“It’s me, Marty. I need you to bring the car around.”

“She’ll be slipping in this rain, sir.”

“I didn’t ask you if she’d be slipping, Marty, now did I? Bring her ’round in ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Marty shouted and Thomas hung up.

When he came back into the kitchen, the kettle was nearing the boil. He stripped off his shirt and used the towel on his arms and torso. He noticed how white the hairs had gotten on his chest, and that gave him a quick, mournful vision of his own headstone, but he vanquished the sentiment by noting the flatness of his belly and the hard cords in his biceps. With the possible exception of his eldest son, he couldn’t picture a man he’d fear to go against in a fistfight, even today, in his golden years.

You’re in the grave, Liam, almost three decades, but I’m still standing strong.

Ellen turned from the stove and saw his bare chest. She averted her gaze and Thomas sighed and rolled his eyes. “Jesus, woman, it’s me. Your husband.”

“Cover yourself, Thomas. The neighbors.”

The neighbors? She barely knew any of them. And, of those she did, most failed to measure up to whatever standards she clung to these days.

Christ, he thought as he went into the bedroom and changed into a fresh shirt and trousers, how did two people vanish from each other’s sight in the same house?

He’d kept a woman once. For about six years, she’d lived in the Parker House and spent his money freely but she’d always greeted him with a drink when he came through the door and she’d looked in his eyes when they talked and even when they made love. Then in the fall of ’09, she’d fallen in love with a bellhop and they left the city to start a new life in Baltimore. Her name was Dee Dee Goodwin, and when he’d placed his head to her bare chest he’d felt he could say anything, close his eyes and be anything.

His wife handed him his tea when he came back into the kitchen and he drank it standing up.

“You’re going back out? On a Saturday?”

He nodded.

“But I thought you’d stay home today. We’d stay home together, Thomas.”

And do what? he wanted to ask. You’ll talk about the latest news you’ve heard from relatives back in the Old Sod who we haven’t seen in years, and then when I begin to talk, you’ll jump up and start cleaning. And then we’ll have a silent supper and you’ll disappear to your room.

He said, “I’m going to get Joe.”

“But Aiden said—”

“I don’t care what Aiden said. He’s my son. I’m bringing him home.”

“I’ll clean his sheets,” she said.

He nodded and knotted his tie. Outside, the rain had stopped. The house smelled of it and it ticked off the leaves in the backyard, but he could see the sky brightening.

He leaned in and kissed his wife’s cheek. “I’ll be back with our boy.”