Page 26 of The Island

They were marched into the farmhouse.

The kids, Heather saw, were wilting fast. Olivia was wearing her jeans and a Grimes T-shirt. Owen was wearing heavy green cargo shorts with his usual red hoodie and Adidas sneakers. She’d pulled on DL 1961 jeans and a black T-shirt. Tom was in thick chinos and a white long-sleeved button-down oxford shirt. All of it was sartorially appropriate for Washington State heat but not Australia heat.

“Over here!” Kate said and forced them onto a sofa.

The room began to fill up with people.

Matt, Ivan, Jacko, and another brother, Brian, squeezed onto an opposite sofa. Matt had taken off his cowboy hat. He and Jacko and Brian had all gotten rifles. Kate was standing by the window with her shotgun. No one was speaking. It was a large space diminished by the accumulation of generations of furniture and knickknacks. There was a fireplace with a fire actually burning in the grate, in this heat. On a mantel there were dozens of family photographs; more on the wall with ancient yellow wallpaper that was peeling in the corners. Pictures of the farm in better days. Pictures of Ireland. Postcards from Sydney and London. Years of baking summers had cracked the floorboards and filled the cracks with dead bugs and garbage. The sofas were leather, patched with duct tape, covered with blankets. Seemingly the whole O’Neill clan had come in here to gawk at them. Men and women with guns. Kids who had been giggling now hushed. A dog sitting between Matt’s legs looked nervously up the stairs.

A grandfather clock was ticking impossibly slow seconds.

No one seemed to know what was going to happen next.

The temperature was unbearable.

Heather was squeezing Tom’s hand on one side and Olivia’s hand on the other. Normally Olivia didn’t let Heather touch her. At least Tom seemed to be doing a little better. He had lost that terrible pallor, and his eyes were back to normal.

“What time does Danny get back?” Jacko asked Matt in a low voice.

“Won’t be back until after six,” Matt said.

“Right…” Jacko said.

The stairs creaked.

Creaked again.

Everyone looked up.

Heather saw a pair of feet at the top of the landing. The feet took a step down and became a pair of ankles and then calves. A powerful woman in pink slippers and a pink dress was making her way down the stairs with the assistance of a stick on one side and a little girl on the other. She was in her seventies, pale, with an eye patch over her left eye. She was wearing a bright copper-colored wig. There was something terrifying about her that had nothing to do with the way she looked. Heather had massaged plenty of older clients, many of whom were physically imposing. This was something different. This woman changed the gravity well of a room. Electrified it. Heather could tell that everyone in here was afraid of her, and that made Heather afraid of her too.

She came down the staircase slowly.

Very slowly.

Two kids scrambled up from a rocking chair near the fire. Matt turned the chair so it was facing the room, not the fireplace. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, the woman wheezed heavily and then continued her progress across the living room like an old pope arriving at an inquisition.

Matt helped the woman into the rocking chair and when he sat down again, the dog hid under his legs.

A noise like a broken lawn-mower engine escaped from the woman’s mouth, and a child brought her a glass of a clear liquid that she knocked back with satisfaction.

This, evidently, was Ma.

“They’re the Americans?” Ma said in a rattle that seemed to come from the wrong side of the grave.

“Yeah. Americans,” Matt said.

“I’ve known a few Yanks. Terry said they were all right in Vietnam. Ones I met were OK. What does he do for a living?” Ma asked.

“He’s a doctor. Dr. Thomas Baxter. He looks after people’s knees. He’s got ID. It checks out,” Matt said.

“How much money in the wallet?”

“Four hundred bucks.”

“And how much did you scumbags get already?” Ma said.

“Nine hundred,” Matt replied sheepishly.