Frankie looked at her detainee. Something about him put a chill in her blood. He wasn't creepy, exactly; might even come off boyishly good-looking, if he weren't so arrogant. No, the feeling was something more like déjà vu.
It hit her. She'd seen a photograph somewhere.
She cleared her throat. "You knew Aidan?"
He gave one nod exactly. That face...
"Smile," she commanded.
His eyes widened, indignant. "I will not!"
"Do it."
"No!"
"What if I agreed to let you go?"
He blinked. "You wouldn't."
"Have it your way." She let herself into the pen, locking it behind her. "Turn around."
Shaking his head, he complied, bracing his arms on the wall.
"Will I pat you down?" she whispered.
"Not if you don't buy me a meal first," he snapped.
"Which pocket then?"
"Back right," he conceded.
She fished out his wallet with the finesse of a pickpocket. "Have a seat."
"Prefer to stand."
She stepped out of the cell, turning the wallet over in her hands, but not yet opening it. "So you knew Father Aidan. Your friend Father Clifford was the priest before him."
"Your point?"
"You're a local boy." She opened it up now and retrieved the pink card inside. "Let's find out just how loc-"
She looked at the name, then the permanent address.
Her hands shook as she set the licence on the desk. She looked up to see her own predecessor, his head bent in shame.
Michael had been on this same doorstep just several weeks ago, delivering the welcome news of a benign biopsy. Siobhan had been terrified to see him, then grateful when he told her the results.
Today, she opened her door with a look neither frightened nor relieved. In fact she looked disappointed and pitying.
"You wanted to see me?" he offered weakly.
"Come in, will ya."
He didn't move. "Incision healing well?"
"Michael, for your own sake. Come inside."
He nodded, chastened.
Taking a seat on the sofa, he planned to decline the offer of a drink, but the suggestion of an anesthetic from one sort of doc to another seemed a loaded one. This might hurt a bit.
He took a nip of whiskey. "Siobhan, I'm supposed to meet someone -"
"Sure she can wait. She's only just crawled out of the grave."
He looked away, shrinking back into the cushions. "You've seen her."
"Brendan has."
"I don't blame you for being angry with me."
"I'm angry with meself, Michael." She checked her watch, then raised her own snifter. "I'd a hunch all that time, and I said nothing."
"You didn't want to stoke false hopes."
"They were hardly false!" Another nip. "Father Clifford wept in my arms. If I could've comforted him, even a few days later..."
"He was already gone a few days later, Siobhan."
The vet's face was reddening. "When did she ask you? Why'd she have to do it?!"
Michael breathed in the vapour of the spirits. "You won't believe me."
"I hardly believed you that night."
"Siobhan..."
"Who else, Michael? Any other living we looked for among the dead?"
He sighed. "Siobhan -"
Her hands were already flailing. "Because I feel half like a sucker and half like a crook!"
Michael nodded. "So do I. Believe it or not."
Siobhan sat still and looked him in the eye.
In the reception lounge, Dermot and Grainne tried to keep Kieran amused with a sketchpad and some old colour pencils. His small, pudgy fingers struggled to control the yellow as he drew, tongue between his lips in deep concentration.
"Is that a piece of cheese?" Grainne asked.
"SpongeBob!" Kieran corrected her.
Dermot stroked a dog with each hand. "He doesn't have any clothes."
"I'll draw them next."
The phone rang, distracting Oonagh. Looking on from the bar, Assumpta started in on her third pint.
Niamh was still on the bottom half of her first. "So I have to ask," she said under her breath, "were you the one who gave my father the idea?"
A gust of laughter pushed stout into the back of Assumpta's nose. It burned. She swallowed. "I was told it was a proud Ballykea tradition." The sting began to lessen. "I thought for sure when you found out I was still alive..."
"That I'd kill you anyway?" Niamh finished.
Assumpta nodded.
Niamh shrugged. "Murder you later. For now I'm too tired. Maybe even glad to see you." She paused, checking that Oonagh was still on the horn. "She know who you are?"
"...I hope not."
"Then we should take this upstairs. Lots happened."
Ambrose. Assumpta realised Niamh might well still believe herself to be widowed.
"Grainne? Dermot?" Niamh reached into her purse and produced a few notes. "Watch Kieran and the dogs for an hour?"
The older children's eyes shone. Dooleys to the last.
At Brendan's place, Peter did his best to keep Aisling in check as her father rounded up a few towels.
"Looks quite like her mother," Peter said, arranging the child on a chair. Accepting a towel, he gave his head a rub, trying to ignore the memory it inspired.
"Made a splash on arrival," Brendan smiled, draping one on his shoulders and another over his daughter's damp head. "Literally. Born in Quigley's hot tub."
Aisling giggled, looking like nothing so much as a confused nun.
Peter grinned. "Sorry I missed it."
"As were we all." Brendan looked at Peter, then back at the water. "Must be strange coming back. And what you're coming back to. Quite a shock."
Peter shuddered.
Brendan noticed. "Poor choice of words."
"Not as if it really happened," Peter muttered.
"Suppose you're right." Brendan scooped Aisling into his lap now, signalling a necessary change of subject. "So Frankie nabbed Ambrose, really?"
"She seems fit for the job. It was strange to see him get a taste of his own medicine."
"She used to be nicer."
"What changed?"
"Dunno. She's especially hard on the new priest."
Peter chuckled at this. "Fancies him?"
"I might've thought so, but it isn't like Assumpta was with you."
Peter shot a warning look.
"Ah, c'mon. No, with Frankie..." Brendan twisted his mouth, as if his tongue was searching around inside it for the right words. Or perhaps he'd eaten coconut earlier in the day. "It's almost as if she's punishing him for not being Aidan."
Peter considered this. He'd still no context for either of his successors, but he knew something of the character of the parish - its capricious loyalties, its fair-weather friends.
Brendan squeezed his brows together, pensive. "You know, Peter, I think Aidan left because so many of us punished him for not being you."
Ambrose had once or twice been handcuffed to another person. This was the first time he wasn't the one in a smart hat and uniform.
"This really isn't necessary," he told Frankie.
"Flight risk. Course it is."
"I'm no flight risk!"
Frankie snorted. They stopped outside the pub door.
"I'm back of my own free will! For the sake of my own conscience!"
"Then you'll gladly introduce yourself to the first person you see."
"Fine. If you'll unhand me."
"Inside."
Stepping into the pub, they turned to make the unlocking as inconspicuous as they could. Ambrose turned to hang up his jacket, another signal he wasn't going anywhere.
Turning to look, he noticed no one at the bar and no one behind it. From behind the kitchen door he could hear two youngish voices arguing, preteens or teenagers maybe, something about whose job it was to look after somebody.
In the lounge, though, there was someone. Sitting on the floor between two lazing dogs, working on a simple magna puzzle, was a small boy.
Before Frankie could say anything, Ambrose went to sit a few feet away.
"What'll that be?" he asked.
The boy shrugged.
"There ought to be a picture on the tin."
The boy grinned shyly. "There is no tin."
And there wasn't, Ambrose realised. The pieces were nesting in an old metal baking sheet; nearby was the zippered cloth bag they'd been stored in.
"Well then we're solving a mystery, aren't we?" Ambrose looked back at Frankie. She had taken a seat at the bar, and was pretending not to watch. He returned his focus to the puzzle.
Two small hands worked hastily to put magnetic squares in the tray; two large hands worked stealthily to put the squares into order. They worked like that in silence for several minutes; Ambrose no longer cared what Gard Sullivan was thinking.
He gave his young teammate the penultimate piece to set in place. "Do you like Wallace and Gromit?"
"Yes, very much." This with a serious nod, then a thoughtful pause. "Is this them?"
A door opened upstairs and some footsteps thundered on the stairs.
Niamh called down over the balustrade, panic rising in her voice: "Kieran!"
Ambrose looked up before he could think better of it.
More footsteps, now, and the voice of Assumpta Fitzgerald from the open guestroom: "Niamh, wait! One more thing I wanted to..." She descended halfway and saw it was too late. "...Tell you about," she added hopelessly.
Niamh staggered from the railing, backing into the corner of the landing and then sinking down against it, like a villain shot dead in a Western.
"Niamh," Assumpta breathed, kneeling beside her.
Niamh's tears were already swelling her face. "Does anyone around here ever stay dead anymore?!"
Kieran hardly noticed. He was laying the last puzzle piece where it belonged, in the space between his newfound heroes.