Chapter Two #4
“Sure,” Cal says. The thought of her driving on these roads gives him the heebie-jeebies, but he was a backcountry kid himself and he knows how it works: she’ll drive whether he teaches her or not, so he’d rather she do it right. “You need some kinda permit for that?”
Trey makes a pfft noise. “Prob’ly.”
“OK,” Cal says, resigning himself to figuring out the admin side of this, which both Trey and her mama would ignore until some form of shit hit the fan.
“Next year maybe you can drive yourself to school, instead of riding that damn bike.” Trey adores her bike, a sleek navy Diamondback that she bought with her woodworking earnings, but from Cal’s perspective her biking these roads is at least as bad as her driving them, and a lot wetter.
“Mightn’t be in school next year,” Trey says.
“Kid,” Cal says. “You gotta finish school.” They’ve had this conversation before, never to anyone’s satisfaction.
“How come?”
“Gives you options.”
“Don’t want options. I’m gonna be a woodworker. I don’t need my Leaving Cert for that.”
“I know that. And if you decide you want to try out something else, a few years down the line, you oughta have that choice.”
Trey twists one corner of her mouth and goes back to chopping ham, but Cal can tell the conversation isn’t over. He keeps separating eggs, and waits.
“When we were up in town, last weekend,” Trey says. “I was talking to Sam Murray.”
Sam is a woodworker in a big way, too big to feel any competition from Cal and Trey’s back-room operation.
He’s thrown them jobs a few times, when he was overloaded or when someone needed something smaller and more fiddly than he wanted to bother with.
Cal likes him—Sam is young and cheerful, with enough energy to furnish Dublin Castle if the chance came his way—but he’s startled by the thought of Trey deliberately getting into a conversation with the guy.
Trey mostly doesn’t talk to people unless she has a concrete objective, or no choice.
“Huh,” he says. “How’s Sam doing?”
“You were gone to the shops,” Trey says, a little defensively. “I saw him coming outa the pub.”
“Fair enough,” Cal says. “What’d he have to say?”
Trey pulls more ham out of the packet, although it looks to Cal like she’s done plenty already. “I asked him if he’d take me on. As an apprentice. He said yeah, no problem. He’s approved, like, to have apprentices. He could register me, so I’d get my qualification at the end.”
She’s still got her head down over the ham, just giving Cal the odd quick sideways glance, but he can feel her alert and waiting for his response. Lena has turned from the fireplace to watch them, but she’s staying quiet.
“Well,” Cal says. “That’s great to hear.
That fretwork must’ve impressed him.” He catches the relief loosening Trey’s face.
He doesn’t know whether to be proud that she had the chops to talk to Sam, or worry that she left him out because she thought he wouldn’t approve.
“Sam’s the real deal; you’ll learn stuff from him that you won’t get from me and YouTube videos. Did he say when he had in mind?”
“Any time, he said. Just let him know.”
“Well, even better,” Cal says. He rummages through a drawer for the whisk.
The kid doesn’t need to be hanging out in some workshop, among big hairy guys talking big hairy talk and sending her to buy new bubbles for the spirit level.
Let her goof off with her buddies a while longer, bitch about homework, catch up on being a kid; once she moves on from that, there’ll be no moving back.
“You can take all the time you need. Finish school, get your license so you can drive yourself into Kilcarrow every day, get back to him then.”
He’s ready for the argument, but Trey just shoves the chopping board towards him. “That much?”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “Sure. And the same amount of cheese.” He’s not reassured.
Trey doesn’t give up that easily; he’s never known her to give up at all, unless she decides she actually wants to.
He waits, but Trey is neatly pulling the cheddar packet open, not looking at him.
Lena strikes a match and sets it to the firelighter, and Cal gets started on the egg whites.
The soufflé works out. Trey finishes hers in a hurry and checks her phone, which has been demanding attention from her coat pocket. “Gotta go,” she says.
“You can’t bike if you’re gonna drink,” Cal says. “You want a ride?”
“Nah. Ross’s brother’s giving us a lift. Thanks.”
“He going drinking with you?”
“Nah. He’s twenty. He’s only driving us ’cause Ross said he’d do his share of cleaning the cattle sheds.”
“If he’s drinking, you don’t take a ride back with him. You call me and I’ll come get you.”
Trey rolls her eyes, throws on her coat, gives Rip’s jowls a quick rub, and heads out the door.
Cal manages not to ask where she’ll be. He would love to tell her to bring her buddies over here, he’ll stay out of their way; but even if Trey would go for it, which she wouldn’t, he has no desire to be the guy who invites random teenagers over to do teenage things at his place.
He and Ardnakelty know each other well enough that no one gets weird about Trey hanging out here, but her friends aren’t from Ardnakelty.
“She’ll be grand,” Lena says, getting up to clear the table. “She’s got sense.”
“She better,” Cal says. He blows out a long breath. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“Sam Murray?”
“Yeah. I knew she wanted an apprenticeship, but I didn’t think she’d go out looking. Not yet, at least.”
“I thought she might,” Lena says. Cal looks up at the touch of remoteness in her voice, like she’s thinking something she’s not going to share, but Lena has her back to him, rinsing plates. “I expected further away than Kilcarrow, but.”
Cal has had the same thought. Sam would at least keep Trey here. Cal can’t tell whether he’s right or wrong to want that; whether the kid needs to be in his keeping for a little bit longer, or whether he just doesn’t want her to go.
He doesn’t ask if Lena is in favor of letting Trey quit school, in case she says yes.
Lena cares plenty about Trey, but she does it differently from Cal.
She’s never shared his ferocious urge to protect the kid.
Cal and Lena are harmonious; their only minor clashes have come out of that discrepancy, and Cal doesn’t feel like having one tonight.
He gets up and finds two glasses and the bottle of bourbon.
“You know Kate, that’s on the team with Trey,” Lena says. “What’s she like?”
Cal glances over quickly. He didn’t have Kate down as the type to give people grief, but you never know. Lena, though, has lost that tint of reserve. Instead she looks mischievous.
“She seems like a good kid,” he says, “from what I can tell. I don’t want to talk to any of ’em too much, in case I’m wearing the wrong shirt or breathing funny or something.
” Cal’s own daughter, Alyssa, is grown now, but when she was Trey’s age, he could be a near-fatal embarrassment just by accidentally glancing in the wrong person’s direction. “How come?”
“I think Trey might be going out with her. Or thinking about it, anyhow.”
Cal stops with the bourbon bottle in midair. “What? How do you know?”
“I don’t know for definite. Just the talk in the car. One of the lads sounded like he was slagging them.”
“Holy shitballs,” Cal says. He can’t think of anything to do except stand there. Lena is grinning. “I mean…Shit. I didn’t see that coming. She’s just a kid.”
“She’s sixteen,” Lena says. “Did you have a girlfriend by then?”
“Yeah. I guess. But Trey, she’s…” Cal leaves the bottle on the counter and takes a walk around the room, to get his head straight. “No. It’s not the same thing. The kid, what with everything, she’s young for her age. Too young for that.”
“Looks like her and Kate mightn’t agree with you,” Lena points out. Her face is still amused.
“I bet they don’t. That’s my point. The fact that she doesn’t even realize she’s too young, that shows she’s way too young.
” Cal knows he sounds like he’s babbling, but he’s not kidding.
When Trey first showed up in his backyard, more than three years ago, she was half feral and the world’s enemy; she knew plenty about dodging trouble and making it through hard times, but almost nothing about being a person among people.
Cal has been teaching her those skills as best he can, and the kid is a fast learner when she feels like it, but neither one of them is magic.
She’s come a long way, but not far enough to go around having relationships like some kind of grown-up.
Lena is laughing. “Cool the jets,” she says. “I’d say they’re only at the stage of being awkward around each other. It could take them months to get any further, if they ever do.”
“Damn,” Cal says, rubbing a hand down his face. “I need that drink.” He goes back to the counter and starts pouring the bourbon, with ginger ale for Lena, on the rocks for himself tonight. “How old’s Kate?”
Lena settles herself on the sofa. “Trey’s age, give or take, if they’re on the same team. I like the cut of her as well. She has a laugh, and she takes no shite.”
“She treat people right?”
“She does, yeah. From what I’ve seen, anyhow.”
Cal brings the drinks over. “You know anything about her family?”
“You could have them over for dinner,” Lena suggests helpfully. “Suss them out, ask about Kate’s prospects, get their fingerprints. Trey’d never talk to you again, but sure you haveta make sacrifices in this life.”
“Seriously,” Cal says. “You know anything?”