Chapter 10: Seris and Donal Debate Whether Hope Is Defensible

The shortbread tin was still on the table when Donal arrived the following afternoon, though Margaret had long since removed the shortbread itself, eaten in three installments across two separate conversations and one period of uncomfortable silence. The tin had remained because no one had quite decided whose responsibility it was to return it, and because it had become, in a small way, part of the furniture of their corner — a marker, like a reserved sign that nobody had placed but everyone understood.

Aeron was not there when Donal came in.

Seris was. She occupied her chair with the particular self-contained quality she always had, a kind of deliberate stillness that was not restfulness — more the stillness of a mechanism that was running very fast in directions not externally visible. She had a notebook open on the table, the one she had purchased three days ago from the newsagent two streets down, and she was writing in it with a mechanical pencil in a script that was not quite any alphabet Donal recognized, though it occupied the page with orderly authority.