Page 21 of Christmas with the Irish Devil
When it passes, I rinse my mouth. The water is cold and pure and tastes like copper anyway. I stare into the mirror above the sink. The woman there looks like me. Redder cheeks. Darker eyes. Same mouth that says the wrong thing when she should smile.
“No,” I whisper. My fingers clamp the porcelain until my knuckles ghost white. “No. Not now.”
The room is steady and not. I swallow, breathe, swallow again. The next wave grips and I ride it. When it loosens, I stand there, shaking, and count to ten out loud. Then to twenty. Then to thirty. It helps. A little.
Someone knocks soft on the door. Two taps. “Love?” Mae’s voice. “You need ginger tea or you need space?”
I close my eyes. I pull breath in slow. “Tea,” I manage.
“Good choice,” she says. Footsteps fade. Return. A mug passes into my hands a minute later, steam curling like a blessing. “Sip,” she orders. “Think later.”
The tea burns my tongue. It is sharp and sweet and settles into the empty places. The world climbs back into itself, inch by careful inch.
“You all right?” Mae asks from the doorway, not looking at me full-on, giving me the dignity of her profile and the hall.
“I will be,” I say. It tastes like a promise I’m not sure I can keep and still feels right in my mouth.
“Good.” She nods once. “Tomorrow you can wash dishes at the lodge if you want. The boy there is breaking plates like a Greek wedding. Cash at the end of a shift. You’ll like the noise.”
“Thank you,” I say. It is not enough. It will do.
“Sleep,” she says. “Or stare. Just don’t faint. I don’t lift.” She taps the door frame twice. Leaves me to the lamp and the frost and the ginger and my own steadiness.
I stand a long time with the mug warming my hands. I think about trains and docks and the way Declan’s voice drops whenhe says my name. I think about Moira’s calm blade of a sentence. I think about a future that is suddenly more complicated than a packed bag and a train timetable. My stomach rolls again, gentler. My throat tightens for a different reason.
I set the mug on the sill and press my palm to the cold glass. Outside, the streetlight halos the frost. A cat lopes along the fence like it owns the town. Somewhere in this house, someone laughs at a sitcom joke that isn’t funny and laughs anyway because it’s night and we are small and sometimes that’s the only way through.
The window fogs where my breath hits. I stand until the tea cools, until my knees stop shaking, until I can move toward the bed and not feel like I will fall.
Then I climb under the quilt with its bright sails, pull it to my chin, and let the room be a boat. I let it carry me. I let it hold while the tide shifts and the map in my head scrambles, and close my eyes.
9
AOIFE
Seven months later
Rockport is where I find my new home. The first winter storm slides in on quiet feet and takes the town by the shoulders. Snow flurries drift like sifted flour, the harbor bells knock once and then go still, and the gulls tuck their beaks into their feathers and pretend they never knew how to scream. I wake to the smell of yeast and cold metal, the kind of morning that makes you grateful for hot water and a working pilot light. The baby rolls under my palm as if to say, again, and I rub the curve low on my belly until the wave passes and the room steadies.
My room sits above a bakery that opens at five, which means most days I wake to the sound of trays sliding and proofing cabinets exhaling like sleepy dragons. The landlady calls me Miss Kelly and always leaves a second key on a hook inside the stairwell because she is convinced I will lock myself out, and I love her for it even as I pretend to be offended. The apartment smells like cinnamon by noon and bleach by midnight, and I have learned to treat both as comfort.
By six I am dressed in black and denim, hair twisted up, sweater stretched thin across a body that feels borrowed. I lace my boots while the kettle hums, sip tea that is more milk than leaves, and stand very still when the baby delivers a decisive kick against the underside of my ribs. “You are punctual,” I tell him, because in the quiet moments I stop pretending the baby is a question. “You are also dramatic. That is a family trait, I think.” The kettle clicks. The town breathes in. I shoulder my bag and go to work.
Salt & Sparrow sits three doors up from the water, in a long, narrow space that used to house a chandlery and now houses linen-draped tables and a bar that glows like honey under brass lamps. The sign outside is hand painted and a little crooked. In the mornings the dining room looks like it is holding its breath. By night it glows. Fairy lights run along the beam that carries the length of the ceiling. A cluster of paper stars hangs in the front window and turns slowly even when there is no draft. I did not choose the name of the place or the stars, but I have adopted both, the way you adopt a street when your feet have kept its rhythm long enough.
When I arrived I scrubbed pots for a week, then watched the line for another week, then made a soup that sold out in an hour. Marta, the owner, handed me the keys to the walk-in the following morning. She is small and precise and has a silver streak through her short dark hair that makes her look like a saint painted with better lighting. She runs the dining room with a delicate sort of ferocity and a ledger that never quite leaves her hand. She introduced me to vendors and to the oyster man and to the woman at the post office who knows how to forward packages without asking for names. She told me I could call her at any hour and meant it. She calls me Chef when she wants me to take the compliment and Aoife when she wants me to drink water.
I unlock the side door. The walk-in sighs when I open it. I stack the morning on the low boy—parsnips, fenugreek, the cod the boats brought in just before the snow, a bouquet of thyme tied with baker’s twine, a jar of lemon peel I candied yesterday because the idea would not leave me alone until I did. I set a pot on low for stock, bones first, then onions that sweat until they gloss.
By seven, the prep crew drifts in like tide. Noor ties on her apron and hums a song I do not know as she lines up potatoes the way a jeweler lines up stones. Felix bounces on his toes as if the floor owes him change. He folds towels with the fervor of a convert and flirts with the espresso machine until it agrees to be generous. Luis, still growing, still lanky, hauls crates with a gentleness that makes me proud and a speed that makes me nervous. He slices his first onion of the day and swears softly when the knife catches. I take his knife, hone it twice, hand it back, and watch his shoulders settle.
“Morning, Chef,” Noor says. She looks at my belly, not shocked anymore, just checking, the way you check the sky for weather. “How is the small boss?”
“Practicing Riverdance,” I say. “He has strong feelings about fennel.”
“Good taste,” she says. “Fennel needs opinions.”
We set the board with lists. Par-cook the potatoes for confit. Shave the fennel for salad and for braise. Zest the citrus for the duck glaze even though I tell myself I am not thinking about duck today. I write the soup on the board, parsnip and pear with white pepper and a pinch of clove. I write the fish special, cod with brown butter and caper raisin, and then draw a line through it because the scallops look better, damp and sweet, the kind of scallops that carry the smell of the boat for exactly one breath before it becomes the smell of the ocean itself. I write scallops with leek ash and persillade. I write brown breadwith seaweed butter because we always run out and because the regulars ask for it with a look that feels like a secret handshake.
