before I ran him off.”

Noreen snorts and smacks a tin of peas onto the top of a stack. “The fields. Feckin’ state of him. That’s tourist talk. Missed having someone to do his washing and cooking, more like.”

“You don’t reckon Kate Winslet can cook a roast dinner?”

“I’d say she can, all right, but I’d say she’d have better sense than to do it for the likes of Johnny Reddy. No: that lad got his arse dumped, is what happened him. Didja see the hair on him? That fella would only leave himself get that scruffy if he’d some poor foolish one wrapped round his little finger. If he was single, he’d be done up to the nines, for going out on the prowl. I’m telling you: he had a one, she found out what he was made of and kicked him to the curb, and he came home sooner than fend for himself.”

Lena straightens Twix bars and thinks this over. It’s an angle she hadn’t previously considered. It’s both plausible and reassuring.

“And Sheila’d better not get used to having him about the place,” Noreen adds. “If he convinces the bit on the side to take him back, we won’t see him for dust.”

“The bit on the side won’t have him back,” Lena says. “Johnny’s one of them fellas that are outa sight, outa mind. He’s making a big splash coming home, but when he was gone, no one thought twice about him. I didn’t hear one word about him, the whole four years. There was no one saying their nephew ran into him in a pub, or their brother was working with him on the building sites. I don’t know what he was at, even.”

Noreen instantly takes up the challenge. “Ah, I heard the odd word. A year or two back, Annie O’Riordan, you know her, from up towards Lisnacarragh? Her cousin in London saw him in a pub, with some young one bet into a pair of black leather leggings laughing her arse off at his jokes. D’you see what I mean? That fella couldn’t make it through a wet weekend without a woman to look after him and tell him he’s only amazing.”

“Sounds like Johnny, all right,” Lena says. Sheila used to think Johnny was only amazing. Lena doubts she does any more.

“And d’you remember Bernadette Madigan, that I usedta do the choir with? She’s got a wee little antique shop in London now, and didn’t Johnny come in trying to sell her a necklace that he said was diamonds, with some sob story about his wife running off and leaving him with three starving childer. He didn’t recognize her—Bernadette’s after putting on the weight something awful, God love her—but she recognized him, all right. She told him to stick his fake diamonds up his hole.”

“Did she ride him, back in school?” Lena asks.

“That’s her business, not mine,” Noreen says primly. “I’d say so, though, yeah.”

The spark of reassurance in Lena’s mind is fading. Johnny was never crooked, exactly, but it was hard to tell whether that was just happenstance. If he’s happened to drift over that line, who knows how far he might have drifted, and what he might have brought back on his trail. “When’d she see him?” she asks.

“Back before Christmas. The feckin’ eejit—Johnny, not Bernadette. She said a blind man coulda told you those were no diamonds.”

“You never said anything.”

“I hear a lot more than I say,” Noreen informs her with dignity. “You’ve some notion that I’m the biggest gossip in the county, but I can keep my mouth shut when I want. I said nothing to anyone about Johnny’s goings-on, because I knew yourself and Cal were working your arses off to keep that child on the straight and narrow, and I wasn’t going to scupper that by giving her family a worse name than they’ve already got. Now.”

“Now,” Lena says, grinning at her. “That’s me told.”

“It’d better be. How’s the child getting on, anyway?”

“Grand. She’s been over putting a new coat of wax on Nana’s old bed.”

“Ah, that’ll be nice. What does she think of her daddy coming home?”

Lena shrugs. “Trey, sure. She said he was back, and then she said the dog needed feeding, and that was the end of that.”

“That dog’s mad-looking,” Noreen says. “Like it was put together outa bits of other dogs that got left over. Your Daisy needs better taste in fellas.”

“She should’ve consulted you,” Lena says. “You’d’ve had her set up with a gorgeous stud with a pedigree as long as my arm, before she knew what hit her.”

“I don’t see you complaining,” Noreen tells her. Lena tilts her head, acknowledging the hit, and Noreen goes back to work with a little nod of victory. She says, “I heard the child stayed over at yours, after Johnny came home.”

“Fair play to you,” Lena says, impressed. “She did, yeah. Cal gets nervous about her walking up that mountain in the dark. He thinks she’ll fall in a bog. She won’t, but there’s no convincing him.”

Noreen darts Lena a sharp glance. “Pass me over that box there, with the jam. What about Cal?”

Lena nudges the cardboard box along the floor with a foot. “What about him?”

“What does he think about Johnny?”

“Sure, he’s hardly met the man. He hasn’t had a chance to come up with much of an opinion.”

Noreen whips jam jars onto the shelf with expert speed. She says, “Are you planning on marrying that fella?”

“Ah, God, no,” Lena says, going back to the Fruit Pastilles. “White doesn’t suit me.”

“Sure you wouldn’t wear white the second time around anyway, and that’s not the point. What I’m telling you is, if you’re planning on marrying him, there’s no reason to wait. Go on and get the job done.”

Lena looks at her. She inquires, “Is someone dying, are they?”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what are you on about? No one’s dying!”

“Then what’s the rush?”

Noreen gives her a prickly stare and goes back to the jam. Lena waits.

“You can’t trust a Reddy,” Noreen says. “No harm to the child, she might turn out grand, but the rest of them. You know as well as I do, you wouldn’t know what notion Johnny’d get into his head. If he took against Cal and decided to make trouble…”

Lena says, “He’d better not.”

“I know, yeah. But if he did. Cal’d be safer if he was married to you. Moved in with you, even. People’d be less likely to believe things.”

Lena has had her temper managed for so long that the blaze of rage catches her off guard. “If Johnny gets anything like that in his head,” she says, “he’d want to watch himself.”

“I’m not saying he would, now. Don’t go giving him hassle, or—”

“I’m not giving him hassle. When was the last time I gave anyone fucking hassle? But if he goes starting anything—”

Noreen sits back on her haunches, glaring. “For feck’s sake, Helena. Don’t be biting my head off. I’m only looking out for the pair of ye.”

“I’m not bloody getting married just in case Johnny Reddy is even more of a tosser than I thought.”

“All I’m saying is have a think about it. Can you just do that, instead of flying off the handle?”

“Right,” Lena says, after a second. She turns back to lining up Kit Kats. “I’ll be sure and do that.”

“Feck’s sake,” Noreen says, not quite under her breath, and smacks a jam jar into place.

The shop is hot, and Noreen’s stacking has stirred up dust motes that eddy in the broad bands of sunlight through the windows. Nellie whines discreetly at the door, and then gives up. Outside, one of the boys gives a startled shout, and the bunch of girls burst into helpless, happy laughter.

“Now,” Lena says. “That’s done.”

“Ah, you’re great,” Noreen says. “Would you ever give me a hand with that top shelf? You’ve the height for it, if you take the stool; I’d have to get the stepladder, and there’s all them clothes from the clear-out in front of it.”

“I left the dogs outside,” Lena says. “I’ve to get them home and get some water into them, before they shrivel up on me.” Before Noreen can offer to bring the dogs water, she gives a Dairy Milk a last tap into line and goes out.

Lena’s visit didn’t settle Cal’s mind. He was half-hoping that, knowing Johnny and this place as she does, she would have some easy, reassuring thing to say about Johnny’s return, something that would clarify the whole situation and relegate the guy to a minor temporary nuisance. The fact that he himself can’t think of anything doesn’t mean much—after more than two years in Ardnakelty, Cal sometimes feels like he actually understands the place less than he did on his first day. But if Lena doesn’t have reassurance to offer, that means there isn’t any.

He deals with his unsettledness in his usual way, which is by working. He puts the Dead South on his iPod and turns the speakers up loud, letting the expert, nervy banjo set a fast rhythm, while he puts his back into planing down pine boards for Noreen’s new TV unit. He’s trying to work out what to charge her for it. Pricing in Ardnakelty is a delicate operation, layered with implications about both parties’ social position, their degree of intimacy, and the magnitude of previous favors in both directions. If Cal gets it wrong, he could end up discovering that he’s either proposed to Lena or mortally offended Noreen. Today he feels like telling her to just take the damn thing.

He’s decided that he’s not going to ask Trey any questions about Johnny. His first instinct was to start steering and nudging conversations, but all the deeper part of him revolts against using Trey the way he would use a witness. If the kid wants to talk to him, she can talk by her own choice.

She arrives in the afternoon, banging the front door behind her to let Cal know she’s there. “Been over at Lena’s,” she says, when she’s got herself a drink of water and joined him in the workshop, wiping her mouth on her arm. “Waxing up the spare bed. ’Cause she let me stay over.”

“Good,” Cal says. “That’s a fine way to say thanks.” He’s been trying to provide the kid with some manners, to temper her general air of having been raised by wolves. It’s working, to some extent, although Cal feels she may be getting the hang of the technique more than of the underlying principle. He suspects that, to her, manners are mainly transactional: she doesn’t like being under an obligation to anyone, and an act of politeness allows her to write off the debt.

“Yeehaw,” Trey says, referring to the Dead South. “Ride ’em, cowboy.”

“You’re a barbarian,” Cal says. “That’s bluegrass. And they’re Canadian.”

“So?” Trey says. Cal raises his eyes to the ceiling, shaking his head. She’s in a better mood today, which reassures him. “And I’m not a barbarian. Got my school results. Didn’t fail anything, only Religion. A in Wood Technology.”

“Well, would you look at that,” Cal says, delighted. The kid is no dummy, but two years ago she gave so few shits about school that she was failing just about everything. “Congratulations. You bring them along for me to see?”

Trey rolls her eyes, but she pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of her back pocket and hands it over. Cal props his rear end on the worktable to give it his full attention, while Trey starts in on the chair to make it clear that this is no big deal to her.

There’s an A in Science, too, and a bunch of Cs with a couple of Bs thrown in. “So you’re a heathen as well as a barbarian,” Cal says. “Good work, kid. You oughta be pretty proud of yourself.”

Trey shrugs, keeping her head down over the chair, but she can’t stop a grin from tugging at one corner of her mouth.

“Your mama and your dad proud too?”

“My mam said well done. My dad said I’m the brains of the family, and I can go to Trinity College and graduate with a cap and gown. And be a rich Nobel Prize scientist and show all the begrudgers.”

“Well,” Cal says, keeping it carefully neutral, “he wants the best for you, just like most mamas and dads do. You want to go into science?”

Trey snorts. “Nah. Gonna be a carpenter. Don’t need any stupid gown for that. I’d look like a fuckin’ eejit.”

“Well, whatever you decide,” Cal says, “work like this is gonna give you all the options you could ask for. We gotta celebrate. You want to go catch some fish, fry ’em up?” Ordinarily he would take the kid out for pizza—Trey, after going almost fourteen years without encountering pizza, discovered an overwhelming passion for it when Cal introduced her to the concept, and would eat it every day given the chance. No place delivers to Ardnakelty, but on special occasions they make the trip into town. Now, all of a sudden, he’s wary. Ardnakelty in general approves of their relationship as the thing that likely prevented Trey from turning into a troubled youth who would break their windows and hot-wire their motorbikes, but Johnny Reddy is a different matter. Cal doesn’t have a handle on Johnny yet, or on what he wants. He feels the need to examine little things, ordinary things like a trip to town for pizza, for what they might look like from outside and how they could be used, and he resents this. Apart from anything else, Cal has a low tolerance for indulging in self-examination at the best of times, and he doesn’t appreciate it being forced on him by some twinkly-eyed little twerp.

“Pizza,” Trey says promptly.

“Not today,” Cal says. “Another time.”

Trey just nods and goes back to rubbing down the chair, without pushing or questioning, which pisses Cal off even more. He’s put a lot of work into teaching the kid how to have expectations.

“Tell you what,” he says. “We’ll make our own pizza. I’ve been meaning to show you how to do that.”

The kid looks dubious. “Easy as pie,” Cal says. “We even got a pizza stone: we can use those tiles left over from the kitchen floor. We’ll invite Miss Lena, make it a party. You go down to Noreen’s and pick up ham, peppers, whatever you want on there, and we’ll get started on the dough.”

For a minute he thinks she’s going to turn it down, but then she grins. “Not getting you pineapple,” she says. “ ’S disgusting.”

“You’ll get whatever I say,” Cal says, disproportionately relieved. “Make it two cans, just for that. Now git, before you smell of vinegar so bad that Noreen won’t let your stinky self in her store.”

Trey goes all out on the toppings, which relieves Cal’s mind a little bit: a kid who comes home with pepperoni, sausage, and two kinds of ham, as well as peppers, tomatoes, onions, and his pineapple, can’t have restrained her expectations too thoroughly. She loads stuff onto her pizza like she hasn’t eaten in weeks. The dough appears to have turned out OK, although their stretching game is weak and the pizzas aren’t shaped like anything Cal’s ever seen.

Lena is curled on the sofa at her ease, reading Trey’s report card, with the four dogs dozing and twitching in a pile on the floor beside her. Lena doesn’t do much cooking. She’ll bake bread and make jam, because she likes those made her way, but she says she cooked a good meal from scratch every night of her marriage, and now if she wants to live mainly off toasted sandwiches and ready meals, she has the right. Cal takes pleasure in making her the best he can come up with, for variety. He wasn’t in the habit of doing much cooking himself, when he first got here, but he can’t feed the kid nothing but bacon and eggs.

“ ‘Meticulous,’ ” Lena says. “That’s what you are, according to this Wood Technology fella. Fair play to you. And to him. That’s a great word; it doesn’t get out enough.”

“What is it?” Trey asks, considering her pizza and adding more pepperoni.

“Means you do things right,” Lena says. Trey acknowledges the justice of this with a nod.

“What’ll you have?” Cal asks Lena.

“Peppers and a bitta that sausage. And tomatoes.”

“Read what the Science teacher said,” Cal tells her. “ ‘An intelligent inquirer with all the necessary determination and method to find answers to her inquiries.’ ”

“Well, we knew that already,” Lena says. “God help us all. Well done; that’s great stuff.”

“ ’S just Miss O’Dowd,” Trey says. “She’s nice to everyone. Long as they don’t set anything on fire.”

“You want some pizza on that pepperoni?” Cal asks her.

“Not of yours. Pineapple all over it. Dripping.”

“I’m gonna put chili flakes on it, too. Right on top of the pineapple. You wanna bite?” Trey makes a face like she’s gagging.

“Jesus,” Lena says. “Mr. Campbell’s still there? I thought he’d be dead by now. Is he still fluthered half the time?”

“Here I’m trying to teach the kid to respect her elders,” Cal says.

“With all due respect,” Lena says to Trey, “is he mostly fluthered?”

“Probably,” Trey says. “Sometimes he falls asleep. He doesn’t know any of our names ’cause he says we depress him.”

“He told us we were making his hair fall out,” Lena says.

“You did. He’s bald now.”

“Ha,” Lena says. “I’ll have to text Alison Maguire. She’ll take that as a personal victory. She hated him ’cause he said her voice gave him migraines.”

“Head on him like a golf ball,” Trey says. “A depressed golf ball.”

“You be mannerly to Mr. Campbell,” Cal tells Trey, sliding pizza off a cookie sheet onto the leftover floor tiles in the oven. “Regardless of his golf-ball head.”

Trey rolls her eyes. “I’m not gonna even see him. It’s summer.”

“And then it won’t be.”

“I’m mannerly.”

“Would I think you’re being mannerly?”

Lena is grinning at them. Lena claims that Trey, on certain words she’s picked up from Cal, has an American accent. “Yeah yeah yeah,” Cal tells her. “At least she knows the word. Even if she’s kinda shaky on the meaning.”

“He’s gonna shave his beard off,” Trey tells Lena, jerking a thumb at Cal.

“Sweet fuck,” Lena says. “Are you serious?”

“Hey!” Cal says, aiming a swipe at Trey with the oven glove. Trey dodges. “I only said I was thinking about it. What’re you doing snitching on me?”

“Thought she oughta be warned.”

“And I appreciate it,” Lena says. “I could’ve walked in here one day and seen your big naked face staring at me, right outa the blue.”

“I don’t appreciate the tone of this conversation,” Cal informs them. “What do you two think I’m hiding under here?”

“We don’t know,” Trey explains. “We’re scared to find out.”

“You’re getting fresh,” Cal tells her. “That report card’s gone to your head.”

“Probably you’re gorgeous,” Lena reassures him. “It’s just that there’s enough risks in life as it is.”

“I’m a hunk. I’m Brad Pitt’s good-looking brother.”

“You are, o’ course. And if you keep the beard, I won’t need to worry about finding out different.”

“Who’s Brad Pitt?” Trey wants to know.

“Proof that we’re getting old,” Lena says.

“Deadpool 2,” Cal says. “The invisible guy who gets electrocuted.”

Trey eyes Cal carefully. “Nah,” she says.

“I liked you better back when you didn’t talk,” Cal tells her.

“If you shave,” Trey points out, putting the last of the pepperoni in the fridge, “you’re gonna be two different colors. ’Cause of the tan.”

All three of them are tanned, this summer. Most people from around here, having evolved to suit Ireland’s unemphatic weather, tan to a startled reddish shade that looks mildly painful, but Trey and Lena are exceptions. Lena goes a blonde’s smooth caramel; Trey is practically hazelnut-colored, and she has light streaks running through her hair. Cal likes seeing her that way. She’s an outdoor creature. In winter, pale from school and short days, she looks unnatural, like he should be taking her to a doctor.

“You’ll look like you’re wearing a bandit mask,” Lena says. “Seán Óg’s would love that.”

“You’ve got a point,” Cal says. Him walking into the pub clean-shaven and two-toned would provide the regulars with months’ worth of material, and probably land him with an unfortunate and unshakable nickname. “Maybe I oughta do it just out of neighborliness. Spice up their summer a little bit.”

The words bring Johnny Reddy into his head. Johnny is spicing up this summer, all right. None of them has mentioned Johnny once, all evening.

“Fuck ’em,” Trey says. The flat, adamant note in her voice tightens Cal’s shoulders another notch. She has every right to it, but it seems to him that a kid her age shouldn’t have that cold finality in her armory. It feels unsafe.

“That’s some language out of a highflier like you,” Lena tells her. “You oughta say ‘Fuck ’em meticulously.’ ”

Trey grins, against her will. “So are you gonna leave the beard?” she demands.

“For now,” Cal says. “As long as you behave yourself. You give me any sass, and you’ll get an eyeful of my chin warts.”

“You don’t have chin warts,” Trey says, inspecting him.

“You wanna find out?”

“Nah.”

“Then behave.”

The rich smell of the baking pizza is starting to spread through the room. Trey finishes putting things away and drops down among the dogs. Lena gets up, picking her way so as not to disturb any of them, and sets the table. Cal wipes down the counters and opens the window to let out the heat from the oven. Outside, the sun has relaxed its savagery and is laying a fine golden glow over the green of the fields; off beyond Cal’s land, P.J. is moving his sheep from one field to another, leisurely, holding the gate for them and swishing his crook to guide them through. Trey murmurs to the dogs, rubbing their jowls, while they close their eyes in bliss.

The oven timer goes off, and Cal manages to coax the pizzas onto plates without burning himself. Lena takes the plates from him to put on the table. “Starving,” Trey says, pulling up her chair.

“Hands off,” Cal says. “The pineapple’s all mine.”

He’s thinking, out of nowhere, of his grandparents’ house in backwoods North Carolina where he spent much of his childhood, and of how, before dinner every night, his grandma would have the three of them join hands round the table and bow their heads while she said grace. He has a sudden urge to do the same thing. Not to say grace, or anything else; just to sit still for a minute, with his hands wrapped around theirs, and his head down.