“Like what? If I tell her I know what she’s doing and it’s a dumbass, dangerous, shitty plan that actually could get her beat up or burned out or whatever people do around here, you think she’s gonna listen? All that’ll happen is she’ll do a better job of hiding stuff from me. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

Lena stays silent. Cal is not, under normal circumstances, a man who lets his moods spill onto other people. She’s not upset by it, but she’s deeply unsettled by the implications. She finds she can’t gauge him any more, what he’s capable of once brought to this point.

Cal says, more quietly, “You figure maybe she’d listen to you?”

“Probably not. I’d say she’s got her mind set.”

“Yeah. Me too.” He slumps back in his chair and reaches for his glass. “As far as I can see,” he says, “there’s not one single thing we could do. Not right now.”

Lena says, “Is she coming here for dinner?”

“Who knows,” Cal says, rubbing his eyes. “I doubt it. Which is probably a good thing, because what I feel like doing is giving the kid a good slap upside her head and telling her to smarten the hell up.”

Lena knows to leave it. “Whatever we make,” she says, “it’d better be something with carrots.”

Cal lowers his hands and blinks at the table like he’d forgotten what they were doing. “Yeah,” he says. “I didn’t know if they’d take; I never grew them before. I think maybe I put in too many.”

Lena lifts an eyebrow. “D’you reckon?”

“This is only half of ’em. The rest are still out there.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Lena says. “This is what you get for going all back-to-nature. You’ll be eating ’em till you turn orange. Carrot soup for lunch, carrot omelet for dinner—”

Cal comes up with a grin. “You can teach me how to make carrot jam. For breakfast.”

“Come on,” Lena says, finishing her drink and getting up. She figures tonight is a good night for an exception to her no-cooking policy. “Let’s go make a carrot fricassee.”

In the end they settle on beef stir-fry, heavy on the carrots. Cal puts on Steve Earle while they cook. The dogs wake up at the smell and come hinting for scraps. Through the music and their talk and the sizzle of food, Lena can almost hear, all around them out in the warm golden air, the rising buzz and scurry of the townland, and the steady dark pulse of Nealon moving through it.

Seventeen

Forty-five minutes before the shop is even due to open, Lena finds Noreen on top of the stepladder with her sleeves rolled up, in a frenzy of whipping things off the shelves and checking their best-by dates, a task that Lena knows usually gets done on Fridays. “Morning,” she says, poking her head in from the tiny back room where Noreen keeps files, problems, and the kettle.

“If you’re here to tell me who kilt that English fella,” Noreen snaps, pointing a tin of tuna at her threateningly, “you can turn yourself around and walk straight back out that door. My head’s feckin’ lifting with ideas and theories and—what’s that Bobby Feeney had?—hypothesises, what the feck is that?”

“I’d a hypothesis once,” Lena says. “Wore it to a wedding. Will I make us a cuppa tea?”

“What’re you on about? Whose wedding?”

“I’m only codding you,” Lena says. “I wouldn’t have a clue what Bobby’d be on about. Was there aliens in it?”

“What d’you feckin’ think? Your man Rushborough was a government investigator, that’s what Bobby’s got into his head. Sent down here to catch an alien and bring it up to Dublin. All that about the gold, that was just to give him an excuse for wandering about the mountains. Did you ever hear the like?”

“I’d say it’s no madder than some of the other ideas going around,” Lena says. “D’you want that tea?”

Noreen climbs with difficulty down the ladder and plumps down on a low step. “I couldn’t face a cuppa tea. Didja ever think you’d hear me say that? The state of me, look at me, I’m wringing; you’d think I’d been in swimming. And it not even half-eight in the morning.” She plucks at her blouse to fan her chest. “I’m fed up to my back teeth with this heat. I’m telling you, I’ll close up this place and move to Spain, so I will. At least they’ve the air-conditioning.”

Lena pulls herself up to sit on the counter. “Cal makes iced tea. I shoulda brought some of that.”

“That stuff’d wreck your insides, no milk in it or anything. And don’t be getting your arse on my counter.”

“I’ll get down before you open up,” Lena says. “D’you want a hand with that?”

Noreen gives the tin of tuna, which she’s still holding, a look of loathing. “D’you know what, feck it. I’ll do it another day. If some eejit walks outa here with stale custard, it’ll serve him right. Coming in here nosing for gossip.”

Lena has never known Noreen to complain about people hunting for gossip before. “Was the whole place in yesterday?”