Niamh still couldn't look at Ambrose, couldn't look away from the fireplace.
"You know what this means," she whispered, careful not to wake the boy drooling on the toss pillow across the room. "I was never widowed. I'm a bigamist."
"Well, then, you're not divorcing. It's always been void."
"Ever the comforter," she snorted, blowing her nose, then checking in alarm that her son - their son - had slept through the honk.
Ambrose caught himself adoring this. He hung his head. "I thought at the time it was the best I could do for you. For everyone."
"I mourned you, Ambrose. Took out benefits. Handed in your badge. Vacated your house. What did we even bury?"
He was sheepish. "My weight in water jugs."
It looked like she might laugh.
She didn't. She spilled more tears. "I'll never understand."
"I wanted you happy."
"You walked out on us."
"Were you not about to do the same?"
She looked up at this. "You didn't think to wonder why?" She turned back to the fire. "Ambrose, you didn't leave so we could be happy. You were afraid of getting your heart broken, so you broke ours first."
Ambrose didn't challenge this. He pointed his own gaze at the flames.
"I have to figure out what to tell him," Niamh whispered. "'Oops, wee mistake. Your daddy's been alive all this time."
"Better now than in thirty years," Ambrose retorted, instantly wishing he could take it back.
Niamh looked mortally wounded. "Where on Earth do you get the nerve?!"
He realised she had finally turned to look at him.
He turned to face her. "I didn't mean your father, Niamh."
The dawn of it worked its way down her face. "Your father, too?"
Ambrose squeezed his eyes shut. "It's what I'm here to find out." He swallowed. "And not to become."
He waited, wilfully blind, taking in the heat of the fire and the sound of his son's tiny snore. He never imagined the one-time love of his life might reach for his hand, squeeze it in reassurance.
He opened his eyes.
She put up a sad smile. "We really were just a pair of stupid children, weren't we? When we got married, I mean?"
"I'd have grown up with you if you wanted me to," he said, turning back to the fire. "I'd have gotten smart if you'd asked."
"I thought I had." Niamh pulled her hand away. "Never mind all that now." She nodded toward the sleeping child. "He needs you in his life. We'll figure out how to explain it."
She stood and made her way to the bar. Ambrose checked behind him. Frankie had gone, an empty soup plate the only evidence she'd ever been there.
The rain was off duty, but thunderclaps persisted. Assumpta counted the seconds after each flash of lightning. The distance between sight and sound was too close for comfort.
She'd become somewhat superstitious about electricity over the years. Cry wolf once, she sometimes thought. She had nightmares. Someday it would get even with her, the divine bolt of retribution for all her sins, and no one would believe she was dead. They'd leave her to rot at the lakeshore, or on the mountainside, and when she got to her great reward it would be an endless trip down a ladder into a cellar where a wonderful man wept. She would never reach him.
Peter could be gone.
She heard Fionn whimper and realised their constitutional had gone too long for the middle-aged dog he now was.
And she hadn't thought to buy dog food.
CILLDARGAN
Father MacAnally stepped back in from the blue-grey dusk of the garden. Under the incandescent light of his parlour, he looked sallow, jaundiced even.
Perhaps it's the sight of me, thought Peter. The edges of his lips crept up at this idea. It hurt.
"How are things in Manchester?" the old man asked.
Peter did not take the bait. He stuck to the weather. "Going on autumn, same as here. Conkers'll be making a mess of things in no time."
"And the people?"
"Well ahead of the chestnut trees."
Growing weary, the parish priest went in for the kill. "And your parish? Sure Father Randall was pleased to have you back where you belong."
Peter moved one eyebrow.
Father Mac ignored it. "Can I offer you anything?" He gestured toward the wet bar with his cane.
"Allow me," Peter said. He stood at the marble-topped sideboard, hesitated when his fingers grasped the faceted crystal bottle-stopper.
"That is, if you even drink anymore?" Father Mac asked idly.
Peter spun the globe prism out of its nest. "Allow meself a pint, time to time. Been ages since I set foot in an off-licence." He poured two measures of whiskey, one generous, one scant.
The older priest took the longer pour without hesitation. "So what brings you back here after all this time?"
Peter met the old man's eyes, took two deep breaths. "Luke 15:32."
It took a moment for the old man to search his memory. Peter savoured this.
Finally, Father Mac downed his whiskey. "When did you learn?"
"Ambrose popped into my confessional."
Father Mac went from yellow to white. "I see."
"Told me about himself. His father. And Assumpta."
White to pink, now. "He's an investigator by nature. I'm not surprised he found out."
"What I want to know is how long you've known."
The old parish priest shook his head. "Have you no shame, Father Clifford?"
Peter lowered his glass, untouched, but made no move to go.
"Father, what you must understand about this parish - why I wish desperately that we could get a local curate -" he clenched a fist on the arm of his chair. "We do things differently here. Sacred covenants...they're worth protecting."
Peter shook his head, keeping his eyes fixed on his old boss. "You can't... Don't..."
"I understand you feel deeply hurt by this, Father, but did it not work? Are you not still a priest?"
Peter took to his feet now, turning for the door.
"So indeed she knew you better than you knew yourself?" Father Mac called after him.
"I never knew either of you at all," Peter murmured, stepping out into the chill of the dark.
He reached behind him for the doorknob. The voice down the foyer startled him.
"You should forgive her, Father. It's the most honourable thing she ever did."
Now Peter slammed the door.
BALLYKISSANGEL
Since the vet's visit that morning, Vincent had felt naked all over again. Avril kept acting funny around him, averting her eyes when he set foot in the same room. As if he'd yet to put on any clothes. As if he'd done it all on purpose.
As if it was his fault refrigerators were designed to make a tall man stick out his bum as he looked for a Coke. That was all he wanted right now. No rum to go with it, no woman to titillate, no sweepstakes-winning piece under the bottle cap, just the caffeine and sugar to get him through. Just the two vices he was still allowed.
Maybe this roommates idea was a recipe for awkwardness. Living with someone was necessarily intimate, no matter how pure the intentions; you would eventually see one another at your worst. Just after a workout. Just out of bed.
Just out of the bath.
And then eventually, wasn't some parishioner or other bound to ask how to find him? "Oh, playing house with the beautiful local divorcee" would not cut it.
Avril pushed past him now with a hamper of clean laundry, and no hello. She had that storm on her brow and her lips, a plain warning to steer clear.
He never had been one to heed plain warnings. "Av-"
Her bedroom door slammed. Something blew out of the hamper and landed at his feet.
"Avril, you dropped some-" he looked down, "thing."
Something lacy, in ivory satin. He shook it off his boot.
"I'll be down at the pub," he called, eager to feel the cool evening air on his face.
The mobile phone in his front pocket buzzed. He shivered. "This is Father Sheahan?"
"Father," whispered a nervous voice. "I need your help."
Vincent stuck a finger in his free ear. "Who's this? Speak up?"
"It's Donal Docherty," the caller said.
"What's the matter, Donal?"
The whisper got smaller, more childlike:
"I see dead people."
CILLDARGAN
Assumpta emerged from the supermarket - since when did Cilldargan have a Tesco? - and reached into her shopping bag for a tin of Cesar. Relieved to find Fionn still tied to the railing outside, she peeled away the lid, and the setter tucked in eagerly to the morsels and gravy.
Starvation averted, she loaded him into her rental car - no easy feat with his clumsy legs and a front seat that only leant part of the way forward. Coupes were not made for this. Low-end Belfast flats were not made for this. Maire Mellon, third-tier stage actress, was not made for this.
And yet Assumpta was. She was made for Fionn.
He poked his head between the two front seats, his nose wet, his breath redolent of the hasty supper he had taken. Assumpta chided herself for forgetting even kibble or biscuit treats on the way down; the ache of her guilt was getting heavier and colder, like clothes in a hard rain.
As if sensing her thoughts, the clouds began leaking again. She started the ignition, the lights, the wipers.
"How could I leave you, boy?" she whispered, scratching the base of a russet ear. "How could I do that?"
They set out again, back toward Ballykissangel. How could any of it have happened? How could Niamh have replaced Ambrose with someone even more obnoxious? How could late-breaking news from Kathleen have stung so much, when her unvarnished contempt had once meant so little?
Deep down Assumpta knew. Peter was gone. No knowing where. He could be in another part of the world. He could be married. He could be dead. He could be all the things she had been, trying to get over him, get him over her - only to break both their hearts. She would probably not see him again. It was only now she realised how much she had wanted that.
Coming to the old glade near the turnoff to Ballykea, she began to wonder what was overcoming her - shame, heartache, or the ghosts of those three pints? It would be dark soon. Maybe she ought to stop and think. There was no better spot for it.
Someone was there, caught in the rain. She thought how in Belfast, she would simply drive on; there was no picking up strange men on the roadside in the city, not if you valued your life. And perhaps now Ballykea wasn't so innocent anymore, either. Perhaps it never really had been.
The man was facing the statue.
He looked familiar from behind. No. It was impossible.
Ah, but what would you have done?
Oh, let me do one good deed in my stupid life.
She pulled over.
Luke 15:32: "But it was only right we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother here was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found."