“I would never do that,” Daniel said, smiling a little sadly out over the lawn. “Heaven knows, I’m the last person in the world who has any right to judge you for missing the obvious.” He took a sip of his drink-glitter of pale amber as the glass tilted-and in that moment, in the fall of his shoulders and the way his eyes closed as he swallowed, it hit me. I had seen these four as safe in their own enchanted fort, with everything they wanted within arm’s reach. I had liked that thought, a lot. But something had blindsided Abby, and for some reason Daniel was getting used to being terribly, constantly unhappy.
“How does Lexie seem to you?” he asked.
Abby took one of Daniel’s cigarettes and snapped the lighter hard. “She seems fine. A little quiet, and she’s lost some weight, but that’s the least we could expect.”
“Do you think she’s all right?”
“She’s eating. She’s taking her antibiotics.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about Lexie,” Abby said. “She seems pretty settled to me. As far as I can tell, she’s basically forgotten about the whole thing.”
“In a way,” Daniel said, “that’s what’s been bothering me. I worry that she may be bottling everything up and one of these days she’s going to explode. And then what?”
Abby watched him, smoke curling up slowly through the moonlight. “In some ways,” she said carefully, “it might not be the end of the world if Lexie did explode.”
Daniel considered this, swirling his glass meditatively and looking out over the grass. “That would depend very much,” he said, “on the form the explosion took. I think it would be as well to be prepared.”
“Lexie,” Abby said, “is the least of our problems here. Justin-I mean, it was obvious, I knew Justin was going to have trouble, but he’s just so much worse than I expected. He never saw this coming, any more than I did. And Rafe’s not helping. If he doesn’t stop being such a little bollocks, I don’t know what…” I saw her lips tighten as she swallowed. “And then there’s this. I am not having an easy time here either, Daniel, and it doesn’t make me feel any better that you don’t seem to give a damn.”
“I do give a damn,” Daniel said. “I care very much, in fact. I thought you knew that. I just don’t see what either of us can do about it.”
“I could leave,” Abby said. She was watching Daniel intently, her eyes round and very grave. “We could leave.”
I fought down the impulse to slap a hand over the mike. I wasn’t at all sure what was going on here, but if Frank heard this, he would be positive that the four of them were planning some dramatic getaway and I was about to find myself bound and gagged in the coat closet while they hopped a plane to Mexico. I wished I had had the sense to test out the mike’s exact range.
Daniel didn’t look at Abby, but his hand tightened around her ankles. “You could, yes,” he said, eventually. “There would be nothing I could do to stop you. But this is my home, you know. As I hope…” He took a breath. “As I hope it’s yours. I can’t leave it.”
Abby let her head fall back against the bar of the swing seat. “Yeah,” she said. “I know. Me neither. I just… God, Daniel. What do we do?”
“We wait,” Daniel said quietly. “We trust that things will eventually fall into place, in their own time. We trust one another. We do our best.”
A draft swept across my shoulders and I whipped round, already opening my mouth on my drink-of-water story. The glass clanged against the tap and I dropped it in the sink; the clatter sounded enormous enough to wake up all of Glenskehy. There was no one there.
Daniel and Abby had frozen, faces turned sharply towards the house. “Hey,” I said, pushing the door open and going out onto the patio. My heart was pounding. “I changed my mind: I’m not sleepy. Are you guys staying up?”
“No,” Abby said. “I’m going to bed.” She swung her feet off Daniel’s lap and brushed past me, into the house. A moment later I heard her running up the stairs, not bothering to skip the creaky one.
I went over to Daniel and sat down on the patio beside his legs, with my back up against the swing seat. Somehow I didn’t want to sit next to him; it would have felt crude, too much like demanding confidences. After a moment he reached out one hand and set it, lightly, on top of my head. His hand was so big that it cupped my skull like a child’s. “Well,” he said quietly, almost to himself.
His glass was on the ground beside him, and I took a sip: whiskey on the rocks, the ice almost melted. “Were you and Abby fighting?” I asked.
“No,” Daniel said. His thumb moved, just a little, across my hair. “Everything’s fine.”
We sat like that for a while. It was a still night, barely a breeze rippling the grass, the moon like an old silver token floating high in the sky. The cool stone of the patio through my pajamas and the toasty smell of Daniel’s unfiltered cigarette felt comforting, safe. I rocked my back just a little against the swing seat, swaying it in a gentle, regular rhythm.
“Smell,” Daniel said softly. “Do you smell that?”
