Chapter Two #5
Lena turns to put her feet up on his lap.
“She’s a Carroll, from Knockfarraney. If it’s the ones I’m thinking of, her dad’s Mattie Carroll, he’s a cattle man—not in a big way, like, but he does well enough—and her mam’s Lucy-Anne.
I was in school with the both of them. Lucy-Anne was good crack, and Mattie had more sense than a teenage boy oughta.
See?” She lifts an eyebrow at Cal, over the rim of her glass. “Lovely and respectable.”
“Well,” Cal says. He takes a big swig of his bourbon.
“That’s good.” He almost wishes Lena hadn’t told him, not tonight, coming right on top of the apprenticeship thing.
It feels like he only just got a good firm handle on what Trey needs from him and how to provide it, and now out of the blue she’s come up with a brand-new set of needs.
Presumably someone should talk to her about healthy relationships and whatever the hell, specially since she didn’t grow up with any kind of example, what with her father being worth even less when he was around than when he wasn’t.
Cal would bet his life her mama hasn’t covered this territory; Sheila Reddy does her best according to her lights, but her best doesn’t get into much emotional depth.
Cal himself has no idea of how to even start.
His ex-wife, Donna, did all that stuff for Alyssa, or at least he assumes she did, since Alyssa turned out pretty great.
But he can’t dump this on Lena. Trey doesn’t look to Lena for counsel.
Mostly she doesn’t look to anyone, but when she does, it’s to him.
Cal doesn’t know how to have this talk with any kid, but he sure as hell doesn’t know how to have it with a girl, let alone a girl who apparently likes girls.
He wants someone to sit him down and explain in small words how he got himself into this.
“At least she’s not gonna come home pregnant,” he says. “We’re not gonna need to, I don’t know, fix her up with contraception or…Jesus.”
“Did you reckon she was gay?” Lena asks.
“I never thought about it before. I didn’t think I needed to think about it any time soon.” Cal leans his head back against the cushions and takes a breath. “Is she gonna get any flak?”
Lena sips her drink and considers that. “Not around here. People think she’s odd anyhow, this won’t make any difference; and they don’t go looking for reasons to go after the Reddys, not any more.
She might get a bitta hassle from a few people in school, maybe.
But she’s got mates now, and so has Kate.
Between them all, they’ll beat the shite outa anyone that needs it. She’ll be grand. She’s tough.”
“I know she is,” Cal says. He doesn’t know how to say that that’s the problem, not the solution. The kid was tough for too long; she deserves the chance to be soft.
“Wait and see,” Lena says gently. “It could turn out great.”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “It could.” Apparently love is in the air, just like he said to Mart.
It’s out of season. That kind of stirring belongs in spring, with the birds flirting and the buds unfurling.
This restlessness in the dark evenings, under the rain, has a different feel.
He finishes his drink and puts the glass on the coffee table, so he can rub Lena’s feet.
By unspoken agreement, Lena doesn’t sleep over when Cal has Trey; it would feel unseemly, the two of them sharing a bed with her right outside their door.
That night, after Lena goes home, Cal stays up.
Mostly, when Trey goes out, he lies awake in bed with his light off till he hears her come in, so she won’t feel like he’s hovering.
Tonight he makes up the sofa bed and then sits at the kitchen table, reading in the small warm circle of light from the hanging lamp.
The type blurs; he needs reading glasses.
Rip, sprawled in his corner, runs and huffs in his sleep, chasing the rooks he never can catch.
It’s past one in the morning, the fire has burned low and the room is cold, when he hears Trey’s key turn quietly in the lock.
“What’s up?” she says, when she sees him there.
“Nothing,” Cal says. “Couldn’t sleep. You have a good night?”
“Yeah,” Trey says. She’s red-nosed from the cold. She breathes on her hands.
“You look freezing,” Cal says, getting up. “Here.” He puts a mugful of milk in the microwave and gets out the cocoa powder. Trey drops down beside Rip and digs her hands into his fur, to warm them.
Cal watches her, as the microwave hums and she murmurs to Rip.
She’s probably had a drink or two, but she’s not drunk or anywhere near it.
She never is; the kid has spent too much of her life on the defensive to be comfortable with the idea of letting her defenses down.
She looks at ease, like the night was a good one.
He wants to ask if Kate was there, but he knows better than that.
“Aidan’s gonna ask Ciara to go out with him,” Trey tells him.
“Well, about time,” Cal says. The microwave dings; he stirs cocoa powder into the hot milk. “Whenever I take you guys anyplace, they’re making goo-goo eyes at each other the whole way.”
“He was waiting till she decided,” Trey explains. “She was worried it’d be too complicated or something, I dunno. With all of us being mates.”
“Hold on,” Cal says. “Back up the truck. So Ciara already knows he’s gonna ask her out? And he already knows she’s gonna say yes?”
Trey gives him a look like he shouldn’t be allowed around people. “Yeah. He said it to Ross and Ross said it to Kate and Kate said it to Ciara, and then the other way round, till they decided.”
“So they’re already going out. If they’ve agreed to go out, they’re going out.”
“Nah. He didn’t ask her yet. They reckon next week.”
“Damn,” Cal says. “This an Irish thing? Or a Gen Z thing? Or just your buddies?”
“What? How’d you ask girls out? Send a message by dinosaur?”
“Watch it,” Cal says, mock-offended, pointing the spoon at her.
Trey is grinning. “I went up to the girl and said, ‘Hey, Susie, you’re looking mighty fine today, you wanna go to the movies Saturday?’ And then I held my breath till I found out if Susie was gonna say yes or if the whole school was gonna be laughing at my sorry ass. ”
“She say yes?”
“Sure she did. We dated for a whole three weeks, till her daddy found out. The point is, we didn’t have the whole thing negotiated in advance by ambassadors. What’s gonna happen if any of you want to get married, someday? International summits?”
“You’re just old,” Trey tells him, getting up and coming over for the hot chocolate.
“Maybe,” Cal says. “But I managed to ask Miss Lena out without asking Mart to ask Miss Noreen to ask her for me.”
The idea catches Trey in mid-sip, and hot chocolate goes down her nose. Cal watches her cough and laugh at the same time. “I guess I oughta be relieved you guys can ask someone out without making a TikTok,” he says.
Trey wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and pulls herself up to sit on the counter. After a moment she says, “How come you don’t want me apprenticing with Sam?”
Cal puts the milk back in the fridge. When it comes down to it, he has no say in what the kid does.
He’s not her daddy, or anything else that matters.
She showed up a few years back, looking for his help because her big brother was missing, and now somehow here they are.
If she wants to quit school tomorrow, he can’t do a damn thing about it.
So far, neither one of them has brought that up.
“I do,” he says. “Sam’s a good guy, he does good work, and you’ve gotta move on from here sometime. Just not yet.”
“I’ll still do our stuff,” Trey says. “Even if I’m apprenticing.”
There’s something in her voice, almost like reassurance, that makes Cal close his eyes against it for a moment. “Well, wait and see how much time you’ve got,” he says. “Sam might keep you pretty busy. It’ll be fine, either way.”
Trey nods, twisting around to get the packet of Twix bars out of the cupboard. Cal can’t tell whether she’s convinced or not.
“Just finish school,” he says.
“That’s another year and a half.”
“Kid,” Cal says. “That’s not a long time.”
“Year and a fuckin’ half.”
“Sam’ll wait.”
“He mightn’t. He’ll take on someone else.”
“Then somebody else’ll take you. You do good work.”
“School’s stupid,” Trey says. “Wanta be doing something real.”
“Well, I get that,” Cal says. “I felt the same way. And now I wish I’d got more out of it while I had the chance.”
“I’m not you,” Trey points out.
“I know that. I’d just like you to have more’n I do.”
“What’s wrong with what you’ve got?”
Cal looks at her, sitting there chewing one of Noreen’s Twixes, with her jeans dirty and gorse in her hair from whatever her and her buddies were doing, perched on the countertop the two of them made themselves out of a half-burnt oak that they salvaged after a fire on the mountain.
“Nothing,” he says. “Not a thing in the world.”
Trey gives him a look that means Well then. He doesn’t know how to tell her that that’s his point. He can’t explain that she’s spurring time along, whipping it faster than there’s any need for. Cal is old enough to know, not only that he can’t afford that, but that no one can.
Shhh, he wants to tell her. Just stay still a minute.
When Trey first started spending time at his place, she could stay still for hours on end, watching the rooks in his oak tree squabble and make mischief like a bunch of middle-schoolers, or waiting for one of the rabbits in the back field to line itself up in her rifle sights.
Now it seems like she never stops moving.
Even sitting right there on the counter, swinging her feet, she’s going too fast.
“I’ll finish this year, anyhow,” she says, like she’s offering a compromise. “Now I’ve started.”
“Well, that’s good,” Cal says. “We’ll figure out the rest along the way. Now get some sleep.”
He lays a hand on her head for a second, on his way to his room.
For a moment he thinks she’s about to say something, but then she just waves at him with her Twix bar.
Cal lies in bed with his eyes open for a long time, listening to her washing out her mug and brushing her teeth and murmuring to Rip, till the line of light under his bedroom door blinks out.