faint and very sweet: a girl’s voice, singing. The steed my true love rides on… A tingle ran up my arms. I wondered then and I wonder now whether Frank was bluffing; whether he was actually ready to pull me out, or whether he knew, before he offered, that by this time there was only one answer I could give.
“No,” I said. “I’ll be OK. I’m staying.”
With silver he is shod before…
“Fair enough,” Frank said, and he didn’t sound one bit surprised. “Keep that gun on you and keep your eyes open. Anything turns up, anything at all, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, Frank. I’ll check in tomorrow. Same time, same place.”
It was Abby who was singing. Her bedroom window glowed soft with lamplight and she was brushing out her hair, slow, absent strokes. In yon green hill do dwell… In the dining room the guys were cleaning the table, Daniel’s sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows, Rafe waving a fork to make some point, Justin shaking his head. I leaned against the broad back of a cherry tree and listened to Abby’s voice, unfurling out under the window sash and up to the huge black sky.
God only knew how many lives this girl had left behind to find her way here, home. I can go in there, I thought. Any time I want, I can run up those steps and open that door and walk in.
Small cracks. On Thursday evening we were out in the garden again, after dinner-huge mounds of roast pork and roast potatoes and vegetables and then apple pie, no wonder Lexie had weighed more than me. We were drinking wine and trying to work up the energy to do something useful. The strap had come off my watch, so I was sitting on the grass, trying to reattach it with Lexie’s nail file, the same one I had used to turn the pages of her date book. The rivet kept flying out.
“Dammit to hell and blast and buggeration,” I said.
“That’s a highly illogical thing to say,” said Justin lazily, from the swing seat. “What’s wrong with buggeration?”
My antennae went up. I had been wondering if Justin might be gay, but Frank’s research hadn’t turned up anything one way or the other-no boyfriends, no girlfriends-and he could just as easily have been a nice sensitive straight guy with a domestic streak. If he was gay, then there was at least one guy I could cross off the Baby- Daddy list.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Justin, stop flaunting,” Rafe said. He was lying on his back on the grass, with his eyes shut and his arms folded behind his head.
“You’re such a homophobe,” said Justin. “If I said ‘Dammit to fuck’ and Lexie said ‘What’s wrong with fucking?’ you wouldn’t accuse her of flaunting.”
“I would,” said Abby, from beside Rafe. “I’d accuse her of flaunting her love life when the rest of us don’t have one.”
“Speak for yourself,” Rafe said.
“Oh, you,” said Abby. “You don’t count. You never tell us anything. You could be having a torrid affair with the entire Trinity women’s hockey team and none of us would ever know a thing about it.”
“I have never had an affair with anyone on the women’s hockey team, actually, ” Rafe said primly.
“Is there a women’s hockey team?” Daniel wanted to know.
“Don’t go getting ideas,” Abby told him.
“I think that’s Rafe’s secret,” I said. “See, because he keeps up this mysterious silence, we all have this image of him getting up to unspeakable things behind our backs, seducing hockey teams and shagging like a bunny rabbit. I think actually he never tells us anything because he never has anything to tell: he has even less of a love life than the rest of us.” Rafe’s eyes slid sideways and he gave me a tiny, enigmatic grin.
“That wouldn’t be easy,” said Abby.
“Isn’t anyone going to ask me about my torrid affair with the men’s hockey team?” asked Justin.
“No,” said Rafe. “Nobody is going to ask about any of your torrid affairs, because for one thing we know we’re going to hear all about them anyway, and for another they’re always boring as shit.”
“Well,” said Justin, after a moment. “That certainly put me in my place. Although coming from you…”
“What?” Rafe demanded, propping himself up on his elbows and giving Justin a cold stare. “Coming from me, what?”
Nobody said anything. Justin took off his glasses and started cleaning them, too thoroughly, on the hem of his shirt; Rafe lit a cigarette.
Abby cut her eyes at me, like a cue. I remembered those videos: There’s an understanding there, Frank had said. This was Lexie’s job, breaking tension, coming in with some cheeky comment so everyone could roll their eyes and laugh and move on. “Ah, dammit to hell and blast and nonspecific fornication, ” I said, when the rivet went shooting off into the grass again. “Is everyone OK with that?”
“What’s wrong with nonspecific fornication?” Abby demanded. “I don’t like my fornication specific.”
Even Justin laughed, and Rafe snapped out of his cold sulk and balanced his smoke on the edge of the patio and helped me find the rivet. A shot of happiness went through me: I had got it right.
“That detective showed up outside my tutorial,” Abby said Friday evening, in the car. Justin had gone home early-he had been complaining about a headache all day, but to me it looked more like a sulk, and I got the sense it was aimed at Rafe-so the rest of us were in Daniel’s car, going nowhere on the highway, gridlocked in with thousands of suicidal-looking office workers and underendowed prats in SUVs. I was breathing on my window and playing tic-tac-toe with myself in the steam.
“Which one?” Daniel asked.
'O’Neill.”
“Hmm,” Daniel said. “What did he want this time?”
Abby took his cigarette from between his fingers and used it to light her own. “He was asking why we don’t go into the village,” she said.
“Because they’re all a bunch of six-toed halfwits down there,” Rafe said, to the window. He was next to me, slouching deep in his seat and jiggling one knee in Abby’s back. Traffic always drove Rafe nuts, but this level of bad mood strengthened my feeling that something was up between him and Justin.
“And what did you tell him?” Daniel asked, craning his neck and starting to edge into the next lane; the traffic had moved an inch or two.
Abby shrugged. “I told him. We tried the pub once, they froze us out, we didn’t bother trying again.”
“Interesting,” Daniel said. “I think we may have been underrating Detective O’Neill. Lex, did you discuss the village with him at any stage?”
“Never thought of it.” I won my tic-tac-toe game, so I put my fists in the air and did a little victory bop. Rafe gave me a sour look.
“Well,” Daniel said, “there we are. I have to admit I’d more or less dismissed O’Neill, but if he picked up on that without any help, he’s more perceptive than he looks. I wonder if… hmm.”
“He’s more annoying than he looks,” Rafe said. “At least Mackey’s backed off. When are they going to leave us alone?”
“I got stabbed, for fuck’s sake,” I said, injured. “I could’ve died. They want to know who did it. And so do I, by the way. Don’t you?” Rafe shrugged and went back to giving the traffic the evil eye.
“Did you tell him about the graffiti?” Daniel asked Abby. “Or the break-ins?”
Abby shook her head. “He didn’t ask, I didn’t volunteer. You think…? I could phone him and tell him.”
Nobody had mentioned anything about graffiti or break-ins. “You think someone from the village stabbed me?” I said, abandoning my tic-tac-toe and leaning forwards between the seats. “Seriously?”
“I’m not sure,” Daniel said. I couldn’t tell whether he was answering me or Abby. “I need to think through the possibilities. For now, on the whole, I think the best plan is to leave it. If Detective O’Neill picked up on the tension, he’ll find out about the rest on his own, as well; there’s no need to nudge him.”
“Ow, Rafe,” said Abby, reaching an arm around the back of her seat and smacking Rafe’s knee. “Knock it off.”
