little four-stall stable with a low ceiling and no electric lights. One of the stalls is occupied by damp goats, another by chickens, and one by a gray cob gelding who stretches his head over the unbarred stall door when Dove comes in. Dove flattens her ears back by way of an ungrateful hello, but I put her in the stall next to him anyway. I want to spend more time with her, but it feels rude to linger while Beech stands there illuminating the stall with the light. So I just pat her neck and tell Beech thank you. He grunts and points back toward the house with his flashlight.
Back in the house, Gabe and Peg Gratton are talking easily while Tommy Falk peers under the lid of a pot on the stove. I don’t see Finn.
The kitchen itself reminds me of the butcher shop, if the butcher shop was made into a house. Despite the dark outside, the kitchen is all bright whitewashed walls and pots and knives hung up on them. The image of clean whiteness isn’t at all diminished by the fact that the floor is filthy with footprints. There are knickknacks on a half- dozen shelves, but they’re entirely different from our sort of knickknacks: crude wooden statues that could be either horses or deer, a broom of grass with a red ribbon tied around it, a piece of limestone with the name
“They’ll have your room,” Peg says to Beech as soon as he comes in. In the light, I can see that Beech has grown into a great, ruddy creature who clearly takes after his father. He looks a little like he’s made of wood, and because wood is fairly inflexible, it takes him awhile to change his expression. When he does, it’s not pleased.
“They never will,” Beech replies.
“And where, then, would you like them to stay?” Peg Gratton asks. It’s strange to see her in this context, not in the butcher’s as someone who will cut your heart out, not in our yard telling me not to race, not in a headdress cutting my finger with a knife. She is smaller, somehow, neater, though her ginger curls are still unruly as ever. I’m bewildered at how easily she and Beech and Gabe go around and around about where we will sleep, and I realize that some of the time that Gabe was gone must have been spent here. Maybe a lot of it. It makes me realize we’ve come here because this is where Gabe feels safe. It makes me feel strange and sad, like we’ve been replaced with another family.
“Where’s Finn?” I break in.
“Washing his hands, of course,” Gabe says. “It may be decades.”
I feel weird about that, too, the rather free admittance of Finn’s foibles, though I’ve always thought it was something private, something only Connollys knew about. Gabe didn’t say it like he was making fun of Finn, but it feels like it.
“Where is the toilet?”
Tommy, not Peg or Beech, gestures toward the stairs on the other side of the kitchen. It’s like it’s everyone’s house, not just the Grattons’. Feeling sulky, I head out of the room. There’s a tiny, dark hallway with three doors off it up at the top of the stairs, but only one of them has light coming from underneath it. I knock. There’s no response until I say Finn’s name and then, after a pause, the door opens. It’s a tiny room, just big enough for a tub and a toilet and a washbasin if they’re very good friends and don’t mind rubbing shoulders, and Finn sits on the toilet with the lid down. There are big manly footprints on the small tiles of the floor.
I shut the door behind me and check to make certain that the tub is dry before stepping into it and sitting down.
“He comes here all the time,” Finn says to me.
“I know,” I reply. “I can tell.”
“This is where he’s been.”
The betrayal sits thick between us. I want to say something to make this better for Finn, who idolizes Gabe, who would do anything for him, but I can’t think of anything.
“Do you think Puffin’s dead?” Finn asks.
“No, she got away,” I say.
He studies his hands. They’re a little chapped on the knuckles from all the washing he’s been up to. “Yes, I thought so, too.”
I look away, to the shiny handles of the bathtub, so shiny that they remind me of the grille of Father Mooneyham’s car. “So,” I say, “one day?”
Finn nods solemnly. “One day. The worst will be early tomorrow morning, I think.”
“Sure, of course. How do you know?”
He looks impatient. “Everything. If people used their eyeballs, everybody would know.”
The door swings open then, without a knock, and Gabe stands in the doorway. He looks in better humor than I’ve seen him for a long time. “Is it a party you’re having in here?”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s started in the tub and then it spread to the loo. All that’s left is the sink if you want it.”
“Well, everyone’s wondering where you are. There’s lamb stew in the works, but only if you come out of the toilet.”
Finn and I exchange a glance. I wonder if he’s thinking what I’m thinking: that Gabe can’t just pretend that there’s no bad feeling, that he hasn’t been gone, that things will just go back the way they were. I thought, before, that a word from him would be enough, but now I know that I want him to court my good graces. If I can’t have a groveling apology, I don’t want anything at all.
As we head down the stairs, Gabe says, “You have the couch, I’m afraid, Finn, because you’re the shortest.”
“Under whose measure!” I say.
Gabe shrugs. “Well, you’re the shortest, technically, but Peg thinks you should be in a room with a door. So we’re in Beech’s room.”
“Where is Beech, then?”
“He and Tommy are on a mattress in the living room. Peg says it’ll work this way.”
Back in the kitchen, the boys are loud and talking over each other. Beech and Tommy have ahold of something and are trying to keep it out of each other’s reach, and a sheepdog’s appeared from nowhere and is trying to get it as well. Peg holds a spoon in one hand and a cat by its scruff in the other. She’s swearing at both of them.
“Put that out,” she says to Gabe, and he takes the cat from her and puts it on the other side of the door. She scowls at me. “I don’t cook. Cats make it worse.”
Before I have a chance to answer, Gabe asks, “Where’s Tom?”
It takes me a moment to realize that he means Thomas Gratton. I’d never considered that Thomas Gratton became Tom under his own roof.
“He went out to see if the Mackies were doing all right. Beech, get out. All of you, out. Go into the living room while I get this done.
Beech and Tommy obey and take their noise with them, and Finn files after them, interested because of the appearance of the dog.
I turn to go, but in the doorway, I hesitate and look back over my shoulder. Peg Gratton has turned back to the great black range to stir the pot, and Gabe stands just behind her, saying something into her ear. I just catch him saying “strong enough” and -
“Puck, catch it!” Tommy shouts.
I turn my face toward the living room in time to catch a sock full of beans in the mouth.
Beech guffaws but Tommy looks aggrieved and apologizes. The collie is now frolicking around my feet with great friendliness, very eager to have the sock, and I realize that this is what Beech and Tommy were fooling around with earlier.
“You should be sorry,” I say sternly to Tommy, who still looks beaten, standing on the other side of the worn green couch that will be Finn’s bed. And then I hurl the sock back to him.
Pleased to be so easily forgiven, he grins and whips it without pause to Beech, who loses it to the dog. Tommy has no qualms about making a fool of himself, scrabbling after the collie as she leads him on a merry chase, and even Finn’s laughing. I find myself wondering what drives Tommy to leave the island; he doesn’t have the brooding of Gabe or the sulkiness of Beech. I’ve never seen him when he doesn’t seem perfectly content, perfectly a part of island life. On the floor, Tommy snags the sock, finally, and around and around it goes to all of us, even the dog again, until Finn says, “Where’s Gabe?” and we realize that he hasn’t come out of the kitchen.
I start toward the kitchen, but Tommy takes my arm. “I’ll go.”
