“Tell me something,” Lena says. The firelight moves across her eyes. “Why aren’t you going to take that pup?”
“Because,” Cal says, “I’d want to guarantee that I’d take care of it right, and no harm would come to it. And it doesn’t seem like I can do that.”
Lena’s eyebrows go up. “Huh,” she says. “Here I thought you just didn’t want anything tying you down.”
“Nope,” Cal says. He watches the fire. “Seems like I’m always looking for something to hold me down. It just never works out that way.”
Lena nods. Wind, wearying to halfhearted gusts, ruffles the fire. It’s burning low again, the heart of it darkening to a deep orange glow.
From the bedroom comes a thrashing of bedclothes and a hoarse, inarticulate cry. By the time Cal’s mind works out that a homicidal intruder is unlikely, he’s at the bedroom door.
He stops and looks over at Lena. “You’re up already,” she says. “I’ll go next time.” Then she turns her shoulder to him, settling herself more comfortably in the chair, and pulls the duvet up to her chin.
Cal stands there, at the door. Another strangled cry comes from the bedroom. Lena doesn’t move.
After a moment he opens the bedroom door. Trey is up on her elbow, head turning wildly, whimpering through gritted teeth.
“Hey,” Cal says. “It’s OK.”
The kid jumps and whips round to stare at him. It takes her a few seconds to see him.
“You had a bad dream, is all. It’s gone now.”
Trey lets out a long shaky breath and lies back, wincing as her rib catches. “Yeah,” she says. “Just dreaming.”
“That’s right,” Cal says. “Anything hurt? You need more painkillers?”
“Nah.”
“OK. Sleep tight.”
When he turns to go, she moves in the bed and makes a small rough sound. He turns back and sees her good eye looking at him, shining in the light coming through the door.
“What?”
The kid doesn’t answer.
“You want me to stick around awhile?”
She nods.
“OK,” Cal says. “I can do that.” He eases himself down onto the floor and settles his back against the wall.
Trey rustles herself around so she can keep that eye on him. “What’re you gonna do?” she asks, after a minute.
“Hush,” Cal says. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
He can see her searching for the next question. To quiet her, he starts to sing, so low it’s half a hum, hoping Lena won’t hear through the wind. The song that comes out is “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” same as he used to sing for Alyssa when she was little and couldn’t sleep. Gradually Trey relaxes. Her breathing slows and deepens, and the shine of that eye fades among the shadows.
Cal keeps on singing. He used to fix up the words a little bit for Alyssa, change the cigarette trees to candy-cane trees and the lake of whiskey to one of soda. There doesn’t seem to be much point in doing that for Trey, but he does it anyway.
EIGHTEEN
The wind blows itself out, and dawn comes to the window cold and still in a clear gold-green. Cal has been dozing off and on, in between watching the fire die down and checking on Trey by the light of his phone. As far as he can tell, she never budged once all night, even when he got close enough to make sure she was still breathing.
In the first light Lena takes shape, curled up in the armchair with her face buried in her elbow, her hair a pale scribble. Outside, the small birds are starting to toss out scraps of morning conversation, and the rooks are bitching at them to shut up. Cal is sore at every point where his bones pressed into the floor, and a lot of points in between.
He gets up, as quietly as he can, and heads to the sink to fill the kettle. He’s light-headed with tiredness, but not in a fuzzy way; the chill and the dawn give everything a spellbound, airy lucidity. In his garden the rabbits are chasing each other in circles through the dew-wet grass.
Lena stirs in the armchair and sits up, arching her back and scrunching up her face. She looks baffled. “Morning,” Cal says.
“Ah, Jaysus,” Lena says, shielding her eyes. “If you’re planning on having guests on the regular, you need curtains.”
“I’d need a lot more’n that,” Cal says, keeping his voice down. “How you feeling?”
“Too old for this carry-on, is how I’m feeling. How about you?”
“Like I got hit by a truck. Remember back when we’d crash on people’s floors just for kicks?”
“I do, yeah, but I was an awful eejit back then. I’d rather be old and have sense.” She stretches, hugely and with appreciation. “Is Trey still asleep?”
“Yeah. I figure the longer she sleeps, the better. Can I make you some breakfast?” Cal finds himself hoping she says yes. Lena may not be the most accommodating person in the world, but she alters the balance of the house in a way he likes. “I got toast with bacon and eggs, or toast without bacon and eggs.”
Lena grins. “Ah, no. I’d better head. I’ve to get ready for work, and I’ve to feed the dogs first, let them out. Nellie’ll be going mental. She loses the head if I’m out past bedtime; by now she’s probably et half the furniture.” She unfurls herself from the chair and starts folding the duvet. “Will I call by here on my way in to work? Bring Trey home?”
“I’m not sure,” Cal says. He thinks about what kind of scary it would take, to make a mother do that to her kid. For a second, before he can turn his mind away, he wonders what it would have taken to make him or Donna do that to Alyssa. “I’d rather get things cleared up a little bit first.”
Lena tosses the folded duvet over the back of the armchair. “Here was me hoping by morning you’d have got sense,” she says.
“I’m not gonna do anything stupid.”
Lena’s glance says this is a matter of opinion, but she doesn’t comment. She pulls her hair band off her wrist and twists her hair back into its ponytail. “So I’m not bringing her home.”
“Maybe later. OK if I see how the day goes, give you a call in a while?”
“Away you go. Have fun.”
“If I needed you to stay here one more night,” Cal says, “would you consider it? I’d run into town and buy an air mattress, so you wouldn’t be back on that chair.”
Lena startles him by bursting out laughing. “You,” she says, shaking her head, “you’re some tulip, d’you know that? And your timing is shite. Come back to me later, once the aches and pains wear off, and we’ll see.” She pulls on her shoes and her jacket and heads for the door.
Cal waits till he hears her car drive away. Then he takes a walk around his garden. He can’t find any sign of intruders, but then he wouldn’t either way. The evidence of the night’s wind is everywhere. Leaves are scattered lavishly across the grass and banked high against walls and hedges, and the trees have a raw, defiant bareness. Under his windows, the earth has been scoured smooth.
He goes back indoors and starts cooking breakfast. The smell of frying bacon brings Trey out of the bedroom, barefoot and crumpled. Her fat lip has gone down some, but the eye is even more spectacular in daylight, and there’s an ugly bruise on her cheekbone that Cal didn’t notice before. Her hoodie and her jeans are crusted with patches and smears of dried blood. Cal looks at her and has no idea what to do about her. The thought of sending her out of this house makes him want to barricade everything and spend his time with his gun pointing out a window, in case someone comes for her.
“How you doing?” he asks.
“Shite. Hurts everywhere.”
“Well, I took that for granted,” Cal says. The fact that she’s walking and talking fills him up with a relief that makes it hard to breathe. “I meant apart from that. You sleep OK?”