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?”
“Johnny thought the kid was still in the house,” Cal says. “He headed up round the back of it, looking for her. I dunno what happened to him.”
“That’s lovely,” Mart says approvingly. “That’d warm your heart, so it would: the good-for-nothing waster sacrificing himself for his child. I’d say that’ll go down a treat; everyone loves a bitta redemption, specially with a comeuppance thrown in. Didja push him in? Just between ourselves, like.”
“Didn’t need to,” Cal says. “He ran off.”
Mart nods, unsurprised. “That’s what he was always best at,” he says. “ ’Tis great when a man’s talents come in handy. Did he mention where he was headed, at all?”
“Nope,” Cal says. “And I didn’t ask, ’cause it doesn’t matter. As far as anyone needs to know, he never made it off the mountain.”
Mart looks at him and starts to giggle. “Well, wouldja look at that,” he says. “I finally got you settled into this place good and proper. You’ve got the hang of it now, bucko; there’ll be no holding you.”
“Even if Johnny did make it out,” Cal says, “he’s gonna run a long way, and he’s not coming back. We’re shut of him. And Nealon figures Johnny’s his guy, so we’re shut of him, too.”
“Well,” Mart says, his eyebrows jumping. “Isn’t that great news? Good riddance to the pair of them.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Cal says. Mart isn’t asking what changed Nealon’s mind. Cal didn’t expect him to.
“I’d say you will. D’you know something?” Mart asks meditatively, turning his head to examine the blaze’s progress. “There was a few votes in favor of just setting Johnny’s place on fire to begin with, instead of foostering about with spades and what-have-you. ’Tis a mad aul’ world, when you think about it. Whatever you do, it all comes to the same in the end.”
“You hear anything about how bad it is?” Cal asks.
“Gimpy Duignan and his missus got told to evacuate, and so did Malachy and Seán Pól and everyone higher up, and a few over the other side as well. The fire lads are hoping they’ll have it under control before it gets that far, but it all depends on the wind.” Mart squints up at the sky. “Not just the wind, maybe. I thought I’d never hear myself say this again, but will I tell you something, Sunny Jim? It looks like rain.”
Cal looks up. The sky is thick and starless; the air has a weight and a restless tingle that have nothing to do with the fire.
“If I’m right about that,” Mart says, “the damage mightn’t be too bad after all. The sheep up there have more sense than most men; they’ll have got themselves well clear at the first sniff of smoke. We’ll lose a bitta forest and plenty of gorse, but sure, no one minds that; it’ll clear the land for grazing, and God knows we could do with any help we can get. As long as no more houses go, this could be a blessing in disguise.” He shoots Cal a sharp sideways glance. “Would you have any idea how it happened to start?”
“Sheila Reddy reckons Johnny started it,” Cal says. “By accident. Threw down a smoke that wasn’t out.”
Mart considers this, still examining the sky. “I’d line up behind that,” he agrees. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Johnny was a terrible man for not taking into account the consequences of his own actions. That adds up nicely.”
Cal says, “Were you guys gonna kill him?”
Mart’s face creases into a grin. “Less of the ‘you guys’ there, bucko.”
“OK,” Cal says. “Were we gonna kill him?”
“You tell me, Sunny Jim,” Mart says. “You were there. You tell me.” Struck by a sudden thought, he fishes in the pocket of his trousers. “Come here, I’ve something to show you. I was on my way home, and my headlights caught that feckin’ zombie yoke of yours. I’m the observant type, and I noticed something different about him. So I pulled over and had a look. And have a guess what that fella was wearing.”
He shakes something out with a triumphant flap and holds it up in front of Cal’s face. Cal has to lean close to identify it. It’s Mart’s orange camouflage bucket hat.
“He didn’t like me taking it off him,” Mart says, “but I fought him off like Rocky Balboa, so I did. No one comes between me and my hat.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Cal says. While keeping his mouth firmly shut, he always figured Mart was right and Senan was behind the hat’s disappearance. “Senan’s an innocent man.”
“Exactly,” Mart says, wagging the hat at Cal. “I’m not afraid to admit when I’ve been wrong. Senan was over at the foot of the mountain, with yourself and meself, when this was planted, and I owe the man an apology and a pint. So who was it robbed this on me, hah? Next time you fancy poking about in a mystery, Sunny Jim, you put your detective skills to work on that one.”
He pulls the hat down on his head and gives it a satisfied pat. “All’s well that ends well,” he says. “That’s my motto.” He lifts his crook to Cal and hobbles off up the road into the darkness, whistling a chirpy little tune and trying to favor all his joints at once.
Trey’s house has, or had, only one bathroom and never enough hot water, so she takes advantage of Cal’s place to have the longest shower of her life with no one banging on the door. She keeps her bad foot propped up on the stool they made, back when she was shorter, so she could get things off high shelves. The hot water stings her burns; there are small, raw bald spots among her hair.
The day flashes disjointed images across her mind: Nealon tilting his chair back, trees made of flame, Lena striding up the path, petrol splashing onto the heaped wheelbarrow, her mam’s hands on the table in sunlight. All of them, except the fire, seem like years ago. Sometime she might feel something about them, but for now she doesn’t have room; her mind is too crowded with the flashes. The single thing she feels is relief that she’s at Cal’s.
When she comes out of the shower, Cal is nowhere to be seen, but Rip is peacefully asleep in his corner, so she doesn’t worry. She sits on the sofa, re-strapping her ankle and looking around. She likes this room. It has clarity, a place for each and every object. The books are lined up in neat stacks under the windowsill; Cal could do with a bookshelf.
Trey finds herself rejecting the idea. Paying Cal back for taking her in would be stupid, a baby thing to do. She’s already, finally, found something worth giving him: her revenge. Her debts to him are cleared, in a way that doesn’t allow for going backwards to little-kid shite like ham slices and bookshelves. They’re on a different footing now.
She finds Cal out front, leaning on the wall and watching the fire. “Hey,” he says, turning his head, when he hears her steps on the grass.
“Hey,” Trey says.
“You’re not supposed to be walking on that foot. Rest it.”
“Yeah,” Trey says. She leans her folded arms on the wall next to his. She’s relying on him not to talk to her, at least not in any way that demands thought. She’s had enough talking and enough thinking in the past few weeks to last her the rest of her life.
The fire has burned itself out on the side of the mountain, and risen to run along its crest; the familiar outlines are traced in flame across solid blackness. Trey wonders how many other people in the townland are at their gates or their windows, watching. She hopes every man and woman of them recognizes this for what it is: Brendan’s funeral bonfire.
“Your mama get any of your clothes out?” Cal asks.
“Yeah. Most of ’em.”
“Good. Miss Lena’s calling round here in a while; I’ll ask her to bring you a change. Those smell like smoke.”
Trey pulls her T-shirt neck up to her nose and sniffs. The smell is fierce, black and woody. She decides to keep the T-shirt as it is. She can use it to wrap Brendan’s watch. “Ask her can she bring Banjo as well,” she says.
“And tomorrow,” Cal says, “I’m gonna take you into town and buy you some jeans that cover your damn ankles.”
Trey finds herself grinning. “So I’ll be decent, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Cal says. Trey can hear the unwilling grin rising in his voice, too. “That’s right. You can’t go round showing your ankles in front of God and everybody. You’ll give some little old lady a heart attack.”
“Don’t need new jeans,” Trey says, by reflex. “These’re grand.”
“You give me any shit,” Cal says, “and I’ll stop by the barber while we’re there and get this whole beard shaved off, clean as a whistle. You can say hello to my chin warts.”
“Changed my mind,” Trey tells him. “I wanta meet them. Go for it.”
“Nah,” Cal says. “No point. The weather’s changing. Smell: there’s rain coming.”
Trey raises her head. He’s right. The sky is too dark to see clouds, but the air is stirring against her cheek, cool and damp in her nose, moss and wet stone underlying the flare of smoke. Something is sweeping in from the west with purpose, gathering overhead.
She asks, “Will it put out the fire?”
“Probably, between that and the firefighters. Or at least wet things down till it can’t keep spreading.”
Trey looks up at the mountainside, where Brendan is lying and where she almost joined him. Her chance of finding him, a slim one from the start, is gone now. The fire will have taken any signs she could have spotted; if his ghost was ever there, now it’s a slip of flame, twisting upwards amid smoke and gone into the night sky. She finds, to her surprise, that she’s OK with this. She misses Brendan as much as ever, but the jagged need has gone out of it. With him, too, her footing has changed.
Something light as a midge hits against her cheek. When she touches it, she feels a speck of damp.
“Rain,” she says.
“Yep,” Cal says. “That’ll make the farmers easier in their minds. You want to go inside?”
“Nah,” Trey says. She should be wrecked, but she’s not. The cool air feels good. She feels like she could stay right here all night, till the fire is out or till the morning comes.
Cal nods and rearranges his arms more comfortably on the wall. He texts Lena about Banjo and the change of clothes, and shows Trey the thumbs-up she sends back. The rooks, alert and edgy in their tree, make hoarse comments on the situation and tell each other to shut up.
The line of flame has stretched wider across the horizon, following the dips and rises of the mountains’ crest. The sound of it reaches them very faintly and gentled, like the shell-echo of a faraway ocean. It’s late, but far into the distance on every side, the fields are dotted with the tiny yellow lights of houses. Everyone is awake and keeping vigil.
“ ’S beautiful,” Trey says.
“Yeah,” Cal says. “I guess it is.”
They lean on the wall, watching, as the rain flecks their skin more thickly and the bright outline of the mountains hangs in the night sky.
I owe huge thanks to Darley Anderson, the finest ally and champion any writer could have, and to everyone at the agency, especially Mary, Georgia, Rosanna, Rebeka, and Kristina; my wonderful editors, Andrea Schulz and Harriet Bourton, for their near-magical ability to see exactly what this book needed to be and then show me how to get it there; superstar Ben Petrone, Nidhi Pugalia, Bel Banta, Rebecca Marsh, and everyone at Viking US; Olivia Mead, Anna Ridley, Georgia Taylor, Ellie Hudson, Emma Brown, and everyone at Viking UK; Cliona Lewis, Victoria Moynes, and everyone at Penguin Ireland; Susanne Halbleib and everyone at Fischer Verlage; Steve Fisher of APA; Ciara Considine, Clare Ferraro, and Sue Fletcher, who set all this in motion; Aja Pollock, for her eagle-eyed copy edit; Darren Haggar, for a stunner of a cover; Peter Johnson, for rabbit preparation tips; Graham Murphy, for working out what’s not on the telly on a Monday in July; Kristina Johansen, Alex French, Susan Collins, Noni Stapleton, Paul and Anna Nugent, Ann-Marie Hardiman, Oonagh Montague, Jessica Ryan, Jenny and Liam Duffy, Kathy and Chad Williams, and Karen Gillece, for laughs, talks, support, creativity, nights out, freezing our feet on a beach in winter, and all the other essentials; my mother, Elena Lombardi; my father, David French; and, more every single time, my husband, Anthony Breatnach.