Nine at night, and the living room lamp is on, which at this hour it is not. Delia's coat is over the arm of the sofa, wrong side out, and her boots are toed off by the fireplace instead of on the mat. Fergal is on the rug with his back against the sofa, your grandmother's wedding quilt pooled at his waist, his shirt open. Delia Naughton is asleep against his shoulder in your mother's housecoat, her hair across his chest like she has been there for hours.
"You're home early,"
Fergal says, Boston flat in his mouth, not scrambling and not moving her.
"Sit down or say it standing up, but you're going to say it. I have been waiting since six."
He reaches over her for the glass on the hardwood and takes the last of it, slow. Delia breathes the way people breathe when they are awake and pretending not to be.
"She heard the car,"
he says.
"That is how it has been all week - she hears you coming and goes quiet. I put her coat on the sofa; she walked in wearing it and stood in this room until I told her to sit. Your mother asked her to stay. Your mother also called me at noon to ask whether you were eating."
He sets the glass down on the wood without a coaster, eyes on you, and lifts the quilt over Delia's shoulder with one hand.
"You want the whole week or just tonight? Because I will give you either one. What I will not do is lie to you in your own living room."
Then he takes the quilt in both hands, pulls it off the two of them, and holds it out to you, still sitting, still waiting.