Catríona’s house is ten minutes from the restaurant if you walk fast and pretend the rain is romantic. I do not walk fast because I do not want to arrive out of breath and frighten anyone, and because I can feel Declan behind me with the steady distance a man keeps when he knows his presence changes the air. He stays across the street, under the eave of the hardware shop, pretending to look at fishing line in the window, which would make me laugh if I were not strung so tight I could pluck.
Catríona’s mother opens the door in a cardigan that looks like it was knitted by a woman who knew what cold is, she smells like flour and tea and a perfume that lives in the wool of the cuffs, and she smiles because she is kind, then her smile faltersbecause she is also a mother and she knows when a thing is wrong even if no one has said the words out loud yet.
“Early,” she says, and makes room for me to pass. “His bag is in the hall. They ate the chocolate chips before they made the scones but we pretended not to notice.”
I kiss her cheek and I am careful not to get rain on her cardigan. “Family thing,” I say, and my voice is bright and controlled and I would hire myself on the spot based on this performance. “Thank you for taking him last minute.”
Liam is on the floor with Catríona, both of them frowning in concentration over a Lego ship with more cannons than any ship ever needed. He looks up when he hears me and the way his face lights cracks me clean in half, he is all curls and joy and the unearned trust of a child who has not yet learned that adults sometimes make choices that burn.
“Mam,” he says, a sound that still makes my bloodstream change direction, and he barrels into me, warm and smelling like sugar and rabbit. “We made stones.”
“Scones, love,” I say, kissing his forehead before he can pull away in the way boys do when they remember they are pirates now. “And I bet they were perfect.”
“We ate the chips,” he confesses immediately, because guilt is easier to hold when you share it, “but we saved you one.”
I tell him we have to go and he nods like this is an adventure and not a reorganization of the universe, and he waves to the rabbit and thanks Catríona’s mother without my prompting, and I feel a wild surge of pride at that small good thing. I do not look across the street as we leave. I do not let my eyes find the hardware shop.
Back at the flat I move through the rooms in a path that is almost a dance, kitchen to bedroom to bathroom to the low drawer by the front door, I take only what matters and what cannot be replaced, my grandmother’s rolling pin with the burnmark near the handle, the tin of recipe cards with my mother’s handwriting in the corners, the framed photo of Liam with chocolate on his nose and an expression like pure invention. Liam packs his own backpack with a seriousness that would be funny on another day. He puts in Bear, the book about the giant who eats the moon, two toy soldiers who have been demoted to chefs, and one sock that does not match anything else he owns.
“Do I need my boots?” he asks, and I say yes, even though the rain has eased, because boots are a good choice when you do not know where you are going.
There is a knock, not loud, that makes me think of the first night he came to my kitchen to taste my food and call it memory. I open the door and Declan stands on the threshold like a sentence you cannot punctuate properly until you have written the whole paragraph. He looks at Liam and something in his face breaks and reforms at the same time, his mouth softening, his eyes going glassy then clearing, the war I was promised visible for one bare second like lightning far out at sea.
Liam looks at him with the frank curiosity of a child who has not yet learned not to stare. He sees the suit, the jaw, the coat. He tilts his head. “You are big,” he says, which is the kind of accuracy I have always loved about him.
Declan crouches because he is not stupid, and because he is a man who has learned that power looks different on your knees. “I am,” he says, and his voice is lower than usual. “I am Declan.”
“Like the saint,” Liam says, because the school nuns have been cataloguing Ireland one martyr at a time. “Mam says he travelled and ate fish and did not like people who were mean to animals.”
Declan looks at me and the corner of his mouth tilts and I hate that there is still a place in my chest that lifts when he smiles. “Like the saint,” he says. “I try not to be mean to anything that bites.”
“Rabbits do not bite,” Liam says with the authority of one who has touched whiskers. “Do you like scones.”
“I do,” Declan says, and he means it, which is a mercy.
“Good,” Liam says, satisfied with the important data.
We leave, the three of us, the apartment a neat shell behind us, the kettle unplugged, the window cracked half an inch to keep the air honest, the fairy lights left off like a promise I do not know if I will ever be able to keep. Declan does not take my bag, which is the right choice, he lets me carry my own life, and he walks behind us at a distance that says I will follow you anywhere, and also I am the wall between you and whatever comes.
The hotel is on the edge of the harbor, glass and grey stone, the lobby smelling like lemons and expensive air, the kind of place that has rugs thick enough to hide footsteps and staff who pretend not to notice when a woman checks in with a man at her shoulder and a child on her hip. Declan handles the desk with the politeness of a man who knows he could own the building if he wanted to and chooses not to because owning is less useful than access. He hands me the key so the small dignity is mine.
In the lift Liam presses all the buttons because he is a kid and because he knows it will make me pretend to be exasperated and he likes the performance. Declan says nothing. He watches us like a man who has been allowed to look at the sun for the first time without going blind.
The room is clean and anonymous and full of tiny hotel things that make children feral with joy. Liam goes straight to the window and flattens his palms to the glass, the harbor below a scatter of lights and black water. “We are up,” he says, which is objectively true and a little thrilling.
“We are,” I say, and I set the kettle to boil because if there is one thing I can do in a strange room it is make cocoa too rich to drink without licking your lips, and I find the paper cups and thetiny wooden stirrers that always splinter if you are not careful, and I mix powder with milk and a splash of the cream I asked for at the desk, and I hold the cup to Liam’s mouth like he is smaller than he is because I need to feel needed tonight in a way that is manageable.
He yawns halfway through the cup, sags against me, his body going heavy and trustful, and I carry him to the bed and lie down with him on top of me because that is how he sleeps best when the day has been too bright or too loud. His curls tickle my chin. His breath warms my collarbone. He is a weight I will never resent. He is a weight I will carry until my spine gives out and I still will not put him down.
Declan stands by the window and does not move. He does not remove his coat. He does not take off his shoes. He stands like a sentry or a man who does not trust furniture not to bite. The harbor lights paint his face in stripes, the kind of chiaroscuro you get in old paintings of saints who had very bad lives and kept believing anyway.
“You think this is protection,” I say softly, because anger has burned itself down to coals and what is left is a heat I can hold. “It is a cage with nicer sheets.”
“I know,” he says, and there it is in his voice, the thing I wanted and did not want, the admission, the weight of it. “For tonight, cage beats funeral.”
I look at him and the room goes very quiet in that hotel way where even the hum of the air unit sounds like it is apologizing for being alive. “You will not take him from me.”
“I would rather cut off my hand than try,” he says, and I believe him because of the way he says it, like a man who has already done worse for less.
