Page 32 of One Night Only
“Where are we going anyway?”
“It’s not far,” he says. “About fifteen minutes.”
I glance at the dark sky outside. “Walk?”
“Drive. Shall we? The sooner we go the sooner we get back.”
Now, what’s that supposed to mean? That he doesn’t want to spend time with me? That he’s only doing this because he feels he has to? Not that I should care. I consider the possibilities as I follow him to a small red car in the parking lot. It’s too scratched to be a rental. Inside, it’s not exactly dirty but there are crumbs in the grooves of the seats, an old coffee cup in the holder. Signs of life. It smells overwhelmingly of the cheap pine air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror.
“Expecting something fancier?” he asks as if reading my mind.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“This is Connor’s car. He’s kindly letting me borrow it while I’m here. Though I bet he’s regretting that now.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I’m just saying it as I see it,” he says innocently. “He’s very smitten with you.”
“No one is smitten.”
“Keeps asking me what my intentions are.”
I laugh once, despite my best efforts to contain it. Declan smiles as he pulls out of the hotel grounds.
“Nah, he’s a good lad,” he says. “Annie told him to keep you company, so that’s what he’s doing.”
I glance at him, surprised. “She told him that?”
“Of course,” he says. “You’re here alone among all these strangers. Rowdy strangers at that. She wants to make sure you’re looked after.”
I turn back to the window, touched she would think of me during one of the biggest weeks of her life.
We’re silent for the next few minutes, the radio doing the talking for us. I try to focus on our surroundings, at the countryside that had fascinated me only a few days before but I’m supremely aware of Declan beside me. Supremely annoyed by how relaxed he is. There’s no hint of tenseness in his shoulders, no gripping the steering wheel, no further glances to me. He even points out the odd thing as we pass. Casual, banal life points such as the school he went to, the field his uncle owns. As if he’s taking his sister-in-law’s friend out for a nice drive.
Perfectly polite. Just like I hoped.
It irritates the hell out of me.
“And if you go that way,” he says, nodding to the trail opposite as we take a fork in the road, “you will eventually come to my parents’ house. I keep asking if they’re going to leave it to us in their will, but I doubt we’ll get much for it now.”
“You casually discuss your parents’ death with them?”
“We have a very comfortable relationship with death in this country. A good funeral is the only entertainment a lot of people get in these parts.”
“Sounds morbid,” I mutter.
Declan only shrugs.
“Would you sell it if they did? The house, I mean.”
“Maybe.”
“But you wouldn’t move back.” It’s not a question.
He glances at me. “Why not?”
“Because you haven’t lived here in years.”
