Cronin snatched the envelope from his hand, crushed it in his fist. “You’re the devil,” he said.
“You didn’t always think so, Tommy.” Gavigan reached into his trouser pocket and withdrew a gold watch. His lips worked through a silent counting, like a child learning to read. “There’s a train in two hours. And when you get to the city, the boys on West Fortieth’ll fix you up with a car. Nothing fancy, but”—he scanned the property—“that should suit you fine.”
“How do you know he’s in New York?”
“I’m playing a hunch,” Gavigan said. “Word is the oldest Dempsey boy lives in the city. What’s his name, now?”
“Martin.” The name jumped, unbidden. The boy’s face from all those years ago flared in Cronin’s mind like an apparition.
“Yes, Martin. A musician of some sort. Like his mother.”
His mother. Bernadette. Just the thought of her name tightened the barbed wire that wrapped Cronin’s heart. Of all the things he had done for the cause—Cronin cleared his throat. “When I find him,” he said, and paused. “What am I to do with him?”
“You bring him to me. Simple as that.”
“And then I’m done.” It wasn’t a question.
Gavigan nodded impatiently. “Isn’t that what I told you?”
THE SMELL OF hay and manure had always been a comfort to Alice—these were home smells, childhood smells, the smell of her father when he came in from the first milking—but even this early in the day, the heat in the barn was almost more than she could take. She and Henry let the calf into the yard so he could nip at the grass and find his mother for another taste of her milk. Inside the house Alice poured a glass of milk for Henry from the metal pail they kept in the icebox, and while he drank she cut a slice of bread and slowly buttered it for him. She didn’t even ask if he was hungry. Feeding him was a way to keep herself busy.
She gave the boy his plate and lingered by the table. She could just see through the dining-room window and into the driveway, where Tom loomed over the old man. She had never before heard anyone call him Tommy. It didn’t suit him; it was a little boy’s name. He had always been Tom, a name as stout as the man who wore it.
Farther up the driveway lurked a car, a black thing buffed to a high polish beneath its patina of road dirt. The old man turned and hobbled toward it. He appeared to be in no hurry. He placed his cane carefully amid the stones and soaked dirt and puddles as he went, and inched his way farther and farther from the house. Tom was already stalking down the driveway. His jaw bulged and his eyes were shut. One hand was wrapped into a fist, the other clutched something made of paper. Had he borrowed money and not told her? Had some debt suddenly come due, right here at the beginning of the summer season? He looked ready to tear the door off the hinges and she prepared herself for the sound of it, but when Tom came into the house he was calm, shuffling out of his boots and lining them up by the door. She was about to send Henry out into the yard so Tom could give her the details of their mystery guest, but he marched up the stairs without a word to her. From their bedroom came the squeal of drawers being opened, the sound of Tom’s feet in the closet. She understood that men needed their privacy but if a bill collector was making house calls, then it was no longer a private matter; it was family business.
She left Henry at the kitchen table and went upstairs. On their bed lay Tom’s battered leather valise, the only piece of luggage he’d carried when he had shown up years ago on her doorstep. Neatly piled next to it were two shirts, a necktie, two pairs of trousers, some boxer shorts. He was removing his church clothes—his one good suit—from the hanger when she came in.
“Where are you going?”
“To town,” he said. “But just for a few days.”
“Town? What town?”
“I won’t be gone long,” he said. He hadn’t looked at her, not once, since he’d come in the house.
“What did that man want?” Alice said. She crossed the narrow room in a few short steps and took hold of his arm. “Do you owe money?”
He gave a grim laugh. “I wish it were money. Money I could pay off and be done with.” Cronin kept his eyes on the stack of clothes, which he began loading into the bag.
“Tom Cronin! Didn’t we promise—”
He looked her full in the face, and something in his eyes—heat, anger, sorrow—stopped her from speaking. This man was putting the squeeze on Tom and now she was squeezing him from the other side. Alice could see he was suffering, but they had promised from the start: no secrets. It was an easy promise to keep on any given day when they sat together at dinner as a family, more than she’d ever imagined she could have, with nothing more to talk about than cows and weather and Henry starting school in the fall. But right now was when it mattered most, when you thought that telling the truth would ruin what you had built. Hadn’t she told him everything about herself, and about the husband who had left her and Henry? Hadn’t she made plain her love for Tom even though she feared she might scare him off for good? Hadn’t Tom figured it out? That secrets could destroy what they had faster than any truth could.
“Tom,” she said again. “Tell me what he said.”
“Unfinished business,” Tom said. “There’s a piece of unfinished business and it’s on me to finish it.”
“Tell him to go to hell,” Alice said. “Tell him you’re done with all that.”
“It’s not that simple. There’s a job I have to do, and then I’m coming home. And once I get back, I’ll never leave your side again.”
“But Tom—”
“You’ll get sick of me, you will.” He forced a laugh but there was no spirit in it.
Alice folded her arms and watched him pack the rest of his clothes. He left the room and when he returned she was there, arms still folded, staring at the open mouth of his valise. He set down a small canvas bag—razor, toothbrush, soap, aftershave—and went to the wardrobe against the far wall. Standing on his tiptoes, he reached one hand to the top and pawed around behind the carved parapet that rose to a peak over the doors. He pulled a stiff ladder-back chair from the corner of the room to use as a step stool, and the moment his gaze reached the top of the wardrobe, he froze. He looked first at the ceiling, then at Alice.
“Where is it?”
“Where is what?” she said.
“The box. There was a small metal box up here—a toolbox.”
“Only it didn’t have any tools in it, did it?”
He stepped down from the chair, his momentum carrying him to within inches of her. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Where’s the box, Alice?”
“You’re better than that. You know you are.”