Ruairí drives with both hands on the wheel, knuckles white, jaw clenched.
Somewhere along the coast a fog has formed, rolling inland in loose, lazy spirals, softening the edges of the warehouses and cranes that border the docks.
Ruairí flicks the headlights to high and then low, like he's not sure what the situation demands.
I huddle in the passenger seat, his coat still wrapped around me, the blood stiffening at the seams.
My hands are raw, and I can't stop flexing them, watching the way the skin stretches over the tendons.
I press them to my stomach, just to remind myself of where I am in the world.
Ruairí keeps his eyes on the road, but every few minutes he glances at me, quick and sharp, as if he's checking a gauge that could redline at any moment.
His jaw works from side to side, and the knuckles on his right hand are swollen and beginning to bruise.
The left hand, which was gentle with me, rests on the shifter.
The radio is off.
Neither of us wants the news.
The only soundtrack is the low whine of the engine and the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers.
The air in the car is a mix of leather and blood and the last traces of the docks.
We hit the bypass and take the old roads to the estate, bypassing the city proper, and I begin to realize how far they took me.
The fog thickens, turning the landscape into a negative—trees and hedges and half-seen stone walls rendered in black and white, all detail erased.
Every so often, we pass a car going the other way, and the flash of their headlights leaves ghosts on the glass.
I try to focus on the mundane.
I count the traffic cameras on the overpass, the broken reflectors in the median strip, the way the drive feels different now than it did that morning.
When we reach the long lane up to the house, the fog is so dense I can barely see the gate ahead.
The guards at the gatehouse wave us through.
Their faces are drawn and gray, and they do not salute or even look directly at Ruairí.
There is a message in their silence, but I am too tired to parse it.
Halfway up the drive, he pulls off to the verge and kills the engine.
The car ticks and settles, the heater blowing lukewarm air into the footwells.
We sit in the dimness, the house a smear of light far ahead, the world outside reduced to a single cone of visibility and the fog that presses in from all sides.
He doesn't speak.
He just sits, breathing slowly, fingers still clamped around the wheel.
I stare at the dash, then at my hands, then at him.
I try to line up the words in my head the way I practiced them.
The sequence is simple, but the delivery is always a risk.
