She puts on her anorak and I watch her go down the yard. I wonder if I should go out to help but I come to the conclusion that I’d only be in the way. I sit in the armchair and look out to where a watery light is shining off the zinc bucket in the scullery. I could go to the well for water for her tea. It could be the last thing I do.

I put on the boy’s jacket, take up the bucket, and walk down the fields. I know the way, could find the well with my eyes closed. When I cross the stile, the path does not look like the same path we followed on that first evening here. The way is muddy now and slippery in places. I trudge on along toward the little iron gate and down the steps. The water is much higher these days. I was on the fifth step that first evening here, but now I stand on the first and see the surface of the water reaching up and just about sucking the edge of the step that’s one down from me. I bend with the bucket, letting it float then sink, as the woman does, but when I reach out to lift it another hand just like mine seems to come out of the water and pull me in.

It is not that evening or the following one but the evening after, on the Sunday, that I am taken home. When I come back from the well, soaked to the skin, the woman takes one look at me and turns very still before she gathers me up and takes me inside and makes up my bed again.

The following morning, I do not feel hot, but she keeps me upstairs, bringing me warm drinks with lemon and cloves and honey, aspirin.

“ ’Tis nothing but a chill, she has,” I hear Kinsella say.

“When I think of what could have happened.”

“If you’ve said that once, you’ve said it a hundred times.”

“But—”

“Nothing happened, and the girl is grand. And that’s the end of it.”

I lie there with the hot-water bottle, listening to the rain and looking through my books, making up something slightly different to happen at the end of each, each time.

On Sunday, I am allowed to get up, and we pack everything again, as before. Toward evening, we have supper, and wash and change into our good clothes. The sun has come out, is lingering in long, cool slants, and the yard is dry in places. Sooner than I would like, we are ready and in the car, turning down the lane, going up through Gorey and on, along the narrow roads through Carnew and Shillelagh.

“That’s where Da lost the red heifer playing cards,” I say.

“Wasn’t that some wager?” the woman says.

“It was some loss for him,” Kinsella says.

When we get to our lane, the gates are closed and Kinsella gets out to open them, then closes them behind us, and drives on very slowly to the house. I feel, now, that the woman is trying to make up her mind whether she should say something to me, but I don’t really have any idea what it is, and she gives me no clue. The car stops in front of the house, the dogs bark, and my sisters race out. I see my mother through the window, with what is now the second youngest in her arms.

Inside, the house feels damp and cold. The lino is tracked over with dirty footprints. Mammy stands there with my little brother, and looks at me. “You’ve grown,” she says.

“Yes,” I say.

“ ‘Yes,’ is it?” she says, and raises her eyebrows.

She bids the Kinsellas good evening and tells them to sit down—if they can find a place to sit—and fills the kettle from the bucket under the kitchen table. We move playthings off the car seat under the window, and sit down. Mugs are taken off the dresser, a loaf of bread is sliced, butter and jam left out.

“Oh, I brought you jam,” the woman says. “Don’t let me forget to give it to you, Mary.”

“I made this out of the rhubarb you sent down,” Ma says. “That’s the last of it.”

“I should have brought more,” the woman says. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Where’s the new addition?” Kinsella asks.

“Oh, he’s up in the room there. You’ll hear him soon enough.”

“Is he sleeping through the night for you?”

“On and off,” Ma says. “The same child could crow at any hour.”

My sisters look at me as though I am an English cousin, coming over to touch my dress, the buckles on my shoes. They seem different, thinner, and have nothing to say. We sit in to the table and eat the bread and drink the tea. When a cry is heard from upstairs, Ma gives my brother to Mrs. Kinsella, and goes up to fetch the baby. He is pink and crying, his fists tight. He looks bigger than the last, stronger.

“Isn’t there a fine child, God bless him,” Kinsella says.

Ma pours more tea with one hand and sits down and takes her breast out for the baby. Her doing this in front of Kinsella makes me blush. Seeing me blush, Ma gives me a long, deep look.

“No sign of himself?” Kinsella says.

“He went out there earlier, wherever he’s gone,” Ma says.

A little bit of talk starts up then, little balls of speech they seem to kick uneasily back and forth. Soon after, a car is heard outside. Nothing more is said until my father appears, and throws his hat on the dresser.

“Evening, all,” he says.

“Dan,” Kinsella says.

“Ah, there’s the prodigal child,” he says. “You came back to us, did you?”

I say I did.

“Did she give trouble?”

“Trouble?” Kinsella says. “Good as gold, she was, the same girl.”

“Is that so?” Da says, sitting down. “Well, isn’t that a relief.”

“You’ll want to sit in,” Mrs. Kinsella says, “and get your supper.”

“I had a liquid supper,” Da says, “down in Parkbridge.”

I sneeze then, and reach into my pocket for my handkerchief, and blow my nose.

“Have you caught cold?” Ma asks.

“No,” I say, hoarsely.

“You haven’t?”

“Nothing happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t catch cold,” I say.

“I see,” she says, giving me another deep look.

“The child’s been in bed for the last couple of days,” Kinsella says. “Didn’t she catch herself a wee chill.”

“Aye,” Da says. “You couldn’t mind them. You know yourself.”

“Dan,” Ma says, in a steel voice.

Mrs. Kinsella looks uneasy.

“You know, I think it’s nearly time that we were making tracks,” Kinsella says. “It’s a long road home.”

“Ah, what’s the big hurry?” Ma says.

“No hurry at all, Mary, just the usual. These cows don’t give you any opportunity to have a lie-in.”

He gets up then and takes my little brother from his wife and gives him to my father. My father takes the child and looks across at the baby suckling. I sneeze and blow my nose again.