Chapter 160: The Table Set for Three

The fish pie was on the counter in the shop and the pot of tea was on the stove and the whole of the village came in through the door.

Nora had been up since five and the whole of the shop smelled of pastry and onion and the fire and there was a loaf on the board and a dish of butter and a jug of milk and the whole of it was the first thing that shop had put out since the fire in the back room in June.

"There is a thing about a fish pie," she said, "that I have been making it for thirty years and that there is not a wolf in this village who has not had a slice of it at a wake or a wedding. And there is a thing about a shop that has been shut since June. It is a shop that is going to have to learn how to be a shop again." She put the pie on the counter. "So I am going to start with the thing I know."

The whole of the shop went up.

And then the whole of the village came in. It came in through the door and it filled the shop and it spilled out onto the step and into the lane and the whole of it was Tom and Hannah and the baby and Arthur with his stick and the woman with the grey plait and the fireman from Galway and Owen with his cap in his hand and the whole of the eleven and the whole of the nine.

Cormac came in with Mary and the whole of them sat down on the floor and on the counter and on the step.

And then my sister came in with her grey coat over her arm and her gold hair going grey at the temples and she stood in the door and looked at the whole of it and did not say anything for a moment.

"There is a thing about a shop," she said, "that I have been in this village for fifteen years and I have been in this shop a thousand times and I have never once been in it when it was full." She came in and sat down on the floor by the counter. "And there is a thing about a shop that is full of a pack. It is not a shop. It is a kitchen."

The whole of the shop was quiet.

And then Nora cut the pie.

The whole of it went round the shop on plates and on the back of a book and on a piece of newspaper and the whole of it was the sound of forty wolves eating a fish pie in a shop in a village on a coast.

And in the middle of it Declan came and sat down on the floor beside me with a plate in his hand.

"There is a thing about this morning," he said. "It is the fifteenth of July and the fleet is out and the ring is on your finger and the pendant is on your neck and the whole of the file is in London. And there is a thing about a wolf who has been the Alpha of this pack since the middle of the night and who is sitting on the floor of a shop with a plate of fish pie." He put his hand on my knee. "She is not a woman from Dublin and she is not a claimant. She is a wolf in a pack and she has a plate of fish pie and there is not a thing in the world that is going to be able to take it off her."

I put my hand over his.

"There is a thing about the cottage on the shore road," I said. "It is empty and it is going to be empty and there is not a wolf in this village who is going to be able to walk past it. And there is a thing about a cottage that a village cannot walk past. It is a cottage that is going to have to be lived in by a wolf who is not afraid of it." I looked at him. "So I am going to live in it. With a fire in it and a boat at the wall and a man who comes in from the harbor at six o'clock for his tea. And there is a thing about the whole of it that I have been thinking about since the ridge. It is not going to be a cottage with two wolves in it."

Declan looked at me.

"Cormac," he said.

"Cormac." I turned round and looked across the shop at the boy who was sitting on the floor with Mary beside him and a plate on his knee and his grey eyes on the whole of it. "There is a thing about a boy who has been in the hand of the Alpha since he was fourteen and who has been told his whole life that he is a thing that was broken in 1994. He is going to need a room and a door that shuts and a wolf who is not going to ask him a question. And there is a thing about a cottage on a shore road with a fire in it. It has a second room and a bed in it and there is not a wolf in the world who is going to be able to say the boy is not welcome."

The whole of the shop was quiet.

And then Cormac got up off the floor and came across the shop and sat down on the floor in front of the two of us.

"There is a thing about a boy who has been in the hand of the Alpha since he was fourteen," he said. "He has been a thing that was used and a thing that cut a line and a thing that stood on the rocks and did nothing. And there is a thing about a boy like that. He does not believe that a cottage on a shore road is a thing that is going to be for him." He put his plate down on the floor. "But there is a thing about a wolf with gold hair who has been in this village for a month and who has done the whole of it. She does not say a thing she does not mean."

I put my hand out.

"Then there is a thing I am going to say and I am going to mean it," I said. "There is a cottage on the shore road and it has a kitchen and a fire and two rooms upstairs and a boat at the wall. And there is a table in the kitchen and it has three chairs at it and there is not a wolf in the world who is going to be able to say the third chair is not for you."

Cormac looked at me for a long moment.

And then he took my hand.

The whole of the shop was quiet.

And then the whole of it went up and the whole of it was the sound of forty wolves in a shop with a fish pie and a pot of tea and a thing that had been said out loud in front of the whole of the pack.

We went up the shore road in the afternoon and the whole of the village came with us and the whole of it was the sound of the sea and the gulls on the pier.

The cottage was the same as it had been on the first night. The flowerpot was by the door and the key was under it and the whole of it was the smell of woodsmoke and salt and the whole of it was the same as it had been when I came up the path in the rain in June.

I put the key in the lock and the door opened and the whole of the cottage was the same and the whole of it was different.

Declan went in first and put the lamp on the table and the fire was laid and Cormac came in after him with a bag over his shoulder and a thing in his hand that he had brought from the harbor office.

It was a photograph in a frame. It was a woman with auburn hair and grey eyes and she was standing in front of a cottage with a baby in her arms and there was a date on the back of it.

"That is my mother," Cormac said. "Not the one on the hill. The one who was in the harbor office and who had a weakness of the heart and who was pushed off a cliff in 1981. I have had it in a drawer since I was fourteen." He put it on the mantelpiece. "And there is a thing about a photograph that has been in a drawer for eight years. It is a thing that a wolf puts on a mantelpiece in a cottage with a fire in it."

The whole of the cottage was quiet.

And then my sister came in with her grey coat over her arm and stood in the door.

"There is a thing about a cottage on a shore road," she said. "It has a kitchen and a fire and a table. And there is a thing about a table. It has chairs at it and the chairs are for the wolves who are going to be in the room." She put her hand on the door. "I am not going to be at that table tonight. I have been in this village for fifteen years and I have been in Athlone since April and there is a thing I have to do before I sit at a table. I have to go up to the high ground and stand in the ring of stones and say the whole of it to a woman who has been in the ground since 1981." She put her hand out. "But there is a thing about a table in a cottage on a shore road. It is not going anywhere."

I took her hand.

"Then there is a thing I am going to say," I said. "And it is the last thing and then we are going to have our tea. The whole of it has been in a file and a court and a box and a shawl and a boot and a book and a hall and a slip and a shore. And there is a thing about a wolf who came to this village in June to bury a sister and who found a pack. She is not a woman from Dublin and she is not a claimant and she is not a thing that came to a village to do a thing. She is the Alpha of this pack and she is a wolf who is going to be at a table in a cottage on a shore road with the man she has chosen and the boy who is going to have the third chair." I put my hand on the table. "And there is a thing about a table with three chairs at it. It is not a table that a pack is going to be able to say is not a table."

We sat down at the table in the kitchen with the fire going and the lamp on and the whole of the sea outside.

Declan put the pot on the table and Cormac put the plates out and I cut the bread and the whole of it was the three of us and the fire and the cottage and the shore road.

And then Cormac said, "There is a thing about this table that I have been thinking about since the shop. It has three chairs and there is a fourth chair against the wall. And there is a thing about a fourth chair. It is not for a wolf who is in this cottage. It is for a wolf who is going to come in through that door and sit down at this table and be in this pack."

The whole of the kitchen was quiet.

Declan looked at the fourth chair.

"There is a thing about the fourth chair," he said. "It is for the pack. It is for the wolf who is going to come up that path in the rain and put a hand on the flowerpot and find the key. And there is a thing about a key under a flowerpot. It is the first thing in the whole of it and it is the thing that the whole of it has been about."

I looked at the table with the three chairs at it and the fourth against the wall and the whole of the firelight on it.

The whole of it had started with a key under a flowerpot and a note on a table that said you're home.

I was home.