The Luna They Burried

last six hours driving from Dublin and I was not ready to be dry yet. The pot was terracotta, cracked along one side, and I had lifted it

I stood on the step a while longer, listening to water drum the gutter. A seagull screamed somewhere over the harbor. In the corner

and closed the do

on over the table, the little brass thing with the green shade that Siobhan had bought at a car boot sale in Galway the year she decided she was going to stay

nd found the back of a chai

elf, iron, grey with rust at the edges, stamped with a curling fish and a number. A fishing weight, the kind the co-op

t this one

of interview rooms teaches you. The handwriting was Siobhan's, sloped and hurried and pr

re h

n, and the boats were all tied up and knocking against the wall. I counted them without meaning to. Detective's habit.

behind me and every ha

ey under the po

astered flat from the rain, a jacket dripping onto the flagstones. Grey eyes, watchful, set deep in a face that had spent a lot of years squin

ple knock

n the yard staring at the buoy." He nodd

close enough that I had not noticed my own hand movin

," I said. "The

ye

ay how. Siobhan had mentioned him the

epped out of the doorway and I got the full measure of him. He was tall and built like a man who worked with his hands, not a man who went to a gym

you find he

de of it, and there was nothing between us but the note and the weight and the smell o

e thought

. Four times. Yo

of bottles, and I had a memory of a phone lighting up face down on a counter and me not turning it o

out," I said. "Why wo

" He was watching me the way a man watches a dog h

sister in a year." I heard how that sounded. "Not prope

eight to it that made me want to fill it

last. "Father Byrne will do the mass

oice came out thinner than I expected. "She used to sa

ight. His hand was broad and there was a callus on the side of his thumb, and I watched him do it and felt something in my chest pull tight, a tug beh

," I

cket and his voice had changed. "I will take

it

N

beat, of the rain, of the small space between us narrowing. "This is my sister's house. That is my sister's table. Put the weig

wanted to laugh, and then he did not look like

y m

n this town is a good man. He is also a man who has lived here his whole life, and there are questions he knows better than to ask." He took a breath.

that the sea, and I had the sudden, ridiculous notion that I could smell whether he was lying. I did not know how. I knew the t

aid. "I have had a year of people telling me

s grey eyes were not cold at all, they were tired, and there was something behind the

says I hav

t quietly. "She had the sea

y face heat, and I hated that. He was a stranger. He was a

ut," I

was a grey curtain and the smell of the sea came in. "The lock on the back door

amp hissing and my hands shaking, and I could not tell whether it was the grief or the man or the fact

threw the bolt, which was stiff

ver been tidy enough to manage. I checked the windows one by one, and at the last one, the little one that faced the yard, I stopped. The yard was dark and the buoy was a black

lf standing on

lver in the moonlight, and it was not moving. It was looking down at the village. At the cottages, at the ha

no wolves in this part of Ireland. There had never been wolves in this part of Ireland. My father had trapped rabbits an

hape of its jaw and the length of its legs and the way it stood

and the headland was only rocks and grass and

ok the note off the table and I read the two words aga

re h

stood in my sister's kitchen with the note in my hand and I was certain of exactly one thing, and it was not a

d been look