“Thanks,” I reply, uncertain and flustered. A genuine warmth bubbles through me, picturing myself back in the O’Callaghans’ house. Not as Lily’s friend, but as Roe’s girlfriend. A sudden image of myself appears in my head, sitting up in the guest bed, his body sliding in next to mine.
I look at the floor, certain that he can see me thinking this, that I have turned his innocent comment into a fantasy about sharing a bed with him. My fingers wrench at the lining of my pockets, tearing at the string.
“Sorry,” he says, “I, er … I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“No, not at all,” I bring my cold, chapped hands to my face, and realize that my cheeks are burning red. “Have you met Tutu?”
“I haven’t,” he says, bending down to scratch the dog’s ear. “What is he, labradoodle?”
“Or cockapoo. I can’t remember which.”
I can remember, obviously. He’s a cockapoo. But to contradict Roe at this point, even on the breed of my own dog, feels too dangerous. It’s like I’m defusing a bomb, and one wrong tug on a wire could send us both sky-high.
“He looks more like your family than you do.”
“Yeah,” I laugh. “Another effortlessly charming blond Viking, aren’t you, Tutes? Maybe I’ll get a gnarly old tomcat so I feel like I have a friend in the house.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Hey, I don’t want to complain about family problems in front of you.”
“Ha! Wow, you’re right. I am Mr Family Problems.” Roe’s grimace is edged with a smile. “No, but seriously. Tell me about it. Give me something to think about that isn’t Lil.”
“Well, fine. It’s my sister. Joanne? Do you remember her?”
“Of course I do. She took us to that marriage-equality rally a few years ago.”
I had completely forgotten about Roe being there. I remember standing with Jo, yelling at the idiot with the “family values” speech, but I had forgotten that Roe was sometimes adjacent to my Lily memories. He was always her gawky, moody brother. Quiet and pale. Behind his back, we called him Colin, as in, the awkward shut-in from The Secret Garden.
“Oh yeah. I forgot you were there.”
“It meant a lot to me, that day.”
I say nothing. It feels like he’s about to say something else, and I want to give him a chance.
“Anyway…” he continues. “You’re having issues with Jo.”
“Yeah. She’s just always trying to be my parent, y’know? She thinks she can tell me what to do.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. I suppose she probably feels weird about living at home still, even though she’s in her twenties. Maybe she feels … inadequate and that her life should have started by now. So she’s trying to find some weird sense of purpose by being overbearing with me. Or something.”
“It doesn’t sound like it’s ‘or something’. It sounds like that’s the whole deal.”
I shrug. “Yeah.”
“You’re pretty smart at reading people. I can see why your tarot business went so well.”
“Until it didn’t,” I finish.
“Yeah. Until it didn’t.”
I clasp at the cards in my pocket, wondering if now is the time to tell him. About the Housekeeper, about the dream, about who took Lily.
“I want to talk to you about something,” he says, just as I’m about to fish out the cards. “I have … a theory about what’s happening with Lil.”
I bite the inside of my cheek hard, and my hand clasps even tighter on the cards.
“OK. Tell me.”
“Can we walk and talk? I feel … weird staying in one space. It’s better when I’m moving.”
“Sure.”
So we walk, and he talks, and Tutu sniffs around us. Every so often I look up at him, his skin bluish, our heads almost level with one another. Girls in my class are always talking about height. All the boys from St Anthony’s, regardless of how unbelievably average or boring or stupid they are, get a free pass if they’re tall. They automatically become fanciable. Maybe that’s why Roe has never cropped up in conversations before, when games of Who Has a Hot Brother? spread through lunchtime discussions. As a non-tall non-athlete, he was probably disqualified from the jump.
But surely I can’t be the only person who noticed that he’s gorgeous? When did that happen, and where was I when it did?
“So, on Friday. You saw that weird protest, right? At Basement?”
“Yeah. Fiona and I were there when the Children of Brigid guys showed up. We were trying on dresses when they came in to complain about the window display. Then a couple of hours later, they’ve managed to summon this huge crowd. It was bizarre.”
“Right, so, you saw that everyone was really, really young, right?”
“Yes. It was crazy. Like our age. Fiona and I tried to research them but hardly anything came up.”
“Right? For some reason, Children of Brigid have managed to keep their name out of the papers, but there have been all these weird reports lately about a spike in young people going religious. Joining ‘organizations’.”
Roe puts the word in bunny ears. This literally stops me in my tracks. Organizations. Where have I heard that before?
“It’s like … it’s like there are journalists who either want to find something but can’t, or want to say something and they’re not allowed to.”
“Like Scientology? Aren’t those guys famously into hounding people with their lawyers?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Anyway, they seem to be really good at attracting young, vulnerable teenagers. I’m thinking that maybe they managed to … to lure Lily away.”
“Oh,” I say, genuinely dazzled by this reasoning. I fidget. Yes. This sounds reasonable. Far more reasonable than, say an evil child-snatching witch summoned from a tarot card reading.
I suddenly feel very silly, and very young.
“What do your parents
