“It’s ‘cause the sheep trust us,” John was saying. “I mean, I know Seamus says it’s ‘cause they’re stupid— “
“You got Seamus to talk?” Sarah said as she sat down.
John ignored her. “But they’re not stupid,” he said. “They just know that we know what’s best for them.”
David poked a log in the fireplace. “They all know that?” he asked, smiling a welcome to Sarah.
“Well, no,” John admitted. “Sometimes one here or there will get his own ideas about stuff, but it almost always ends badly, you know? Like when the big shaggy one, you know, Orca? With the gimpy leg? Got stuck in the ditch over by Blue Rock?”
“How do you know the name of it?” Sarah asked.
John gave her a barely tolerant look. “I don’t know the real name of it,” he said. “It’s big and blue so that’s what I call it. Anyway, he was trying to get to that old deer salt lick and didn’t think things through, you know?”
“Like us,” his mother said.
John turned to her and grinned. “Yeah. That’s the point I was trying to make,” he said.
David sat back in his chair and picked up the hatchet he was sharpening. “And we’re Orca with the gimpy leg,” he said.
“Uh huh,” John said. “Only if we just relax…. you know?”
“And trust our Shepherd?” David said.
“Well, that’s what I think,” he said. “I see it every time I move ‘em to a new pasture. They’re like all freaked out ‘Where are we going? Where are you taking us?’ You know? Even though we were just there two days before. But when they chill and let me do the leading, they’re fine.”
David stared at his son. “How old are you again?”
John dumped the bridle he was working on to the floor next to him.
“Okay, Mom, she’s about to be murdered in the basement, right?” He looked at his Dad. “Why do girls always go down to the basement when they hear a noise? Are they just stupid or what?”
Sarah cleared her throat, gave her son a baleful look, and began to read.
The next morning, after their chores, they got a surprise when they looked up to see Seamus and Dierdre coming down the long drive that led to their cottage in their pony and trap. They came bearing gifts—another two chickens and a rooster, another dozen eggs, a kidney and potato pie, and a newspaper. The newspaper was printed in Draenago, one town over from Balinagh, and there was no knowing how factual the information was. The old couple had been to town the day before. David and John helped Seamus unhitch the pony and put it in the paddock with a flake of hay while Sarah made a pot of tea in the kitchen with Dierdre. She had tried her hand at a basic loaf cake the day before, no icing, and was as proud to serve it up to Dierdre with their tea as if it had been a Lindser Torte.
The older woman seemed tired to Sarah. But likely it was the additional news she brought that contributed to the lines of worry on her face.
“We heard of a friend of a friend, from the village,” Dierdre said, after Sarah had poured her a second cup of tea. “He’d been murdered in his bed. The villains broke into his house, murdered poor Iain, and ransacked his croft.”
Sarah was horrified. Her eyes flickered through the kitchen window to the sounds of her son’s laughter as he talked with Seamus and David.
“Murdered?” she said as she sat down heavily into a kitchen chair.
“Aye,” Dierdre said. “Took everything but left the animals to wander. That’s how they discovered the murder. One of his cows was found, dead, too far from Iain’s place, and someone went to check on Iain.”
“Are you worried about the two of you?” Sarah asked, her own worry ratcheting up.
“Aye, of course. Me an old woman and an addle-pated old man. We’re sitting ducks, we are.” Sarah could see how upset the older woman was and it unnerved her to see it. Dierdre was always so steady and self-assured.
“Do you… is there any way to protect yourselves?” Sarah asked.
“Guns, you mean? Oh, aye, but Iain had guns too. A fat lot of good they did him, lying in his own gore.”
“Did he have dogs?”
“Shot dead, both of them, and never raised a whimper to warn him.”
“So, maybe the killers were someone who knew the dogs?”
Dierdre stared at Sarah as if she’d started speaking Latin.
I’ve been reading too many mysteries, Sarah thought.
“It’s just, it would explain why…” she said.
“Yes, it would,” Dierdre said slowly, as if realizing for the first time something very important. “They didn’t bark because they knew them. Iain was killed by someone he knew.” She looked at Sarah and, if anything, the fear seemed to be more intense than before.
Later, when the couple took their leave, David agreed to go with them for the night. After seeing how upset Dierdre was, Sarah encouraged him to do it.
“We’ll be fine,” she said, not at all sure they would be. “Get them settled in and reassured the best you can. It’s just one night.”
That night, Sarah and John sat in front of the fireplace as usual.
“Feels weird, Dad not being here,” John said.
“I know.”
“Are you okay, Mom? You look a little nervous.”
Sarah saw that John looked a little nervous too. Afraid that his insecurity might be the result of her nerves, she smiled and shook her head.
“Not at all,” she said. “Just missing Dad’s company. We’re really the Three Musketeers, aren’t we? Just feels wrong not to all be here, is all.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“Ready to hear chapter eight?” she asked, picking up the book.
“Yeah, sure. Hey, you know, Mom?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“If it’d make you feel better, you can always keep the gun loaded while Dad’s away.”
The gun?
Sarah sat at the kitchen table staring at the small rifle.
“Dad said not to tell you,” John said, frowning at her. “He said you’d freak out about a gun in the house.”
Sarah ran a hand through her hair.
“Where did it come from?” she asked. It looked lethal just sitting there, as if it could harm the two of them without even being touched.
“Dad found it in the barn.”
“Does it have bullets?”
John opened a kitchen drawer and withdrew a box of bullets. He pushed the box across the table to her.
“Does Dad know how to shoot it?” she asked.
“He says he had a rifle when he was a kid.”
Sarah looked at her son as if there were more to the story.
John shrugged and nodded to the gun.
“How hard can it be?” he said.
Sarah lifted the rifle gingerly. It was very heavy.
“It’s not loaded,” John said.
“Okay,” she said, putting the gun back down and taking a long breath. “Do we know how to load it?”
Her son grinned at her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next morning, they woke up to frost on the ground. With no central heat, Sarah and John moved about the cottage in their Gor-Tex jackets over sweaters like tubby Michelin men. John’s jacket was so big, he folded the sleeves back. He wanted to cut them but Sarah wouldn’t allow it. What if they were here long enough for him to grow into them?
John lit the fire in the cook stove and gathered more wood, set the rabbit trap, sharpened the knives (I wouldn’t even let him open a can of dog food back home, she thought with amazement, for fear he’d cut himself), fed the horses and the goats and the chickens with corn and hay he took out of the basement storage. While he did his chores, Sarah put water on for tea, sliced bread and put it on the stovetop to toast, then scrambled six eggs in the iron skillet. Dierdre had shown her how to make butter from the goat milk and she was going to try that today. They were all, finally, at the point where they didn’t mind the taste of the goat milk in their tea. She needed more soap—for the dishes, for their clothes, for their baths. She intended to heat up water today so John could have a nice long soak in the tub. She couldn’t remember the last time the child had been clean. Probably at the hotel in Limerick.