With a swallow, Lou turned around and saw Ruth behind them.

“Alfred.” Ruth folded her arms and stared at her husband.

“Well, this is awkward,” Alfred said. “I think I’m going to go and join the party. I’ll leave you two to bludgeon each other in private.”

Alfred disappeared, leaving Lou alone with Ruth, and the hurt on her face was like a dagger through his heart. He’d gladly have anger any time.

“Ruth,” he said, “I’ve been looking for you all evening.”

“I see the party planner, Alison, joined us, too,” she said, her voice shaking as she tried to remain strong.

Lou looked over his shoulder and saw Alison, little dress and long legs, dancing seductively in the middle of the floor.

Ruth looked at him questioningly.

“I didn’t,” he said, the fight going out of him, not wanting to be that man anymore. “Hand on heart, I didn’t. She tried tonight, and I didn’t.”

Ruth laughed bitterly. “Oh, I bet she did.”

“I swear I didn’t.”

“Anything? Ever?” She studied his face intently, clearly hating herself, embarrassed and angry at having to ask.

He swallowed. He didn’t want to lose her, but he didn’t want to lie. “A kiss. Once, is all. Nothing else.” He spoke faster now, panicking. “But I’m different now, Ruth, I’m—”

She didn’t listen to the rest of it. She turned away from him, trying to hide her face and her tears from him. She walked over and opened the door to the balcony.

“Ruth—” He tried to grab her arm and pull her back inside.

“Lou, let go of me. I swear to God, I’m not in the mood to talk to you now,” she said angrily.

He followed her out onto the balcony, and they moved away from the window so that they couldn’t be seen by anyone inside. Ruth leaned on the edge of the railing and looked out at the city, the cold air blowing around them. Lou moved close behind her, wrapped his arms tightly around her body, and refused to let go, despite her body’s going rigid as soon as he touched her.

“Help me fix this,” he whispered, close to tears. “Please, Ruth, help me fix this.”

She sighed, but her anger was still raw. “What the hell were you thinking? How many times did we all tell you how important this night was?”

“I know, I know,” he stuttered, thinking fast. “I was trying to prove to you all that I could—”

“Don’t you dare lie to me again.” She stopped him short. “Don’t you dare lie when you’ve just asked for my help. You weren’t trying to prove anything. You were fed up with Marcia ringing you, fed up with all the details, you were too busy—”

“Please, I don’t need to hear this right now.” He winced.

“This is exactly what you need to hear. You were too busy at work to care about your father or about Marcia’s plans. You got a stranger who knew nothing about your father’s seventy years on this Earth to plan the whole thing for you. Her.” She pointed inside at Alison, who was now doing the limbo, revealing her red lace underwear to all who were looking. “A little tramp whom you probably screwed while dictating the party guest list,” she spat.

“That didn’t happen, I swear. I know I messed everything up. I’m sorry.” He was so used to saying that word now.

“And what was it all for? For a promotion? A pay raise that you don’t even need? More work hours in a day that just aren’t humanly possible to achieve? When will you stop? When will it all be enough for you? How high do you want to climb, Lou?” She paused. “Last week you said that a job can fire you, but a family can’t. I think you’re about to realize that the latter is possible after all.”

“Ruth.” He closed his eyes, ready to jump off the balcony then and there. “Please don’t leave me.”

“Not me, Lou,” she said. “I’m talking about them.”

He turned around and watched his family now dancing in a train around the room, kicking up their legs every few steps.

“I’m racing with Quentin tomorrow. On the boat.” He looked at her for praise.

“I thought Gabe was doing that?” Ruth asked in confusion. “Gabe volunteered right here in front of me. Quentin said yes.”

Lou’s blood boiled. “No, I’m definitely going to do it.” He would make sure of it.

“Oh, really? Is that before or after you’re coming ice-skating with me and the kids?” she asked before walking off and leaving him alone on the balcony, cursing himself for forgetting his promise to Lucy.

As Ruth opened the door to go back inside, music rushed out, along with a burst of warm air. Then the door closed again, but he felt a presence behind him. She hadn’t gone inside. She hadn’t left him.

“I’m sorry about everything I’ve ever done. I want to fix it all,” he said with exhaustion. “I’m tired now. I want to fix it. I want everyone to know that I’m sorry. I’d do anything for them to know that and to believe me. Please help me fix it,” he repeated.

Had Lou turned around then he would have seen that his wife had indeed left him, that she’d rushed off inside to once again cry her tears of frustration for a man who had convinced her only hours previously that he had changed. It was Gabe who had stepped out onto the balcony when Ruth had rushed off, and it was Gabe who’d just heard Lou’s confessions.

Gabe knew that Lou Suffern was exhausted. Lou had spent so many years moving so quickly through the minutes, hours, and days that he’d stopped noticing life. The looks, gestures, and emotions of other people had long stopped being important or visible to him. Passion had driven him at first, and then, while on his way to the somewhere he wanted to be, he’d left it behind. He’d moved too fast, he’d taken no pause for breath; his rhythm was too quick, his heart could barely keep up.

As Lou breathed in the cold December air and lifted his face up to the sky, to feel—and appreciate—the icy droplets of rain that started to fall onto his skin, he knew that his soul was coming to get him.

He could feel it.

The Best Day

AT NINE A.M. ON SATURDAY, the day after his father’s seventieth birthday party, Lou Suffern sat out in his backyard and lifted his face and closed his eyes to the morning sun. He’d clambered over the fence that separated their one-acre landscaped garden—where pathways and pebbles, garden beds and giant pots were neatly organized—from the rugged and wild terrain that lay beyond human meddling. Splashes of yellow gorse were everywhere, as though somebody in Dalkey had taken a paintball gun and fired carelessly in the direction of the northside headland. Lou and Ruth’s house sat at the very top of the summit, their back garden looking out to the north with vast views of Howth village below, the harbor, and out farther again to Ireland’s Eye.

Lou sat on a rock and breathed in the fresh air. His numb nose dribbled, his cheeks were frozen stiff, and his ears ached from the nip in the wind. His fingers had turned a purplish blue, as though they were being strangled at the knuckles—not good weather for vital parts, but ideal weather for sailing. Unlike the carefully maintained gardens of his and his neighbors’ houses, the wild and rugged gorse had been even more lovingly left to grow as it wanted. It had roamed the mountainside and stamped its authority firmly around the headland. The land here was hilly and uneven; it rose and fell without warning, apologized for nothing, and offered no assistance to trekkers. It was the student in the last row in class, quiet but suggestive, sitting back to view the traps it had laid. Despite Howth’s wild streak in the mountains and the hustle and bustle of the fishing village, the town itself always had a sense of calm. It had a patient, grandparental feel about it: lighthouses that guided inhabitants of the waters safely to shore; cliffs that stood like a line of impenetrable Spartans with heaving chests, fierce against the elements. There was the pier that acted as a mediator between land and sea and dutifully ferried people out as far as humanly possible; the martello tower that stood like a lone aging soldier who refused to leave his zone long after the trouble had ended. Despite the constant gust that attacked the headland, the town was steady and stubborn.