25. Declan
25
DECLAN
T he next day I was at my desk looking over my itinerary for my trip to Prague when my phone started buzzing. I answered it without looking at the number. “Declan Byrne speaking.”
“Declan. Hi,” Sinead said. “Do you have time to talk?”
I straightened. “Is everything all right?”
“I’m grand,” Sinead reassured me. Then she half-laughed at herself. “Well, I’m an alcoholic in rehab. But, you know, aside from that.” She blew out a breath. “My therapist thinks I should tell you about, um, my rock bottom. You know why I finally admitted I had a problem.”
I’d wanted the same thing, but now she sounded so uncomfortable, I felt myself getting defensive on my little sister’s behalf. “Screw your therapist. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, sounding a little more sure of herself.
Silence grew on the line between us.
“I’m taking Catie and Olivia on my business trip to Prague,” I said, just to have something to say. “Catie asked to go, and I couldn’t say no.”
“You never could,” Sinead said, sounding sad and fond at the same time. “You’re a good sort, Declan. I probably don’t say it enough.”
“Mum thinks I’m controlling. She said I get huffy.”
Sinead laughed. “Well, that’s true too.”
I grinned. This time the silence between us was comfortable.
“I think I want to tell you,” Sinead said at last. “About my ‘rock bottom.’” I could practically hear the air quotes.
I blinked, surprised. “Okay.” I rose and closed my office door, so neither Catie nor Olivia could overhear my half of the conversation. Then I stood in the middle of the room, bracing for the worst.
“I didn’t drink when I was bartending. At least not more than a pint or two,” she explained. “But sometimes I’d stick around after I clocked out, to chat with my friends, and have fun for a while. My friend normally babysat Catie when I had late shifts—Catie would sleep over at her place and come back in the morning, and it didn’t make any difference if I came home a little later. So I’d stay for an hour or so and pretend… well, pretend my life wasn’t a mess. Anyway.” She took a breath.
I waited.
“I thought I was sober enough to drive that night. I wasn’t. I…” She took a deep breath. “I was too drunk, Declan. Too drunk to know I was driving in the wrong lane. I had to swerve to avoid hitting another car… In in the end, I just cut through a garden and hit a mailbox, but… God, I could’ve hit a kid. I could’ve crashed, died, and...”
She paused and, even though she didn’t say the words, I knew exactly what she meant.
“Jesus Christ, Sinead.” I sat down in my chair, my knees giving out on me. I thought of the wreckage from our da’s accident. I thought of going to the morgue with Mum to officially identify the body and claim his belongings. At the last second she’d flinched away from looking at Da like that, so I’d done it instead. “You could’ve…”
“I know,” she said, her voice gutted. “I could have done the same thing to some other family that O’Rourke did to ours.”
I was probably a selfish bastard, because at the moment I didn’t care about that. “ You could have been hurt.”
“I know,” Sinead repeated. “I know.”
We sat in the silence together.
“Anyway,” Sinead said. “There you have it. Rock bottom and a wake-up call, all in one. I called a cab, and then I googled rehab facilities, and then I called you. I didn’t tell you because I was ashamed,” she explained. “But apparently, shame can be a trigger for relapsing. So. There you have it. Don’t hate me.”
“I could never hate you,” I said instantly, meaning it with every fiber of my being. “I love you Sinead. I love you so fucking much.”
“I know,” she said, and this time I could hear she was crying.
We stayed on the phone together until she sounded good again, and she hung up to go play checkers with her roommate.
I sat alone in my office, somehow raw and numb at the same time.
If I were a praying man, I’d thank God for that mailbox. I didn’t want to think about how close I’d almost come to losing someone else I loved.
I sat there, staring blankly at the wall, until my phone buzzed with a notification from @1000words.
I checked the screen.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this woman at Snug contacted me, and apparently there’s a publishing company that wants to sponsor my blog???!!!
I smiled. When I’d mentioned Olivia’s blog to an employee who worked in our corporate partnerships division, I had no idea she’d find an interested company that quickly. I knew @1000words—Olivia—was good, but I was glad someone else was finally noticing.
That’s fantastic. You deserve it. I wrote back.
Do you think I should take it? she asked. It’s not set in stone yet. They want me to do a video, where I’m reading one of their books. And if they like it, I’ll post it, and they’ll pay me.
You should definitely take it, I said, confident my employee wouldn’t have sent her a bad deal. It’s the next professional step. Who knows? If it goes well and you decide you want to pursue more sponsorships, you may even be able to quit your day job.
I hit send, feeling optimistic for the first time all day.
M aybe it was the news about how close I’d come to losing Sinead, but at dinner that night with Catie and Olivia, I found myself noticing all the little details. Catie’s mile-a-minute talking. The taste of the fresh brown bread Maeve had made for dinner. The flash of laughter in Olivia’s eyes when I made a dirty joke that went over Catie’s head.
I was so damn lucky, I realized, to get to have this summer with Olivia and Catie. That would be true even if Olivia left Ireland when her contract was up. Of course, that was the last thing I needed, but…right now, I was happy, which was more than a lot of people got.
After dinner, Olivia sent Catie upstairs to change into her pajamas. When Olivia hung back, saying she had something important she wanted to talk to me about, I couldn’t help the greedy hope that flared to life in me.
Maybe her picture book sold. Maybe she wants to focus on her blog full time. Maybe she’s quitting nannying, I thought.
Maybe she’s staying in Ireland .
Does that even matter? The thought came unbidden into my mind. I reland, States…hell, Antarctica. Wherever this woman goes, I’ll follow.
“So.” I looked at her across the dinner table, keeping my face neutral and utterly free of the hope that was clawing at my insides. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
Olivia took a deep breath. She clasped and unclasped her hands like she was nervous.
I gentled my voice. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“I think you should consider being a little nicer to Seamus O’Rourke,” Olivia said.
“What?” I felt like I’d been slapped.
“He’s been trying to get in touch with you to talk about something, but you’ve been ignoring his emails. What if it’s important?” she said.
“Fuck him,” I snarled.
Olivia flinched.
I hated that I’d made her flinch, but I was doing all I could to control my temper. Why did she keep bringing Seamus up? Why didn’t she listen to me?
“I need you to understand,” I said, my voice deadly serious. “I will never, ever have anything to discuss with that man. The whole family is rotten and needs to be stopped.”
“You can’t mean that,” Olivia said. “I know Seamus’s father is horrible, but surely you wouldn’t judge a man by his last name.”
“I would, and I do. I swear to you, Olivia, one day I’ll buy their damn mansion and raze it to the ground,” I said. “So that they can feel a fraction of the pain they’ve inflicted on my family.”
“But—”
“No.” I stood and stormed upstairs to my office, not bothering to clear the table. I heard Olivia’s steps chasing after me.
“Declan, wait. What if the thing he has to tell you affects?—”
I whirled at the top of the stairs and looked down at her. “This is none of your business, Olivia. Why do you even care?”
How could you take his side over mine? I wanted to demand. But I wasn’t ready to expose that vulnerability, not even to her.
Olivia opened her mouth, then closed it. Maybe she’d realized she didn’t have a good answer. Maybe she had one, but wasn’t willing to share it with me.
I wasn’t sure which option was worse.
Olivia blew out a breath and shook her head, like she was trying to take a step away from our argument. “I need some air,” she announced shortly. “I’m going on a drive.”
My blood ran cold at the idea of her driving when she was upset. It hadn’t been that long since Olivia had called me from the side of the road after her accident. Images of an unconscious Olivia, draped over the steering wheel, flashed before my eyes.
“No,” I ordered.
She crossed her arms. “I said I’m going on a?—”
“And I said no, you aren’t.”
Her mouth gaped open. “ Excuse me ? Did you seriously just forbid me from doing what I want?”
“No, I mean…” My hand clenched and unclenched on the railing. Fuck, why was this so difficult? “Let me drive you. Or have Molly pick you up. Hell, call a cab since you clearly have some weird hang-up about using my driver. I don’t care, just please… please don’t drive when you’re upset. If you had another accident, I couldn’t…” My pulse was hammering in my throat. I fought off images of my da in the morgue, of Olivia in shock after she’d driven my car off the road, of Sinead crying alone in rehab while she told me about her own close call.
Some of what I was feeling must have shown on my face because Olivia’s voice gentled. “I’ll be fine, Declan,” she said. “I promise. But I can’t live my life hemmed in by your fears of the past.”
This time I was the one who flinched.
Was that what I was doing?
Olivia climbed the stairs until she could take my face in her hands and give me a quick, achingly gentle kiss. “I’ll be careful. Can you put Catie to bed?”
I nodded, wooden.
Then Olivia walked out the door, leaving me frozen on the stairwell.
I fucking hated Seamus O’Rourke.