Chapter 34 Ronan
RONAN
Time changed when waiting. I’d been through it before when I lost my wife. I hadn’t expected to experience the same kind of gnawing grief all over again, except it was almost worse. I’d lost Bree because she chose to walk away. I understood, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
The woman at the flower shop smiled at me as I passed. “Afternoon, Ronan.”
“Afternoon, Terry.” I spoke on autopilot.
The flower shop’s display of white lilies stopped me in my tracks.
My wife had loved lilies. Bree had put a single one in a vase in the pub the week before she left.
She never mentioned it, and I hadn’t asked, but she’d only done it once I admitted to her in a late-night conversation that the smell reminded me of her.
And now I couldn’t walk past a flower shop without the two of them colliding.
I almost plucked one of the lilies from a bundle, but when Terry tried to entice me closer to the bouquets of roses stacked in the wooden risers on either side of her door, I turned and crossed the street.
Not that it was any better over there. Green shamrocks hung from every window, along with green hearts and flowers. A few went a little too cliche with pots of gold and dancing leprechauns, but no one here minded. Most believed the more garish the better the party.
“Hey, Ronan, you ready for the St. Patrick’s Day party over at the pub? I hear Declan has something special cooked up.” Bert, the older guy who ran the hardware store stood next to the bench beside his door with his hands on his hips.
I ground my teeth and swallowed the instant retort before managing a nod.
“It’ll be great.” He might have said something else, but I’d lost interest in every conversation.
The pub wasn’t the same without Bree. More so for Declan, Finn, and me, but it had lost its sparkle in general.
The regulars still visited, but the conversations were duller, quieter. They drank less and left earlier.
Declan had been closing up by eight at night. We all knew why, but no one mentioned Bree’s name. She’d become the heart of the pub, and without her, it all fell apart.
Finn had stopped coming as often after his shifts. When he showed up, he sat at the bar, drank his Guinness, and made Declan laugh, but the ease had gone out of it. We were all running on autopilot, waiting for that moment when we could finally breathe again without falling apart.
The lightness Bree brought into a room wasn’t something I could manufacture and add to the pub. It was gone. She was gone. We all noticed the absence but couldn’t talk about it for more than a minute.
My steps slowed when I reached the pub. I gripped the handle tight in one hand and braced for the feel of her, the impact that punched me straight in the chest, tearing out my heart all over again.
I should stop coming here. All it did was hurt more.
But I couldn’t leave Declan to suffer alone.
Nine months.
Nine fucking months since we’d seen her. Heard her voice, her laugh.
I’d driven past the pub early on, my head always pulling upward to look at the windows.
It had taken me a month to train myself out of it.
Declan kept the lights off, said he couldn’t stand to turn them on and see the empty rooms. I understood that.
I’d done the same thing after losing my wife.
Took me four months to be able to even look at her side of the closet.
I’d taken all the plants from Bree’s apartment and redistributed them throughout my house and the patio at the back of the pub, determined to keep something alive.
I yanked the door open and stepped through before I crumbled on the sidewalk.
The smell slapped me in the face first, hops, grease, and smoke. My head snapped up.
Empty. My heart kicked into overdrive. I’d gotten used to the thinning crowd since Bree left, but to see the whole place completely empty rattled me to my core.
Not having her here, not being able to see her smile, punched deeper than ever as I caught sight of the green garland wrapped around the windows.
Declan almost hadn’t bothered with the St. Patrick’s day decorations.
Why bother, he’d asked. Finn and I didn’t have an answer except that Maeve would have wanted it.
Bree wanted us to move on with our lives.
Impossible without her, but we did our best.
The decorations made it worse, somehow. Bree should have been in here, standing on that stupid ladder and trying to hang garland around every available surface.
I should have been able to walk in and help her while she argued with Declan about the placement of the window clings and lined up Maeve’s empty bottles for good luck.
Declan’s attempt at decorating hung over the empty pub tables, looking sad and alone.
“Fuck.” Declan’s roar rolled out from the kitchen, followed by a crash of metal.
I ran into the kitchen, the sudden sight of melted plastic and the acrid stench of water and fire knocking me into a hard stop. My body swayed. “What happened?”
Declan stood in the middle of the kitchen, his hands laced together on top of his head.
He kept his back to me, barely moving. “Wire short-circuited this morning. Caused a fire.” He bent at the waist and cursed.
“Finn and the fire department just left. They managed to put it out before it spread through the whole pub.”
Obviously. I’d seen that for myself, but Declan probably needed to say it out loud. I understood. Sometimes hearing the obvious made it real in a way staring never could. “Guess Maeve was wrong about the kitchen not needing renovations.”
Declan’s shoulders rose, then fell as he straightened, hands still on his head. “She always kept up the maintenance. The wiring should’ve been fine.”
I’d learned a long time ago that ‘should have’ failed more often than not.
I took a slow walk around the kitchen. The fire must have started in the wall, or the stove in front of it.
A large black hole punched through the wall and into the open freezer on the other side.
Smoke curled up in slow spirals. Soot covered half the kitchen.
A large section of the ceiling had fallen onto the floor, and the firemen had drenched the entire kitchen while putting out the flames.
“This whole thing will need to be redone.” I stopped close to the back door and rubbed soot off the frame, darkening my thumb in the process. “There’s no way you can use any of the equipment after this.”
Declan growled and kicked the stove. “That’s what I figured.”
Good. At least he was able to think beyond the moment and what this meant. “It’s going to cost a lot to repair.”
“You mean an entire remodel?” Declan grabbed a broom and pushed a pile of soggy ceiling tiles into a dustpan. He carried them to the large trash can and dumped them inside.
“You probably shouldn’t do that yet.” I took the pan from him and propped the broom in the corner. “The insurance adjuster needs to see all the damage before you clean up.”
Declan had never dealt with anything like this before. He ran the pub, and he did a damned fine job, but he’d never faced anything like a fire.
My pulse slowed, then raced again as the truth of it all came crashing down on me.
“You have to call Bree. She needs to know about this so she can decide what to do next.” It was her place.
Declan could try to take care of it himself, but even with insurance, it would cost a lot of money to get the kitchen up and running again.
“Maybe we just shut down the kitchen. It’s not making us much money anyway. Hardly anyone comes in for food.” The defeated posture returned, and he palmed the edge of the nearest counter, dropping his head between his arms. “I don’t want to call her, Ronan.”
We’d discussed it a couple times since she left. I’d lost count of how many times I picked up my phone and tapped her name, just to swipe away without calling.
Telling her we missed her wouldn’t solve any problems. I’d written it out once, typed it all out, read it back, then deleted it.
I’d needed to see it. Three sentences that said nothing useful except the truth.
We were broken without her. I’d taken two extra jobs the last few months.
Declan had noticed but not mentioned it.
We all dealt with her absence in our own way.
“She hasn’t been back, Ronan.” The pitch of Declan’s voice, the posture, showed his defeat.
I forced my feet into motion, moving across the room and putting a hand on his back. “She might not come back now, either. She might take the money and close the pub. You need to be prepared for that possibility.”
“Like you are?” Declan raised his head. Red rimmed his eyes, and I didn’t know if it came from the smoke or misery over Bree.
Both, most likely.
The back door creaked open and Finn stepped through.
“Sorry I couldn’t stay earlier. Had to finish my shift.
” He rested his hands on his hips and turned the same slow circle I had.
“Shit. I knew it was bad. Kitchen fires almost always are, but seeing it like this…” He shook his head.
“I never see them afterward, you know? It’s surreal.
” He kept talking, verbally processing what we all felt.
The strangling sensation eased with every word Finn said. He might talk to keep things from turning too quiet, but it helped me and Declan too.
Declan straightened and dug his phone out of his pocket. “Here goes nothing.”