Free Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation by M. R. Sellars Page B

the same thing myself.”
    “Not what I wanted to hear,” he replied. “So
listen, stay right where you are. I’m pretty much done here, so I’m
gonna shake loose and come down there.”
    “We’ll be waiting.”
    I thumbed off the phone and clipped it back
onto my belt then turned my full attention back to my wife. Her
eyes were still closed, and she was carefully working her fingers
from temples to forehead and back again. Her lips were parted
slightly, and I watched the rise and fall of her chest as she
struggled to regulate her breathing. I knew exactly how she felt,
and it was killing me to see her like this.
    Of course, I suppose now I knew exactly how
she felt when the roles had been reversed.
    “I’d like to tell you it gets better,” I said
softly. “But, it’s more like you just get used to it.”
    “Fek ,” she
muttered the colloquial Irish profanity.
    “Yeah, I know,” I agreed.
    “How do you do it?” she asked then moaned,
still not opening her eyes.
    “I wish I could answer that,” I replied. “I
just do. If it’s any consolation, I’d rather not.”
    “Aspirin,” she murmured.
    “Let me see if I can get you some,” I told
her as I started up from my seat.
    “Purse. Side. Tin,” she told me, exaggerated
economy in her selection of verbiage.
    I pulled her purse across the table and
rummaged about in the side pocket. Under any other circumstances I
wouldn’t have dreamed of sticking my hand into the carryall. As I
had told my wife countless times before, a woman’s handbag seemed
to me to be a kind of tame black hole: a place where an impossible
number of items disappeared and could only be found by the woman
who owned the receptacle in the first place. At the moment, hers
was definitely living up to that assessment.
    “Left. Bottom. Yellow tin.” She offered
another set of terse instructions.
    I pushed my hand deeper into the pocket and
finally managed to withdraw the sought after container of aspirin.
I sat it on the table and pushed it over to her then started
sliding out of the booth as she slitted her eyes and reached for
the tin.
    “I’ll go get you some water,” I told her.
    “Black Bush,” she asserted.
    “No whisky with aspirin,” I replied.
“Water.”
    “Black Bush,” she repeated.
    “Water.”
    She tossed the tin in front of her and it
bounced across the table, tablets noisily rattling around inside.
Then it slid off the edge and clattered to the floor.
    “Black Bush.” This time it was a demand.
    I knew exactly where she was coming from, and
I didn’t fault her a bit. The truth was that the aspirin really
wouldn’t do much good for the kind of headache she had anyway. Not
that booze was any better remedy, but it would help take the edge
off.
    “Shot or rocks,” I conceded with a soft
sigh.
    “Bottle,” she replied.
     
    * * * * *
     
    “Slow down,” I said to my wife as she drained
the tumbler and clacked it back onto the wooden table with a heavy
thunk. “That’s your second double.”
    Her hand was still wrapped around the glass,
and her head was tilted back, face pointing upward to the ceiling.
She drew in a deep breath and then exhaled heavily, puffing out her
cheeks as she did so.
    “Aye, but I said bottle, not double,” she
stated as she lowered her gaze down to meet mine.
    “Give those a chance to work,” I told her.
“They aren’t even in your bloodstream yet.”
    She frowned back at me but didn’t argue. She
slouched down in her seat, and a moment later I felt her
sneaker-clad feet slide up onto the bench next to me. She reached
up and pressed her palms against either side of her head as if she
were trying to squeeze it back into shape.
    “This sucks,” she moaned.
    “I know,” I replied.
    I was fully aware that the words were of
little consolation, but they were the best I had to offer at the
moment. I wanted desperately to ask her about the experience. But,
she needed some time to come to terms with what had happened, so