Page 56 of Christmas with the Irish Devil
“There is a bowl,” I say. “Don’t ruin it.”
Liam cackles. “Da can stir. But not too fast. The dough gets dizzy.”
“Noted,” Declan says gravely, and comes to the counter to stand beside me. He doesn’t crowd. He fits, his forearm brushing mine when we reach for the same measuring cup and both of us pretending we don’t feel it.
I show Liam how to whisk flour with his fingers to break the clumps. He takes it on like a scientist, murmuring to himself about “flour snow.” Declan measures the milk like the fate of empires depends on it. When I cut in the cold butter with two knives and then my fingertips, working fast so it stays in little pebbles, he watches the way my hands move and says, quietly, “You make it look like a story.”
“It is a story,” I say, tipping the buttermilk in and turning the mix with a quick hand. “Short one. About a bowl and a heat source and an arm that doesn’t quit.”
Liam sticks his floury hand into the dough. I narrow my eyes. “Gentle.”
“I am gentle,” he says, not gentle at all.
We turn the shaggy mass onto the counter and press it together. Soda bread doesn’t want kneading. It wants a firm, fast touch and then it wants to be left alone. I split the dough, roll it into ropes, and show Liam how to twist—under, over, tuck. His tongue peeks out as he concentrates. He makes three lumpytwists that are, in his eyes, masterpieces. Declan makes one twist, and it is perfect, of course, which I tell him only with a look that says,Fine. You’re allowed to be good at everything.
He leans closer. “Is that the bribe?” he asks under his breath.
“Depends,” I say. “What else is in your bag of tricks?”
For the yeasted loaf, I let Liam sprinkle the sugar that wakes the yeast. He does it like confetti. The bloom of foam feels like a small miracle every time. We stir and fold and slap the dough, the soft thwack-thwack on the counter oddly satisfying. Declan tries his hand at kneading, and I slide my palms over his to correct the pressure. The dough comes into its own, going from shag to silk, and he looks at me with that question in his mouth again, the one that doesn’t need saying. I pretend the window needs opening.
We set the loaf to rise in a bowl under a damp cloth. “Proofing, dragon-size,” I tell Liam, who nods and tiptoes around the table as if noise could scare bread back to flour.
While it rises, we play a card game that Liam has invented and whose rules change mid-hand whenever he decides. It’s called Chef’s Kiss and it involves slapping the table and shouting “Basil!” at inappropriate moments. Declan, who can suit an expression to a room in under a heartbeat, summons a look of wounded dignity when he loses, which makes Liam howl. I cheat openly and am soundly punished by my son’s sense of justice. When I throw my hands up and groan, Liam clambers into my lap and pats my cheek. “Better luck next kitchen, Mama.”
Declan’s phone trills once on the counter and then goes silent, screen facedown. He doesn’t move to check it. It buzzes later, a longer vibration that would have him halfway to a door most days. He just pivots the phone away and pours Liam more milk. I watch him, not casually. The shadow that lives in his shoulders has slipped back for an afternoon and I can see theboy he was, the one who read the names on the gravestones and tried not to make them promises.
The loaf doubles. Liam taps it with the back of a spoon, making the soft thump that marks readiness. We score it, brush with milk, sprinkle with salt, slide it into the oven on a hot stone. The smell starts as the smallest whisper and expands until the whole kitchen is a church built of yeast and heat.
When the loaf is done, it thuds hollow when I tap the bottom. We break it by hand while it’s still steaming, burn fingers, laugh, blow, hold butter knives under a trickle of hot water so the butter slides on instead of tearing. I spoon jam onto Liam’s piece and watch it melt into a jewel shine. He hums through his first bite, a sound so satisfied it makes something behind my ribs ache.
We walk to the shore after lunch, loaf crust in my pocket for the gulls who are too proud to admit they’re beggars. Liam scours the wrack line for sea glass, bringing us treasures—a rounded triangle of bottle-green, a pale, nearly clear sliver he declares “ghost glass.” Declan skips flat stones and pretends he can’t count how many times they kiss the water. His hand finds the small of my back once, quick and thoughtless, and leaves heat there like a print.
In the late afternoon, as the light goes amber and the wind sharpens, we end up on the sofa with a blanket and the book from the shelf that smells like old ink and library whispers. Declan reads in that low voice that makes vowels a place to rest. He does the banshee with restraint that still sends a pleasure shiver up my spine. Liam presses his feet under my thigh and stares at his father as if he’s meeting him for the first time again, and again, and again. Selkies, he wants. Cú Chulainn. St. Stephen’s Day wren boys with their songs that sound like warnings.
When the book marks the place with a ribbon and small boy eyelids go half mast, I take the out. “I’ll start the stew,”I say, and stand, because some tenderness is easier to bear if your hands are busy. In the kitchen, I brown cubes of beef until the pan collects fond like notes on a staff, deglaze with stout, drop in carrots and parsnips, thyme and bay, a handful of pearl onions that burst like little moons under the lid. I make a salad of shaved fennel, orange, and bitter greens because salt needs bright. Declan lifts Liam, sleeping, and carries him upstairs with the care of a man transporting an irreplaceable artifact. He comes back down with a crease at the corner of his mouth that wasn’t there before.
We eat by the window with the lamps low, just enough light to see each other’s faces and not so much that the world intrudes. He makes a show of asking for seconds as if the request is outrageous. I pass him the ladle and pretend to debate it like a courtroom drama.
Later, when Liam falls asleep again—this time a sprawl that takes up more mattress than his body has a right to—Declan and I lie on top of the covers and listen to the sea. I take his hand. He takes mine. We say nothing for a long time, because what can language do with a moment like this except bruise it.
“You’re a good father,” I whisper finally, so softly I almost don’t hear myself.
He doesn’t answer. He turns his head and looks at me as if I’ve lit a candle in a dark hallway. Then he closes his eyes, and the grip of his fingers around mine tightens for a breath before settling. It is, weirdly, everything.
Morning smells like coffee and the ends of last night’s bread toasted under the grill. Liam clatters into the kitchen wearing his knight costume over his pajamas and announces a dragon emergency, which we resolve by eating the dragon (toast) with honey until there’s only a tail left and even that is “too fierce not to bite.” I scramble eggs low and soft, fold in chives and a knob of butter at the end, and watch Declan cut fruit with a precisionthat would terrify a surgeon. We sit with plates we don’t bother to make pretty, syrup smudged at the corners of Liam’s mouth, butter pooling where the toast dips in the middle.
The house is so quiet that we hear the soft thwap when the letter slides through the slot by the front door. Not a knock. Not the heavy thunk of a courier. Just paper, and the kind of timing that feels intentional.
Liam doesn’t notice. He’s busy making an egg volcano that erupts jam. I go to stand, napkin in my hand, but Declan’s chair scrapes gently back and he’s already crossing the room. He bends, picks up the envelope, and I know before I see it that it is not a bill or a menu tucked in by the local pizza place.
The paper is thick and cream, the kind that holds a crease like a grudge. My name is written in looping, old-fashioned script with a fountain pen, each stroke pressed just a fraction too hard. Aoife Kelly. No return address. No stamp I recognize at a glance. A feeling like cold air against damp skin slides under my sweater.
“Who’s it from?” I ask, keeping my voice where the boy won’t hear anything in it.
“Funding,” he says, smoothly, without looking up. “Restaurant security. I’ll take care of it.” He breaks the seal with the pad of his thumb. Doesn’t open it. Just slips it into the inside pocket of his cardigan like a magician makes a coin disappear.
I wipe jam from Liam’s chin and press a kiss to his forehead as if that can ward off anything with ink. When I look up again, Declan’s face is easy and warm and completely unreadable, like the sea when the wind drops. He pours more coffee into my mug and tips it toward me like a promise.
