Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy

Author:Charlotte McConaghy [McConaghy, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250804297
Google: ulv2DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1250804299
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Published: 2021-08-02T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

Several hours have passed when a second knock comes at the door.

“It’s like Grand Central fuckin’ Station around here tonight!” Fergus says. He has become steadily drunker by the minute, his accent growing concurrently thicker. I can barely understand him. He sways where he sits, still pretending to work but having long since lost the ability to wield tools.

Amelia has remained sprawled closest to the door so she rises to answer it a second time. “Hello, love,” she says, but there is no response, only Lainey Burns pushing past her into the living room. Her eyes dart in search of Duncan.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asks him. “I told you—” Lainey sees me and falls silent.

Duncan struggles to get up off the floor, and I can see his leg is really hurting him so I reach a hand for him to push off from. He glances at me in thanks, then goes to Lainey and guides her down the hallway.

“I need to bury him, Duncan,” we can hear her saying. “I need for this to be over.”

They disappear into Duncan’s bedroom and the door closes, shutting off the sound of their voices. I guess it wasn’t Lainey who killed him then, unless she’s one hell of an actress.

I take a gulp of my previously forgotten wine.

“Poor girl,” Fergus says.

“She’s better off,” Amelia says.

“Hey,” Fergus says. “A little respect for an old friend.”

“He was no friend of mine.”

“And that may be true but no one deserves to get eaten alive.”

An awkward silence descends. They’re all careful to avoid my eyes.

“It’s what we’re all thinking, isn’t it?” Bonnie pipes up. “There’s been no answers to find because the man was eaten by the damned wolves we’re all pretending we can’t hear. You said so yourself, Inti. They’re predators and nothing can change that.”

I get to my feet.

“Inti—” Amelia tries.

“I just need the loo,” I say, which is true, and head down the hallway. But when I reach the bedroom door I pause to listen. I can hear them from here, the lilt and cadence of their words, and there is something that strikes me about them, about the way those words have become hushed, intimate. I see again the way he took her arm to lead her down the hallway, the way she went straight into his bedroom. They’re friends, of course, they’ve known each other a long time, but some instinct in me recognizes something more. When their voices drop away completely the knowing in me is even louder; there is far more intimacy in a silence this long.

I return to the living room without having used the toilet. I sit on the couch beside Fergus and say, soft enough that no one will overhear, “It’s Duncan, isn’t it. The one she’s seeing?”

“Nah, ’course not,” he says, but he’s so drunk I can see through him with ease. “Look, we don’t know, who’s to say?” he tries. “They had a thing, way back in high school before she ever got with Stuart.

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