The Hunter

Trey lets out a crack of laughter before she knows it’s coming. “Ah, now,” Lena says reprovingly, “he was dead serious. He’d it all thought out. He said I’d be handy with the sheep, since I know my way around livestock, and he’s great at mending things, so I’d never have to worry if a fuse went or a handle came off the door. Since I was getting too old for babies, I wouldn’t be expecting him to be a daddy; and he’s no spring chicken himself, so he wouldn’t be always at me. And most evenings he’s down the pub or else up the mountains looking for UFOs, so he wouldn’t be under my feet. His only worry was that his mam didn’t approve, but he was certain we’d get round her in the end, specially if I could make a good rice pudding. Mrs. Feeney’s a martyr to the aul’ rice pudding, apparently.”

Trey can’t stop grinning. “What’d you say?”

“Bobby’s all right,” Lena says. “He’s an awful eejit, but I can’t hold that against him; he’s been that way since we were in nappies. I said he’d made a lot of good points, but I’d got too settled in my ways to go making changes. Then I gave him a jar of my blackberry jam, for his mam to put on her rice pudding, and sent him on his way. I’d say the jam made him a lot happier than I would’ve.” She tosses Trey a pillowcase. “You can have Banjo in with you, if you want him.”

“He’ll get up on the bed.”

“That’s grand. As long as he doesn’t wet it.”

Trey says, “How long can I stay?”

Lena looks at her. “Go home tomorrow,” she says. “See what you’re dealing with, for a day or two or three. Then we’ll take it as it comes.”

Trey doesn’t bother arguing. Lena is hard to budge. “Then can I come back?”

“Probably, if you want. Wait and see.”

“I’ll wax this,” Trey says, nodding at the bed. “Needs a fresh coat.”

Lena smiles. “It could do with one, all right,” she says. “Go on and get some sleep now. I’ll get you a T-shirt.”

The T-shirt smells of sun-drying and of Lena’s washing powder, which is different from Trey’s mam’s. Trey lies awake for a while, listening to the muffled bumps and rustles of Lena getting ready for bed in the next room. She likes the width of the bed, and not having Maeve a few feet away, snuffling and kicking out and having irritable conversations with herself. Even in her sleep, Maeve is discontented about most things.

The night sounds different down here. Up the mountain, there’s always a bullying wind shoving at the loose windowpanes and making an uneasy mutter in the trees, smudging any other noises. Here Trey can hear things clearly: the crisp snap of a twig, an owl on the hunt, young foxes squabbling far off across the fields. Banjo turns over, on the foot of the bed, and lets out a deep luxurious sigh.

In spite of the bed and the peace, Trey can’t sleep. She feels like she needs to be ready, just in case. The feeling is familiar and strange at the same time. Trey is good at noticing things outside herself but uninterested in noticing things inside, so it takes her a while to recognize that this is the way she felt most of the time, up until a couple of years ago and Cal and Lena. It faded away so gradually that she forgot it, till now.

Trey is very clear on what she likes and doesn’t like, and she liked her life a lot better the way it was this morning. She lies still in the bed, listening to creatures moving outside the window and to the night wind making its way down from the mountain.

Two