Chapter Nineteen
Ronin
I pull the Ford up in front of my parents’ house and cut the engine. Seamus’s car is already parked there. Great. This should be fun.
When Da called this morning and told me to be here for noon, I didn’t know what to think.
Still don’t, if I’m honest. It’s been six months since I’ve been welcome here.
Not since the wedding. Not since Alannah disappeared and Mam told me she was disappointed in me.
Not angry. Disappointed. That was worse.
She loved Alannah like the daughter she never had, and it broke her heart when she left.
I know she’s spent most of her time with Siobhán since, comforting her friend.
Da made sure I knew that during one of the few conversations we’ve had since the wedding that wasn’t about business.
Because really, that’s all we talk about now.
And Seamus? He was once like a second father to me.
Now, even when work puts us in the same room, he barely looks at me.
I sit there, hands resting on the wheel, not ready to go inside and face whatever this is. My thumb finds my wedding ring the way it always does. I trace the woven lines of the Celtic knot she chose. Forever. That was the idea. Damn, I miss her. I let out a tired sigh.
The curtains in the front sitting room move, catching my eye.
They’ve seen me. No point putting it off any longer.
I get out of the car, and the cold cuts through my coat before I’ve even shut the door.
My boots crunch over the snow-covered walk as I head for the house.
When I reach the step, I lift my hand to knock, but the door opens before I can.
Da stands there, jaw set. He doesn’t say a word, just steps back and opens the door wider.
I step inside, and he closes it behind me.
I toe off my boots and hang my coat on the hook by the door like I always have.
When I turn around, he’s already halfway down the hall.
“C’mon,” he mutters without looking back.
I follow him into the front sitting room, where I’d seen the curtains move. He goes straight to the sofa and sits beside Mam. I hesitate, unsure whether to go to her or give her space. It’s been a while.
She solves it for me, pushing herself up from the cushions and beckoning me closer.
As I cross the room, I see how tired she looks, the lines at the corners of her eyes deeper than I remember.
She opens her arms, and I go into them without thinking.
She hugs me hard enough that I feel the tremble run through her. “I missed you,” she whispers.
I lean down and kiss her cheek. “Me too, Mam,” I say quietly.
A throat clears behind me. Da’s. “Sit, Ronin.”
I do as I’m told and take the only chair left, facing the O’Connells on the love seat and Da and Mam on the sofa.
I make myself look at Seamus and Siobhán and regret it the second my eyes land on them.
Siobhán has always been small, like Alannah, but now she looks thinner, her face pale and drawn, as though the last six months have worn her down.
This is my fault. All of it. What the fuck was I thinking, doing what I did? I already know the answer. Pride. Nothing but my own fucking pride.
I clear my throat and nod toward them. “Mr. and Mrs. O’Connell.” Once, I’d have called them Seamus and Siobhán without a second thought. Now the names feel wrong in my mouth, like they belong to someone I don’t get to be anymore.
Siobhán barely speaks, her voice thin. “Ronin.” She dips her head in a small nod.
I sit back, hands braced on my knees, not sure where to start.
Seamus spares me the effort. “Ronin, thank you for coming.” He leans forward and picks up an envelope from the coffee table.
I hadn’t even noticed it there. “This came by courier from home yesterday,” he says quietly, his fingers tight along the edges as he holds it out to me.
I hesitate before taking it, then slide my thumb under the flap. The handwriting inside is heavy, the letters slanted and pressed deep into the page.
Seamus,
The girl is grand. She’s where she belongs, and that’s the way it will stay. She is healing and putting the worst of it behind her.
She has taken up again with the Walsh lad.
You know the one I mean. He’s been nothing but respectful.
Never put a foot wrong with her, not now and not when they were children.
His father came to me, same as he did before you took the family to Boston, and asked if there might be a chance for a match. This time, I did not tell him no.
I have begun the process of seeking a dissolution of the marriage between Alannah and Cormac’s boy.
The petition will go through on the grounds of non-consummation, and on the treatment she received at the wedding reception before God and half of Boston.
You know as well as I do that is more than enough.
Papers will come to you from the chancery when the time is right. It’s in your interest to see they reach Ronin Byrne without delay, and in his interest to sign them when he’s told. I will not have my granddaughter’s name dragged back and forth across an ocean while he makes a show of himself.
I warned you years ago she was an Irish girl and Ireland is where she belonged. And now you’ve brought her back to us. She is safe, and she will be loved and well cared for here. Let that be the end of it.
Mind yourself,
Malachy
I read it twice. The words don’t change. “Can he actually do that?”
“If the marriage was never consummated,” Seamus says without expression. “And with what happened at the reception, he doesn’t need to reach far for the rest.”
“It’s the Church,” I say. “They don’t just—”
“They do when it’s Malachy asking.” My da’s voice is quiet but final. “He’s been filling their collection plates for over thirty years. Half the men he’s kept out of prison are wearing vestments now. If he wants it done, it’ll be done.”
I look back at the letter. At the line I keep coming back to. The Walsh lad. “Who is he talking about?” I ask. “Walsh.”
Seamus glances at Siobhán. Neither of them says anything for a second.
“Finn Walsh,” Seamus answers. “He and Alannah grew up together. Him and his twin sister. His father is one of my da’s most trusted men.
Before Cormac and I set things in motion to move to Boston, his father had gone to my da to request a match between Finn and Alannah.
We knew if we were going ahead with plans for you and her, we had to leave when we did. Pissed my old man off.”
I stare at him. “And now?”
“And now there’s no one standing in his way.”
The room is quiet. It hits me like a fist to the chest. Someone else. Someone she grew up with, who knew her before Boston, before me, before any of this. Someone her grandfather already approved of once. Someone who didn’t ruin it.
“I’m not signing anything,” I say.
My da looks at me. Not surprised. Just tired. “Ronin—”
“No.” The word comes out flat. “I’m not signing.”
My mam speaks carefully. “If she’s finding some peace over there...”
“She’s my wife,” I say.
“On paper,” Seamus says. Quiet. Final.
I want to argue. The words are right there, pressing at my teeth.
But I can see Alannah’s face in my head.
The way she looked at me in that bar at the hotel.
Before I opened my mouth. Before I put my hand on her wrist and marched her into that ballroom.
I put the letter on the coffee table and push myself to my feet.
My da walks me out. In the hall, he rests his hand on my shoulder, and the weight of it is heavier than usual. “When the papers come,” he says, his voice low, “don’t make it harder than it already is.”
I don’t answer. I take my coat from the hook and let myself out.
***
I don’t bother with the lights when I get home.
I know my way well enough by now. Six months of moving through this place in the dark will do that.
I shrug off my coat, leave it over the banister, and walk through to the front room, where the window faces the water.
The harbour is dark, snow coming down in a slow, steady drift, settling on the glass.
I sink into the chair closest to the window and lean back.
The room is exactly the way she planned it. She chose all of this—where the chairs would sit, which way the table would face, the colours for the walls. Everything. And she never got to live a single day of it.
In the corner, stacked against the wall, is a pile of unopened boxes.
Christmas decorations. I went out at the beginning of December for lightbulbs and ended up in the holiday section of the store, staring at the displays—ornaments, strings of lights, garland, stockings.
She’d talked about it when we signed the papers on the house, our first Christmas, how she wanted lights in the window and the whole place done up.
I found myself grabbing a cart and filling it without really deciding to, choosing things I knew she would have liked, the ones she would have chosen herself.
I told myself that if she came home, we could still go out and get the tree and have that first Christmas she’d dreamed about.
I stare at the boxes in the corner until the shapes blur. The Walsh lad. Someone who knew her before I did. Someone her grandfather had once planned for her to marry, before Seamus and my da got in the way. Before Boston. Before me.
I don’t know how to fix something when she won’t come back to let me try. I’ve turned that over for six months and I still don’t have an answer. You can’t apologize to an empty room. You can’t do better for someone who isn’t there.
Everyone keeps telling me what I can and can’t do.
I can’t go to Ireland. Apparently, that would be a death sentence.
When I asked Seamus for his father’s address so I could write her, he refused.
Said his daughter deserved some peace. And now I’m supposed to sit here in Boston and wait for papers to sign while her grandfather dissolves my marriage and lines up someone else for her life.
I won’t.
My thumb finds my ring. The knotwork presses into my skin. Outside, the snow keeps falling. Somewhere out there across all that dark water, she’s moving on without me.
And that isn’t something I’ll accept.