Page 73 of Christmas with the Irish Devil

Her gaze moves to Liam again. He bangs the cars one more time and then, feeling the current without knowing its name, places both toys on the table like offerings. “Gran,” he says, and the word spears me, and it spears her. She does not let it show.

“It is a cold thing,” she says, eyes on me again, “to forgive strangers and damn your own.”

“It is a colder thing,” I say, “to watch your own cut a child’s shadow and call it weather.”

We hold there for a long breath. The men at the mantel look at the fire because they are not idiots. Aoife’s fingers worry the hem of her sleeve once and then still.

Mother stands. The chair legs whisper against the rug. She smooths her skirt and lifts her chin again, and I see the girl she was when Boston was harder and more honest about it. “If I walk out that door,” she says, “I do not come back the same woman.”

“If you walk out that door,” I say, “you have a chance to come back at all.”

She takes one step, then another. At the doorway, she stops beside Aoife. The two of them share a look I cannot read. Not hatred. Not mercy. Something older. Something that women carry in rooms like this while the men shout themselves hoarse.

“Raise him to look for danger where it hides,” my mother says to Aoife, and the advice is both gift and curse. “Learn the names of your neighbors’ dogs.”

“I know them already,” Aoife replies.

Mother leaves the room. Keane follows. Two men go with them and do not return. The door settles.

I let the breath out and feel the house shift. Portraits come down within the hour. Two go to the attic. One goes to a fire that burns very hot and very fast in the old brick pit behind the stables. The staff do not look at me while they carry the frames. The walls look bare and young without the old eyes.

Liam tugs my sleeve. “Can we plant somethin’?” he asks. He says it like plant and fix are the same verb.

“After lunch,” I tell him. “Wear boots.”

In the afternoon, I take a spade to the garden by the south wall, the one that gets winter light and holds it like a secret. The earth there is dark and mild under the frost, because the last gardener loved it. I turn a strip and kneel and let the soil stain my palms. Cold, soft, alive.

Aoife finds me with a tray of tea I did not ask for, the pot wrapped in a towel, steam curling like a promise. She sets it down on an upturned crate and looks at the row I have marked with sticks and string. She sees rosemary and bay, thyme for roasted winter vegetables, mint for summer water and bruised cocktails, sage because every kitchen wants a leaf that smells older than it is.

“This place has too many ghosts,” I say, voice low because the wall is listening. “We need to plant something that lives.”

She steps into the bed without caring about her shoes, crouches, and presses a small rosemary start into my hand. “Then give this one a home,” she says. “It knows how to survive bad winters.”

We work until the light dies. Liam brings two smooth stones from the drive and decorates the edges of the bed like a mason. He is careful with where he places each one. He hums under his breath the way he does when he is drawing.

That night the house sleeps differently. Doors settle. Floors relax. The portraits do not watch because they are in the dark.In the morning, for the first time in years, the rooms smell more like bread and herbs than beeswax and smoke.

The next morning, I ask her if she will marry me.

A year later, she becomes my wife.

32

EPILOGUE

LIAM

Christmas morning, two years later

I wake up before the sun because my toes feel fizzy. Not the bad kind of fizzy, the good kind, the kind that saysget up, there are secrets downstairs. The hallway is cold and I like how the wood feels on my feet. My pajamas have dragons on the sleeves. They look like they are flying when I run.

The big tree is lit already. I think it sleeps with its eyes open. The fire makes a sound like someone clapping softly. I can smell bread and cinnamon, and also the dog. He is under the table pretending to be a rug. He is not very good at it because his tail thumps when he dreams.

Mam and Da are on the couch under the red blanket with the tassels. They fell asleep there. Their legs are tangled. Mam’s hair is in Da’s collar and his hand is on her hip like it is the only place it is allowed to be. I tiptoe past because I do not have to, but I like the game where the house is quiet and I am the only one who knows it is awake.

In the kitchen there is a plate with a fox on it. My tutor left gingerbread for me and wrote a note in curly letters that saysFor Liam, from the kitchen sprites. I take two pieces, even though Icould take five. I eat them by the window where the garden is, the one Da planted when I was five. The rosemary is big now. It smells like winter and pizza.

There is a little violin under the tree. It has a ribbon on it that looks like a river. I know it is for me because Mam said I could try something that sings with strings if I kept practicing my scales on the piano. I pick it up very carefully, the way Da showed me with the big bottles in the wine room. It feels like it wants to be held by someone small.

I tuck it under my chin and pull the bow across the strings the way the teacher did in the video. It makes a noise that sounds like a door being polite. Da stirs on the couch and says a word in Irish that means he is impressed even when he is sleepy. Mam groans and pulls the blanket over her face and says I am not allowed to be a genius before breakfast.

I smile because I have already eaten two gingerbread foxes and no one knows yet. The dog knows. He comes over and licks my toes until I fall onto my bottom and laugh so hard the house laughs with me.

This is our house, I think. And I really like it here. Especially because the dog still will not stop licking my toes.