“She was restless,” Lena says. “She wanted to be doing something. I figured you wouldn’t mind.”
“I can just about live with it,” Cal says. “The reason those aren’t done yet is ’cause I wasn’t looking forward to getting down on the floor like that.”
“You know what we oughta do,” Trey says.
“What’s that?” Cal says.
“That wall.” She points at the fireplace wall. “In the evenings it goes gold, like, from the sun coming in through that window. Looks good. We oughta paint it that color.”
Cal is startled by something rising up inside his chest that might be a laugh or a sob. Mart was right again: here he is, with a woman bringing ideas into his house. “Sounds good to me,” he says. “I’ll get in a few paint samples, we can pick the one that matches best.”
Trey nods. Something in Cal’s voice has caught her; she gives him a long look. Then she picks up her paintbrush and goes back to the skirting board.
Lena looks at the two of them. “Right, so,” she says. “I’ll be off.”
“Could you maybe hang around a little longer?” Cal asks.
She shakes her head. “I’ve things to do.”
Cal waits while she puts on her big jacket and packs her accoutrements away in its pockets, and snaps her fingers for Nellie. He walks them out. “Thanks,” he says, on the step. “Could you give the kid a ride home, later on?”
Lena nods. “You got things under control,” she says, not really asking a question.
“Yeah,” Cal says. “I did. Or close enough.”
“Right,” Lena says. “Good luck.” She touches Cal’s arm for a second, in something between a pat and a shake. Then she heads off through the rain towards her car, with Nellie lolloping along beside her. It comes to Cal that, while she doesn’t know anything for sure and doesn’t want to, she’s had a pretty fair idea all along.
He closes the door behind them, turns off the Dixie Chicks and goes to Trey. His knee still hurts enough that he has a hard time finding a position he can take up on the floor; he eventually settles for sitting with his leg stretched out at an awkward angle. Trey keeps on painting, but he can feel her stretched taut as a wire, waiting.
He says, “I talked to some people, while I was out.”
“Yeah,” Trey says. She doesn’t look up.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, kid. I got some sad news for you.”
After a moment she says, like her throat is tight, “Yeah.”
“Your brother died, kid. The same day you last saw him. He met up with some people, they got in a fight. Your brother took a punch, and he fell over and hit his head. No one meant for him to die. Things just went bad that day.”
Trey keeps on painting. Her head is down and Cal can’t see her face, but he can hear the hard hiss of her breathing.
She says, “Who was it?”
“I don’t know who threw the punch,” Cal says. “You said all you need is to know for sure what happened, so you can leave it. Did that change?”
Trey says, “Did he die quick?”
“Yeah. The punch knocked him out, and he died just a minute later. He didn’t suffer. He never even knew what was happening.”
“D’you swear?”
“Yeah. I swear.”
Trey’s brush scrubs back and forth over the same patch of skirting board. In a little bit she says, “It might not be true.”
“I’m gonna get you proof,” Cal says. “In a few days’ time. I know you need that. But it’s true, kid. I’m sorry.”
Trey keeps up the painting for another second. Then she lays down the brush, leans back against the wall and starts to cry. At first she cries like a grown adult, sitting there with her head back, her jaw and eyes tight, tears trickling down the sides of her face in silence. Then something breaks and she sobs like a child, with her arm across her knees and her face buried in her elbow, crying her heart out.
Every cell in Cal’s body wants to grab his rifle, head back up to Mart’s place and march that bastard all the way to town and into the police station. He knows it wouldn’t be the slightest bit of use, but he still wants to do it, with such ferocious urgency that he has to stop his muscles from propelling him onto his feet and right out the door.
Instead he gets up and fetches a roll of paper towels. He puts it down by Trey and sits against the wall next to her while she cries. Her arm crooked over her face makes him think of a broken wing. After a while he lays his hand on the back of her neck.
In the end Trey runs out of crying, for now. “Sorry,” she says, wiping her face on her sleeve. She’s red and blotchy, with her good eye swollen almost as small as her black one and her nose swollen almost as big as Cal’s.
“No need,” Cal says. He hands her the roll of paper towels.
Trey blows her nose loudly. She says, “Just seems like there oughta be some way to fix it.”
Her voice wavers, and for a second Cal thinks she might break down again. “I know,” he says. “I’ve never quite come to terms with that myself.”
They sit there, listening to the rain. Trey catches the occasional long shuddering breath.
“Do I still haveta go into Noreen’s today?” she asks, after a while. “I’m not having any of them nosy fuckers seeing me like this.”
“No,” Cal says. “That’s taken care of. Those guys won’t be bothering any of us any more.”
That gets Trey’s attention. “You beat ’em up?”
“I look like I could beat anyone up right now?”
The kid manages a watery grin.
“Nah,” Cal says. “Just talked to ’em. But it’s OK.”
Trey refolds her wad of paper towel to find a clean patch and blows her nose again. Cal can see her taking in, piece by piece, the ways things have changed.
“That means you can go home now,” he says. “I enjoy having you around, but I think it’s time you went home.”
Trey nods. “I’ll go. Later, just. In a while.”
“Fair enough,” Cal says. “I can’t drive you, but Miss Lena will, once she’s finished work. You want me or her to come in with you? Help you explain things to your mama?”
Trey shakes her head. “I’m not gonna say it to her yet. Not till you get that proof.” She glances up from her wad of paper towel. “You said a few days.”
“Give or take,” Cal says. “But there’s one condition. You gotta give me your word of honor that you won’t try to do anything about this. Ever. Just put it down and go back to normal, like you said. Put your mind into going to school, hooking back up with your friends. Maybe making it through a few days without pissing off your teachers. Can you do that?”
Trey takes a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah,” she says. “I can.” She’s still slumped against the wall; her hands, holding the paper towel, lie in her lap like she doesn’t have the energy to move them. She looks like a long cruel tension is leaching out of her, notch by notch, leaving her whole body slack to the point of helplessness.
“Not just for now. For the rest of your life.”
“I know.”
“You swear. Word of honor.”
Trey looks at him. She says, “I swear.”
Cal says, “ ’Cause I’m taking a pretty big chance here.”
“I took a chance on you last night,” Trey points out. “When I let them lads go.”
“I guess you did,” Cal says. He has that shaky feeling up under his breastbone again. He can’t wait for it to be tomorrow, or next week, or whenever he’ll have got his strength back enough to react to things like his normal self. “OK. Give me a week. Say two, to be on the safe side. Then come back.”
Trey takes another long breath. She says, “What do we do now?”
The idea of a world with no quest in it has left her lost. “You know what I want to do today,” Cal says, “is go fishing. That’s about all I’ve got in me. You think us beat-up stray mutts can make it that far?”