wishes he’d thought to bring his extra clothes out of his bedroom. He’s not planning to sleep if he can help it, in case of the various situations that might arise, but after a night on this floor he’s going to be walking like Mart.
“Tell me something,” Lena says. The firelight moves across her eyes. “Why aren’t you going to take that pup?”
“Because,” Cal says, “I’d want to guarantee that I’d take care of it right, and no harm would come to it. And it doesn’t seem like I can do that.”
Lena’s eyebrows go up. “Huh,” she says. “Here I thought you just didn’t want anything tying you down.”
“Nope,” Cal says. He watches the fire. “Seems like I’m always looking for something to hold me down. It just never works out that way.”
Lena nods. Wind, wearying to halfhearted gusts, ruffles the fire. It’s burning low again, the heart of it darkening to a deep orange glow.
From the bedroom comes a thrashing of bedclothes and a hoarse, inarticulate cry. By the time Cal’s mind works out that a homicidal intruder is unlikely, he’s at the bedroom door.
He stops and looks over at Lena. “You’re up already,” she says. “I’ll go next time.” Then she turns her shoulder to him, settling herself more comfortably in the chair, and pulls the duvet up to her chin.
Cal stands there, at the door. Another strangled cry comes from the bedroom. Lena doesn’t move.
After a moment he opens the bedroom door. Trey is up on her elbow, head turning wildly, whimpering through gritted teeth.
“Hey,” Cal says. “It’s OK.”
The kid jumps and whips round to stare at him. It takes her a few seconds to see him.
“You had a bad dream, is all. It’s gone now.”
Trey lets out a long shaky breath and lies back, wincing as her rib catches. “Yeah,” she says. “Just dreaming.”
“That’s right,” Cal says. “Anything hurt? You need more painkillers?”
“Nah.”
“OK. Sleep tight.”
When he turns to go, she moves in the bed and makes a small rough sound. He turns back and sees her good eye looking at him, shining in the light coming through the door.
“What?”
The kid doesn’t answer.
“You want me to stick around awhile?”
She nods.
“OK,” Cal says. “I can do that.” He eases himself down onto the floor and settles his back against the wall.
Trey rustles herself around so she can keep that eye on him. “What’re you gonna do?” she asks, after a minute.
“Hush,” Cal says. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
He can see her searching for the next question. To quiet her, he starts to sing, so low it’s half a hum, hoping Lena won’t hear through the wind. The song that comes out is “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” same as he used to sing for Alyssa when she was little and couldn’t sleep. Gradually Trey relaxes. Her breathing slows and deepens, and the shine of that eye fades among the shadows.
Cal keeps on singing. He used to fix up the words a little bit for Alyssa, change the cigarette trees to candy-cane trees and the lake of whiskey to one of soda. There doesn’t seem to be much point in doing that for Trey, but he does it anyway.
EIGHTEEN
The wind blows itself out, and dawn comes to the window cold and still in a clear gold-green. Cal has been dozing off and on, in between watching the fire die down and checking on Trey by the light of his phone. As far as he can tell, she never budged once all night, even when he got close enough to make sure she was still breathing.
In the first light Lena takes shape, curled up in the armchair with her face buried in her elbow, her hair a pale scribble. Outside, the small birds are starting to toss out scraps of morning conversation, and the rooks are bitching at them to shut up. Cal is sore at every point where his bones pressed into the floor, and a lot of points in between.
He gets up, as quietly as he can, and heads to the sink to fill the kettle. He’s light-headed with tiredness, but not in a fuzzy way; the chill and the dawn give everything a spellbound, airy lucidity. In his garden the rabbits are chasing each other in circles through the dew-wet grass.
Lena stirs in the armchair and sits up, arching her back and scrunching up her face. She looks baffled. “Morning,” Cal says.
“Ah, Jaysus,” Lena says, shielding her eyes. “If you’re planning on having guests on the