Chapter 30
30
brAIDEN
I wait until Fairfax sets his platter of roasted tomatoes on the table before I say, “The door to the pool house needs to be replaced.”
“Again?” he asks, his voice perfectly toneless.
The glare I give him is meant to make him question his choice of profession and the likelihood that he’ll live long enough to spend his next paycheck. The effect is somewhat marred by Birte crooning, “Replace the door. What a chore. Someone’s sore.”
“Have it done by noon,” I tell Fairfax. I suspect that’s an impossible deadline, even for him. But I want to have something to holler about later.
“Of course,” Fairfax says, nodding and returning to the kitchen, as if my request is no more difficult than his providing an extra fork.
Birte is still chanting—sore, sore, sore. “Eat your breakfast,” I tell her, pointing to her plate. She picks up her fork and starts to eat her beans, stabbing them one by one.
Aiofe watches for a moment, curiosity tilting her head. She picks up her own fork, clearly intending to imitate her aunt, but she casts a quick glance toward me first.
“No,” I say.
She pouts, but she shoves her beans onto toast like a normal person.
I push back from the table and head to the sideboard, meaning to pour myself some tea. Reflexes take over, and I fill a mug with coffee first. I realize my mistake before half the cup is full, but the damage is done. The entire room smells like coffee. Like Samantha.
“Fairfax!” I holler.
He pushes through the swinging door, his face a carefully blank mask.
“Take this.” I hand him the mug. “And I want that samovar out of here by lunch.”
“Of course,” he says again.
My phone rings before he clears the room: “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.” I answer, because I have no choice, not if I’m to keep my position as Captain of the Fishtown Boys. Trying to scrub a lifetime of rage from my voice, I say, “Boss.”
“Tell me yer diggin’ a grave this mornin’.”
Jesus Christ. But I say, “It’s been less than twenty-four hours.”
My answer irritates him as much as his demand grates on me. But whatever he starts to shout turns into the longest coughing fit I’ve heard yet from the old sod. His voice sounds like a broken reed when he finally croaks, “How long does it take fer a man t’ fire a pistol?
“I need some time.”
“Fer what, boyo? One last poke, t’ remember th’ good times?”
Now I’m the one who can’t talk. I can’t push words past the scarlet fire in my brain .
Ingram says, “Don’t wait too long, boyo. Or I’ll start t’ think yer wantin’ t’ leave th’ Fishtown Boys behind.”
“The Boys are mine, Ingram.”
The deep breath he draws sounds like oil sloshing in a barrel. “Will they stay yers, boyo? When they find ya’ve lost yer bollocks?”
“I haven’t?—”
“Today, boyo. Get rid o’ that skirt today.”
I nearly break my finger stabbing the call away. Aiofe and Birte are staring, eyes as big as Fairfax’s serving bowls. I snatch up The Philadelphia Enquirer so I don’t have to speak.
I’m halfway through the front page before I realize I forgot to get tea. I’m willing to skip it, myself, but there’s no reason for Birte and Aiofe to go without.
I make the child’s first, pouring milk into a cup and adding just a splash of tea. The beige liquid slops into the saucer as I set it on the table. Aiofe frowns and pushes it away.
“Don’t start,” I warn her. She turns her attention to a sausage, as if she’s practicing brain surgery.
Back at the sideboard, I pour for Birte. I stir in her four spoons of sugar, grimacing at the thought of that much sweetness. “Careful,” I say, as I place it beside her plate. “It’s hot.”
“Hot, hot, hot,” she chants. “Fought, fought, fought. Rot, rot, rot.”
I gulp my own tea, black and bracing. It sears my lips like lava, scoring a gulley through my chest. The fire matches the burn of my scarred forearm, which hasn’t let up since Samantha set it throbbing hours ago. “Goddammit!” I shout.
Aiofe bolts upright. The look on her face is pure terror, which drives a stake through my heart because I’ve never raised a hand to the wean.
Birte reaches for the rosary that hangs from her belt and starts muttering over her beads. “I believe in God…”
I snatch my papers up from the table because I’ve lost all hope of reading in peace, and I’m not hungry, and I don’t want more tea, and breakfast isn’t right anyway without Samantha. That’s rubbish, though, because Aiofe and I ate together every feckin’ morning for seven years, and nothing should be any different now.
I shove my chair into the table, hard enough to make a peony fall from the bowl of flowers in the center. Samantha wore a skirt with peonies on it—the petals scattered across black silk, along with tulips and chrysanthemums. The last thing I want to see this morning is a peony. I snatch the flower from the tablecloth and crush it in my fist.
“Our Father—” Birte chants, her voice rising to match my rage.
“Shut it,” I tell her.
“—who art in heaven,” she continues, even louder.
I swipe at her beads, trying to snag them from her fingers.
“Hallowed be thy name,” she shouts.
“Dammit, woman!” I holler, raising my voice to cover hers.
Birte bellows, “Thy kingdom come…”
Aiofe squeezes her eyes shut and covers her ears, rocking back and forth in her chair.
“Fairfax!” I shout, but he’s already barreling through the swinging door.
“What’s all this foolishness?” he asks Aiofe, closing gentle fingers around her wrists. The instant he touches her, she freezes. “There you go,” he says calmly, easing her hands from her ears. “Be a good girl. Go on up to your room. Draw me a picture of Coinín before John Bell gets here. Can you do that for me, love?”
She stares at him like he’s an anchor and she’s a tiny rowboat tossed on stormy seas. When she nods, I realize I’ve been holding my breath.
“Go on then,” Fairfax says. “Take a piece of toast with you. That one in the holder, already spread with butter.”
Aiofe grabs the toast without taking her eyes from Fairfax .
“Go on then,” Fairfax repeats. “Start your drawing. I’ll be upstairs in just a mo.”
Aiofe finally leaves.
Birte’s been shouting the entire time. She’s finished her Our Father and two Hail Marys; she’s halfway through the third.
Fairfax closes his hands over hers, so they’re both clasping the onyx rosary beads. He keeps his own voice low and steady as he joins her: “Pray for us sinners…”
And like a feckin’ miracle, Birte lowers her volume to match his. “Glory be to the father,” she starts.
Fairfax calls over his shoulder, into the kitchen. “Grace? Can you help us out a bit?”
Grace Poole slouches into the dining room. Her eyes are bloodshot, and I don’t know when her hair last saw a comb. But she takes Birte’s hands between her own and starts crooning in Irish. I don’t catch the words, but the tone is a mother settling a child after a bout of bad dreams.
Fairfax says to Grace, “Why don’t you take her upstairs? A kip and a bath and she’ll be right as rain.”
Grace nods over Birte’s head before helping her from her chair. As they disappear upstairs a silence falls over the entire house.
“This isn’t working,” I finally say.
Fairfax’s face is bare of any emotion. It occurs to me that this is how he manages me , much as he’s managed Aiofe and Birte into calm. The thought pricks along the back of my neck. I’m better than this. I have been. I can be.
“Birte’s not strong enough to join us down here,” I say. “See to it that she’s kept comfortable on the third floor.”
“Sir,” Fairfax says.
That means he disagrees with me. And I know Samantha would disagree too. She’d say the answer isn’t locking Birte up. The answer is a doctor, same as she’s been insisting for weeks.
But Samantha left. She doesn’t get a vote in how I run my house .
“Do you have something you want to say?” I challenge Fairfax.
“No, sir,” he says. His formality tells me he’s thinking volumes.
“Then get back in the kitchen.” Because I don’t want to hear it, not one word.
“Sir,” he says. His back is stiff as he leaves.
I almost call him back. But if I apologize to Fairfax, that’ll just open doors to all the other words I owe. And I’m not saying them to anyone, not when I’m right, not when I meant every feckin’ syllable.
By reflex, though, I take my phone from my pocket. My finger hovers over Samantha’s name.
No. I’m not calling her. Not when she’ll eat my head off about Birte. When she’s the one who lit Ingram’s fuse. When she broke the feckin’ pool house door, despite Fairfax’s snide conclusions.
I slam my finger down on the icon, blocking Samantha Kelly on my phone forever.
For the second day in a row, I storm out of my own dining room. And this time, when I head to the garage, it takes all my concentration not to see the gaping hole where the Mercedes used to sit.
I order Seamus and Patrick to meet me in Fishtown. We look at three properties, and I choose the one I like best. Seamus makes the necessary calls, finding the owner, making a bid, doubling it to drown out any conflict.
I call my chief foreman at Kelly Construction and order him to meet us on the site within the hour. When he arrives, I tell him I want the ugly mid-century building leveled. I long to see something broken. Ruined. Destroyed.
I give him four months to build a new Hare and Harp. When he protests that he needs more time, I tell him to get the job done, or I’ll find someone who can. Seamus and Patrick stay behind when I stalk back to my Jaguar .
I don’t care if every man who works for me sneers behind my back. I just want the Hare back. I want a place I can work, away from Thornfield, away from Aiofe and Birte and yes, away from memories of Samantha.
I want to turn back time. And failing that, I want to forget the past four months and go back to when being Captain of the Fishtown Boys was all I ever needed to be happy.