Johnny focuses on her and brings out a smile, which makes him wince. “Someone’s got faith in me, anyway,” he says. “Daddy’s sorry for giving out. I shoulda known better, isn’t that right? I shoulda known you’d never say a word.”
Trey shrugs.
“That was only brilliant tonight, the way you walked into the pub. I shoulda thought of that. The faces on those great eejits, hah? I thought Bobby Feeney’s big fat head was going to explode.”
“They fell for it,” Trey says.
“They fuckin’ did. Hook, line, and sinker. ’Twas only beautiful; I’da watched that all night long. We’ll teach them to fuck with the Reddys, hah?”
Trey nods. She expected to hate bringing out the gold in the pub, talking shite with everyone staring at her; she was unprepared for the burst of power. She had those men by the noses, to lead wherever she wanted. She could have made them get up out of their seats, leave their pints and traipse obediently around the mountain, along every trail she took when she was hunting for Brendan. She could have walked the lot of them straight into a bog.
Sheila turns Johnny’s chin towards her so she can get at the other side of his face. “Now,” he says, rolling an eye over his shoulder to catch Trey’s, “I’ve another wee job for you. Tomorrow morning, you go down to that smartarse Hooper and ask him, nice and polite like, to mind his own fuckin’ business, as a favor to you. Can you do that for me?”
“Yeah,” Trey says. “No problem.” She wants Cal out of this as much as her dad does. She doesn’t like being on the same side as her dad. It leaves her with a strange, prickly sense of outrage.
“You explain to him that no one’ll believe him. If he meddles, he’ll do nothing but get you in trouble. That oughta do it.” Johnny smiles at her, lopsided. “And after that, it’s plain sailing all the way. Happy days, hah?”
The door creaks. Alanna stands half in, half out of the room, wearing an old T-shirt of Trey’s, with her stuffed rabbit tucked under her arm. “What happened?” she says.
“Go back to bed,” Sheila says sharply.
“Ah, sweetheart,” Johnny says, snapping alert to give Alanna a big smile. “Your big silly daddy fell over. Wouldja look at the state of me? Your mammy’s just tidying me up a wee bit, and then I’ll be in to give you a good-night hug.”
Alanna stares, wide-eyed. “Get her to bed,” Sheila says to Trey.
“Come on,” Trey says, steering Alanna back into the hall. Johnny waves to them both as they go, grinning like a fool through the blood and the dish towel.
“Did he fall over?” Alanna wants to know.
“Nah,” Trey says. “He got in a fight.”
“With who?”
“None a your business.”
She’s heading for Alanna and Liam’s room, but Alanna balks and pulls at her T-shirt. “Want to come in with you.”
“If you don’t wake Maeve.”
“I won’t.”
The bedroom is too hot, even with the window open. Maeve has kicked off her sheet and is sprawled on her stomach. Trey guides Alanna through the tangle of clothes and who knows what on the floor. “Now,” she says, pulling the sheet over the two of them. “Shh.”
“I don’t want him to stay,” Alanna tells her, in what’s meant to be a whisper. “Liam does.”
“He won’t stay,” Trey says.
“Why?”
“ ’Cause. That’s how he is. Shh.”
Alanna nods, accepting that. In no time she’s asleep, snuffling into her rabbit’s head. Her hair smells of gummy bears and is faintly sticky against Trey’s face.
Trey stays awake, listening to the silence from the sitting room. The curtain stirs sluggishly in the feeble breeze. Once there’s a sudden strangled roar of pain from Johnny and a sharp word from Sheila, which Trey reckons is her setting his nose back into line. Then the silence rises to wall them off again. Alanna’s breathing doesn’t change.
—
It takes Cal a long time to get home. The adrenaline has leached out of him, leaving his limbs heavy and unwieldy as wet sandbags. The moon has sunk behind the mountains, and the night is dark and simmering hot. When he finally rounds the bend and his house comes into view, the living-room windows are lit, small and valiant against the black huddle of the mountains.
Cal stands still among the moths and rustles, leaning on the roadside wall with both hands, his mind groping for what intruder this might be and where he’s going to find the force to drive them out. His thigh and his forehead are throbbing. For a second he considers just lying down and going to sleep under a hedge, and dealing with this in the morning.
Then a shape crosses the window. Even at this distance, Cal knows it for Lena, by the line of her back and by the moving sheen of the lamplight on her fair hair. He takes a breath. Then he straightens up and heads down the dark road, his big old sandbag feet catching in potholes, towards home.
The dogs signal his arrival early enough that Lena is at the door to meet him. She’s barefoot, and the house smells of tea and toast. She’s been waiting awhile.
“Hey,” Cal says.
Lena’s eyebrows go up, and she moves him into the light so she can examine his face. “Johnny, yeah?” she inquires.
“He looks worse’n I do.”
