Chapter 15: The Couch Above the Shop

Padraig's POV

She knocked on the shop door at twenty to midnight.

I came down the back stairs in a T-shirt and found Althea on the step with a beagle, a tote bag and her car keys wrapped in her fist.

"I didn't want to call the police," she said. "He'd tell them I called first."

"Travis?"

"He's been on my porch since eleven. He's drunk, and he's crying, and he wants the house back."

"Come up."

"I can sleep in the car."

"Althea."

"I know. I'm coming up."

I put a blanket on my couch and a bowl of water down for the dog.

She sat with her knees pulled up and her shoes off and looked around my room.

It is a plain room.

A table, two chairs, a lamp, a bookshelf of paperbacks with cracked spines, and a bed in the next room with the door open.

"You live like a monk," she said.

"I live above a saw."

She laughed, and then her mouth shook, and she put the back of her wrist against it.

I did not cross the room.

I stood by the stove and made tea the way my father used to, strong enough to hold a spoon.

She took the mug in both hands.

"I stood on my porch this morning and told a stranger he'd made a felony," she said. "I enjoyed it. What kind of person enjoys that?"

"One who's owed it."

"I'm growing a baby. I'm supposed to be calm."

"You're allowed to be furious at that man."

"Are you?"

"I've been furious since March," I said. "I just never had anywhere to put it."

She looked at me for a while.

Then she moved over on the couch, and I sat, and I told myself it was only so she wouldn't have to raise her voice.

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