Chapter 29
29
SAMANTHA
I t takes me over an hour to get Aiofe to stop shaking.
The nursery door is closed, but the men are still out there. I hear them talking to each other. Someone takes an axe to Braiden’s office door to make sure it’s no longer smoldering. Someone else says something about candles and spilled wax.
I want to listen to every word. I want to understand what’s happened. Braiden seemed so certain— This wasn’t Russo.
How can he know? What if Russo compromised one of the men at the gate? What if the fire was meant to be a warning, an opening salvo? Could gunmen be lurking outside the house right now? Sharpshooters waiting to pick us off as we flee the flames?
I can ask questions all afternoon, but Aiofe needs me. So I take my phone out of my pocket and launch a playlist, a set of quiet songs I use to help me unwind after a long day at the office.
Or rather, songs I used to listen to. I haven’t played music in weeks. Not since I moved into Thornfield Hall.
But the playlist works its magic. It covers the noise in the hall. I rack my brain for activities we can do.
We could play charades—that would be perfect for a child who cannot speak, at least until it’s her turn to guess.
I could read to her—but the handful of books on the shelf by her bed are all in Irish.
We could review her lessons for the week—if I had the slightest notion what John Bell taught her before taking his Friday half-day and heading out for the weekend.
In the end, we draw pictures. It’s a strange pastime, one more suited to a younger girl than Aiofe. I’m not an expert on children, but everything about Braiden’s ward seems suspended in time. When she’s not dressed like a schoolgirl, she looks like Alice in Wonderland, clean starched dresses with sparkling white pinafores. She keeps a stuffed rabbit close at hand, even though most children her age are ashamed of their childish toys. She doesn’t have a computer, doesn’t have a phone, and I’ve never seen her play a video game.
But she draws a lot better than I do. My first attempt at a cat looks like a pregnant toaster, and my version of a pony resembles roadkill. I save face by blaming it on my aching shoulder.
Aiofe accepts my excuse with a serene smile. At my urging, she takes the colored pencils and starts to sketch. In seconds, she’s created the clear image of a country church. It has stone walls and a steep roof. The steeple is topped by a tiny cross that matches the one hanging around her throat.
I’m reminded of the children’s finger-game and rhyme — “Here’s the church and here’s the steeple; open the door, and see all the people.” My arm’s too sore to act it out, though. And, young as she might behave at times, Aiofe is ten years old, not four.
She turns the page in her sketchbook and starts on another drawing. At first, I think this one is a princess—it’s a girl in a long flowing dress. But the dress stays white and Aiofe sketches in a bouquet of flowers. I wait for her to add a veil before I ask, “She’s a bride?”
Aiofe looks at me with a disdain that spans multiple languages.
Next, she draws a stuffed rabbit, with a surprisingly convincing folded-down ear.
And she’s starting in on a horse-cart, one with high wheels and a seat wide enough for two, when the nursery door opens.
Braiden looks tired. His hair stands on end; he’s been running his fingers through it again. He found time to get a new shirt, and someone has wrapped gauze around his palm.
I resist the urge to comment on our twin bandages. I figure that might upset Aiofe.
“Go downstairs,” Braiden tells her. “Fairfax has tea for you in the kitchen.”
She obeys, wordless as ever.
Braiden crosses the room and scowls at the cart she’s drawn, a frown that only deepens as he flips back through the rest of her art.
“She’s got a lot of skill,” I say.
“She’s got a lot of practice.” He ruffles his thumb over the already-filled pages of the book. The sheets move quickly, but I see a dozen churches, even more brides, and enough bunnies to populate a small country.
“What—” I start to ask, but Braiden closes the book. He rubs the space between his eyebrows with both two fingers as if he has a headache.
“Grace Poole started the fire,” he says.
“Grace!” That makes no sense. “Why would Grace trap you in your office? Where did she get the candles? Why would Grace?—”
“She drinks.”
“I know she drinks,” I say, annoyed because that doesn’t begin to answer my questions. “I’ve smelled it on her.”
“Give her half a chance, and she’ll be jarred by noon.”
“But that doesn’t explain?—”
“Fairfax saw her take candles from the pantry.”
I don’t like Grace. Her flat affect jars me every time I see her, and I can barely understand a word she says. But I never had her pegged for an arsonist.
“I didn’t hear the police come,” I say.
“There will be no police.”
“You’re just letting her walk away?”
“She won’t be going anywhere.”
I can’t believe what he’s saying. “Braiden, she tried to murder you!”
“She set a fire. Sent a message. She won’t be doing it again.”
I understand Braiden can’t afford to have the police prying into his life. There are questions he can’t answer for the authorities, not without the sort of elaborate lies that quickly collapse under their own weight.
But the thought of keeping an arsonist—an attempted murderer —under his roof… I have to try to make him see reason. “If the smoke detectors hadn’t worked… If Fairfax didn’t have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen… If you didn’t have extra men at the gate, and extinguishers down there…”
“No one was hurt,” he says.
I play my trump card. “I don’t feel safe sleeping under this roof with Grace in the house.”
His laugh is the harsh bark of an exhausted sheepdog. “You’re safe.”
“How can you say that?”
“I talked to her.”
“You talked to her?”
He cups my face between his palms. The gauze on his hand is soft on my cheek. For just a moment, I’m back in the hallway, snared in that moment when he ordered me to bring Aiofe into this room.
“Aiofe needs her,” he says. “Grace Poole won’t cause any more problems.”
There’s something about Braiden Kelly, something about the way he strips the world down to its most essential atoms. There’s right. There’s wrong. Braiden names the difference, and every force in the world rushes to obey.
And I’m no different.
If Braiden says Grace will stay, then Grace will stay.
I nod, because he’s waiting for my response. But before I can speak, a song blares from his pocket—U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday ”.
All the blood drains from his face. “Oh Christ,” he says. “I need to take this.”