Chapter 51 A Beginning
A BEGINNING
Caitríona
The cottage feels smaller without Noreen’s voice filling the corners. Someone from the crew put the window back in and scrubbed the blood from the grout. They left the kettle gleaming on the stove and a fresh tin of tea on the counter like tidying up could stitch a life back together.
It cannot.
We sit in a hush that is not quite silence.
The goats knock their horns against the shed.
Rain presses its face to the blue shutters and fogs the field beyond the stone wall.
Livia lines up her wellies at the back door and climbs into my lap without her typical chatter.
I hold her tight despite the ache at my fresh wound.
The Gemini medical crew are miracle workers.
They patched us up in no time, multiple bullet wounds between Matteo and me, no more than bothersome bee stings to those professionals.
Livia tucks her head under my chin and strokes the locket against my throat the way she always does when she is thinking hard. “Is Auntie Noreen with the stars?”
I kiss her hair. “With the stars and the saints,” I reply, because that is how Noreen taught me to answer, and I refuse to let the world take that from us.
“And Leo, too?”
“Yes, a stór.”
We gave my aunt a proper goodbye this morning, while Matteo’s faithful guard would have his funeral back in Manhattan.
Father O’Malley met us at the parish gate wearing a coat too thin for the wind.
A handful of neighbors stood at the low wall, caps in hands and faces set.
No one asked questions. County Down knows how to grieve without prying it open.
Livia carried a jam jar full of daisies.
Matteo walked beside me with his sleeve torn, his shoulder bandaged, and his jaw clenched so tight I worried it would crack.
When the priest spoke the words, the old goat bleated from the road squealing her displeasure.
Noreen would have laughed at that. I almost did.
Instead, I pressed my palm to the cold curve of the coffin and whispered thank you into the wood.
I owed my aunt everything. She had given Livia a home when I couldn’t. And how did I repay her? By bringing nothing but trouble to her door. The guilt eats at me, but I swallow it down, just like everything else.
Now we are back where she made her tea and her miracles, and the house does not know what to do with us.
It’s too quiet without her, without Leo. The Gemini men came in the night and took him home. Matteo watched the taillights until they disappeared across the fields. He has not shaved. He keeps rubbing his thumb over a pale scar on his knuckle like he is reading it for instructions.
I set Livia on a kitchen chair and ladle soup into bowls. She eats because I do and Matteo does, three solemn people making a show for a little heart that deserves softness. She finally finishes and glances up at me. “Can the goats come inside for just one minute to say goodnight to the kitchen?”
Matteo manages a smile. “How about the goats leave a card at the door?”
She nods, content for now and rushes off to find paper.
He clears our bowls and washes them as if he has always stood at this sink.
When he dries his hands, he looks at me like there is a cliff edge inside him.
“I have teams sweeping Belfast,” he whispers.
“Every dock. Every pub that any Quinlans or McKennas visited. But Donal is a ghost. I don’t like it. ”
My stomach dips. The name tastes like iron. “If he wants to be found, he will let himself be found. If he wants to hurt us…” I trail off, eyes flicking to the girl drawing spirals on a scrap of paper with her tongue caught between her teeth. “I don’t think there’s a reason anymore…”
Matteo follows my gaze and lowers his voice further.
“I cannot put you back in the crossfire. Not here. Not with her.” He slides the dish towel over the oven handle and leans his hip on the counter.
“Come to Manhattan with me. Tonight. The penthouse in the Upper West Side is secure. Between Alessandro and me, the building is full of men who would bleed before they let harm knock on our door. I will build you a life there. Both of you. I want to make you smile more than you flinch, Kitty Cat. Please, give me the chance.”
I stare at his hands because I cannot look at his mouth when it says things my bones want. “I brought her to Noreen so she wouldn’t be burdened by the weight of our names,” I whisper. “I swore it over her cradle. Every story I told her had a girl and a happy home and never once a gun.”
“I know.” His voice roughens. “I will spend every day making sure the only things she learns from me are how to fix a bicycle and how to fold a paper boat and how to make you laugh when you’re tired. I will protect you both for the rest of my life. That is the only oath I have that matters.”
Livia looks up at the sound of his voice going soft. “Papà?”
He crosses the room in three strides and crouches, forearms on his knees so he is small enough for her world.
“Piccola, I want to take you and Mammy on a big adventure. Airplane, clouds, a city with tall buildings and the best hot chocolate. We will have a room with twinkle lights and a shelf just for your books and a window that looks at the river. Would you like that?”
“Are there goats?” she asks, ever practical.
“We can visit the goats on weekends. I’m sure Aisling will take good care of them. And you can teach New York pigeons about manners.”
She considers this, eyes going far away like she is mapping out how to carry love from one house to another. “Only if Mammy comes,” she decides. “And Auntie Noreen’s flowers too.”
“We can plant daisies on the terrace.” Tears threaten, but I blink them away. “We can take a bit of this soil with us and tuck it in the pot so she knows the way.”
Livia nods like a queen granting permission. “Okay. But my jam jar comes on the plane.”
“Your jam jar comes,” Matteo promises.
I slide my chair back and stand because I need to move or I will calcify. Matteo straightens too. We reach each other in the middle of the kitchen without meaning to. He takes my hands and sets them against his chest like something that belongs there. His heartbeat rises to meet my fingertips.
“I’m afraid.” It tastes like truth and old wounds.
“Me too,” he murmurs. “But I am more afraid of you waking up one morning without me than I am of any enemy. Let me take you home. Let me make one for the three of us.”
Livia pushes her drawing across the table and clears her throat in a very important way. “We can put the picture on the fridge in Manhattan,” she announces, pointing. “It’s our family. Mammy. Papà. Me. And the goats but smaller.”
I pick up the paper, and my laugh breaks on the rocks of my chest. It’s three circles with stick legs and a rectangle with horns that looks a lot like a lopsided dog. Matteo examines it as if it is a contract he is honored to sign.
“Then it’s decided,” he says softly. He looks at me, not away, and the vow lives in his green eyes. “We leave at dusk. Leo’s men will ride with us, and the jet can be at Belfast by five.”
I nod because somewhere inside the ruins a door opens, and the air smells like the sea again. “We’ll go,” I whisper. “For her. For us.”
We spend the afternoon folding our lives into duffel bags.
Livia gathers her treasures: the jam jar, a goat-chewed ribbon, the paper sun with too many rays.
I take Noreen’s recipe book and her shawl that still smells like peat and lavender.
Matteo finds a small trowel in the shed, and we kneel by the daisies to take a square of soil the size of a hand.
Livia pats it smooth in a plastic tub like it is a cake she will not let fall.
Before we leave, I step into the sitting room one last time.
The chair by the window wears Noreen’s cardigan across the back like a person about to sit.
I press my palm to the worn armrest and picture her telling the goats to stop arguing with the rain.
“Mind us from where you are,” I whisper.
“I will try to be as brave as you were.”
Outside, engines purr at the lane. Gemini men in dark coats watch the hedgerows with a predator’s patience.
Matteo locks the front door and then slips the key under the stone Noreen always used.
We stand together for a long breath facing the cottage with the blue shutters and the people who made us better.
On the walk to the car, Livia reaches up and takes one of each of our hands. She swings them once, serious and satisfied. “When we get to the tall buildings, can we get a night-light with stars so Auntie Noreen can find us?”
Matteo squeezes her fingers. “We will get a whole sky.”
I squeeze back. “And a window for the moon.”
She nods, content, and climbs into the backseat with her jam jar held like a crown jewel. Matteo opens my door and bends close, voice a hush meant just for me. “This is not a goodbye to here,” he murmurs. “It’s a beginning somewhere we get to choose.”
I tip my forehead to his. “Then choose me again tomorrow.”
“Every day,” he answers.
We pull away from the cottage. The goats lift their heads and watch us go like dignitaries.
The lane curves to the road and the road runs toward Belfast and the runway and a life I never believed I could have.
I look back once and see the blue shutters, bright as eyes.
Then I face forward, lace my fingers with Matteo’s over the console, and let the car carry us toward Manhattan and whatever we will be there.