of the tapes Leonard had hired me to set running to find out who was trashing his neighborhood. The tapes were admitted as evidence, and the Guards were able to get a case brought against the men, who weren't men at all: three of them were fifteen and one sixteen. They were too young to be named, but three of them were from the extended Butler family. None showed any remorse; they all felt Leonard was reckless and foolhardy for trying to defend his property. Dave told me what the sixteen-year-old said.
'What the fuck did he have to get in our way for? I mean, he should have known. Family man, he shouldn't've been taking risks like that.'
He said that over and over again, each time with mounting rage.
I went up to see the Leonards. I went to the removal, and to the funeral. All I can remember are the weeping children clinging to their mother, and their mother not being able to walk very well, and my wondering was it from grief, or from the fact that the kids were clinging to her, and wondering why I was wondering. I still have the picture on my phone of the Leonards wishing me a Merry Christmas. I find I look at it almost every day.
KAREN TYRRELL STOOD at the far end of the room with her back to me. She faced a big sash window that looked out across a paddock to the river. She was working at something, and when I got closer I saw that it was a painting. She had a table by the window, and around it on the wall, sketches and oils of the same view: the paddock, always with two horses, and two trees just far enough apart that they never touched, and the river. The river was altered in the paintings so that its flow caught the eye: it seemed as if the horses, and the viewer, yearned to be taken by the river, to be caught up in its current, to escape, while the trees stood upright, implacable, season in, season out, shedding and sprouting and never touching. I watched for a while as she worked, very deliberate, very careful, incorporating snow into the scene as it fell in real life. I set my face to try to feel as little as possible, to think of nothing but the picture she worked on and the scene it represented. There were no horses in the paddock today, but there were two in Karen Tyrrell's painting, of course. I stood and watched that little girl work, oblivious to the horrors that had taken place in her house that day, to the legacy of horror she had inherited, stood and prayed that the Guards would get here before she asked me what had happened, and if not, that I would find the heart to know what to say.
She turned around, and I almost gasped at her tear-stained face, at the dark hair, her mother's hair, at the startling eyes, one blue, one brown, her father's eyes, at her clear, confident gaze, as if we were at the very beginning of things.
'Where's my mother?' she said.
About the Author
DECLAN HUGHES has worked for more than twenty years in the theater in Dulin as director and playwright. In 1984, he cofounded Rough Magic, Ireland 's leading independent theater company. He has been writer in association with the Abbey Theatre and remains an artistic associate of Rough Magic. He lives in Dublin, Ireland. This is his third novel.
