43. Saoirse
Saoirse
Trapped In Amber
I’m in shock. Finn just let me go. Is it a test, or does he trust me?
At reception, I crane my neck to check if he’s waiting for me in the parking lot.
He is. The zippy little hatchback, so different from my world of Maybachs and mansions, looks small with Finn leaning against it.
I get it. He’s a man with nothing to prove, so he doesn’t give a shit what type of car he drives—he probably got that one so he could teach me how to drive.
That makes me question if I were a prisoner or not. Was the constant surveillance and bursts of terror all in my mind?
The sudden release, not knowing if my escape is real as he watches me walk away, creates a tumult of excitement in my belly.
It’s almost orgasmic.
One buzz of the intercom lets me in. My enquiry at reception goes without a hitch.
Maeve lives in the convent as a secular history teacher. And yes, she uses the name ‘Maeve Byrne’. I could’ve found my sister anytime I wanted.
I could’ve sent that fancy personal security guard of mine to look for her. But, I didn’t.
My sneakers squeak on the shiny linoleum as I follow the receptionist to a door. Sunshine slants under the eaves and brings brightness to the cool interior.
The lady knocks. “Maeve, you have a visitor.”
A voice, a beloved voice, so similar to my own, calls out. “They can come in.”
It feels like sleep walking when I see her for the first time in six years. She’s sitting at a small built-in desk and marking essays. No digital submissions, no autocorrect, just pages of human handwriting.
I’ve married and gotten a career in real estate; developed luxury housing projects and secretly gone on contraception.
Been captured and enraptured by the man who whisked me away by infiltrating my home with spies. Cheated on my husband and said and done things that probably got men killed.
Oh, God, I’ve been so bad.
Maeve holds her arms open and I run to her. She hugs me tight as I weep.
“Hush, Saoirse. Hush. None of this is your fault. You have to believe it.”
Sniffing, I can only let her out of my tight hug after many minutes have passed.
“How much do you know?” I want to confess my many transgressions, but not if it’s already known.
The room is sparsely furnished. There’s a single twin-size bed pushed into a corner with a view over the courtyard and rug in the middle of the wooden floor.
One wall holds bookshelves. The opposite wall’s shelves have knickknacks. Small cut glass bowls full of bands and hair pins, a brush and comb, a bottle of inexpensive eau de cologne.
At the head of her bed hangs a crucifix. On the wall in front of her computer desk is a print of The Holy Mother.
As for my sister herself, she hasn’t aged a day. Maybe it’s because she has been frozen in my mind at the age of eighteen for so long that I find it hard to see her as any different.
Her rosy-cheeked, heart-shaped face with its pointed chin and wide, flattened oval forehead. Her red, slightly wavy, hair hangs in thick drapes on each side of her face, unstyled and unshaped.
The russet-blonde arched eyebrows and the freckled bridge of her pert nose.
Her full, sensual lips send one signal, while her sandy lashes and periwinkle aquamarine eyes send another.
The clothes? Demure. Her expression? Serene.
I envy her.
Framed photos of two young girls with braided hair and their arms hugging stare out of the pictures. I’m all she has left. The big sister who let her only sibling slip away and never made the effort to find her.
“You must hate me, Maeve. But I hated everyone after Finn left. I wanted everyone to suffer the same way I did.”
She sighs and pats my back. Pushing me away from her, she holds my arms and stares deeply into my eyes.
“You have a lot of decisions to make, Saoirse. I don’t envy you.”
Holding up my hand, I hang my head. “Please. I need time to take this in.”
My sister smiles. “Cool. But I want you to know that I haven’t been sitting here praying and twiddling my thumbs, you know.”
I go sit on the bed. I love looking at her. She feels brand new to me after so long apart.
Maeve gets straight to the point. “I know virtually nothing about what’s going on in the outside world.”
I’m amazed. “Then what the fuck have you been praying about?” And why the fuck have you been praying? Aren’t I proof that prayers are never answered?
But I don’t say that out loud. Next to my sister, I feel jaded and soiled.
Maeve insists. “Do me a favor, please, Saoirse. And maybe it will help you sort it out in your mind.”
The information… The grand Irish story of it all, comes out in short bursts of confession.
The drunken wedding. The moon night without the honey.
Burying myself in work. Taking over Patrick’s role, which included inheriting his strong-arm tactics.
Forcefully removing families from rent-controlled buildings.
Constructing cheap, poorly-made luxury condos. Pricing out middle income Brooklyn couples to get the upmarket singles escaping Manhattan.
Paying off the right people. Bribing, blackmailing, and bullying anyone left.
And my marriage? I’m a pet, treated like a woman-child by a man who stomped over his brothers and uncles so he could be the only one at the top.
“How do you know this?” Maeve is aghast.
“Look around, kid sister. How many grandpas, uncles, and male relatives do we have? They’re all dead. Only the females are left behind, the women too afraid to tell tales.”
“Women… Like us.” Maeve finally gets it.
I nod, eager to bring this bitter update to a close.
Feargal—Liam’s cousin—got out of clink and came to work for Declan. He was kind to me. A ray of sunshine in my bleak Sunnyside world.
I asked Declan if Feargal could join the table, take over Fourth Avenue, and drive me everywhere.
Feargal drove me straight to Finn. How? I hopped into the trunk of his car and left my phone behind… because Dec kept me like a prisoner. I wanted to escape.
Only to run straight into my grudge fucker’s arms, to be kept in his bedroom, bound by invisible chains, until I bleed.
“That’s all we are in the end, Maeve. Breeding machines to men who want to leave their legacy of violence to a son.”
Maeve sucks her teeth. She gets up, goes to the shelf, and pours us each a glass of water from the pitcher.
She hands me one and waits for me to drain it before asking.
“You’ve been married nearly six years, Saoirse. Have you been to see an OB-GYN?”
I fix my gaze on her. “Yes, but only to get a prescription for the pill.”
Maeve gasps and crosses herself. “Holy Mother!”
I feel dead inside. “I’m so far removed from my religion right now, it fills me with despair.”
“What are you going to do now? You’re with Finn, yes?” She wants me to contradict her, but I don’t.
The mention of his name triggers me. I start trembling, wrapping my arms around me to keep warm.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t want…”
Maeve goes out and closes the door behind her. I hear her footsteps fade.
She’s gone to fetch Finn in the parking lot, hasn’t she?
But no. She comes back holding a coffee mug half full of whiskey.
“I stole a tot from the bottle Sister Prejean keeps under her pillow.”
Again, she waits for me to drink it down before settling herself for a good old lecture.
“You’re a product of your environment and your upbringing, Saoirse. You mustn’t blame yourself.”
“We had Mam growing up, Maeve. It wasn’t all bad.”
She taps a finger to make her point.
“It’s not a coincidence that you fell in love with Finn O’Shea after Mam passed. You had a hole in your heart and he came along and filled it. But you should start seeing things from Finn’s point of view.”
I’m following what she’s saying closely.
Maeve doesn’t hold back. “He finds you on your knees in the chapel. He sees his opportunity. Innocent, humble, vulnerable virgins don’t hang around every corner you know.”
I know.
“He likes you on your knees. Your personality is unformed, and you’re in mourning. The perfect clay for him to mold on his giant wheel of fortune.”
“What do you mean, Maeve?”
“You gave him polite victim attitude. Your body language, your distress… He’s a shark and you’re the blood he smelled in the water.”
That’s unfair. “We were raised to be polite, you and I. That’s not a victim mentality!”
Maeve smirks. “Of course it is. Most Irish American princesses are brought up to say yes and Amen to everything, because it makes us more valuable when it comes to marriage.”
Folding my arms, I frown. The whiskey had zero effect on me.
“The way you say it makes me sound like a dunce. But you have no idea how hot Finn was… Is. Show me a woman who can resist all that Irish charm.”
My sister claps her hands like she’s swatting a bug.
“That’s what I’m talking about! You have no idea how danger is able to package itself. Charm is a verb, not a character attribute. Being charming doesn’t equal being good—quite the opposite.”
The whiskey creeps into my brain, putting me in the mood to listen.
“Ugh!” Maeve rubs her arms and shivers dramatically.
“If a man turns on the charm, Saoirse, it’s because he wants something out of you! Twenty-seven years old, and you don’t know the difference between a genuine compliment and when a man is trying to shine you on. What are you like?”
I’m scarlet for myself. Six years separation and this is what Maeve wants to talk about?
“Finn disappeared long ago, Saoirse. He left you a cruel note and murdered Uncle Seamus. What you need to be asking yourself is why has he come back now?”
I can answer that. “Connor and then Eamon died. I saw Finn at Eamon’s funeral.”
“Pfft!” she scoffs. “Finn came back to take Connor’s place, Saoirse. You’re just a side project to amuse him.”
I’ve got a giant, whiskey-inspired lump in my throat.
“You don’t know that! You can’t know that. Shut up!”
The way his eyes look at me while he teaches me how to drive. His hand covers mine to show me how to change gear. Not to mention the searing, totally fucking flammable connection we have when we fuck.
“Finn loves me, Maeve. I don’t have to explain it to you.”
I’m already arguing, when I should be agreeing with Maeve, but I can’t.
She’s relentless. “If you’re too much of a pussy to do it, let me break up with him for you. What’s in it for Finn—he wants you to leave Dec and be with him. Why?”
I know the answer to this.
“Finn says the five borough structure is imbalanced. A few wealthy individuals are getting richer by exploiting those without power. Rents, dealerships, and leases have gotten damn murky under Declan’s watch.”
Maeve surprises me by agreeing. “Sure. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Does Declan know how disgruntled everyone is?”
“I’ve never asked him. All the captains and soldiers are yes-men. No one would dare give Declan the cold hard facts. That’s what Finn says.”
Maeve crows with laughter. “Finn says. Finn says. Do you hear yourself?” She settles down and gets serious. “I’m giving you the cold hard facts, dear sister, because I love you and care for your best interests—unclouded by male dominance and sex, okay?”
“Got it.”
Taking a deep breath, she talks quickly.
“Finn left you standing at the docks alone to face the consequences of the actions he inflicted on you—again, alone. Your marriage to Declan never stood a chance, not because you were consumed with hatred for that mad hitman lover of yours, but because Finn snatched away your virginity, effectively leaving you with nothing to give your husband.”
She gets up and paces.
“After all our Mam said about respecting ourselves and saving ourselves for marriage, for honor. To avoid being scandalized at all costs. Finn took that from you.”
“Finn and I were going to Boston to get married, Maeve!”
“He chose to save himself over saving you. End of story. How long did it take for you to fall back in love with him when he returned? Was it as lightning fast as the speed you did it the first time?”
I sway between rage and sadness.
My mind wanders, fueled by whiskey.
The way Finn fucks me is transcendent. That such a gorgeous god-like creature wants to fuck me at all still fills me with wonder.
“He makes it feel so good, Maeve. Physically, I adore him. And my marriage? It was dead at the start. Just you wait until it’s your own arranged marriage, then talk to me about loving my husband like a good Catholic wife should.”
She replies in an offhand way. “You don’t know? My marriage has been arranged. Declan wants me to marry Rian.”
It feels like a smack in the face when she says it. No, wait. It’s a full-on knockdown punch.
“That you can sit there and tell me without weeping, Maeve, makes me doubt your sanity. Isn’t what happened to me a grim example?”
“Nope.” My sister’s shrug hits me like a salty wave crashing on an icy Irish ocean. “I’m a virgin, so I have something to offer a man.”
I’m not offended—I’m horrified. And Maeve scolds me for being indoctrinated?
“You say Dec arranged it?”
Her nod is nonchalant. “Yes, because Patrick’s sick, in case you’ve been too busy fucking Finn to find out. You should visit him. He’s your Da.”
“I’ll pray for his soul from afar. Maeve, is there a backdoor exit in the convent?”
My sister smiles and nods.