Chapter 52
KATE
Another week. More meals. Less sleep.
I order a suture removal kit online and have it delivered to the motel’s front desk. When I pull the knotted black thread from my thigh I expect it to hurt, but all I feel is pressure. An angry red scar waits beneath, longer and darker than all the others.
I can’t keep living this way. I can’t stay inside these four dingy walls. I can’t avoid going online, visiting websites I’ve known since the day I sat down at my first computer. I’ve only been trapped like this one other time in my life.
My job is to keep Breagha safe, to keep her from being afraid. I’m eight and she’s five, and I have to keep her from touching Larissa in the dark. She can’t find out how cold Larissa is.
Breagha says she’s hungry, so I give her all my food. I’m strong. I don’t need it. After a while, my stomach doesn’t even hurt.
Late at night, when Breagha’s head is in my lap, I listen to the Bad Men through the grate in the floor. I memorize everything they say. That’s what a good girl does. That’s what a Lynch girl does to help her clan.
It takes me a long time to realize the cocksucker they’re talking about is Da.
The cocksucker won’t leave Baltimore to the bratva.
The cocksucker won’t pay to bring Breagha and me home.
The cocksucker will end up with three fucking corpses on his motherfucking doorstep if he doesn’t do what’s good for him.
Finally a new Bad Man comes. He’s more important than the rest. They call him Brigadier. The other men listen to him, even though when he laughs he sounds exactly like a girl.
Brigadier brings me to the cold room. He pets my hair and says I’m his lisichka. After, he drives Breagha and me back to our house in Baltimore. Da is there, and Mam, and Granny.
That night, when Mam turns out the light, I scream and I scream and I scream.
I wet myself like I’m a little baby. Mam tells me I’m a bad girl, keeping Breagha from falling asleep.
I’ve given Mam a headache. She doesn’t know why she’s been cursed with a child like me.
She tells me a Lynch woman offers up her pain to the clan.
The next day, Granny takes me to Ireland.
We fly all night over the ocean. She lets me leave the light on above my seat, even when the rest of the plane is dark.
We arrive in Ireland, and we drive to County Donegal, with its dozens of cousins, Lynches and Malloys.
Athgarven, where Rosie Lynch teaches me to bake soda bread and Mad Robbie Malloy runs rings around the garda.
Ireland. It saved me when I was eight. Granny and I went back many times, until I went to uni in Dublin. Just last year, Da sent me to Athgarven, in Donegal, as punishment.
Ireland’s not a punishment. Ireland is the one place I can breathe. The one place I can be free. Before I go, though, I need to chance one phone call.
I’m standing on the Metro platform outside Arlington Cemetery. This is one of the above-ground stations. The sun is shining and a fresh breeze blows. It’s a perfect spring morning.
I check the monitor hanging over the platform. The next train is due in five minutes. That’s enough time for me to say goodbye. I’ll be long gone from the station before Wolf traces my call.
I fish my burner out of my pocket.
Granny answers on the third ring. Her voice sounds strained, hoarse, as if she’s been coughing.
“It’s me,” I say.
“A chroí.” My heart. That’s what Granny’s always called me. I’ve known the words forever, years before she took me to Ireland.
I force my lips into a smile, hoping I can push the lie into my tone of voice. “What’s the craic?” I ask because the easy Irish greeting is something else I’ve known all my life.
“Where are you, a chroí? Everyone is worried.”
Everyone? Not Mam and Da—they must be grateful their troublesome older daughter hasn’t rung with more requests. Not Breagha—she’ll be too busy with beaus and courting. Not Wolf. Never, ever Wolf.
Granny is worried, which was never my intention. Instead of answering, I ask, “Do you remember the ruined castle in Donegal?”
“Outside of Athgarven?” Granny asks. “I remember taking a picnic to a pile of moss-covered rocks. And I remember you chasing after a family of squirrels for the better part of an afternoon.” A cough interrupts her.
My fingers tighten around the burner until she goes on, her voice thicker than it had been.
“And I remember you eating three fairy cakes after you finally came back to our blanket. You were so full you slept the rest of the afternoon.”
“That was the first time I slept without nightmares, after…” After the Bad Men.
“I remember,” Granny rasps.
“I’m going back,” I tell her. “Ireland is where I need to be.”
There’s a moment where I think Granny’s dropped her phone, but I realize she’s only biting back another cough before she says, “He misses you.”
“Who?”
“Your husband. He regrets what happened. He wants you back.”
“Wolf told you that.” My sneer is harsher than my grandmother deserves.
“He didn’t have to.” She clears her throat. “Nilsson and Anna are worried. Three times in the past week, they’ve interrupted Mrs. Watson and me at breakfast.”
“Oh, please,” I snort.
“Nilsson wants to call Dr. Patel.” Another throat clearing. “Anna begged me to talk to you, to ask you to come home. I don’t think she believed me when I said I had no way of reaching you.”
Lies. All of it lies, or Nilsson and Anna are misreading the signs. They want to believe they work for a man instead of a machine. “I can’t come home, Granny.”
“I know, a chroí,” she says softly.
“He really, truly hurt me.”
“I understand.”
“He doesn’t want me. He just wants to win.”
“And you don’t want him,” Granny says. “You just want to win.”
“Granny!” I protest, but the platform lights start to flash before I can finish my lie. My train is coming in. “I have to go, Granny.”
“Of course, dear. I’ve already kept you too long.”
“Not long enough,” I say, because I don’t want to end the conversation.
But this call has been bouncing off cell phone towers for over five minutes. I’ve worked too hard to let Wolf catch me now. I can call Granny from Donegal.
“I love you,” I say as the train doors open.
“Love you to the moon and back, a chroí.”
Something cracks inside me as I drop the burner into a dustbin. I barely make it onto the train before the heavy doors close.
I’m four subway stops from National Airport. All I have to do is repeat what I did the day I escaped Wolf—use his credit card to buy a ticket to Dublin.
My train pulls into the Pentagon station. Stops. Leaves, traveling south. I’m three stops from the airport.
I can wait until I’m about to board the plane, then grab the two-thousand-dollar maximum from an ATM. I’ll be in the air before Wolf can stop me.
Pentagon City—two stops left.
I’ll be leaving behind my new laptop, but there’s nothing on that computer worth saving; nothing I can’t reproduce.
Crystal City—one stop left.
Wolf won’t keep Granny forever. He’ll send her back to Baltimore, back to Da. She won’t have Helen Watson to nurse her anymore. She’ll end up in her windowless little room at Three Oaks.
Her cough sounded terrible. She was tired. Sad.
But Granny understands. She wants me to go to Ireland. She knows Donegal will heal all the broken places inside me.
She’s sick. She may be dying.
But she’s my grandmother, the only person in the entire Lynch clan who’s ever understood me. She wants me to be safe. To be whole.
National Airport—the Metro doors open.
I step off the train and into the rest of my life.