Page 35 of Irish Vice

Aiofe positively dances as she leads me down to the nursery. There’s a table in the corner, where I know she does her schoolwork. The chairs are sized for a child. I take the one closest to the window. Aiofe sits with her back to the door.

She sets her stuffed rabbit on the edge of the table, taking care to arrange his head over his floppy paws. “Does the rabbit have a name?” I ask.

Her eyebrows meet in a frown. I can practically see the gears turning inside her head as she fights to make herself understood. I think about the child I met three months ago, the one who simply stared at me when I greeted her, seemingly deaf as well as mute.

She reaches under the table and slides open a drawer. Her sketchpad is inside, along with a box of crayons. She turns to a blank page and prints her letters with care: C-O-I-N-Í-N.

“The rabbit’s name is Coinín?” I pronounce it like it looks—coin-in.

Aiofe’s lips twist in a frown, but she gives a nod. That must be her way of saying I’m close enough.

I think about Braiden’s pet name for me—piscín. Kitten. The name he called me as I fled the party. It has the same ending as Aiofe’s word. “What does it mean?” I ask. “Coinín?”

She taps the rabbit.

“I know it’s his name. But does it have a meaning?”

She taps the rabbit more emphatically, raising her eyebrows as if I’m a very slow student. “Oh!” I finally say. “It means rabbit?”

She nods happily, and then she starts to draw on the page above her precise letters. Coinín’s round body quickly takes shape, along with his four legs. It only takes me a moment torealize she’s making a portrait. She pays extra attention to the ears, capturing the folded one perfectly.

When she’s finished, she catches her bottom lip between her teeth. She leans over the sketchbook like she’s peering into a microscope. Her fingers move very carefully, separating the page from the book. When she’s done, she hands me the picture.

“It’s mine?” I ask, surprised and truly touched.

She nods vigorously.

“Will you sign it for me? Like it’s a painting in a museum?”

I’m pretty sure she’s never seen a painting in a museum, but she takes the picture back and adds her name to the lower right corner: Aiofe Máiréad Mason.

“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you very much.”

Fairfax clears his throat from the doorway, and I wonder how long he’s been standing there with his tray. “Here you go,” he says. “Tea and biscuits.”

He’s rounded up formal china and delicate lace napkins. He pours for us like he’s a butler, placing a silver strainer across Aiofe’s cup first, then mine. The tea is a grassy yellow, and it smells like apples rolled in straw.

The delicate cookies are homemade—shortbread and lemon snaps and ginger cakes. I can’t imagine him serving any of them to the brutes downstairs.

As if my thought has summoned them, there’s a shout from the ballroom. The chant of “Drink, drink, drink!” trembles through the floor.

“What do you have there?” Fairfax asks, as he steps back from his pouring duty.

“A picture of Coinín,” I say. “Aiofe drew it for me.”

“You’re a lucky one,” Fairfax says. “It’s not everyone who gets a signed portrait of Coinín.”

Cuh-neen. Swallowing half the first syllable. Lesson delivered without a fuss, without a hint of condescension.

“It’s not everyone who gets a Fairfax, watching out for her,” I say.

He simply nods, then says to Aiofe. “Finish your tea, love. Then brush your teeth. I’ll be up to tuck you in in half an hour.”

She shakes her head and sets her face in a dull frown, a remarkably accurate portrait of Grace Poole.

Fairfax says, “Grace is with Miss Birte tonight. They’re upstairs, away from the noise of the party. You’re stuck with me, lass. Now, drink up.”

Aiofe starts to nibble on one of the ginger cakes.