“The bit on the side won’t have him back,” Lena says. “Johnny’s one of them fellas that are outa sight, outa mind. He’s making a big splash coming home, but when he was gone, no one thought twice about him. I didn’t hear one word about him, the whole four years. There was no one saying their nephew ran into him in a pub, or their brother was working with him on the building sites. I don’t know what he was at, even.”

Noreen instantly takes up the challenge. “Ah, I heard the odd word. A year or two back, Annie O’Riordan, you know her, from up towards Lisnacarragh? Her cousin in London saw him in a pub, with some young one bet into a pair of black leather leggings laughing her arse off at his jokes. D’you see what I mean? That fella couldn’t make it through a wet weekend without a woman to look after him and tell him he’s only amazing.”

“Sounds like Johnny, all right,” Lena says. Sheila used to think Johnny was only amazing. Lena doubts she does any more.

“And d’you remember Bernadette Madigan, that I usedta do the choir with? She’s got a wee little antique shop in London now, and didn’t Johnny come in trying to sell her a necklace that he said was diamonds, with some sob story about his wife running off and leaving him with three starving childer. He didn’t recognize her—Bernadette’s after putting on the weight something awful, God love her—but she recognized him, all right. She told him to stick his fake diamonds up his hole.”

“Did she ride him, back in school?” Lena asks.

“That’s her business, not mine,” Noreen says primly. “I’d say so, though, yeah.”

The spark of reassurance in Lena’s mind is fading. Johnny was never crooked, exactly, but it was hard to tell whether that was just happenstance. If he’s happened to drift over that line, who knows how far he might have drifted, and what he might have brought back on his trail. “When’d she see him?” she asks.

“Back before Christmas. The feckin’ eejit—Johnny, not Bernadette. She said a blind man coulda told you those were no diamonds.”

“You never said anything.”

“I hear a lot more than I say,” Noreen informs her with dignity. “You’ve some notion that I’m the biggest gossip in the county, but I can keep my mouth shut when I want. I said nothing to anyone about Johnny’s goings-on, because I knew yourself and Cal were working your arses off to keep that child on the straight and narrow, and I wasn’t going to scupper that by giving her family a worse name than they’ve already got. Now.”

“Now,” Lena says, grinning at her. “That’s me told.”

“It’d better be. How’s the child getting on, anyway?”

“Grand. She’s been over putting a new coat of wax on Nana’s old bed.”

“Ah, that’ll be nice. What does she think of her daddy coming home?”

Lena shrugs. “Trey, sure. She said he was back, and then she said the dog needed feeding, and that was the end of that.”

“That dog’s mad-looking,” Noreen says. “Like it was put together outa bits of other dogs that got left over. Your Daisy needs better taste in fellas.”

“She should’ve consulted you,” Lena says. “You’d’ve had her set up with a gorgeous stud with a pedigree as long as my arm, before she knew what hit her.”

“I don’t see you complaining,” Noreen tells her. Lena tilts her head, acknowledging the hit, and Noreen goes back to work with a little nod of victory. She says, “I heard the child stayed over at yours, after Johnny came home.”

“Fair play to you,” Lena says, impressed. “She did, yeah. Cal gets nervous about her walking up that mountain in the dark. He thinks she’ll fall in a bog. She won’t, but there’s no convincing him.”

Noreen darts Lena a sharp glance. “Pass me over that box there, with the jam. What about Cal?”

Lena nudges the cardboard box along the floor with a foot. “What about him?”

“What does he think about Johnny?”

“Sure, he’s hardly met the man. He hasn’t had a chance to come up with much of an opinion.”

Noreen whips jam jars onto the shelf with expert speed. She says, “Are you planning on marrying that fella?”

“Ah, God, no,” Lena says, going back to the Fruit Pastilles. “White doesn’t suit me.”

“Sure you wouldn’t wear white the second time around anyway, and that’s not the point. What I’m telling you is, if you’re planning on marrying him, there’s no reason to wait. Go on and get the job done.”

Lena looks at her. She inquires, “Is someone dying, are they?”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what are you on about? No one’s dying!”

“Then what’s the rush?”

Noreen gives her a prickly stare and goes back to the jam. Lena waits.

“You can’t trust a Reddy,” Noreen says. “No harm to the child, she might turn out grand, but the rest of them. You know as well as I do, you wouldn’t know what notion Johnny’d get into his head. If he took against Cal and decided to make trouble…”

Lena says, “He’d better not.”

“I know, yeah. But if he did. Cal’d be safer if he was married to you. Moved in with you, even. People’d be less likely to believe things.”

Lena has had her temper managed for so long that the blaze of rage catches her off guard. “If Johnny gets anything like that in his head,” she says, “he’d want to watch himself.”

“I’m not saying he would, now. Don’t go giving him hassle, or—”

“I’m not giving him hassle. When was the last time I gave anyone fucking hassle? But if he goes starting anything—”

Noreen sits back on her haunches, glaring. “For feck’s sake, Helena. Don’t be biting my head off. I’m only looking out for the pair of ye.”

“I’m not bloody getting married just in case Johnny Reddy is even more of a tosser than I thought.”

“All I’m saying is have a think about it. Can you just do that, instead of flying off the handle?”

“Right,” Lena says, after a second. She turns back to lining up Kit Kats. “I’ll be sure and do that.”

“Feck’s sake,” Noreen says, not quite under her breath, and smacks a jam jar into place.

The shop is hot, and Noreen’s stacking has stirred up dust motes that eddy in the broad bands of sunlight through the windows. Nellie whines discreetly at the door, and then gives up. Outside, one of the boys gives a startled shout, and the bunch of girls burst into helpless, happy laughter.

“Now,” Lena says. “That’s done.”

“Ah, you’re great,” Noreen says. “Would you ever give me a hand with that top shelf? You’ve the height for it, if you take the stool; I’d have to get the stepladder, and there’s all them clothes from the clear-out in front of it.”

“I left the dogs outside,” Lena says. “I’ve to get them home and get some water into them, before they shrivel up on me.” Before Noreen can offer to bring the dogs water, she gives a Dairy Milk a last tap into line and goes out.

—

Lena’s visit didn’t settle Cal’s mind. He was half-hoping that, knowing Johnny and this place as she does, she would have some easy, reassuring thing to say about Johnny’s return, something that would clarify the whole situation and relegate the guy to a minor temporary nuisance. The fact that he himself can’t think of anything doesn’t mean much—after more than two years in Ardnakelty, Cal sometimes feels like he actually understands the place less than he did on his first day. But if Lena doesn’t have reassurance to offer, that means there isn’t any.

He deals with his unsettledness in his usual way, which is by working. He puts the Dead South on his iPod and turns the speakers up loud, letting the expert, nervy banjo set a fast rhythm, while he puts his back into planing down pine boards for Noreen’s new TV unit. He’s trying to work out what to charge her for it. Pricing in Ardnakelty is a delicate operation, layered with implications about both parties’ social position, their degree of intimacy, and the magnitude of previous favors in both directions. If Cal gets it wrong, he could end up discovering that he’s either proposed to Lena or mortally offended Noreen. Today he feels like telling her to just take the damn thing.

He’s decided that he’s not going to ask Trey any questions about Johnny. His first instinct was to start steering and nudging conversations, but all the deeper part of him revolts against using Trey the way he would use a witness. If the kid wants to talk to him, she can talk by her own choice.

She arrives in the afternoon, banging the front door behind her to let Cal know she’s there. “Been over at Lena’s,” she says, when she’s got herself a drink of water and joined him in the workshop, wiping her mouth on her arm. “Waxing up the spare bed. ’Cause she let me stay over.”

“Good,” Cal says. “That’s a fine way to say thanks.” He’s been trying to provide the kid with some manners, to temper her general air of having been raised by wolves. It’s working, to some extent, although Cal feels she may be getting the hang of the technique more than of the underlying principle. He suspects that, to her, manners are mainly transactional: she doesn’t like being under an obligation to anyone, and an act of politeness allows her to write off the debt.

“Yeehaw,” Trey says, referring to the Dead South. “Ride ’em, cowboy.”

“You’re a barbarian,” Cal says. “That’s bluegrass. And they’re Canadian.”

“So?” Trey says. Cal raises his eyes to the ceiling, shaking his head. She’s in a better mood today, which reassures him. “And I’m not a barbarian. Got my school results. Didn’t fail anything, only Religion. A in Wood Technology.”

“Well, would you look at that,” Cal says, delighted. The kid is no dummy, but two years ago she gave so few shits about school that she was failing just about everything. “Congratulations. You bring them along for me to see?”

Trey rolls her eyes, but she pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of her back pocket and hands it over. Cal props his rear end on the worktable to give it his full attention, while Trey starts in on the chair to make it clear that this is no big deal to her.

There’s an A in Science, too, and a bunch of Cs with a couple of Bs thrown in. “So you’re a heathen as well as a barbarian,” Cal says. “Good work, kid. You oughta be pretty proud of yourself.”

Trey shrugs, keeping her head down over the chair, but she can’t stop a grin from tugging at one corner of her mouth.

“Your mama and your dad proud too?”

“My mam said well done. My dad said I’m the brains of the family, and I can go to Trinity College and graduate with a cap and gown. And be a rich Nobel Prize scientist and show all the begrudgers.”

“Well,” Cal says, keeping it carefully neutral, “he wants the best for you, just like most mamas and dads do. You want to go into science?”

Trey snorts. “Nah. Gonna be a carpenter. Don’t need any stupid gown for that. I’d look like a fuckin’ eejit.”

“Well, whatever you decide,” Cal says, “work like this is gonna give you all the options you could ask for. We gotta celebrate. You want to go catch some fish, fry ’em up?” Ordinarily he would take the kid out for pizza—Trey, after going almost fourteen years without encountering pizza, discovered an overwhelming passion for it when Cal introduced her to the concept, and would eat it every day given the chance. No place delivers to Ardnakelty, but on special occasions they make the trip into town. Now, all of a sudden, he’s wary. Ardnakelty in general approves of their relationship as the thing that likely prevented Trey from turning into a troubled youth who would break their windows and hot-wire their motorbikes, but Johnny Reddy is a different matter. Cal doesn’t have a handle on Johnny yet, or on what he wants. He feels the need to examine little things, ordinary things like a trip to town for pizza, for what they might look like from outside and how they could be used, and he resents this. Apart from anything else, Cal has a low tolerance for indulging in self-examination at the best of times, and he doesn’t appreciate it being forced on him by some twinkly-eyed little twerp.

“Pizza,” Trey says promptly.

“Not today,” Cal says. “Another time.”

Trey just nods and goes back to rubbing down the chair, without pushing or questioning, which pisses Cal off even more. He’s put a lot of work into teaching the kid how to have expectations.

“Tell you what,” he says. “We’ll make our own pizza. I’ve been meaning to show you how to do that.”

The kid looks dubious. “Easy as pie,” Cal says. “We even got a pizza stone: we can use those tiles left over from the kitchen floor. We’ll invite Miss Lena, make it a party. You go down to Noreen’s and pick up ham, peppers, whatever you want on there, and we’ll get started on the dough.”

For a minute he thinks she’s going to turn it down, but then she grins. “Not getting you pineapple,” she says. “ ’S disgusting.”

“You’ll get whatever I say,” Cal says, disproportionately relieved. “Make it two cans, just for that. Now git, before you smell of vinegar so bad that Noreen won’t let your stinky self in her store.”

—

Trey goes all out on the toppings, which relieves Cal’s mind a little bit: a kid who comes home with pepperoni, sausage, and two kinds of ham, as well as peppers, tomatoes, onions, and his pineapple, can’t have restrained her expectations too thoroughly. She loads stuff onto her pizza like she hasn’t eaten in weeks. The dough appears to have turned out OK, although their stretching game is weak and the pizzas aren’t shaped like anything Cal’s ever seen.

Lena is curled on the sofa at her ease, reading Trey’s report card, with the four dogs dozing and twitching in a pile on the floor beside her. Lena doesn’t do much cooking. She’ll bake bread and make jam, because she likes those made her way, but she says she cooked a good meal from scratch every night of her marriage, and now if she wants to live mainly off toasted sandwiches and ready meals, she has the right. Cal takes pleasure in making her the best he can come up with, for variety. He wasn’t in the habit of doing much cooking himself, when he first got here, but he can’t feed the kid nothing but bacon and eggs.

“ ‘Meticulous,’ ” Lena says. “That’s what you are, according to this Wood Technology fella. Fair play to you. And to him. That’s a great word; it doesn’t get out enough.”

“What is it?” Trey asks, considering her pizza and adding more pepperoni.

“Means you do things right,” Lena says. Trey acknowledges the justice of this with a nod.

“What’ll you have?” Cal asks Lena.

“Peppers and a bitta that sausage. And tomatoes.”

“Read what the Science teacher said,” Cal tells her. “ ‘An intelligent inquirer with all the necessary determination and method to find answers to her inquiries.’ ”