TWO

The bells rattled against the door. Sam watched through the window as the pretty American smiled at his uncle Gerry, pushing her rope of hair over one shoulder, hefting her bag in the other hand.

“Don’t stand there with a pole up your arse,” his sister Fiadh said. “Go after her, why don’t you.”

The hell of it was, Sam wanted to. He pictured it, taking her suitcase from her and loading it into the boot, sliding into the back of the cab beside her. He would hold her hand—this was his fantasy, after all—as they crossed the river to where the other half lived, to the university where he’d never truly belonged.

He blinked, dispelling the vision. Outside, the taxi pulled away from the curb. “Too late,” he said. Nine years too late, if he let himself go there, which he mostly did not. It was the girl, her privilege or the way she’d set off so hopefully without a clue where she was going.

Fiadh crossed her arms. “And whose fault is that?”

Nobody’s fault. It was the way things were. “I can’t leave the shop. I’m working,” he said.

“I’m here.”

“In the back.”

After Fiadh got her certificate in baking and pastry, Sam figured she’d be off, to London, maybe. But then the Covid happened, and she’d settled into her old room above the shop, selling her bread from behind the counter. For the past year, she’d been pushing Sam to invest in a new mixer, a new oven, to expand the business.

“So ask Mam,” Fiadh said. “Or Grace.”

Sam shook his head. The responsibility of the shop was on him. Always on him, since their father died. “Mam is busy. And Grace is too young.”

“Sixteen. Older than you were when you started working the register.”

He’d never minded, really, sweeping the floors and stocking the shelves with their father. He’d thought then it was only temporary, a way to help out, to earn some spending money until he could go to uni. “She should be studying.”

Grace was starting sixth year, taking all higher levels. She needed to do well. He went over her English essays, even helped her study for her Leaving Certificate in maths, but it had been too long. His brain was too full of daily takings and cash deposits, calculating taxes and inventory, to make the switch easily to functions and graphs.

Fiadh tilted her head, regarding him. “You’re a sad, lonely gom. You need a girl.”

“I have girls,” Sam protested.

“For a night. Three, tops.”

Because he took care not to go home with partners who were looking for more. He winked, hoping to distract her. “I get no complaints.”

Fiadh snorted. “Because you only shag alley cats.”

“Like the girls you date are any better.”

“Everything all right?” their mother asked.

Janette had always had an uncanny ability to catch her children at their worst.

“Grand,” Sam said.

Fiadh made a face. “I was just telling Sam he needs to settle down.”

“I’m only twenty-eight,” Sam said.

“I was twenty-one when I married your father,” Janette said.

And forty-one when he died, leaving her with five mouths to feed and a shop to run and no money for burial expenses.

Sam smiled. “You were one of the lucky ones,” he said, but he didn’t believe it.

“There was a girl in the shop,” Fiadh said. “An American. Very pretty.”

Janette looked at Sam. “And?”

His family’s love surrounded him, warm and suffocating. Like wading through a haystack, it was.

“He called her a taxi,” Fiadh said.

“Uncle Gerry. He was glad for the fare,” Sam said.

And Sam . . . He was glad to do it. Taking care of his family. That’s what he did, that’s who he was now. That’s all he could be.