Gradually, though, her mind healed over. She started going to classes again. One night she laughed on the phone. A few weeks later, when Cal phoned to tell her that Lyle was pleading guilty, she was at a bar with Ben. Cal knew the cracks were still there and still fragile, but he also knew how strong the drive towards life is in healthy young creatures. He put his trust in that, as far as he was capable of doing.

When Donna started giving him shit, at first Cal put that down to the same thing: delayed trauma, coming out now that she had room for it. The shit in question was initially a generalized buckshot spatter of anger, but gradually, as Donna talked her thoughts into clarity, it focused in on their time in Seattle: specifically, the fact that Cal had spent most of that time tracking down Lyle. Donna felt, apparently, that he should have spent it in Alyssa’s apartment, with her and her roommates and Donna and Ben and whatever other friends had shown up to offer moral support and gossip and crap with chia seeds in it.

“What was I gonna do there?”

“Talk to her. Hug her. Just fucking sit there. Anything would’ve been better than nothing.”

“I did something. I went out and got the guy. Without me, they would have—”

“She didn’t need you out somewhere being a cop. She needed you right in that room being her father.”

“She didn’t want me there,” Cal said, baffled. “She had you.”

“Did you ask her?” Donna snapped, hands and eyebrows flying up. “Did you ever ask?”

Cal hadn’t. It had seemed obvious to him that at a time like that, a kid needed her mama with her, and that Donna would do the talking and hugging part a lot better than he would. He had gone out and brought Alyssa the best he had to offer, which was Lyle’s louse-ridden scalp. That didn’t seem like nothing to him. Without his work, Lyle would still have been on the streets; every time she went out her door, Alyssa would have been watching for him on every corner. Now, at least for the next seven to ten years, she could go out without being afraid.

Either way, this did not, at first, seem like marriage-ending material. But over the next months it led them, via a series of leaps and skids that Cal barely managed to follow even at the time, into much darker and muddier places. They argued for hours on end, late into the night, far past the point where Cal became too punch-drunk and exhausted to understand what they were arguing about. In the end Donna got mad enough that she left, which stunned Cal to the bones. He had got plenty mad at Donna, in the course of their time together, but never mad enough that it occurred to him to walk out.

The only thing he took away from those arguments with any clarity was that Donna believed he would be a better husband, and a better father, if he wasn’t a cop. Cal thought that was a load of hooey, but he found himself willing to run with it anyway. He had his twenty-five, Alyssa was out of college, and the job was no longer what it had been, or maybe what Cal had believed it was. He couldn’t tell what it was, any more, but he was becoming clearer and clearer that he didn’t like it.

He didn’t tell Donna what he had decided until he had turned in his paperwork, got it all approved and got in writing the date when he would hand in his badge. He wanted to present her with something solid, so she would know he wasn’t bullshitting. Maybe he left it too long, because when he told Donna, she said she had something to tell him, too, which turned out to be that she was seeing some guy called Elliott from her book club.

Cal didn’t reveal that part to his buddies. They would have said that Donna had been banging Elliott all along and that was why she left to begin with, and Cal knows she wasn’t. He would like to believe she was, for his own peace of mind, but he knows Donna better than that. She has her code too. Probably the thought of hooking up with Elliott never so much as crossed her mind while she and Cal were together, or she would never have laid a finger on him even after they split. He just told the guys that she had said it was too late, which she had, and the guys bought Cal more beer and they all agreed on the incomprehensibility of women.

But this, which should have provided some comfort, just made him feel worse. He feels like a fraud, because the other thing he took away from all those fights with Donna was that somehow, without ever intending to, he had let her and Alyssa down. All Cal ever wanted to be was a steady man who took care of his family and did right by the people around him. For more than twenty years, he went about his business believing he was that man. Only somewhere along the way, he fucked up. He lost hold of his code, and the worst part is that he can’t understand what he did. Everything he’s been since that moment has been worth nothing, and he doesn’t even know what the moment was.

Cal finishes his beer and heads up the fading road. Mart and Kojak come to their door in a cloud of onions and paprika. “Well, would you look at that,” Mart says happily. “It’s Sunny Jim. How’s she cutting?”

“I told Trey Reddy to get lost,” Cal says. “She won’t be coming round any more.”

“Good man yourself,” Mart says. “I knew my money was safe on you. You’ll be glad you did it in the end.” He waves Cal towards the kitchen. “Sit you down there now, and I’ll get another plate. I’m after making a chicken and bacon paella that’s only feckin’ beautiful, if I do say so myself.”

“I ate,” Cal says. “Thanks.” He gives Kojak’s ears a rub and goes home, through the cold darkening air and the smell of smoke coming from somewhere.

SEVENTEEN

When Cal walks into Noreen’s the next day, he’s expecting a frosty stare if he’s lucky, but she greets him with a block of cheddar, a long account of how Bobby came in asking for it and she told him that when his manners were as good as Cal Hooper’s he’d get the same service Cal gets and the big eejit left practically in tears, and a reminder that in a couple of weeks Lena’s pups will be old enough to leave their mammy. Cal has been in Ardnakelty long enough to interpret the nuances of this exchange. Not only does Noreen know that he’s seen the light, and approve wholeheartedly, she’s going to make sure the rest of the townland knows it too. Cal wonders whether Mart went as far as breaking the terms of his feud with Noreen to make this happen.

By way of confirmation, he tests out Seán Óg’s that evening. He walks in the door and is hit by a burst of whoops and ironic cheering from Mart’s corner. “Jaysus,” Senan says, “the dead arose. We thought Malachy had kilt you.”

“We reckoned you must have an awful delicate constitution altogether,” says the buck-naked window guy, “to be put off the drink for life by a few sips of poteen.”

“Who’s we, kemosabe?” Mart demands. “I told ye he’d be back. He didn’t fancy looking at your ugly mugs for a few days, is all. I don’t blame him.” He moves over to make room for Cal on the banquette, and signals to Barty to bring him a pint.