“I’ll be over to you in a bit,” Lena says. “I’ll see this lot settled in bed and show Sheila where to find everything, and I’ll be there.”
“Yeah,” Cal says, on a sudden long breath. “That’d be great.”
As Lena hangs up, Sheila comes quietly out the door and shuts it behind her. “Was that Cal?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Lena says. “Himself and Trey are grand. They’re at his place.”
Sheila catches a breath and lets it out again carefully. She sits down on the step next to Lena. “Well then,” she says. “That’s that sorted.”
There’s a silence. Lena knows Sheila is leaving it deliberately, so that she can ask any questions she might have—as a matter of fairness, since she’s after taking them in. Lena has no questions, or anyhow none to which she wants the answers.
“Johnny’s done a legger,” she says. “Cal gave him a bitta cash. If he’s in luck, everyone’ll think he got caught in the fire.”
Sheila nods. “Then that’s that sorted as well,” she says. She smooths her hands down her thighs.
The sky is as dark as the fields, so that they merge into one unbounded expanse. High amid the black hangs a bright, distorted ring of orange. Billows of smoke, strangely lit from below, heave and churn above it.
“Cal says the house is gone,” Lena says.
“I knew that, sure. It’ll be ashes. I always hated the place anyway.” Sheila tilts back her head to watch the blaze, without expression. “We won’t be under your feet too long,” she says. “Coupla weeks, just. If the aul’ Murtagh place makes it through, I might ask would they let me have that. Or I might come down offa the mountain, for a change. See if Rory Dunne fancies having us in that cottage, instead of doing the Airbnb. Alanna’s starting school next month; I could get a bit of a job for myself.”
“You’re welcome here as long as you need it,” Lena says. “Specially if Maeve and Liam are going to brush those dogs. With the heat this summer, they’ve been shedding enough to make me fitted carpets.”
Sheila nods. “I’ll go in and tell the kids about their daddy,” she says. “They’re worrying. They’ll be upset he’s gone, or Maeve and Liam will anyway, but I’ll tell them at least he’s safe now. They’ll be glad of that.”
“Good,” Lena says. “Someone oughta be.”
Sheila lets out a crack of laughter, and Lena realizes how it sounded. “Ah, stop,” she protests, but she’s laughing as well. “I meant it.”
“I know, yeah, I know you did. And you’re right, o’ course. It’s just the way you said it, like—” They’re both laughing much harder than it deserves, so hard that Sheila has her head down on her knees. “Like it was cleaning a manky toilet, ‘Someone oughta do that—’ ”
“ ‘—but I’m not touching it—’ ”
“Oh, God—”
“Mammy?” Alanna says, in the doorway. She’s bare-legged, wearing an oversized red T-shirt that Lena’s seen on Trey.
“Oh, Jesus,” Sheila says, getting her breath and wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Come here.” She holds out an arm to Alanna.
Alanna stays where she is, baffled and suspicious. “What’s funny?”
“It’s been a long day, is all,” Sheila says. “A long aul’ time. Come here.”
After a moment Alanna curls onto the step, in the crook of Sheila’s arm. “Where’s Trey?”
“At Cal’s.”
“Is she gonna stay there?”
“I don’t know. We’ve a loada things to decide on. We’re only starting out.”
Alanna nods. Her eyes, gazing up at the mountain, are solemn and dreamy.
“Time for bed,” Sheila says. She stands up and, with a grunt of effort, lifts Alanna off the step. Alanna winds her legs around her, still gazing over her shoulder at the fire.
“Come on,” Sheila says, and carries her inside. Lena stays where she is for a while, listening to the sounds of the place full of people getting ready for bed. She has no desire to make the arrangement a long-term one, but just for a few weeks, it feels like a worthwhile thing to have other people in her house again.
—
What with everything that was going on, Trey missed dinner. She’s considerably more concerned about this than about her ankle, which is baseball-sized and purple but doesn’t appear to be broken, or about the spatter of red patches and blisters on her arms where burning flecks settled. Cal, whose hands are still shaking, doesn’t have the wherewithal to cook anything substantial. He straps up the kid’s ankle and makes her a sandwich, and then another one, and finally dumps the bread and various fillings on the table and lets her go to town.
He’s watching her for any number of things, trying to remember every word Alyssa’s said over the years about trauma and delayed reactions and attachment disruption, but for the life of him he can’t see anything worth watching. What the kid mainly looks is hungry, with a large side order of dirty. He would give a lot to know what turned out to be more important to her than her revenge, but he has a growing feeling that that might not be something she’ll ever be willing to share with him.
Probably he ought to talk to her about—among a whole mess of other things—the fire: the people who could lose everything, the animals whose homes are gone, the firefighters putting themselves in danger. He’s not going to do it. For one thing, right now he’s too blown apart by relief that she’s here, and apparently in one piece, to have any room left for matters of conscience. For another, it would have no impact. If she set her place on fire, Trey was getting rid of evidence. Cal can only see one reason for that, and it’s not one against which anything else would hold weight.
“I’m not gonna ask you,” he says suddenly.
Trey looks up at him, chewing.
“About any of it. Anything you feel like telling me, go for it anytime, I want to hear it. But I’m not gonna ask.”
Trey takes a minute to examine this. Then she nods and shoves the last hunk of sandwich in her mouth. “Can I’ve a shower?” she asks, through it. “ ’M manky.”
Cal takes himself outside while she does that. He leans on the wall by the road and watches the fire. A few days ago he wouldn’t have been easy leaving Trey alone in the house, but any danger to her is gone. He’s not sure what complicated weave of allegiances led her to the decisions she made, but that doesn’t matter—for now, anyway—as long as those decisions look acceptable from the outside.
He’s still out there when Mart comes stumping down the road. Even with the orange glow lighting the sky, it’s dark enough that Cal hears the crunch of his feet before his shape separates itself from the hedges. He recognizes Mart by his walk. It’s jerkier than usual, and Mart is leaning hard on his crook: all that time standing still, watching Johnny dig, has stiffened him up.
“Hey,” Cal says, when he gets close enough.
“Ah,” Mart says, his face cracking into a grin, “the man himself. That’s all I wanted to know: you made it back safe and sound. Now I can head off to my beauty sleep with a clear conscience.”
“Yep,” Cal says. “Thanks for checking.” His enforced alliance with Mart is over, but something has shifted between them, whether he likes it or not.
Mart sniffs. “My God,” he tells Cal, “there’s a terrible bang of smoke offa you. You’d want to give yourself a good scrub before your missus calls round, or she won’t go near you. Did you get close to the fire?”
“Just for a minute,” Cal says. “Got Trey in the car and made tracks. She’s inside. Sheila and the other kids, they’re at Lena’s.”
“Ah, that’s great,” Mart says, smiling at him. “I’m delighted they’re all safe out of it. What about the bold Johnny, Sunny Jim? Did you push him in the fire, or where is he at all?”