The Searcher

SEVENTEEN

When Cal walks into Noreen’s the next day, he’s expecting a frosty stare if he’s lucky, but she greets him with a block of cheddar, a long account of how Bobby came in asking for it and she told him that when his manners were as good as Cal Hooper’s he’d get the same service Cal gets and the big eejit left practically in tears, and a reminder that in a couple of weeks Lena’s pups will be old enough to leave their mammy. Cal has been in Ardnakelty long enough to interpret the nuances of this exchange. Not only does Noreen know that he’s seen the light, and approve wholeheartedly, she’s going to make sure the rest of the townland knows it too. Cal wonders whether Mart went as far as breaking the terms of his feud with Noreen to make this happen.

By way of confirmation, he tests out Seán Óg’s that evening. He walks in the door and is hit by a burst of whoops and ironic cheering from Mart’s corner. “Jaysus,” Senan says, “the dead arose. We thought Malachy had kilt you.”

“We reckoned you must have an awful delicate constitution altogether,” says the buck-naked window guy, “to be put off the drink for life by a few sips of poteen.”

“Who’s we, kemosabe?” Mart demands. “I told ye he’d be back. He didn’t fancy looking at your ugly mugs for a few days, is all. I don’t blame him.” He moves over to make room for Cal on the banquette, and signals to Barty to bring him a pint.

“Come here,” Bobby says to Senan. “Ask him. He’d know.”

“Why would he know?”

“It’s probably some American yoke. The young people do all be talking American these days.”

“Go on and educate me, then,” Senan says to Cal. “What’s a yeet?”

“A what?” Cal says.

“A yeet. I’m sitting on the sofa tonight after my tea, doing a bit of digesting, and my youngest lad comes running in, launches himself onto my feckin’ belly like he’s been shot from a cannon, yells ‘Yeet!’ out of him right in my face, and legs it out again. I asked one of my other fellas what he was on about, but he only laughed his arse off and told me I’m getting old. Then he asked me for twenty quid to go into town.”

“Did you give it to him?” Cal asks.

“I did not. I told him to fuck off and get a job. What the hell is a yeet?”

“You never saw a yeet?” Cal says. He finds himself fed up to the back teeth with being tossed around by these guys like a beach ball. “They’re pet animals. Like hamsters, only bigger and uglier. Great big fat faces and little piggy eyes.”

“I haven’t got a fat fuckin’ face. You’re telling me my young lad’s after calling me a hamster?”

“Well,” Cal says, “that word’s used for something else, too, but I hope your boy wouldn’t know about that. How old is he?”

“Ten.”

“He got the internet?”

Senan is swelling up and turning red. “If that little fecker’s been looking at porn, he can say good-bye to his drum kit, and his Xbox, and his—everything. What’s a yeet? Did he call his own father a prick?”

“He’s only winding you up, ye eejit,” the buck-naked window guy tells him. “He’s no more notion of yeets than you have.”

Senan glares at Cal. “Never heard of ’em,” Cal says. “But you’re cute when you’re angry.”

Everyone roars with laughter, and Senan shakes his head and tells Cal where he can shove his hamsters. The guys order another round, and Mart insists on teaching Cal the rules of Fifty-Five, on the grounds that if he’s planning on sticking around these parts he might as well make himself useful. Nobody says a word about Trey, or Brendan, or Donie, or dead sheep.

Nobody Cal meets, in fact, mentions any of those. Cal tries to take this as an indication that the whole thing is well and truly over—surely if the kid did anything dumb, he would hear about it, one way or another. He’s not entirely sure that’s the case.

Trey herself has dematerialized. Cal is prepared for anything from slashed tires to a brick through his window—he’s moved his mattress into a corner out of range, and he keeps a lookout for missiles on his way in and out of the house. Nothing happens. When he sits on his step in the evenings, nothing rustles in the hedges but birds and small animals. When he works on his house or cooks his dinner, the back of his neck stays quiet. If he didn’t know better, he could easily find himself believing that he imagined the whole thing.

He goes flat out on the house: gets the name of the local chimney sweep from Noreen, finishes painting the walls in the front room and moves on to stripping the wallpaper in the little second bedroom. Mart’s buddy Locky comes round to do the rewiring and provide a washing machine, at a price that Cal knows better than to inquire into. Locky shows an inclination to chat, so Cal takes the opportunity to go into town and buy himself some new kitchen cupboards and an actual fridge-freezer. With them installed and a fire in the fireplace, the front room changes. It loses its remote, dismantled air and comes together into something whose bareness has a spare, solid warmth. He WhatsApps Alyssa a photo. Oh wow, she texts back, it looks great!

Getting there, Cal texts. You should come see it. Alyssa comes back with, Yes! As soon as work settles down and an eye-roll emoji. Even though this is much what Cal expected, it leaves him sore and low, with the urge to call Donna and piss her off.

Instead he goes out to his woods and spends a couple of hours collecting dead branches to stack for firewood. The cold has settled in, and a fine net curtain of rain hangs in the air. Whenever Cal leaves the house, even just to take out the trash, he doesn’t feel a drop hit him, but he gets back inside damp through. Somehow it seeps inside the house, too: no matter how long he keeps the fire burning and the oil heater on, his sleeping bag and his duvet always feel almost imperceptibly damp. He buys another heater for his bedroom, which helps some but not a whole lot.

He tries to take advantage of the fact that he can play his music as loud as he wants again, but it doesn’t go to plan. He starts out well, cooking dinner to a good rousing dose of Steve Earle complete with full air drums, just like no one ever came peeping in the windows to see him make a fool of himself. Somehow or other, though, by the end of the evening he finds himself sitting on his back step with a beer, looking up into the darkening haze of the sky and feeling the mist of rain thicken on his skin and his hair, while Jim Reeves fills the air with an old tearjerker about a guy trudging through a blizzard who almost makes it home.

One of the few things that give Cal real pleasure in these days is the discovery that he still has his eye for a rifle. The weather lends itself more to fishing, but he doesn’t have the patience just now. He would love to spend more time out with the Henry, drizzle or no drizzle, but there’s a limit to how much rabbit he can eat. He stashes a couple in his new freezer and takes two to Daniel Boone, who rewards him with a discount on bullets and a tour of his favorite guns, and a pair to Noreen, to make it clear that he sees and appreciates her support. He knows he ought to take one to Mart, but he can’t bring himself to do it.

He could take one to Lena, except he’s avoiding her with such dedication that he feels like a damn fool, skulking outside the shop trying to make sure she’s not in there before he can work up the courage to go in himself. He would love to do all his shopping in town for a few weeks, but he can’t risk offending Noreen at this delicate moment. This also means he can’t hurry in and out; he has to listen to all the news about Angela Maguire’s heart trouble, complete with an explanation of how Noreen and Angela are half cousins via a great-grandmother who may or may not have poisoned her first husband, and discuss what the new water park up beyond town might mean for Ardnakelty. Normally he would be happy to spend half his day on this, but if Lena sees him she’ll want to talk about the pup, and Cal isn’t going to take the pup.

For the first time since he arrived, Ireland feels tiny and cramped to him. What he needs is thousands of miles of open highway where he can floor it all day and all night long, watching the sun and the moon pass over nothing but ochre desert and tangled brush. If he tried that around here, he would get about fifty yards before running into an unjustifiable road twist, a flock of sheep, a pothole the size of his bathtub or a tractor going the other way. He goes walking instead, but the fields are so sodden they squelch like bog under his feet, and the road verges are churned to extravagant pits and ridges of mud that stop him from ever finding a rhythm to his stride. Mostly these inconveniences wouldn’t bother him, but right now they feel personally targeted: pebbles in his shoes, small but carefully chosen for their sharp corners.

Cal refuses to let his unsettled feeling faze him too badly. It’s natural enough, after the disturbance Trey brought. If he lets it be and does plenty of hard work, the feeling will pass. This is what he did at times when, for example, his marriage or his job pinched him around the edges, and it worked: sooner or later, things shifted themselves around enough that he felt at ease amid them again. He reckons by the time he has the house ready for winter, he should have worn the restlessness down.

In the event, he doesn’t get the chance. Less than two weeks after he sends Trey packing, he’s sitting in his nice spiffed-up front room, in front of a wood fire. It’s a high-tempered, unruly night, windy enough to make Cal wonder if his roof is as sound as he thought. He’s reading the skinny local paper, and listening for the sound of smashing roof slates, when there’s a knock at the door.

The knock has an odd quality, rough and sloppy, more like an animal’s pawing. If it hadn’t come in the lull between two gusts, Cal might have put it down to the wind hurling a branch up against the door. It’s ten at night, past farmers’ bedtime unless something is badly wrong.

Cal puts his paper down and stands for a moment in the middle of his front room, wondering whether to get his rifle. The knock doesn’t come again. He crosses to the door and cracks it open.

Trey is standing on his doorstep, shaking from head to toe like a whipped dog. One of her eyes is purple and swollen shut. Blood is streaked across her face and pouring down her chin. She’s holding up one hand, curled into a claw.

“Aw, shit,” Cal says. “Aw, shit, kid.”

Her knees are buckling. He wants to pick her up and carry her inside, but he’s terrified to touch her in case he hurts her worse. “Get in here,” he says.

She stumbles inside and stands there, wobbling and panting. She looks like she doesn’t know where she is.

Cal can’t see anyone coming after her, but he locks the door all the same. “Here,” he says. “Come on. Over here.” He guides her to the armchair with his fingertips on her shoulders. When she drops into it she lets out a sharp hiss of pain.

“Wait,” Cal says. “Wait there. Hold on.” He gets his sleeping bag and duvet from his bedroom and tucks them around the kid, as gently as he can. Her good hand fastens on the duvet so hard the knuckles whiten.

“There you go,” Cal says. “It’s gonna be OK.” He finds a clean towel and squats by the armchair to stem the blood dripping off her chin. Trey flinches away, but when he tries again she doesn’t have the focus to stop him. He blots till he can see where the blood is coming from. Her bottom lip is split open.

“Who did this to you?”

The kid’s mouth opens wide, like she’s going to howl like a broken animal. Nothing comes out but more blood.

“It’s OK,” Cal says. He gets the towel to her mouth again and presses. “Never mind. You don’t have to say anything. You just sit still awhile.”

Trey stares past him and shakes. She breathes in shallow huffs, like it hurts. Cal can’t tell if she knows what’s going on, or if she took a blow to the head and wandered here in a daze. He can’t tell how bad that hand is, or if any teeth are gone, or what other damage might be hidden under her hoodie. The blood from her mouth is everywhere.

“Kid,” he says gently. “I don’t need you to say anything. I just need to know what hurts worst. Can you show me?”

For a moment he thinks she can’t hear him. Then she lifts her curled hand and motions at her mouth and at her side.

“OK,” Cal says. She knows what he’s saying, at least. “Good job. We’re gonna get you to a doctor.”

The kid’s good eye flares wide with panic and she starts struggling to get her feet under her. “No,” she says, in a harsh growl blurred by the swollen lip. “No doctor.”

Cal puts up his hands, trying to block her into the armchair. “Kid. You need X-rays. That lip, you could need stitches—”

“No. Get away, get—” She smashes his hands away and manages to stand up, rocking.

“Listen to me. If your hand’s broken—”

“I don’t care. Fuck off, get—”

She’s ready to fight her way to the door and stumble back into the night. “OK,” Cal says, stepping back and raising his hands. “OK. OK. No doctor. Just sit down.”

He has no idea what to do if she won’t, but after a minute, when the words get through, the fight goes out of her and she collapses back into the chair.

“There you go,” Cal says. “That’s better.” He puts the towel back to her mouth. “You feel like you’re gonna throw up?”

Trey shakes her head. The pain makes her suck in a breath. “Nah.”

“Don’t swallow the blood, or you will. Just spit it right into here. You dizzy? Seeing double?”

“Nah.”

“Did you black out?”

“Nah.”

“Well, that’s all good,” Cal says. “Doesn’t sound like you have a concussion.” Blood is creeping up through the towel in a rapidly widening patch of red. He switches to a clean part and tries to make himself press harder. He notices, off in a distant corner of his brain, the awareness that at some point, once he has this situation under control, he’s going to kill someone.

“Listen,” he says, when the red stain slows. “I’m gonna go outside just for one minute. I’ll be right outside the door. You just sit tight. OK?”

Trey stiffens again. “No doctor.”

“I’m not gonna call a doctor. I swear.” He detaches her good hand carefully from the duvet, closes her fingers on the towel and arranges it against her lip. “You keep that there. Press as hard as you can stand. I’ll be right back.”

The kid still trusts him, or else she just has no choice. Cal doesn’t know which possibility kills him worse. She sits there, holding the towel and staring at nothing, while he goes out and closes the front door gently behind him.

He keeps his back against the door, wipes his bloody hands on his pants and tries to scan the garden. The night is huge and wild with wind and stars. Leaves scud and soar, and shadows roil on the grass. Anything could be out there.

Lena takes her time answering her phone, and her “Hello?,” when it finally comes, has a definite coolness to it. She hasn’t missed the slight to her pup, and she doesn’t appreciate it.

Cal says, “I need your help. Someone’s beat up Trey Reddy pretty bad. I need you to come over to my place and give me a hand.”

A big part of him expects Lena to stick by her principle of not getting involved in other people’s business, which would be the smartest response by far. Instead she says, after a silence, “What d’you want me for?”

“Look her over, see how bad she is and whether she’s got any other injuries. I can’t do that.”

“I’m no doctor.”

“You’ve seen to plenty of hurt animals. That’s more’n I’ve done. Just find out if she’s got anything that needs medical attention.”

“It mightn’t show. She could have internal bleeding. You need to get her to a doctor.”

“She doesn’t want one. I just need to know whether I should drag her kicking and screaming, or whether she’s gonna survive without. And if I do have to drag her, then I’m gonna need you to hold her down while I drive.”

There’s another, longer silence, in which Cal can do nothing but wait. Then Lena says, “Right. I’ll be down to you in ten minutes.” She hangs up before he can say anything more.

Trey jumps violently at the sound of Cal coming back in. “Just me,” he says. “I got a friend of mine coming over who’s good at caring for hurt animals. I figure a hurt kid can’t be too different.”

“Who?”

“Lena. Noreen’s sister. You don’t need to worry about her. Out of everyone around here, she’s the best person I know for keeping her mouth shut.”

“What’ll she do?”

“Just take a look at you. Clean up your face—she’ll do it gentler than I can. Maybe stick on one of those fancy Band-Aids that look like stitches.”

Trey clearly wants to argue, but she’s got nothing left in her to do it with. The warmth from the coverings and the fire has eased her shaking, leaving her limp and slumped. She looks like she barely has the strength to keep holding the towel to her mouth.

Cal pulls over one of the kitchen chairs, so he can sit by her and catch it if she drops it. Her eye has got worse, plum-black and swollen so big that the skin is tight and shiny.

“Let’s see how that cut’s doing,” he says. Trey doesn’t react. Cal reaches out one finger and moves her hand away from her mouth. The bleeding has slackened, just slow bright drops welling up. Her teeth are all still there. “Better,” he says. “How’s it feel?”

Trey moves one shoulder. She hasn’t looked straight at him once. When she tries, her eye skids away like his hurt her.

She needs to rinse out that cut with salt water, and someone needs to take a close look and see if it needs stitches. Cal has done first aid on babies, junkies and everyone in between, but he can’t do it here. He can’t take the risk that he’ll put a finger wrong and break the kid. Just being this near to her makes his whole body sing with nerves.

“Kid,” he says. “Listen to me. I can’t make sure this situation goes nice and smooth unless I know what it is I’m dealing with. I’m not gonna say a word to anyone without your leave, but I need to know who did this to you.”

Trey’s head moves against the back of the chair. She says, “My mam.”

The fury hits Cal so intensely that for a second he can’t see. When it clears a little, he says, “How come?”

“They told her to. Said do it or we will.”

“Who told her to?”

“Dunno. I was out. Got home and she said to come out back ’cause she hadta talk to me.”

“Uh-huh,” Cal says. He makes sure he has his cop face and his cop voice in place, peaceful and interested. “What’d she use?”

“Belt. And hit me. Kicked me a coupla times.”

“Well, that’s not good,” Cal says. He wants Lena to get here so badly that he can hardly sit still. “You got any idea why?”

Trey makes a ragged twitch that Cal recognizes as a shrug.

“You been stealing from anyone who might take offense?”

“Nah.”

“You’ve been asking questions about Brendan,” Cal says. “Haven’t you?”

Trey nods. She doesn’t have the wherewithal to lie.

“Dammit, kid,” Cal begins, and then bites it back. “OK. Who’ve you been asking?”

“Went to see Donie.”

“When?”

It takes her a while to figure that out. “Day before yesterday.”

“He give you anything?”

“He just told me to fuck off. Laughed at me.” Her words are sloppy and widely spaced, but she’s making sense. Her mind is OK, depending on your definition of OK. “He said watch yourself or you’ll end up like Bren.”

“Well, Donie can say anything he likes,” Cal says. “Doesn’t make it so.” The talking has opened up her lip again; a thin trickle of blood is making its way down her chin. “Hush, now. I’ll take care of that part. All you gotta do is stay still.”

Wind slams against the windows and sings furiously in the chimney, setting the fire fluttering and sending curls of rich-smelling smoke into the room. Firewood cracks and pops. Cal checks Trey’s lip every now and then. When the bleeding stops again, he stands up.

The movement sends a jolt of panic through Trey. “What’re you doing?”

“Getting you some ice to put on that eye, and that lip. That’s all. Bring down the swelling, and ease the pain a little bit.”

He’s at the sink, popping ice cubes into a fresh towel, when he sees the sweep of Lena’s headlights across the window. “Here’s Miss Lena,” he says, putting down the ice tray with a surge of relief. “I’m gonna go warn her not to pester you with questions. You just sit tight and keep this on your face.”

Lena is getting out of her car by the time Cal comes outside. She slams the door and strides up the drive, hands shoved in the pockets of a man’s green wax jacket. The wind whips pieces of her hair free from its ponytail and the starlight turns it a luminous, eerie white. As she reaches Cal, she raises her eyebrows for an explanation.

“Kid showed up at my door in bad shape,” Cal says. “If you ask her for details she’ll freak out, so don’t ask. She’s got a black eye, a split lip, something’s wrong with her hand, and she says her side hurts pretty bad.”

Lena’s eyebrows flick higher. “Noreen told me a date with you would be different from the local lads,” she says. “She’s always right, that one,” and she walks past him into the house.

The sight of her hits Trey with another jolt of panic. She drops the towel, ice cubes scattering, and looks like she’s about to scrabble up from the chair again. “Hush,” Cal says. “Miss Lena’s here to take a look at you, remember? It’s her or a doctor, so don’t give her any hassle. OK?”

Trey sinks back into the chair. Cal can’t tell whether that’s because she’s OK with Lena or because her strength has given out. “There you go,” he says. “That’s better.” He goes to the cupboard and finds his first-aid kit.

“First thing is to get you cleaned up,” Lena says matter-of-factly, pulling off her jacket and throwing it over the back of a chair, “so I can see what’s what. Have you another cloth, Cal?”

“Under the sink,” Cal says. “I’ll be right outside.” He puts the first-aid kit in Lena’s hands and walks out the back door.

He sits down on the step, leans his elbows on his knees and breathes hard into his fingers for a while. He feels some kind of light-headed, or maybe sick, he can’t tell which. He needs to do something, but he can’t tell what that is either. “Fuck,” he says quietly, into his fingers. “Fuck.”

The wind shoves at him, trying to get around him and in the door. The treetops toss furiously and the garden has a deserted, tight-battened feel, like no creature that’s not desperate or crazy would be out in this. No sound comes from inside the house, or nothing Cal can hear through the wind.

After a while his head starts to come back together again, at least enough to fumble for something like a plan. He has better sense than to go near Sheila Reddy, but nothing on earth is going to keep him away from Donie.

He can’t do anything until he learns what Trey needs, though, and figures out how to get it for her. He considers slipping the kid a big dose of Benadryl and hauling her into the car when she gets drowsy. Even leaving aside the problematic aspects of showing up at a hospital with a drugged beat-up teenage girl, he’s uneasy about a course of action that, among its many other less predictable consequences, would likely land the kid in foster care. Maybe she’d be better off there; he can’t tell. Back when it was his job, he would have handed her over without a second thought and let the system do its thing.

Lena comes outside drying her hands on her jeans, closes the door behind her and sits down on the step next to Cal.

“She gonna make a run for it while you’re out here?” Cal asks.

“I doubt it. She’s exhausted. No reason why she would, anyway. I told her she doesn’t need a doctor.”

“Does she?”

Lena shrugs. “There’s no emergency, as far as I can tell. Her stomach’s not sore or swollen, and she’s got no bruises there—she says she curled up in a ball—so no reason to think she’s bleeding internally. I’d say she’s got a cracked rib, but there’s nothing a doctor could do about that. The hand seems like it’s bruised, not broken, but she’ll have to wait and see how it goes over the next couple of days. There’s plenty more cuts and bruises on her back and her legs, but they’re not serious.”

“Right,” Cal says. The image of Trey curled up feels like it’s branding him. “Yeah. Well. There you go. You think the lip needs stitches?”

“It could do with them, all right, so it doesn’t leave too bad of a scar. I told her that and she said no stitches, she doesn’t give a shite about scars. So I had her rinse it out with salt water, and I put on one of your Steri-Strips. Gave her one of your Nurofen for the pain. Better than nothing.”

“Thanks,” Cal says. “I appreciate this.”

Lena nods. “She oughta get seen, just in case. But she’ll live without.”

“Then she’ll have to live without. She’d just do herself more damage, fighting all the way.”

“If she gets worse during the night, she’ll need to go. Like it or not.”

“Yeah.”

Lena pulls her hands up into her sweater sleeves to keep them warm. She says, “Are you going to keep her here for the night?”

Even if Sheila notices Trey is gone before morning, she’s hardly likely to call the cops. “Yeah,” Cal says. “Could I ask you to sit with her?” It comes out abrupt, but he can’t wait to get moving. “I got somewhere I need to be. If she gets worse, call me and I’ll come back.”

“She was asking for you.”

“Tell her I’ll be back in the morning. And tell her don’t worry, I’m not going for a doctor.”

“She hardly knows me. It’s you she wants.”

Cal says, “I’m not gonna spend the night alone with a little girl.”

Lena tilts her head back against the door frame to inspect him up and down. She doesn’t look particularly impressed with what she sees. “Fair enough,” she says. “I’ll stay if you do.”

It’s a challenge, and it leaves Cal stymied. “What am I gonna do for her here?” he says.

“Same as I am. Give her more Nurofen, or a clean towel if her lip opens up. It’s not like she needs brain surgery. What are you going to do for her anywhere else?”

“I told you,” Cal says. He wishes he had called someone else, anyone else—not that there is anyone, unless he felt like getting on Facebook and messaging Caroline. “I got somewhere to be.”

“Not somewhere smart.”

“Maybe not. But still.”

“If you leave,” Lena informs him, “I’m leaving as well. This is your mess, not mine. I’m not sitting here all night waiting for your problems to come find me.”

She doesn’t look one bit nervous to Cal, but neither does she look like she plans on backing down. “These problems aren’t gonna come looking for anyone,” he says. “Not tonight, anyway.”

“Imagine how you’ll feel if you abandon a poor widow woman and an injured child to get bet up by hooligans.”

“I’ve got a gun I can leave you.”

“Congratulations. So do plenty of other people round here.”

More than anything else, she looks amused at Cal’s predicament. He runs his hands over his face. “Look,” he says. “I know it’s a lot to ask. You could take her to your place, if—”

“You think she’ll go?”

Cal rubs his face harder. “My mind’s not working too good right now,” he says. “Are you serious about leaving if I do?”

“I am, yeah. I don’t mind giving you a hand where you actually need it, but I’m not going to be left handling the real business while you chase off on some nonsense you’ve got into your head.” She grins at him. “I told you I was a cold bitch.”

Cal believes her. “OK,” he says, like he has a choice. “You win.” There’s no way in the world he can leave Trey in this house alone tonight. “I’ve only got one bed, and the kid’s getting that, but you can have the armchair.”

“Well, would you look at that,” Lena says, standing up. “Chivalry isn’t dead.” She holds the door open and ushers him inside with a sweep of her arm, in exchange.

With the shock and the pain ebbing, fatigue has hit Trey like a kick from a horse. Her head has fallen back in the armchair, the hand holding the ice pack has dropped into her lap, and her good eyelid is drooping. “Come on,” Cal says. “Let’s get you to bed before you fall asleep right there.”

The kid catches her breath and rubs at her good eye. There are gouges on her hand where the belt buckle caught her. “ ’M I staying here?”

“Yep, for tonight. You’re gonna have my bed. Me and Miss Lena, we’ll be right out here.” Trey’s lip, all tidied up and held together by the Steri-Strip, has a reassuringly professional look. Lena did a good job. “Now come on. I’m not gonna carry you; I’d throw my back out.”

“You could do with the exercise,” Trey tells him. Her lopsided shadow of a grin pretty near takes Cal to pieces.

“Ungrateful little so-and-so,” he says. “Watch your manners or I’ll make you sleep in the bathtub. Now move it.”

Her sore places are stiffening. He has to half scoop her out of the armchair, set her on her feet and steer her into the bedroom. The movement makes her grimace, but she doesn’t complain. Lena picks up the duvet and the sleeping bag and follows them.

“Here you go,” Cal says, switching the light on. “The lap of luxury. I’m gonna let Miss Lena get you settled. You need anything in the night, or anything bothers you, you just call us.”

Trey crumples onto the mattress in an ungainly pile of elbows and feet. Lena tosses the bedclothes beside her and moves to undo Trey’s shoelaces. To Cal the scene looks lawless and incomprehensible, stained mattress on scuffed floorboards, harsh glare from the bare bulb, tangle of cheap bedclothes, the woman kneeling at the feet of the bruised and bloody child. He feels like he should at least be able to offer the kid something gentle, a feather bed with a ruffle, a soft-shaded bedside lamp and a picture of kittens on the wall.

He switches on the oil heater. “Well,” he says. He thinks, fleetingly and ridiculously, of putting the toy sheep on Trey’s pillow. “Good night. Sleep tight.” She watches him over Lena’s shoulder, with her one open eye beyond any expression, as he shuts the door.

The bloodied dish towels are scattered around the armchair. Cal collects them and throws them in his new washing machine. He doesn’t turn it on, in case its whirring disturbs the kid. He switches on the electric kettle and sets out two mugs—what he needs is a shot of whiskey, but he might yet have to drive tonight, and he’s learned enough to know that around here tea is an appropriate response to any situation at any time of day or night. Blood has dried in the lines of his knuckles; he washes his hands at the kitchen sink.

Lena comes out of the bedroom and closes the door quietly behind her. “How’s she doing?” Cal asks.

“Asleep before I got the duvet on her.”

“Well, that’s good,” Cal says. “You want some tea?”

“Go on.”

Lena settles herself in the armchair, testing it out, and kicks off her shoes. The kettle boils, and Cal pours and brings a mug over to her. “I don’t have milk. This OK?”

“You savage.” She takes the mug and blows on it. She looks at ease in the armchair, as if it were her own. It’s an ample, lopsided creation in a peculiar purplish green that might have been fashionable for a minute a long time ago, or might just have started out a different shade; it’s surprisingly comfortable, but Cal never envisioned inviting anyone to sleep in it. He has that sense of being weightless again, off his feet and borne along with nothing to grab hold of.

The fire has burned low; he puts more wood on it. “She say anything to you that I oughta know?” he asks.

“She said nothing about anything, except what I told you. But I didn’t ask.”

“Thanks.”

“No point. You’re the one she trusts.” Lena sips her tea. “She’s been coming here a lot.”

“Yeah,” Cal says, taking his mug to the table. He can’t imagine that Lena is aiming to lecture him on the unseemliness of letting Trey Reddy hang around, and sure enough, she only nods. “Are you gonna get any hassle for helping me out?”

She shrugs. “I doubt it. You might, but, depending what you do next. Are you going to bring her home in the morning?”

“You know anywhere else she can go?”

He feels Lena take in the implication. She considers and shakes her head.

“Aunt? Uncle? Grandparents?”

“Most of her relations are emigrated or dead or useless, depending on which side you mean. Sheila’s got cousins over the other side of town, but they wouldn’t want to get mixed up in this.”

“I can see their point,” Cal says.

“Sheila does the best she can,” Lena says. “You and I might not think it’s great, but we haven’t spent twenty-five years on the wrong side of Johnny Reddy and Ardnakelty. Sheila’s had all the fancy notions worn right out of her. All she wants is to keep the children she’s got left alive and out of jail.”

Cal has no idea what to say to this. He can’t tell whether he’s angry at Lena, or whether his anger at Sheila and whoever got to her is so high that it’s spilling over onto her.

Lena says, “She’s got used to doing whatever needs to be done. Right or wrong. She hasn’t had much choice.”

“Maybe,” Cal says. He doesn’t find that reassuring. If Sheila felt her best or only option tonight was to beat the living shit out of Trey, she might feel that way again sometime. “I might see if I can get a few things done before I send the kid back there.”

Lena glances up from her tea. “Like what?”

“The stuff I shoulda been doing tonight.”

“Man business,” Lena says, mock-awed. “Too serious for a lady’s delicate ears.”

“Just business.”

The firewood pops and shoots a spray of sparks upwards. Lena stretches out a toe to nudge the screen more snugly into place.

“I can’t stop you doing something stupid,” she says. “But I’m hoping if you have to leave it till morning, you might think better of it.”

It takes Cal a minute or two to figure out why this comment startles him so much. He was assuming that the reason Lena made him stick around—apart from not wanting his business dumped in her lap, which is fair enough—was because the kid wanted him there. Instead, she sounds like her aim was to prevent Cal from getting his ass kicked, or something similar. Cal finds this unexpectedly moving. Mart has put considerable effort into the same goal, but it’s different coming from a woman. It’s been a while since a woman gave that much of a damn about Cal either way.

“Well, I appreciate that,” he says. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

Lena makes a wry pfft noise, which leaves Cal slightly chagrined even though he agrees that it’s warranted. “I’m going asleep,” she says, leaning to put her mug on the table. “Will we turn out the light?”

Cal switches it off, leaving only the firelight. He goes into the spare bedroom and brings out his heavy winter duvet—he hasn’t got around to buying a cover for it, but it is at least clean. “I apologize for this,” he says. “I’d like to be a better host, but this is all I’ve got.”

“I’ve slept in worse,” Lena says, taking out her ponytail and snapping the hair band around her wrist. “I wish I’d brought my toothbrush, is all.” She curls sideways in the chair and tucks the duvet around herself.

“Sorry,” Cal says, getting both his coats from their hook. “Can’t help you there.”

“I’ll go down to Mart Lavin and ask if he has a spare, will I?”

Cal is so off-kilter that he spins around horrified. When he sees her grin, he’s startled into a crack of laughter loud enough that he claps a hand over his mouth, glancing at the bedroom door.

“You’d make Ardnakelty’s day,” he says.

“I would, all right. It’d almost be worth it, only Noreen’d pat herself on the back so hard she’d do herself an injury.”

“So would Mart.”

“Jesus. Is he on this too?”

“Oh yeah. He’s already decided that Malachy Dwyer’s gonna cater the bachelor party.”

“Ah well, feck the toothbrush, so,” Lena says. “We can’t let those two think they’re right every time. ’Twouldn’t be good for them.”

Cal arranges himself in front of the fireplace and wraps both coats around him. By firelight the room is all warm gold flickers and pulses of shadow. It makes the situation bloom with a seductive, ephemeral intimacy, like they’re the last people left awake at a house party, caught up in a conversation that won’t count tomorrow morning.

“I don’t know that we’ve got much choice,” he says. “Unless you leave before dawn, someone’s gonna see your car.”

Lena thinks that over. “Mightn’t be a bad idea,” she says. “Give people something to talk about, keep their minds away from the other thing.” She nods at the bedroom door.

“Are you gonna get hassle, though?”

“What, for being a loose woman, like?” She grins again. “Nah. The aul’ ones’ll talk, but I don’t mind them. It’s not the eighties; it’s not like they can throw me in a Magdalen laundry. They’ll get over it.”

“How ’bout me? Is Noreen gonna show up with a shotgun if I don’t marry you after this?”

“God, no. She’ll blame me for letting you slip through my fingers. You’re grand. The lads in Seán Óg’s might even buy you a pint, to congratulate you.”

“Win-win,” Cal says. He stretches out on his back, with his hands behind his head, and wishes he’d thought to bring his extra clothes out of his bedroom. He’s not planning to sleep if he can help it, in case of the various situations that might arise, but after a night on this floor he’s going to be walking like Mart.

“Tell me something,” Lena says. The firelight moves across her eyes. “Why aren’t you going to take that pup?”

“Because,” Cal says, “I’d want to guarantee that I’d take care of it right, and no harm would come to it. And it doesn’t seem like I can do that.”

Lena’s eyebrows go up. “Huh,” she says. “Here I thought you just didn’t want anything tying you down.”

“Nope,” Cal says. He watches the fire. “Seems like I’m always looking for something to hold me down. It just never works out that way.”

Lena nods. Wind, wearying to halfhearted gusts, ruffles the fire. It’s burning low again, the heart of it darkening to a deep orange glow.

From the bedroom comes a thrashing of bedclothes and a hoarse, inarticulate cry. By the time Cal’s mind works out that a homicidal intruder is unlikely, he’s at the bedroom door.

He stops and looks over at Lena. “You’re up already,” she says. “I’ll go next time.” Then she turns her shoulder to him, settling herself more comfortably in the chair, and pulls the duvet up to her chin.

Cal stands there, at the door. Another strangled cry comes from the bedroom. Lena doesn’t move.

After a moment he opens the bedroom door. Trey is up on her elbow, head turning wildly, whimpering through gritted teeth.

“Hey,” Cal says. “It’s OK.”

The kid jumps and whips round to stare at him. It takes her a few seconds to see him.

“You had a bad dream, is all. It’s gone now.”

Trey lets out a long shaky breath and lies back, wincing as her rib catches. “Yeah,” she says. “Just dreaming.”

“That’s right,” Cal says. “Anything hurt? You need more painkillers?”

“Nah.”

“OK. Sleep tight.”

When he turns to go, she moves in the bed and makes a small rough sound. He turns back and sees her good eye looking at him, shining in the light coming through the door.

“What?”

The kid doesn’t answer.

“You want me to stick around awhile?”

She nods.

“OK,” Cal says. “I can do that.” He eases himself down onto the floor and settles his back against the wall.

Trey rustles herself around so she can keep that eye on him. “What’re you gonna do?” she asks, after a minute.

“Hush,” Cal says. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.”

He can see her searching for the next question. To quiet her, he starts to sing, so low it’s half a hum, hoping Lena won’t hear through the wind. The song that comes out is “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” same as he used to sing for Alyssa when she was little and couldn’t sleep. Gradually Trey relaxes. Her breathing slows and deepens, and the shine of that eye fades among the shadows.

Cal keeps on singing. He used to fix up the words a little bit for Alyssa, change the cigarette trees to candy-cane trees and the lake of whiskey to one of soda. There doesn’t seem to be much point in doing that for Trey, but he does it anyway.