Peter felt Assumpta strain against his clutch. He somehow summoned the willpower to loosen it, let her run from him once again.
She did not do that.
Rather, she spun to face him, returning the embrace. The sudden pull of a much-shorter person took him by surprise, making him stumble. A few collaborative clumsy staggers had her back against the side of the car.
He felt breath moving through her, moving faster now, pressing her glorious living body against his. He felt the warmth that only comes from a beating heart. Kissing her cheek, he found tears. His own rushed out to meet them.
She was whispering the apology, over and over, pleading. He couldn't bear any more of it; he closed in on her mouth with his own.
Desire had become unrecognisable in the last three years, turning from its familiar human form into a yearning for mortal oblivion to swallow him, body and soul. And he'd begun to suspect it really would: the deaths of his parents had left him desperate for faith, clinging to it madly, turning ever toward the light. The loss of Assumpta had blocked that light entirely - a wall all the smells and bells and rosaries in the world couldn't bring down. He'd been a ghost in a mask.
Doubt was gone, now. And hunger was back, as surely God must have intended it. Assumpta was alive.
Now Peter was alive again, too.
Did anything else matter? He freed one hand to fumble behind her for the door pull, not sure if it was the front or the rear door he found. She moved aside just enough to allow him to open it, then pushed him through.
Not resisting, he discovered the rear seat was still folded forward from when he'd loaded the suitcases. He watched her clamber in after him, closing the door and crawling into place beside him. Was it really going to happen like this...in the boot of an aging hatchback, with the smell of takeaway still thick in the air?
He drew her tight against him once more, and heard the owl cry out again. He bent forward into her neck, the only place he'd kissed her before, and felt the same pulse beating wild against his lips.
This time she didn't push away, didn't apologise. She didn't run.
"I love you," she whispered. "All along. Every day. That never stopped."
BALLYKISSANGEL
Dead tired and overfull with spaghetti, Niamh dismissed the jealous pang in her gut as the Garda car dropped Ambrose off just ahead of her in front of the pub. Would crossing the street have been exhausting? She watched now as Frankie made the turnaround to park in front of the house; another twinge of possession came through.
"Can we go in now?" Kieran yawned from the back.
She sighed and released the childproof lock.
Ambrose hadn't missed this. He was waiting at the pub door. He held it open.
Niamh greeted him with a nod, but not with a look. "How's your mother?"
"It was right to visit."
"Step into the light?"
His yes was a whisper.
Niamh nodded again, uneasy. "Kieran, up to bed, now." But Kieran appeared starstruck at the sight of Ambrose.
From the end of the bar, Siobhan and her old flame caught Niamh's eye.
Niamh felt something like a sense of duty push her fatigue aside. She drew her room key out of her purse and handed it to Ambrose. "You put him to bed, then. Tell him a story."
Ambrose gulped. "What-?"
"Sure you've had plenty of time to come up with a few!" Niamh shooed him toward the stairs and made her way, once again, to the bar.
Siobhan gave the gooseberry an annoyed glare.
Niamh ignored it. "Evenin', Siobhan. Do us a lager, will y'Oonagh?"
CILL NA SIDH
After dropping an insistent Kathleen off at home, something dawned on Donal:
He had remembered Liam's drug advice backward.
It was mushrooms you should try in the beauty of nature; it was marijuana you should stay put in the sitting room with some potato crisps and inane late-night telly. That prank hour with the naughty rabbit-people would've done nicely.
It was too late. Father Mac had already made off into the woods, cane in one hand, and Donal's mini-torch keychain in the other.
"Come back, Father!" Donal called out, but the old man wasn't moving at the normal speed of stoned. He was moving as if he were twenty years younger - as if the brownies had erased all the pain in his miserable old bones.
The bed of the old hatchback was neither roomy nor plush, and its borrowing occupants were no teenagers. The clumsiness as Peter pulled her onto him had been less like that of total inexperience, Assumpta thought, than that of lankiness in so small a space.
As for the decidedly adult freedom not to rush home for bed-check...well, it came with its own complications. The folded-down, felt-upholstered seatback was beginning to sting her palms and the caps of her knees. It called to mind another time and place, another night. Crawling on the cellar floor, touching, shivering; fumbling blind for that awful fuse, but now...
Now the lights were on inside. Now they had only to find the key.
The awkwardness of the boxy old car was nothing to the fine-motor challenge of shirt and cardigan buttons. The chill and the odour of Chinese leftovers faded as the warmth and scent of his skin became the whole world.
What was her sacrifice, if it hadn't made him happy? What were those vows, but unwittingly living a lie? What could be more perfect atonement than loving away all the pain she'd never meant to cause? What...
What was the glaring white light in the window?