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“What happened anyway?” one asked. “Your two brothers in there. You looking like you walked the length of the country to come see them.”

“Our mother died.”

“Ah,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”

At the bus station, Mac went straight to the men’s toilet and threw up. When he got home, so many hours later that the sun was beginning to lighten the sky, Cathal was out, had been out for over a day, and Nuala was focused on the small boys.

“Your father said he had a job after delivering the mail but—” She seemed to think about how to ask. “Would you know how long that usually takes?”

“Has it been longer than you expected?” Mac asked.

“It has. I expected him last night, but it’s now morning.”

It was mean, and he knew it was mean, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Check the pub, Nuala. Check the roads. Check any old place because any place is as likely as any other.”

Nuala drew back as if seeing him for the first time. “Your father said you were a good boy. That you’d help me. And you’re to call me Mammy.”

ALL NUALA HAD TO DO to get the small boys to love her was pull them onto her lap and pretend to get their names mixed up. All she had to do was give them a thick smear of butter on a piece of bread, tickle their bellies, and she had them. But they were easy to love with their fat cheeks and big heads. They threw their arms around her and pressed their hot faces to her hip and she said they were little dotes. She was kind to them. Mac looked for signs that she was not, but she was. She poured love on them from the moment they woke up in the morning until the moment they were asleep. They never asked for their mother. Nuala taught them songs in English that Mac had never heard. Next thing they were going around using turns of phrase that had never been uttered in their village before.

When the hour came to eat, Nuala doled out each portion and locked the rest away in the trunk where their mother used to keep linens. She kept the key hidden or else they’d eat too much, she said, and there’d be none for the next meal. The amount of food they ate at mealtimes was unacceptable, and it was high time there was some order put on them instead of the chaos they were used to.

“I’m hungry,” Rian announced one day, when the food she’d put out for breakfast was gone. She’d been with them for almost a month.

“You’ve had enough,” she said. Cathal was down at the post office already; the creak and clang of his bicycle on the road had woken Mac before dawn.

“I know there’s more,” Rian said. “There were two full loaves of bread on the sideboard not ten minutes ago.” He walked over to her precious trunk and kicked it. Then he lifted his booted foot and tried to break the lock.

“Stop that,” she shouted at him, and looked at Mac, but Mac was tired, and he was hungry too. Their mother used to let them eat whatever was available. The next meal was a problem she’d face once the time came. In the five months since her death, Rian’s clothes seemed a size too small. The delicate bones of his wrists and ankles peeked out from the cuffs of his shirts and pants.

Rian went out to the garden and Mac thought he’d walk off his tantrum, but instead he returned with a hammer. “What are you doing?” Nuala demanded. But he ignored her and started firing on the lock, hitting it with all his strength, telling his brothers to get out of his way.

Nuala pushed Rian down, hard, and the hammer slid across the floor. Then she lifted her hand high into the air and struck him in the face. She would have hit him again but Mac grabbed her wrist. “Let go of me!” she shouted, and Mac did. She glared at him but didn’t try to strike Rian again. At their feet, Rian turned away so they wouldn’t see him cry.

Later, when it was time for tea, Nuala gave a bun and a boiled egg to every child at the table except Rian. Mac didn’t want his. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of eating it, and just as he went to offer it to Rian, Rian grabbed Thomas’s. But Nuala was fast. She hit Rian once again, and the bun fell out of his hand. As if nothing happened she picked it up from the floor and handed it back to Thomas.

“You can’t do that,” Mac said.

“I can’t stop a thief?” Nuala asked.

“I hope you die,” Rian said to Nuala.

“God sees you,” Nuala said to him. “God knows.”

CATHAL FOUND MAC IN THE back garden that evening. He walked up to him holding a stick and then he swung it, hard, hitting Mac across the back. Mac felt air thump out of his lungs. “Did you lay a hand on Nuala?” Cathal demanded. He dropped the stick and while Mac recovered, he took off his belt.

“You don’t dare,” Cathal said as he lashed him, the leather biting into his back. “You don’t dare.”

“I only stopped her hurting Rian. She hit him, did she tell you that? She’s not his mother. Do you know down at the shop they give him food? Thomas too. Anyone can see how hungry they are.”

Cathal reached up to lash him again, but this time Mac grabbed the end of the belt and pulled so hard that his father lost his balance and fell. Mac rose to his full height and stood over him. He was taller than Cathal by a hand.

“We need her, don’t you understand?” Cathal said from the ground. “Think, Macdara.”

“Need her for what?” Mac scoffed. “There’s only five of us here. How about the other six?”

That night, after everyone was in bed, Rian climbed the ladder to the loft to sleep next to Mac. He took his few things from the baby room and set them at Barry’s former place.

Mac pretended to be asleep.