“It’s all totally grand,” Maeve says triumphantly. “Everyone says their dads are going
Trey stays still. She can feel victory rocketing like whiskey through every vein of her; she’s afraid to move in case her dad and Maeve see it. Nealon is doing the work she set him to, plodding obediently along the path she laid out for him. Down at the bottom of the mountain, among the pretty little fields and the neat smug bungalows, Ardnakelty is ripping itself to pieces.
“Well, God almighty, wouldja look at that,” Johnny says, rubbing Maeve’s shoulder automatically. He’s gazing at nothing and blinking fast, thinking. “That’s great news, isn’t it?”
“Serves them right,” Maeve says. “For being a shower of bastards to you. Doesn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Johnny says. “You done a great job, sweetheart. Daddy’s proud of you.”
“So you don’t need to worry,” Maeve says, wriggling closer to Johnny. She gives Trey a smirk and the finger, close to her chest so he won’t see. “Everything’s grand.”
After that Johnny doesn’t leave the house any more. When Maeve presses up against him and asks stupid questions, or Liam tries to get him to come play football, he pats them and moves away without seeing them. He smells of whiskey and stale sweat.
Trey goes back to waiting. She does what she’s told, which is mostly housework and making her dad’s sandwiches, and when there’s nothing to do she goes out some more. She walks the mountains for hours, taking breaks to sit under a tree when Banjo ups his panting to melodramatic groans. Cal told her to be careful out and about, but she’s not. She reckons most likely her dad killed Rushborough, and he’s not going to kill her. Even if she’s wrong, no one else is going to do anything either, not with Nealon buzzing all through the air.
The drought has stripped back undergrowth and heather on the mountainside, revealing strange dents and formations here and there among the fields and bogs. Trey, scanning every dip, feels for the first time a chance she might spot the marks of where Brendan’s buried. The bared mountainside seems like a signal aimed straight at her. When something laid Rushborough in her path, she accepted; this is its response. She starts leaving Banjo at home, so she can walk herself to exhaustion without having to take him into consideration. She finds sheep’s bones, broken turf-cutting tools, the ghosts of ditches and foundation walls, but nothing of Brendan. Something more is required of her.
She feels like she’s somewhere other than her own life; like she’s been coming loose from it ever since the morning her dad strolled back into town, and now the last thread has snapped and she’s drifting outside of it altogether. Her hands, cutting potatoes or folding clothes, look like they belong to someone else.
She doesn’t think about missing Cal; she just walks on it all day long, like walking on a broken ankle, and lies down with it at night. The feeling is familiar. After a day or two it comes to her that this is how she felt after Brendan went.
Back then she couldn’t live with it. It ate her mind whole; there was no room left for anything else. She’s older now, and this is something she chose for herself. She has no right to complain.
—
Cal waits for Trey. He has a fridge full of pizza toppings, and a tin of the best wood stain mixed and ready to go, like she’ll somehow sense them and come to their call. He imagines by now she must have heard about him and Lena, although he can’t begin to guess what she’ll make of it. He wants to tell her the truth, but in order to do that, he’d have to see her.
What he gets instead is Nealon, tramping up the drive with his suit jacket over his arm and his sleeves rolled up, blowing and puffing. Cal, with Rip to warn him, is waiting on the step.
“Afternoon,” he says. He can’t help resenting Nealon, for the painful surge of hope when Rip jumped up and went for the door. “You on foot in this heat?”
“Jaysus, no,” Nealon says, wiping his forehead. “I’d be melted. I left the aul’ motor out on the road, where your birds won’t shite on it again. You’ve got more patience than I do; I’d’ve shot the little bolloxes by now.”
“They were here first,” Cal says. “I just try to stay on their good side. Can I get you a glass of water? Iced tea? Beer?”
“D’you know something,” Nealon says, rocking on his heels, with a mischievous grin breaking across his face, “I’d only murder a can of beer. The lads can get along without me for a bit. They’ll never know the difference.”
