Chapter 24: Three Casseroles Deep

Ronan talked until two in the morning and when he had finished I walked back to the cottage and lay on the bed in my clothes without sleeping and stared at the ceiling until the grey came up.

He had voted against Eileen in 1975. He and Fionn had stood up in the hall and asked for the vote, and the vote had gone against them by two, and the next morning Eileen had come to Ronan's cottage and told him that he would keep his cottage and his garden and his place as healer and that if he ever spoke of the vote again she would have him out of the territory before the week was out. And Fionn had lost the Beta's seat and then his life, and Ronan had kept his cottage and his garden and his silence for twenty two years, and he had told me all of it with his hands flat on the table and his old eyes dry.

"Two votes," he said at the end. "That is all it would have taken. Two wolves in that hall who were not brave enough, and Fionn would have lived and your grandmother would have had justice and this village would have been free fifty years ago."

By nine in the morning the first casserole came.

It was Hannah from Tom's house, with the baby on her hip and a dish in her hand, and she came in without being asked and put the dish on the table and stood with her back to the window and said, "You are not leaving."

"I am not leaving."

"Good." She jiggled the baby. "Because there is a thing I did not tell you when you came to my door and I have been sick about it since. The morning your sister went into the water I was down at the slip with the baby and I saw the Alpha come up from the boathouse at six o'clock in the morning and she was carrying a bucket. A metal bucket with a lid on it. And she took it up to the hall and she did not come out for an hour." Hannah's sharp face was very sharp. "I have thought about that bucket every night for a month. There was no reason for a bucket. There was nothing in that boathouse that needed a bucket."

"Did you tell the sergeant?"

"I told no one. I told Tom and Tom said it was for the ashes and I should not be talking about it." She shifted the baby to the other hip. "I am telling you now because you are the only one who has not told me to be quiet."

The second casserole came at eleven. It was Eileen from the post office, and she came in with her coat still on and put the dish down beside Hannah's and said, "I have been thinking about the letter. The one with the Athlone postmark. I have been thinking about it and I have remembered a thing. The day your sister came in for it she was not alone. There was a woman waiting for her outside on the street with her back to the window and I did not see her face and I did not think anything of it at the time, but when your sister came out she said a word to the woman and the woman turned and walked off toward the hall."

"What did the woman look like?"

"Tall. A dark coat. That is all I have." Eileen looked at the window and then at me. "There is a thing I should tell you and it is not a nice thing. When I went home from the shop that morning I told my sister about the letter and the woman outside and my sister said, Eileen, you should not be talking about that, and I said, why not, and she said, because the Alpha hears things." Eileen's face was unhappy. "I did not believe her. I thought it was a thing old women say. And then the next day the Alpha came into the post office and she asked me how my sister was and she said, I hear you have had a letter from Galway. And I said, no, and she looked at me for a long moment and she said, that is good, Eileen, because letters from Galway can be a great deal of trouble."

The third casserole came at two. It was Nora from the shop, and she came in with her coat buttoned and her face arranged in kindness and put the dish down on the table beside the other two and looked at them and said, "I see the whole village is feeding you."

"You are the third today."

"Then you will have enough to last the week." She sat down without being asked and folded her hands. "I am going to say a thing to you and I want you to listen carefully, because I have been told to say it and I am not going to pretend I have not been told." She looked at me. "The Alpha wants you to know that the offer from last night still stands. She wants you to know that it will not stand after Saturday. And she wants you to know that a woman who is alone in a cottage on this shore road at night is not as safe as a woman who has taken the Alpha's offer and gone home."

I looked at her. Her face was kind and her hands were folded and her coat was buttoned and the fear came off her in a wave that made the back of my throat go tight.

"You are the informer," I said.

Nora's hands went white on the table. "I am not."

"You brought me a casserole the day after the funeral and you told me not to go up to the high ground on Saturday and you said the Alpha has ears in every kitchen. And then you went home and you told her what I had asked you and she came to my door that night." I sat down across from her. "I am not angry with you. I have been a guard for fifteen years and I know a frightened witness when I smell one. But you are going to tell me the truth now, and then you are going to go home, and then you are going to remember that you have a daughter and that your daughter had a thing happen to her that my sister helped with, and you are going to ask yourself which side you are on."

Nora's face worked. The baby's mother and the post office woman were long gone and the kitchen was quiet except for the clock.

"My daughter was taken by the Alpha in 1989," she said. "She was fifteen and she was caught shifting without leave and the Alpha had her in the hall for three days and she came home and she was never the same. Siobhan was the one who sat with her. Siobhan was the one who got her a place in Galway and a job in a shop and got her out of this village." Nora's eyes were wet. "I have been carrying casseroles to the Alpha's hall for eight years because I am afraid of her, and I have been carrying casseroles to your sister's cottage for eight years because I love her, and I cannot be both things at once and I have been trying to be both things at once and it is tearing me in half."

"Then stop." I took her hands. "You do not have to stand up in the hall and denounce her. You do not have to do anything that will put your daughter at risk. But from now on when the Alpha asks you what I have been doing you are going to tell her that I have been sitting in my sister's cottage drinking tea and crying. Can you do that?"

Nora looked at me. Then she nodded and wiped her face with the back of her hand and got up and went to the door.

"Niamh," she said. "There is one thing more and then I will go. The Alpha did not send me here this afternoon. The Beta did. He came to the shop this morning and he said, go up to the cottage and tell her the offer will not stand after Saturday." She looked at me. "I said, why do you not tell her yourself, and he said, because she will not listen to me, and I have said a thing to her that I cannot take back and I do not know how to stand in front of her again."

She went out. The door closed. I sat at the table with three casseroles and the whole village in my head and the bond in my chest going tight and slack and tight again.

I found him on the pier at four o'clock. He was standing at the end of it with his hands in his pockets and the wind coming off the water and the twenty boats knocking against the wall behind him, and he did not turn round when I came along the planks.

"Declan."

"I know what you are going to say."

"I am not going to say anything. I am going to stand here." I stood beside him at the end of the pier and looked out at the water. "You sent Nora to me with a message you should have brought yourself. You told me on the hill that you could not be my reason, and you were right, and I have been thinking about it all day. I do not need you to be my reason. I have a reason. I have a sister in the ground and a grandmother in a cache and a village that has been lied to for fifty years and a list of names in my pocket that goes back to 1969." I turned and looked at him. "But I am not going to stand at the end of this pier and pretend that the bond between us is not there. It is there. It is in my chest every hour of the day and it is stronger when you are near me and it does not care what either of us wants. So I am going to ask you one question and you are going to answer it honestly and then we will know where we are."

He turned round. His grey eyes were very tired and the wind was pulling at his auburn hair and there was a smudge of engine oil on his jaw.

"Ask it," he said.

"On Saturday night, when the Alpha takes the Mary Rose out and calls the pack to listen, will your wolf tell her what is in my head?"

Declan looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, "Yes."

"Then I am going to need you to be somewhere else."

"I know." He said it quietly. "I have been thinking the same thing since the hill. If I am on that shore road on Saturday night with the pack, I will tell her everything. It is not a thing I can choose. So I will not be on the shore road. I will be up on the high ground with the ring and the charter, and I will keep my mind on the water, and I will not come down until the moon is over."

"Good."

"And Niamh." He took a step toward me. "There is another thing. You asked me on the hill what I was afraid of and I told you about my father and I did not tell you the whole of it. I am afraid of the bond because it is the one thing in my life that I did not choose and cannot control, and I have spent twenty years being a man who controls everything because the one time I did not, my father went out in a boat on a day when the sea was wrong." He reached out and put his hand on my arm and the spark came through my coat and up my arm and I felt it go through him too. "So I am going to say the thing I should have said on the hill. I am not going to be your reason. But I am going to be beside you, if you will have me, and I am going to do it without asking the bond for permission."

The wind came up off the water. His hand was warm on my arm. I stepped in and put my hand on the back of his neck and pulled his mouth down to mine.

It was not a gentle kiss. He made a sound against my mouth and his hands came up and one of them went into my hair and the other flat on my back and the bond in my chest went from a rope to a fire and I forgot where the pier ended and the water began. He tasted of salt and tea and the cold air and I could feel his heartbeat through his coat and the heat of him and the smell of pine and wet wool and engine oil, and his mouth moved down to my jaw and my throat and I put my head back and looked at the grey sky over the sea and did not care about anything else in the world.

And then, from the headland, a howl came up over the water.

It was long and high and it was not a hunting howl. It was a wolf standing on the rock at the top of the headland where I had first seen Cormac, and it was calling, and it went on calling until the boats in the harbor knocked against the wall.

Declan lifted his head. His face had gone white.

"That is Cormac," he said. "That is my son, and he is on the headland, and he is calling for the pack."