Chapter 17
17
FIONA
P atrick sends me into the bakery, telling me to get him a cup of coffee. As I wait in line to place my order, I watch him edge the end table further away from the others. I set my sunglasses on top of my head to better watch him working.
Two women stand behind the counter. From the structure of their cheekbones and the curve of their lips, I’m guessing they’re a mother/daughter team. But Mother isn’t exactly welcoming when I get to the front of the line.
Glaring out the window, she asks, “You’re with him?”
I shrug, like I’d rather be anywhere else in the world. “He’s just moving the table so he can sit in the sun,” I say. “Old bones.”
She’s building up a head of steam, and I wonder why Patrick chose this place for my summit with Rónnad. But the younger woman steps forward with a smile as soothing as foam on a latte. “It’s time for your break, Ma,” she says. And when her mother hesitates, “Go on. Take your tea. Put your feet up in the office and close your eyes for a bit.”
The older woman grumbles, but she drops a bag of chamomile into a glazed mug. She stares out at Moran as she siphons off hot water, her lips moving like she’s muttering a spell.
“Don’t let those chairs block the sidewalk,” she warns me.
“They won’t,” I promise.
Still grumbling, she disappears through a door in the back.
“Sorry about that,” the younger woman says. “She’s having a bad morning.”
I spotted the headscarf and the yellow cast to her face the moment I walked in—not to mention wrists as thin as broomsticks. But I say, “Happens to the best of us.” I order a caramel latte for me and two drip coffees, figuring Rónnad can doctor one with cream and sugar, if that’s her preference. When they’re served up, I find a trio of little cherry pastries on the tray as well—Jenn’s Jam Tarts, according to the label inside the bakery case.
“On the house,” the woman says. “Come back in for free refills on the coffees.”
I thank her and carry out the tray. Patrick takes his mug, but he glares at the miniature pies as if they’re poisoned. Tired of old people being pissed off with me, I polish off one in three bites.
Jittery, Patrick is twisting his fidget ring. I think about telling him to take a walk around the block. Or maybe he should stop mainlining coffee.
The skin looks tight around his eyes, but I know he slept well last night. We both did—sliding beneath the duvet and curling against each other, my back to his front. His arm felt like an iron shield clamped around me, banishing even a hint of nightmare.
I know it’s strange that we haven’t talked about it. Neither one of us has mentioned that we’re sleeping in the same bed, touching, closer than close, but apparently we’re never having sex again.
I’m Fiona Fucking Ingram. There is literally nothing I won’t say out loud. Nothing I won’t try in bed. Nothing I won’t tease a man about, if I think it’ll help me get my way.
But every time I start to say something— I haven’t slept this well in eight years —I know exactly what he’ll do. He’ll run stiff fingers through his hair. He’ll look at a point exactly three inches above the bridge of my nose. He’ll let his thumb drift toward the titanium ring on his middle finger, the one that spins.
And I somehow know that if he thinks he’s being soft, that he’s slacking off on what he owes Braiden Kelly or the Fishtown Boys or some perfect version of himself packed deep inside his memory, then he’ll stop. He’ll deny himself a night of sleep, just to prove he can. And I’ll lose out too.
Fuck.
I rub my arms and consider stealing another one of the cherry tarts. Before I can reach for the pastry, though, a bundle of rags rolls around the corner of the building.
Patrick stands. It takes me longer to realize there’s a person inside all that cloth. She’s wearing three different skirts, one hem bunching at her ankles, another at her calves, the last around her knees. Her waist looks like someone cinched a frayed rope around a broken-down mattress. One of her sweaters has horizontal rainbow stripes; the other is covered in filthy white polka dots on black. Both are torn at the elbows, revealing a yellow and black plaid shirt underneath. Her hair is woven into four braids that flop around like snakes.
She looks like a cross between a crazy woman, a witch, and some sort of Roma fortune teller.
She waddles over and sits in the middle seat, the one Patrick was in. Without saying a word, one hand crams a cherry tart into her mouth. The other grabs my latte. Her fingers are gnarled like ancient pine trees, swollen knuckles stretching paper-thin skin .
Her face is as wrinkled as her hands, the skin so shiny she might buff it. Her red-rimmed eyes are the tired brown of sun-baked grass, and that braided hair is the colorless gray of a field mouse. She wheezes, spraying flakes of pastry over the table as she says, “Rónnad.”
“Fiona,” I say, wondering if Q has played an elaborate joke on me.
Patrick doesn’t say anything. He just scowls.
Rónnad downs half my coffee in three noisy swallows. She wipes her mouth with the back of one hand and says, “How much do you need?”
I can’t believe I actually answer her. “Ten million.”
She puffs air out of her mouth, like she can’t be bothered for so small a sum.
“By no later than June 15,” I add.
That’s only six weeks. But Q said she could do it. And no matter how odd this witch-like woman is, no matter how strange our conversation, Q never led my father astray, not once in twenty years. The same instinct that tells me Uncle Aran will destroy me, the one that says Keenan Rivers is looking for a way to tear me apart too, that’s the inner thought that says Q is on my side. So Rónnad must be too.
“Ten million,” she says, finishing off my latte. “Another,” she says, shoving her mug into Patrick’s ribs.
His face darkens, and I imagine all the ways he can put this woman in her place, but I give him a single shake of my head. It’s a risk. I’ve never given him a direct order before.
But he takes the cup and goes inside.
“Ten million dollars,” Rónnad says. “I can do that.”
“How?”
“You don’t trust me?” She laughs without any humor.
“I don’t know you. How the fuck am I supposed to trust you?”
She clicks her tongue, but I’m not sure if she’s protesting my swearing, my lack of faith, or Patrick’s failure to return instantaneously with her sweet, milky coffee. “Give me a bank account,” she says. “I’ll deposit one hundred thousand dollars by tomorrow night. One million by next Monday. The rest by June 15.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “Just like that?”
She smacks her lips. “Just like that.”
Patrick finally returns. Rónnad accepts the fresh latte like she’s doing him a favor.
“And what do you want in exchange?”
She drains off all the coffee at once, as if her mouth is made of asbestos. When she sets the empty mug on the table, she cocks her head like a curious pigeon. Her braids bounce. “Those sunglasses.”
My fingers go to the frames of the glasses I picked up at the drugstore before the funeral. “You’ll deposit one hundred thousand dollars into my bank account by tomorrow night. And all you want is a pair of sunglasses? ”
She shrugs. “They’re nice sunglasses.”
“They’re rip-off designer shades I bought at CVS.”
She nods and repeats: “They’re nice sunglasses.”
She’s fucking nuts. I don’t know what sort of joke Q is playing. I don’t know if this woman is wearing a wire, or if she plans on hacking the banking system, or if this is all an elaborate scam to get two lattes and a cherry tart.
But I made my crazy vow in front of the entire Old Colony Crew. I need ten million dollars by the end of June. So unless I can figure out some way to spin it from thin air, I need Rónnad.
“How do I send you the account information?” I ask.
She digs in the pocket of one of her skirts. Patrick tenses, but he holds off from putting her in a wrist lock for long enough that she can produce a smartphone.
It’s an Apple. Top of the line. More camera lenses than my own phone, which is only a year old.
She holds the device to her face, unlocking the screen. Peering closely at the glass, she searches for an icon. Her knotted finger lands heavily on the green-and-white image for texts.
“Here,” she says, passing the phone to me. “You send yourself a text.”
I stare at the phone like it’s a live tarantula. There’s no way in hell I’m giving her my personal information.
Patrick grunts like a silverback gorilla. He takes his burner out of his pocket and I pass him Rónnad’s phone. He types in a number, hits send, and nods when the message arrives.
Rónnad returns her phone to her pocket, then points at me with an index finger so twisted it points in three directions at once. For a moment, I think she still wants me to hand over my own device. Then, I think she’s asking for a third latte. But she raises her chin, gesturing toward my glasses.
I take them off slowly and pass them across the table. Rónnad picks them up using both hands, reverently, as if they’re some sort of holy relic. When she puts them on, they cover half her face.
“Tomorrow,” she says.
And then she’s gone.