Deirdre and Declan were still talking on the phone, Declan and his endless questions, each one leading to another obscurity or memory. Lucy’s hands shook. It was hard enough remembering the early years but it was nothing compared to reliving those times after Deirdre became a teenager. All she did then was add complications to Lucy’s already stressful life. Lucy hated thinking about how hard she had to work to crush Deirdre back into place, not that she’d stay there for long. Lucy felt like going outside, grabbing the hose, pulling it in the house, over the waxed floor and hooked rugs, and pounding it into the receiver, flooding the phone line with a powerful gush of water to pound some sense into her ignorant child. Deirdre still hadn’t figured out that it’s how you live that makes you happy in the end. The details. Being happy isn’t about smiling all the time, partying ’til all hours and studying whatever you want in school, it’s about appreciating what’s been given to you.

“But I think I could come home, work on my thesis, get a little house, maybe . . . have a garden.”

“Deirdre, you can’t come home to nothing. You hate it here.”

Silence.

“But you and Dad are there.”

“Yes, we are here, and we’ve been here for our whole lives. You’re thirty years old. And anyway, you can’t plant a garden and just leave it.”

Silence on the phone and then a dry sound as Deirdre swallowed.

“I can’t stay up here.”

A detail.

“Too cold is it?”

“Yeah. Too cold. I’m homesick.”

Oh my. Details.

“You’ve just got to make a go of it.”

“But I want to come home. I want to come home. Can’t I make a go of it at home?”

“Well, you’ve spent your life since you were fifteen trying to get away from here. How do you think coming back is going to make it any better?”

“You did. You came back. You brought us all back.”

“And many’s the time I’ve wished I’d not come back, my girl.”

Declan was standing in the doorway, watching her. He was giving them time to talk one on one, but she could tell he couldn’t stand to listen to them fighting. Lucy looked at him and then away. It had been Declan’s constant drinking way back then. How he couldn’t hold a job. Everybody’s goddamn boozing had been enough to make Lucy want a drink, though she never took to it the way all the drunks around her did. She just took to the garden. But Declan’s drinking had stopped, and now he stood there in the doorway nervously, watching Lucy say goodbye to Deirdre, watching her hang up the phone and sit there staring out the window.

Later Lucy saw him watching her from the window while she worked in the garden, and she saw him come out holding her sun hat, and she felt his shadow as he stood over her.