“You sure you don’t want me to come in with you?” Tony asked as he shut off the engine.

“I’m sure,” Sara said.

“You sure you should be going in there at all?” he asked, his voice dropping. “Is there anything she can tell you that’d make you feel better?”

“I don’t know. But I want to see her.”

Sara undid her seat belt and opened the passenger door.

“You don’t need to wait,” she said. “It’s not that far to walk home. I can do it in forty, fifty minutes.”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “I’d enjoy the . . .”

His words faltered, and his skin bloomed red. His hand, raised mid-gesture, fell to the steering wheel. He looked straight-ahead, across the grounds to the trees beyond.

“I don’t mind,” Tony said again.

“I know,” Sara said. “But you have to go and fetch those switch plates from the supplier, right?”

He exhaled, smiled, as if released from a trap. “Yeah, I do. And then I’ve to get back to the house and get them fitted. So long as you’re sure.”

Sara climbed down from the passenger seat, her shoes crunching on fine gravel. “I’m sure. And Damien doesn’t need to know I came here. He doesn’t need to know you brought me. Even if he comes home early, for all you know, I went for a walk.”

He turned his gaze to her for a moment, then away, his fingers flexing on the wheel. “Aye,” he said. “A walk would do you good.”

“Thank you,” she said, and closed the passenger door.

Sara walked to the steps leading to the open front doors of the house and turned to watch as Tony put the van in gear. As he turned in the small car park, he glanced at her once, and once again, each look seeming like a small theft through the glass. She wondered about him, the scars on his hands, the length of his fingers. The space between his jaw and his ear, the stubble on his throat. She wondered if it would be warm against her lips.

“Stop it,” she whispered.

She hesitated at the doors, questioning why she had come here. Why did she want to see Mary, this woman she didn’t know at all, had only met for a few frightening moments the day before? Something had happened in the hallway of the house as Mary screamed and Sara cowered against the wall. A change, a shift, not so much an awakening as a return. Yes, that was it. Sara had the sense of returning to herself having been absent all those months. And it was Mary who had summoned her back. And she needed to know why.