Chapter 6: Sunday

"Yes," I said.

The crying in the background stopped. She must have been listening.

"But there are rules."

"Tell me."

"You come when I ask you. Not before, not after, not because you were in the neighborhood."

"Yes."

"You don't come upstairs. You wait at the car."

A pause.

"Yes."

"And if she asks to go home early, she goes home early. I'm not stealing her."

"I know you're not."

"Sunday at ten," I said, and hung up before he could thank me.

I didn't sleep much that week.

On Sunday, at ten exactly, a black car pulled up across Dorchester Avenue.

I watched from my window.

Cormac got out and opened the back door, and a small person in a yellow raincoat shot out of it.

It wasn't raining.

He caught her by the hood before she could run into the avenue.

He knelt down and said something to her, and she nodded hard.

He held her hand all the way across at the light, and at the shop door he let go.

Then he walked back to the car and leaned against it, and folded his arms.

He didn't look up at my window.

The bell rang downstairs and Nessa came pounding up the steps.

"Orla! Orla, I'm here! I didn't cry in the car!"

She hit me at the knees.

I picked her up. She weighed nothing. She smelled of strawberry shampoo and the leather of the car.

"Did you eat breakfast?"

"No. I was saving it for you."

I made pancakes.

My only pan was too small, so they came out the size of coasters, and Nessa decided this was on purpose.

"Baby pancakes," she said reverently.

She ate seven.

Then she took the grand tour, which took one minute.

"This is your bed?"