6. Cillian #3
Some recessive gene for sheer bloody-mindedness.
Teresa sees me first and her whole face changes.
“Cillian.” She comes to me and puts both hands on my face, stroking my cheeks.
I let her, bending down slightly so she can reach.
For a second I’m twelve again, standing in this hallway with my hands at my sides not knowing what to do with a mother’s touch.
“It’s so good to see you.” She means it. Teresa has always been genuine.
“You too,” I tell her, and I mean it back.
She holds my face for a moment and looks at me with those worried warm eyes.
Those green eyes seem to peer into my very soul and she frowns slightly, as if she can see something she doesn’t want to say out loud. Instead, she pats my cheek once and lets go.
Then she turns to Valentina.
It’s not like this is the first time Teresa has met Valentina.
Valentina was Emma’s maid of honor at her wedding and Teresa was there—the shit storm that caused with Connor was horrific.
I don’t know how much Emma and Teresa communicate, so how Teresa feels about Valentina is unclear.
Teresa takes Valentina’s hands in both of hers, squeezing gently. From the hard swallow, Teresa desperately wants to ask Valentina how Emma is doing.
But she can’t ask that question out loud. Not when Emma’s name is verboten in the Brennan household.
Teresa searches Valentina’s face, looking for something she desperately needs to know.
Valentina sees it immediately.
“You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve been so exhausted this week.
A very close friend of mine is at the very end of a long project.
” She tilts her head slightly. “She’s worked so hard on it.
We all have, honestly. But she’s wonderful—glowing, really.
The project is going beautifully. Any day now and it’ll all be finished.
” A small, warm smile. “She’s more than ready. And everything looks perfect.”
A project? What is Valentina talking about? I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on, but Teresa does.
The color that comes into her face is sudden, a flush of something that is pure relief, and her eyes go bright just for a moment before she blinks it back. Her grip on Valentina’s hands goes tight. Her whole body seems to ease by a degree, something unknotting somewhere deep in her.
“Everything,” Teresa says, and her voice catches slightly on the word. “Everything looks—”
“Perfect,” Valentina finishes quietly, holding my aunt’s eyes. “I promise.”
Teresa nods. She can’t say anything else. She squeezes Valentina’s hands once more then she straightens and pulls herself together with the seamless efficiency of a woman who has had long practice at it.
“Come in,” she says, and her voice is steady. “Let me get you something.”
I watch them go down the hall together, Teresa’s hand light on Valentina’s arm, and I stand in the hallway by myself for a moment. Whatever just happened between the two of them has nothing to do with me.
It hits me. Valentina just told Teresa that Emma is okay. My chest tightens at the kindness my wife showed my aunt.
My wife.
I stay with the vase that doesn’t belong and the ghost of a six-year-old in a yellow raincoat, and I think about what it means that my wife just gave my aunt the thing she needed most tonight…then moved on like it was nothing.
It wasn’t nothing.
I follow them in.
“…the portrait period especially. There’s something the light does—too warm, almost Mediterranean, no business being on Irish subjects and it always works.” I hear Valentina say to my aunt. “He was Irish?”
“He was,” Teresa confirms as she and Valentina look at a picture nearby. Instinctively, I look for my uncle.
Connor is in his chair with the old guard arranged around him—Hannigan, Walsh, Doyle, men who’ve proven their loyalty.
Connor has a glass of whiskey that is entirely for atmosphere because Connor doesn’t drink before nine.
I know everything about him, and I can’t always tell if that’s love or just the particular knowledge you develop about the thing that shaped you.
“Cillian,” he says when he sees me.
“Connor.” We shake hands and it’s firm and brief, the handshake he gives everyone in his employ.
He turns to Valentina, who materializes by my side. “Mrs. Brennan.”
“Mr. Brennan.” Her voice is even and her face is composed, but there’s no warmth in her. She looks at Connor the way she looks at things she has assessed and found uninteresting. It lasts about two seconds, then she turns away and that’s all he gets.
Connor notices.
He’s not a man who misses things. His jaw shifts slightly and he goes back to whatever he was saying to Hannigan, but I know my uncle.
He’s pissed at Valentina’s greeting.
He won’t do anything about it tonight, though. No, he’ll mull over it before deciding when to strike.
I drag Valentina away and spot Brigid in a corner, looking bored, a book in her hands.
As viperish as my aunt is, she’s a far better improvement than Connor.
Brigid is Connor’s older sister and she looks like him, with the same pale eyes and sharp jaw.
But where Connor’s face has gone heavier with age, Brigid has gone sharper. She is thin and upright and she dresses severely. One time told her that she’s the Brennan Princess Anne and she nearly beat the shit out of me for daring to compare her to the English.
But Brigid’s bark is worse than her bite.
I didn’t understand it when I was a child because all she would do is tell me that I’m holding my fork wrong and that my mother would have been disappointed in my grades.
But that’s how Brigid shows she cares, because she doesn’t waste her cruelty on people she’s indifferent to.
She looks at Valentina when I bring her over but doesn’t look at me. “So you’re the Italian.” She puts a lot of emphasis on the “I” making it sound more like “eye.”
“And you’re the aunt,” Valentina responds coolly.
Brigid’s blue eyes move to me. “She’s pretty enough, I suppose.” Back to Valentina, dismissive. “The Santoros always did have a talent for wrapping things nicely. Shame about what’s usually inside.”
I stop breathing.
Valentina looks at Brigid with an expression of perfect, polite interest, the way you look at something mildly curious you’ve found on the bottom of your shoe.
“And the Brennans,” she says, “have a talent for saying what everyone else is too well-bred to say out loud.” She tilts her head, studying my aunt. “You must be very proud of that. It takes real courage to be rude when you’re too old for anyone to correct you.”
The fireplace crackles. Nobody in the surrounding area appears to be breathing. Or that might just be me.
Brigid looks at her for a long moment. It’s very clear my aunt did not expect to encounter this version of Valentina Santoro Brennan and she’s reassessing my wife.
She looks at me. “She’ll do,” she says suddenly.
Something in my chest unknots so fast I nearly exhale audibly.
“Told you,” Valentina mutters.
“I didn’t say anything,” I manage.
“You were holding your breath.” She turns back to Brigid. “What are you reading?”
“Nothing you’d know,” Brigid says sharply, but the edge in it has changed. There’s less dismissal and more test.
Valentina raises an eyebrow. “Try me.”
Brigid studies her then shows her the book. I’ve never heard of it, but knowing my aunt’s taste, it’s a book that makes you think. Valentina’s eyebrows rise further.
“I have thoughts about that book,” she says.
Brigid stares at her in disbelief and I fight the urge to do the same. “You’ve read it?”
“I read everything.” She says it without arrogance. “I found the second half self-indulgent.”
“The second half,” Brigid says, “is the only part worth reading. The first half is throat-clearing.”
“The first half is the architecture,” Valentina argues. “Without it, the second half is just noise.”
Brigid’s eyes narrow. Then she moves over on the small sofa by the fireplace and I nearly fall over. That’s as close as Brigid Brennan gets to an engraved invitation. “Sit down and explain yourself.”
“Gladly,” Valentina retorts and sits. I step back and watch the two most difficult women I’ve ever been in a room with square off over a book.
I don’t know why I even worried. She’s going to be absolutely fine.
I think something else too, but I shove it away.
I leave them to it and find my cousin Declan by the drinks table, which is where Declan always is because he has the same relationship with these functions that I do and the drinks table is at least something to do with your hands.
“Your wife,” Declan nods toward Brigid’s corner, “is sitting next to Aunt Brigid.”
I pick up a drink. “I know.”
Declan stares at me. “Brigid is talking to her.”
“I know, Dec.”
“Brigid doesn’t talk to people at these.” He looks at me with something between bafflement and respect. “Who is she?”
“She’s my wife.”
Declan scowls at me. “I know that, you ass. I mean—who is she?”
I think about everything I know about Valentina and everything that I don’t. “I’m still working that out,” I tell him. Declan nods at it like it makes complete sense.
Soon after, Teresa calls for dinner.
Valentina and I are seated at the end of the dining table.
I pull her chair before she can reach it.
She goes still for half a second.
She clearly wasn’t expecting it, but she sits and looks up at me when she does.
The look lasts just a moment too long before she glances away.
I sit down next to her, trying not to think about how that look burns through me.
The dining room is decorated in dark wood and candlelight.
The extra good China is out.
That only comes out when Connor wants to communicate that an evening is significant.
A dozen people are arranged around the table, conversations already running.
Valentina is immediately part of three conversations simultaneously—the woman on her other side, Walsh across the table, and Connor’s associate two seats down.
I watch her do it and think, not for the first time tonight, that she moves through rooms like she was built for them.