"I do."
"Not the way you loved me."
"Who says I did?"
"You did."
"You say."
"You say." He took her shoulders in his hands.
"Off me now."
"You say."
"Off me now. Unhand me."
He dropped his forehead to the flesh just below her throat. He felt more alone than when the bomb landed on the floor of Salutation Street Precinct, more alone and more sick of his very self than he'd ever expected to feel.
"I love you."
She pushed his head back. "You love yourself, boy. You--" "No--"
She gripped his ears, stared into him. "Yes. You love yourself. The grand music of it. I'm tone- deaf, Danny. I couldn't keep up."
He straightened and sucked air in through his nostrils, cleared his eyes. "Do you love him? Do you?"
"I'll learn," she said and drained the rest of her glass.
"You didn't have to learn with me."
"And look where that got us," she said and walked out of his father's study.
They had just sat down again for dessert when the doorbell rang. Danny could feel the booze darkening his blood, growing thick in his limbs, perched dire and vengeful in his brain.
Joe answered the bell. After the front door had been open long enough for the night air to have reached the dining room, Thomas called, "Joe, who is it? Shut the door."
They heard the door shut, heard a soft muffled exchange between Joe and a voice Danny didn't recognize. It was low and thick, the words unintelligible from where he sat.
"Dad?" Joe stood in the doorway.
A man came through the doorway behind him. He was tall but stoop- shouldered, with a long, hungry face covered in a dark, matted beard shot through with tangles of gray over the chin. His eyes were dark and small but somehow managed to protrude from their sockets. The hair on the top of his head was shaven to a white stubble. His clothes were cheap and tattered; Danny could smell them from the other side of the room.
He gave them all a smile, his few remaining teeth the yellow of a damp cigarette left drying in the sun.
"How are you God-fearing folk tonight? Well, I trust?"
Thomas Coughlin stood. "What's this?"
The man's eyes found Nora.
"And how are you, then, luv?"
Nora seemed struck dead where she sat, with one hand on her teacup, her eyes blank and unmoving.
The man held up a hand. "Sorry to disturb you folks, I am. You must be Captain Coughlin, sir."
Joe moved carefully away from the man, sliding along the wall until he reached the far end of the table near his mother and Connor.
"I'm Thomas Coughlin," he said. "And you're in my home on Christmas, man, so you best get to telling me your business."
The man held up two soiled palms. "My name's Quentin Finn. I believe that's my wife sitting at your table there, sir."
Connor's chair hit the floor when he stood. "Who the--?" "Connor," their father said. "Hold your temper, boy."
"Aye," Quentin Finn said, "that's her sure as it's Christmas, it is. Miss me, luv?"
Nora opened her mouth but no words left it. Danny watched parts of her grow small and covered up and hopeless. She kept moving her mouth, and still no words would come. The lie she'd given birth to when she'd arrived in this city, the lie she'd first told when she'd been sitting naked and gray with her teeth clacking from the cold in their kitchen five years before, the lie she'd built every day of her life on since, spilled. Spilled all over the room until the mess of it was reconstituted and reborn as its opposite: truth.
A hideous truth, Danny noted. At least twice her age. She'd kissed that mouth? Slid her tongue through those teeth?
"I said--you miss me, luv?"
Thomas Coughlin held up a hand. "You'll need to be clearer, Mr. Finn."
Quentin Finn narrowed his eyes at him. "Clearer about what, sir? I married this woman. Gave her me name. Shared title to me land in Donegal. She's my wife, sir. And I've come to take her home."
Nora had gone too long without speaking. Danny could see that clearly--in his mother's eyes, in Connor's. If she'd ever held hope of denial, the moment had passed.
Connor said, "Nora."
Nora closed her eyes. She said, "Ssshh," and held up her hand. " 'Ssshh'?" Connor repeated.
"Is this true?" Danny's mother said. "Nora? Look at me. Is this true?"
But Nora wouldn't look. She wouldn't open her eyes. She kept waving her hand back and forth, as if it could ward off time.
Danny couldn't help but be perversely fascinated by the man in the doorway. This, he wanted to say? You fucked this? He could feel the liquor sledding through his blood and he knew some better part of himself waited behind it, but now the only part he could reach was the one who'd placed his head to her chest and told her he loved her.
To which she'd replied: You love yourself.
His father said, "Mr. Finn, take a seat, sir."
"I'll stand, sure, Captain, if it's all the same to ya."
"What do you expect is going to happen here tonight?" Thomas said.
"I expect to walk back out that door with my wife in tow, I do." He nodded.
Thomas looked at Nora. "Raise your head, girl."
Nora opened her eyes, looked at him.
"Is it true. Is this man your husband?"
Nora's eyes found Danny's. What had she said in the study? I can't abide a man feels sorry for himself. Who's feeling sorry now?
Danny dropped his eyes.
"Nora," his father said. "Answer the question, please. Is he your husband?"
She reached for her teacup but it tottered in her grip and she let it go. "He was."
Danny's mother blessed herself.
"Jesus Christ!" Connor kicked the baseboard.
"Joe," their father said quietly, "go to your room. And don't dare argue, son."
Joe opened his mouth, thought better of it, and left the dining room.
Danny realized he was shaking his head and stopped himself. This? He wanted to shout the word. You married this grim, grisly joke? And you dared talk down to me?
He took another drink as Quentin Finn took two sideways steps into the room.
"Nora," Thomas Coughlin said, "you said was your husband. So I can assume there was an annulment, yes?"
Nora looked at Danny again. Her eyes had a shine that could have been mistaken, under different circumstances, for happiness.
Danny looked over at Quentin again, the man scratching at his beard.