‹Dear Fr T:
‹Thanx for yr email of five words total. Cynthia’s ankle on all prayer chains. Harold and I attended service at Lord’s Chapel last Sunday. They baptized the niece of Dooley’s old teacher, Miss Pearson, who visited twice after my gall bladder op. Be glad you are not at LC anymore. For one thing they are using TRUMPETS. Three of the things blaring at once! What in the world they’ll fall back on at Easter is beyond me. Somebody said if the Search Committee had used you as a roll model they would not be in this mess. Glad to be a Baptist again, ha ha. Large Waterford vase.
‹Love to all, Emma›
‹Hey Dad
‹Hey Cynthia
‹A foal out of Brown Betty last night. No problems. Miss you guys.
‹Hal says he’ll be proud to see my name on the business. Wish I could jump over the four years of vet school. Hey, Cynthia hope your ankle is ok. Lace sends love. She spent a week at Meadowgate. Barnabas doing great don’t worry about anything. Hal and Marge and Rebecca send love. Sammy and Kenny and Jessie and Pooh send the same and so does Harley. Mush, mush and more mush.
‹Love,
‹Dools›
The emails were on the bed when they returned from their wanderings. He grabbed Dooley’s and read it avidly; he was starving for it. Don’t worry about anything. He liked that.
After his walk to the lake with Liam and a demoralizing breakfast of yogurt and fruit-his idea, not Broughadoon’s-he and Cynthia had taken off for Ben Bulben, where the Vauxhall climbed a rude track along the flank. They slowed for sheep in the road, searched the views. Then lunch at the tea shop in Drumcliff and out to the churchyard where she sketched Yeats’s headstone. Covered by a layer of common gravel, his grave had looked bereft among those better-tended.
Through it all, Cynthia was subdued. The prolonged ankle business-the crutches and the craving to toss them-had gotten to her; she was struggling through an inevitable patch of depression. He seldom saw her out of sorts, it was mildly alarming, he would do anything-stand on his head, whistle Dixie-to help her through.
She stood at the chest of drawers, leafing aimlessly through the work of the day. He looked over her shoulder.
‘That’s a good one,’ he said. ‘The great Ben as the prow of a ship steering through a green sea.’ He thought she might enjoy the imagery.
‘I’m afraid I can’t do it,’ she said, not hearing.
He shucked change from his pocket to the tray. ‘Do what?’
‘William’s portrait by firelight.’
‘Worst case, let’s say you really can’t do it. What difference does it make?’
‘All the difference.’
‘All? Isn’t that carrying it a little far?’
‘His face is the best of faces, I won’t find another like it’
‘Then why not a portrait by daylight or lamplight? Why heap on coals with the firelight business, no pun intended?’
She looked up at him. ‘Because that’s the way he should be painted. It’s the way it needs to be done’
This was making him crazy. ‘But you’re anxious about it.’
‘It’s all right to be anxious. A bit of stage fright is good for the performance, don’t you think?’
Well, yes-he agreed.
‘So you pray and I’ll paint and together we’ll get the job done. Okay?’ She smiled, innocent as any babe.
Thank God, he’d hardly had a smile out of her all day. ‘You’re a bloody nutcase.’
‘Mush, mush, and more mush.’
He pressed her close, wordless. That he could hold to himself all the comfort in all the world was sometimes nearly too great a thing to believe.
At Anna’s suggestion, the poker club and the Kavanaghs joined tables at dinner. Cynthia ordered a bottle of Prosecco, which Liam kept for the Italians who sometimes came.
‘To a safe and happy journey,’ said his wife, ‘for the Book Poker Fishin’ Irish Widows’ Travel Club!’
‘That’s us!’ said Debbie.
‘Slainte!’ he said.
‘Salute!’ said everyone else.
Moira adjusted her glasses, shuffled papers. ‘Okay, time for th’ language test we’ve been talkin’ about-let’s hear everything you’ve learned so far.’
‘Um,’ said Lisa. ‘La dolce vita!’
‘Ferragamo, Armani, por favore!’ said Tammy. ‘What else could we possibly need?’
‘We’ve hardly had time to learn a whole other language,’ said Debbie. ‘I only have one word.’
‘Go for it,’ said Moira, who was making the rules.
‘Magnifico?’ said Debbie.
‘Say that anywhere, it will get you points.’
‘I hope we’re not going to conjugate any verbs this evenin’,’ said Lisa.
‘On th’ plane tomorrow. Now-for a night out in Positano, this is all you need, th’ whole nine yards; I made a copy for everybody: Ciao. Falanghina. Risotto. Tiramisu. Espresso. Il conto. Ciao.’
‘Two ciaos?’
‘One for hello, one for sayonara,’ said Moira. ‘As for our night out in Naples, we’ll be addin’ this to our vocabulary: Vada via che sa di aglio.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Buzz off, garlic breath.’
‘Idn’t she terrific?’ asked Debbie.
‘Bilingual,’ said Cynthia.
‘Y’all goin’ to meet here next year?’ asked Lisa.
‘We don’t know yet,’ said Cynthia. ‘Are you?’
‘Maybe. We really like it over here, th’ lake fishin’ an’ all.’
‘I really like workin’ with ghillies,’ said Debbie.
Hoots, cackles, the usual.
He raised his glass. ‘Happy fishing in Italy!’ This launched a din that made his ears ring.
‘You are quaint,’ said his wife, patting his hand.
‘Tim and Cynthia’-Tammy lifted her glass; bracelets jangling. ‘Safe travel, strong ankles, and may th’ dollar clobber th’ euro, pronto!’
‘Salute! ’
‘Amen,’ he said.
Liam came to the table. ‘A phone call from your son. Take it in the kitchen, we’ll hold th’ noise down at th’ sink.’
He passed through the swinging door in a blur and picked up the phone.
‘Hey, buddy?’
‘Hey, Dad.’
Something was wrong, he could hear it. His heart seized.
‘I messed up.’
‘Talk to me,’ he said.
‘She hit me. That’s it, I’m done. It’s over.’
‘Why did she hit you?’
‘I told her she was ice sculpture. She’s cold, Dad, frozen like Mitford Creek two winters ago. You could skate on her ice.’
The up email, the down phone call. Roller coaster.
He eased himself into the corner behind the desk, turning his back to Maureen and Bella at the sink, Liam at the stovetop. ‘She hit you because hitting was what she learned all the years she was being hit.’
‘It’s time she got over those years.’
‘Why are you done? Why did you end it?’
‘What else could I do?’
‘You could talk.’
‘No way.’
‘Do you love her?’
A long silence. Then, ‘I wish I didn’t.’
Before Dooley was ten years old, his mother had given away four of her five children; his father, a violent drunk and erstwhile highway laborer, vanished along the severe slab he’d helped pour. Cleaving asunder was hard for anybody, especially for kids who had felt the cleaver again and again; he could sense Dooley’s anguish clear across the Pond.
‘Where did she hit you?’
‘Slammed me in th’ gut.’
‘It wasn’t the first time.’
Soon after the two met, Dooley had hidden Lace’s hat-a despoiled affair which she wore with ominous pride. She’d let him have a big one in the solar plexus.
‘Ice,’ he said, ‘is what you turn into when you’re trying to protect yourself. Ice is what keeps you from feeling anything.’ Dooley Barlowe had shown up on the rectory doorstep a decade ago, his anger frozen in a glacier of his own. It was melting, drop by everlasting drop, but only in the temperate climate of love and with a staggering amount of patience. ‘Are you with me, buddy?’
‘I guess. Not really. Gotta go.’
‘Wait. Give me a minute.’
Silence. A minute begrudged.
‘Can you forgive her?’
‘Why invest more energy in somebody who thinks slammin’ you in th’ gut solves everything? She brought me to my knees, Dad.’ There was the boil-there was the sticking point.
‘Hitting you wasn’t a good thing, I admit. But if you think about it…’
‘I don’t want to think about it. Gotta go.’
The transatlantic cable hummed; he set the receiver on its charger.
He was a wreck.
‘You’re a wreck,’ she said. She was waiting for him at the garden door; he went to her and they stepped outside and sat on the bench.
‘Dooley and Lace,’ she said, knowing. ‘At it again.’
He shrugged, shook his head. ’Til the cows come home, I suppose.’ This was more than a lovers’ quarrel, it was something deeply poisonous that both Lace and Dooley carried like a virus. He’d seen Lace the first time several years ago; she was stealing Sadie Baxter’s ferns-digging them with a mattock, shoving them into a sack to sell to a mountain nursery. Watching her eyes beneath the brim of her ruined hat, he asked her to replant everything she had dug, but she had stood him down. I’ll knock you in th’ head, she said, if you lay hands on my sack-I don’t care if you are a preacher.
She grabbed her goods and ran then, the hat flying off her head. He’d taken it home and when she came looking for it at the rectory, Dooley hid it, taunting her. That was the first punch. She had come again after that, beaten brutally by her father. It had taken hours for Cynthia to dress the bleeding lacerations riven upon old wounds.
‘All that pain for all those years,’ Cynthia said.
‘They can’t trust each other.’
‘Time can be healing. Will you buy that?’
‘Not at the moment,’ he said. He told her about the ice sculpture.
Why did he care so much about Dooley and Lace as a couple? In recent weeks, he’d finally swallowed the lie that two damaged lives couldn’t possibly be fashioned into a whole. Faithless as a heathen, he’d given up hope.
‘They have the same enemy,’ he said. ‘Fear.’
‘But they have the same God-love. They’ll manage. We were a couple of ice sculptures ourselves.’
‘Remember your cold feet a couple days before the wedding?’ he asked.
‘Remember your cold feet for a whole two years?’
‘You win,’ he said. He realized that he wanted again to hope.
In the library, Liam prodded a burst of flame from the turves, then stood away from them by the photo gallery. At the lake, Liam had asked him to speak his piece and he’d done that as simply as he knew how. Liam had listened, saying little-from there, the results were beyond anything priest or friend might do. They’d walked back to the lodge together, sober, not talking. ‘Partridge,’ said Liam at a sound in the hedge.
The club was busy ordering espressos, no decaf-‘Gambling again!’ said Tammy. Anna removed her apron and found a seat with the club; after serving coffee, Seamus chose the remaining wing chair; Maureen entered, peered around, and sat by Anna. Bella slipped into the room, a shadow gliding past the bookshelves to a chair at the open window.
Cynthia looked stricken.
‘What?’
‘I think William and I are the evening’s entertainment. ’
He pondered the expectant faces, the hush over the room. Definitely.
‘I thought everyone would go about their usual after-dinner business while William and I worked by the fire.’
‘You’ll be fine.’
She gave him a look, mildly ticked at this remark. ‘Easy for you to say.’
He had to laugh. ‘I worked for forty years with people watching.’
William entered with the aid of a silver-handled cane, wearing a starched shirt, pressed trousers, a jacket, a vest, a blue necktie.
Spontaneous applause. The poker club gave an all-thumbs-up; the scent of Seamus’s pipe smoke sweetened the air.
‘Anna says you’re after capturin’ me on paper. So, aye, I’m ready to be captured.’ William’s face was pink from the scrubbing, from the newness and pleasure of it all.
‘Can we watch?’ asked Debbie.
‘Well,’ said Cynthia.
‘Where d’you want me?’ asked William.
‘Right there in your chair, comfortable as anything.’
‘I see m’ fire’s been poked up. ’t would be Liam thinkin’ of that.’ William saluted Liam, settled himself by the checkerboard. ‘Can a man have his pint while gettin’ his likeness struck? I’ve a ragin’ thirst.’
‘There by your elbow, Da, ready and waiting.’
‘’t would be Seamus thinkin’ of that.’ William lifted his glass to Seamus, took a long draught, wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. ‘If you wouldn’t object, Missus Kav’na, would ye leave off th’ scar an’ touch up the oul’ nose? An’ if you’d be so kind, take a year or two off th’ eighty-some that’s accumulated while I wasn’t lookin’.’
‘Ah, no,’ said Maureen. ‘’t is her style to render th’ truth.’
‘Th’ truth,’ he said, glowering.
Cynthia was already sketching, her hand darting for this brush or that, the ferrule chiming against the water jar. He sank into prayer like a swimmer into familiar water.
‘If you’d like,’ Cynthia told William, ‘you may take off your coat and tie.’
‘You don’t care for me coat an’ tie?’
‘I like them very much, but wouldn’t you be more comfortable?’
‘A man wants a dacent coat an’ tie to get ’is face done up in a picture.’
‘You’re being painted by someone very famous at her drawing, Da. ’t is a privilege she’s givin’ you. Be a dote, now.’
William gripped the arms of the chair as if it might lift off and fly. ‘’t would be good to have a fag to settle me nerves. But I’m off tobacco since Jack Kennedy closed down indoor smokin’ an’ ran us to th’ tarmac in a drivin’ rain. Beggin’ your pardon, Missus, do I need to keep m’ trap shut?’ William drew forth the handkerchief, gave a honking blow.
‘You may talk up a storm, William, it’s the shadows I’m wrestling with.’
‘Talk about th’ good oul’ bad days,’ Maureen said to William.
‘I’ve but one thing to say about th’ oul’ bad days-if th’ current crop of young was to be up against it as we were, they’d perish with none left standin’.’
Seamus gave his white mustache a quick comb. ‘May I tell a joke, then, if it wouldn’t interfere with the proceedings?’
‘Please,’ said Cynthia. ‘We love jokes.’
‘I generally try to bring one down at th’ weekend.’ Seamus rose and buttoned the jacket of his butler’s garb, clasped his hands behind his back.
‘So. There was this gent from Ballyshannon who all his life was after ownin’ a BMW sport coupe. So when he retired, first thing he did was fulfill his dream. A few days after this mighty purchase, he was out for a spin an’ decided to see what it would do if he opened it up.
‘Ah, but you can guess what he saw in th’ rearview mirror.’
‘A Defender of th’ Peace of Ireland!’ said William.
‘Gent pulled over, knowin’ this was not goin’ to be a good thing. Th’ Gard gets off his motorcycle, comes up to th’ gent’s window, says, You know how fast you were goin’?
‘Gent says, Triple digits?
‘Gard gives him a tough look, says, Here’s what I’ll do. Tell me one I haven’t heard before an’ I’ll let you go.
‘Gent thinks a minute, says, My wife ran off with a Gard five years ago an’ I thought you were bringin’ her back.
‘Gard gets on his motorcycle, cranks th’ engine, says, Have a nice day.’
The poker club hooted, Maureen slapped her knee, the old man threw back his head and guffawed.
‘That’s it, William!’ said Cynthia. ‘Keep laughing!’
Absorbed by what she was doing, he watched her at her work and found himself suddenly happy. Dooley and Lace would manage, she had said. For now, that would have to be enough. His prayer for Cynthia floated beneath the surface of his thoughts-she could do this.
‘Don’t stop,’ she whispered, not looking his way. ‘We must keep William laughing,’ she said to the room. ‘Why don’t you tell an Uncle Billy joke, darling?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Anna.
‘Hear, hear,’ said Seamus.
‘The one you told at the funeral,’ urged his wife. ‘You remember.’
There he’d stood under the funeral tent in front of God and everybody, forgetting the punch line of Uncle Billy’s favorite joke. Miss Rose had called it to his memory in a squawk heard all the way to Main Street. He remembered, all right.
He followed Seamus’s lead and stood, buttoning his jacket.
‘Uncle Billy Watson was one of my best friends, and a type of uncle to everybody. He was born and reared in the mountains of North Carolina, where many Irish found a home after immigrating to America. I believe he told me his mother was a Flannagan. I know for a fact we’ve got Hogans and Rileys and O’Connors and Wilsons in our coves and hollers-some very gifted at playing the traditional tunes of their ancestors, by the way. Wish you could hear their fiddle music, Bella, and I wish they could hear yours.’
Bella moved from the window, silent, and sat next to Maureen.
‘Uncle Billy devoted most of his life to making people laugh. He believed that laughter doeth good like a medicine, as scripture says, and it must have done him a world of good, for he lived into his eighties.
‘I remember the day he called me at the church office and said, Preacher, I done fell off a twelve-foot ladder.
‘Good Lord, I said, did you hurt yourself, any bones broken?
‘No, sir, he said, not a dent. I only fell off th’ bottom rung.’
William laughed, raised his glass. ‘To Uncle Billy!’
‘Uncle Billy!’ said Seamus, raising his.
‘Uncle Billy was married to a fierce woman named Rose. Here’s something that may have had special meaning; I’ll try to tell it the way he told it.
‘Well, sir, a feller died who’d lived a mighty sinful life, don’t you know. Th’ minute he got down t’ hell, he commenced t’ bossin’ around th’ imps an’ all, a-sayin’ do this, do that, an’ jump to it! Well, sir, he got so dominatin’ an’ big-headed that th’ little devils reported ’im to th’ chief devil, who called th’ feller in, said, How come you act like you own this place?
‘Feller said, I do own it, my wife give it to me while I was livin’.’
A prodigious roar, he thought, considering the size of the crowd.
‘Give us another!’ cried William.
‘Well, sir, there was this census taker a-goin’ round, don’t you know. An’ he come to this house an’ he knocked on th’ door an’ a woman come to th’ door. He says, How many young ’uns you got an’ what are their ages?
‘Well, let’s see, she says, we got Jenny an’ Benny, they’re ten. We got, uh, Lonnie an’ Johnnie, they’re twelve, we got Timmy an’ Jimmy, they’re-
‘Census taker says, Hold on! You mean t’ tell me you got twins ever’ time?
‘She says, Law, no, they was hundreds of times we didn’ git nothin’.’
There was the light again in Anna’s eyes, and Maureen’s unhindered laughter. Applause, even.
William thumped his cane. ‘Another, if ye’d be so kind!’
He appealed to his wife, who was hammering away on the damp paper. ‘Um,’ she said, furrowing her brow. ‘The gas stove?’
He reeled it off, brought the house down. This was heady stuff.
Maureen wiped her eyes. ‘We’re starvin’ for entertainment.’
‘Obviously,’ he said.
‘Last man standin’ gets a pint on th’ house,’ said William.
Seamus put forth another; Moira rendered one with the full Georgia accent; Maureen stood, smoothed her apron, drew a breath.
‘O’Shaughnessy,’ she said, ‘had emigrated to America an’ done well for ’imself, bein’ made th’ actin’ foreman…’
‘Actin’ foreman,’ said William, approving.
‘… an’ with th’ grand rise in pay they give ’im, he decides to share his good fortune with th’ folks back home in Sligo. So he rummages about for a grand present for ’is oul’ mum an’ da an’ settles on a lovely gold-rimmed mirror for th’ parlor.’
‘Good thinkin’,’ said William.
‘An’ so he parcels an’ posts it, an’ before long his oul’ da is openin’ it up an’ lookin’ into th’ mirror. Come here, Mary, he says, an’ see how your son has aged since he went to that Protestant country!
‘And so the mother leans over th’ father’s shoulder an’ looks in an’ says, I’m not surprised a’tall. Look at th’ oul’ hag he’s livin’ with.’
He was oddly moved by the laughter, the ease of it. ‘Give us another, Maureen!’ he said.
‘Aye, Rev’rend, an’ don’t you know Mike Gleason is fetchin’ his long-lost brother from th’ airport tomorrow? Mike says he hasn’t laid eyes on ’im in thirty years. So I say to Mike, An’ how will ye recognize ’im, as he’s been away that long?
‘I won’t, says Mike, but he’ll recognize me, ’cause I’ve niver been away a’tall.’
Encouraged by the ensuing ruckus, Seamus set aside his pipe, combed his mustache, and stood, bowing slightly. ‘’t was a quiet night at Jack Kennedy’s.’
‘Seamus likes to put on th’ local color,’ said William.
‘Only two oul’ gents at th’ bar, who had gone at their pints quite fierce an’ would need th’ cab to get home. First one looks over, says, I’ll stand ye a round, ’t is me birthday.
‘Well, now, says the other, there’s a coincidence f’r ye, ’t is my birthday as well.
‘If that don’t take th’ cake, says th’ first, and how old might ye be?
‘Sixty-seven, says the other.
‘That’s bloody amazin’, says the first. I’m sixty-seven meself.
‘A twist of fate if I ever heard it, says the other. An’ where were ye born, then?
‘Enniskillen, says the first. And yourself?
‘’t was Enniskillen for me, th’ very same. What a blinkin’ fluke.
‘The phone rings, Jack answers, his wife says, Any business down there, darlin’?
‘Ah, no, he says, not much. Just the guzzeyed O’Leary twins.’
Miles from Yeats’s pavements grey, in what had been stables in a once-isolated corner of his paternal homeland, they were hooting and cackling like maniacs-all without help from TV, CD, DVD, or any other gizmo. Such merriment wouldn’t last, of course, but that was life and they were grabbing it and holding on.
He was the first to see it finished. The watercolor was the laughing William Donavan, the very breath of him.
Cynthia looked up, and he stooped and kissed her forehead. ‘You did it,’ he said. ‘The shadows might have been painted by the firelight itself.’
She leaned forward, holding it up for William to see.
‘Aye, God!’ William said.
Anna put her hand on William’s shoulder, pleased. ‘Mr. Yeats himself was never so handsome. ’
Maureen drew Bella into the circle around Cynthia and her paints. ‘Look, babby. Th’ spit image!’
‘Brilliant!’ whispered Bella. ‘’t is yourself, Daideo, with th’ necktie matchin’ your eyes.’
William gazed at the damp paper, mesmerized. ‘A prodigious fine work, Missus. I don’ know how ye did it.’
‘I had help,’ said his wife, looking a mite dazed.
As they heaved their way upstairs, Pud in tow, he felt her exhaustion as palpably as his own. Bouncing around in the Vauxhall for two days running made the prediction of tomorrow’s heavy rains sound welcome.
But it wasn’t weariness he was feeling. He realized he was bracing himself for something to do with her work. He would risk ferreting out the truth instead of tensing for the unknown.
They put on their nightclothes and lay in the dark, looking out to the sheen of the moon in a mackerel sky.
‘What are you going to do with this new ability to paint people?’
‘What do you mean, do with?’
‘It seems you’d want to do something with these wonderful portraits-perhaps an art show.’
‘An art show? Where? In the Local behind the produce section? On our clothesline where the garage used to be?’
‘You have contacts in New York.’
‘But I don’t want a show, Timothy. It’s too much work, it’s insanely too much work. And then the critics go after you and find you provincial, which I am, and who would want to buy a portrait of someone they don’t even know?’
‘Ah,’ he said, feeling some relief. He had pressed Uncle Billy to give an art show-Andrew Gregory had framed more than twenty of the old man’s early pencil drawings of wild-life and hung them in his antiques shop. The show had been such a hit that Uncle Billy pronounced himself ‘nearabout killed.’
‘What I want to do is give the portraits away. I want Bella to have hers, she seemed so pleased with it. And William must have his, to show off sometimes, or just look at and remember how gay we were this evening by the fire. I still can’t believe how well it came off tonight-William has a very busy face.’
No art show, then. He breathed out. However…
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘You’ve never been able to fool me.’
He would like to be able to fool her on occasion, but so be it. ‘What was I thinking?’
‘That I’m going to dive into another book, and abandon you for months on end.’
‘Correct.’ And shame on him, he was two cents with a hole in it.
‘I am going to do another book. I just don’t know when.’ She gave him a profoundly steady gaze. ‘Books-that’s what I do.’
‘Of course.’
‘You do people, I do books.’
The faint chime of the clock at the end of the hall.
‘Before I retired,’ he said, ‘I think you sometimes felt abandoned.’
‘As hard as I tried not to, I did. You were always caught up in dozens of other lives, and I had to make my peace with it, knowing that’s what you do. And look what came of it-you rounded up the Barlowe children, and saved Lace’s neck-that wonderful, beautiful, talented girl who might have been ruined but for tangling yourself up in her terrible life. So I long ago gave you permission to keep doing that, and you should give me the same.’
‘I do, of course.’
‘But you give it from your head, not your heart.’
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘You take no prisoners.’
She drew his hand to her mouth and kissed it. ‘So when we grow old-what shall we do besides people and books?’
‘We are old,’ he said, rueful.
She turned over and buried her face in the pillow. ‘Speak for yourself, sweetheart.’
She had gone at William’s portrait like a hound after a hare. He felt the tight muscles in her neck and right shoulder-this was old territory, he knew it like his own flesh. How often had he rubbed the tension from the muscles that did the heavy lifting of her calling? He was ashamed of his peevishness.
‘Who’s next under your unremitting brush?’
‘Anna and Liam. That feels good; don’t stop.’
‘But they almost never sit down, and certainly not at the same time.’
‘Anna said they would do it, she seemed happy about it.’
‘You know Seamus invited us to Catharmore on Monday afternoon?’
She yawned. ‘I’ll be the nosiest guest imaginable. ’
‘No news there.’
‘And Feeney’s dropping by to see you tomorrow.’
Beneath the bed, Pud sighed. He heard birds stirring in the trees beyond the window, and soon, her whiffling snore.