But she didn’t deserve that.
And there was nowhere to go. Nothing to do. I could lay her out on the floor in front of the fire. I could touch her until she was the only thing that mattered. I could distract myself from my pain with her pleasure.
But she didn’t deserve that either.
She didn’t deserve a single thing that had happened to her. Least of all me.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I said.
I stayed in the shower until the hot water ran out and then I stayed in a little longer until the cold water didn’t hurt anymore. When I was numb, I turned off the water and wrapped myself in another of Sinead’s flowered towels. She had a real “woman on my own” aesthetic. I opened the bathroom door only to find Poppy just outside it.
Asleep.
Her body against the wall, her head tilted uncomfortably to the side. Her legs stretched out in front of her. Asleep against the wall when the bed was right there. The daft girl. But then I realized being uncomfortable had been the point. She’d been trying to stay awake.
What would it be like? I wondered. What would it be like to deserve her? To have her be mine? What kind of fortune would that be? The kind I couldn’t even imagine; I lacked the creativity. The understanding of that kind of luck.
Carefully, so I didn’t wake her and I didn’t hurt her arm, which she’d been abusing up in that garden, I picked her up. At the movement, my blue file folder slipped out from behind her.
Jesus Christ. It was too much to hope she had respected my privacy and not looked.
Well, half of it she already knew. The rest of it she had to be able to guess. How strange to have so many secrets known by someone else.
I set her back down in the bed. On the side table were her meds. After her work in the garden, she must have taken one for pain and that was why she was asleep.
The sooner I got her away from this place and to her sister, the better. The rest of her life was waiting for her. Even as part of me wanted to keep her here. Just a bit longer. A few hours. A day.
This time when the knock on the door came, it was a surprise, a sign I was getting too comfortable. Soft. The gun I’d left on the mantel slipped into my hand like it had been born there and again, I used the barrel to lift the edge of the curtain.
It was Father Patrick. Again. Looking furtively around him like bad guys lurked in the shadows.
Jesus. This fucking guy.
“Yeah?” I asked when I opened the door.
“I got an answer from Poppy’s sister’s number.”
Right. The words hit me like bullets. The world was in motion and I couldn’t pretend for another minute that she wasn’t in danger. I could have her or she could be safe.
There couldn’t be both.
“What did it say?”
“Just asked which village?”
“Did you answer?”
“No, look—” The father held out his phone and I grabbed it.
Which village? was in the last text bubble. And I didn’t know Zilla at all, but that didn’t sound like any loving sister I knew. I opened the phone, pulled out the sim card, and crushed it with my foot.
I’d been a fool. Hoping for the best when I knew that was a sucker’s game. I had a window, a tiny impossible window, to get Poppy new documents and a new life. And I’d been in this cottage playing pretend.
“What are you doing?” Father Patrick asked.
“Is there any place you can go for a few days?” I asked him.
“Go? No. This is my home.”
“It would be safer for you if you left for a little bit.”
“What about Sinead?’
“Sinead’s safe; I’m asking about you?”
“I’m not leaving the church, Ronan. I’m safe there.”
“The Heavenly Father isn’t going to protect you from the people who are coming this way, Father. They’ll kill you in a church as easily as they’d kill you any place else.”
“All the same,” he said. “What will you be doing?”
“The less you know, the better.”
“But Poppy . . . she’ll be all right, won’t she?’
“Yes,” I said. I’d make sure of it as it would probably be the last thing I’d do. “Go home, Father—”
I went to close the door and the father put his hand out. “I’ll pray for you, Ronan.”
“Pray for Poppy, Father Patrick. There’s no saving me.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Poppy
The next morning, there was a strange woman in the kitchen. In the kitchen I—in a very short period of time—had come to think of as our kitchen. Mine and Ronan’s.
She was short with a pile of graying red hair on top of her head, and she was humming off tune as she put wet food in the cat’s bowl. The cat was trying to climb up her leg, her purr audible from across the room.