9. Lorcan
Lorcan
Dinner at the estate is a study in survival techniques.
Jamie eats like a soldier behind enemy lines—fast, efficient, one eye on the exits. When he’s offered seconds, he hesitates like there's a trick in it. Then he takes the seconds anyway. Then thirds. The kid's stomach is at war with his pride, and his stomach wins by a landslide.
Cara doesn't eat much, but her eyes track everything—which fork Ma uses, where I put my hands, every detail of the room. I've seen professional surveillance guys less observant than this nine-year-old.
And Oisin has decided the safest place in the universe is Maeve's lap, where he eats his dinner one meatball at a time while shooting me looks like I might steal his plate at any moment.
By nine, Oisin's asleep on Maeve's shoulder, and I watch as she carries him upstairs. Jamie mutters something that might be goodnight and disappears into his room, and I hear the lock click. Fair enough, kid.
Cara pauses at her own door, looks back down the hallway at the room Maeve and Oisin entered, then at me, then closes the door softly.
They're safe. All of them, under one roof, with a gate and top-notch security and the O'Rourke name wrapped around them like armor.
Then it's just us. My wife and I. And a bed.
Maeve stands by the window in a sleep shirt, her arms wrapped around herself like she's waiting for a root canal.
Night one of four, and I know what she’s thinking.
"Relax," I say, toeing off my shoes. “It’s not as though I’m going to force myself on you."
Her head turns.
"Tonight, nothing happens. Nothing sexual.” I stretch out on top of the covers, on my side of the bed, hands behind my head. "I just want to know you."
She stares at me like I've spoken Portuguese. "Know me."
"We have a conversation, and then we sleep. That's it." I pat the mattress beside me. "Talk to me, Maeve. "
She doesn't move for a long moment. Searching for the trap, maybe.
Finally, slowly, she perches on the far edge of the bed. A whole river of duvet between us.
"So talk," she says.
"Ladies first."
"I don't have anything interesting to say."
“Right. I'll start then.” I grin at the ceiling. "When I was eight, Ronan convinced me the attic was haunted by our great-grandfather's ghost, who died angry because someone drank his whiskey. So naturally, I stole a bottle of Da's Jameson to leave up there as a peace offering."
A beat. "You didn't."
"Oh, I did. Ronan drank half of it. He was thirteen. Puked in Ma's rose bushes. Ma thought the roses had been poisoned and nearly fired the gardener over it.”
The sound that comes out of Maeve is small—not quite a laugh, but close.
"That's insane."
"That was a typical day in the O’Rourke house.
" I roll onto my side to face her. "Cillian broke his arm jumping off the garage roof because Declan bet him a dollar he wouldn't. Declan paid up, too.
Held the dollar over Cillian's cast at the hospital.
Ma took the dollar and made them both scrub the kitchen floor for a month. "
"Your mother made mob princes scrub floors."
"My mother would make the Pope scrub floors if he tracked mud in.
" I watch her shoulders gradually drop. "There were four of us. Four boys in this house, all of us convinced we were invincible. We fought like dogs and lied for each other like we were saints. This hallway right out there,” I point at the door.
“Ronan and I greased it with furniture polish once, to see if we could skate down it in socks.
Jamie's sleeping in the room I crashed into headfirst."
"Is that why you're like this?"
"Like what?"
"You know." She waves a hand at me.
"Devastatingly charming?"
"I was going to say concussed."
The laugh rips out of me before I can stop it, loud in the quiet room, and I catch it—the flicker at the corner of her mouth. She fights it, but loses. It's not a full smile, but it's the ghost of one.
"Your turn," I say.
The almost-smile dies. "My stories aren't like yours."
"Tell them anyway."
And slowly, she does.
She tells me about being fifteen when her da's face showed up on the news.
About her ma wasting away after that, there but not there.
About learning to forge her mother's signature on school forms and stretch a pound of ground beef.
About being sixteen with a newborn brother in her arms because her mother couldn't get out of bed, and then…
Her voice goes toneless, with no inflection or emotion.
"She overdosed. At home. On a weekday morning.” Her thumbnail digs into the pad of her finger. "I was at school. Jamie was at school. Oisin was at a sitter's because I couldn’t trust my mother with him.”
She pauses for a long moment, and I just wait for her to continue.
"Cara had a stomachache that day and stayed home." She swallows audibly, and I know what’s coming isn’t going to be pretty.
"She was six. Ma OD’d in the bathroom. Cara found her.
And she didn't know what to do. She sat on the floor next to Mom and held her hand, waited for her to wake up or for someone to come home. "
The room goes very still.
"For hours," Maeve whispers. "She sat there for hours. And she hasn't spoken since."
I picture the sweet, slightly shy, observant girl I met today as a six-year-old holding her dead mother's hand on a bathroom floor, waiting.
"Has she seen anyone?" The question's out of my mouth before my brain catches up. "A professional. A specialist, someone who—"
I hear it as I'm saying it. Specialists cost money.
"Forget I asked," I mutter. "Stupid question."
"The school counselor tries." Maeve's staring into space.
"Twenty minutes a week, when she has time.
She's got four hundred other kids. She keeps telling me Cara will talk when she's ready.
" Her jaw tightens. "But they don't get it.
They don't get how sensitive she is. And nobody listens to a kid who doesn't talk. "
Once she begins, the floodgates open and Maeve tells me about Jamie’s anger issues and frequent disciplinary troubles at school, and Oisin’s fear of adults, especially men.
I can’t fathom how Maeve’s managed—with no help and little money—to hold her family together for three years.
Nineteen years old.
I've spent my whole life around high-achievers—CEOs, Senators, Crimebosses. And I'm lying here realizing that the toughest person I have ever met is this hundred-pound young woman in a threadbare sleep shirt who never once, in her entire story, mentioned herself. Not what she’s lost. Not what she’s sacrificed.
Not what it cost her. Every sentence is about them.
Jamie’s needs. Cara’s needs. Oisin’s needs.
Someone should be taking care of her.
I want to be that someone. I want to take some of the burden off her shoulders so badly my hands itch with it.
Also—and this part ambushes me completely—I like her. Not the situation. Not the arrangement. Her. The badger temper and the murder threat and the determination and the spine of pure steel.
"Hey." My voice comes out rough. "Come here."
She hesitates. Then, miracle of miracles, she scoots across the duvet river, and I fold her into my side.
She's stiff for about ten seconds, then her head finds the hollow of my shoulder.
"This doesn't mean anything," she informs my collarbone.
"Course not."
"I'm just tired."
"Obviously."
We stay like that. Her breathing slows. I run my fingers through her hair, and she lets me. I’m not trying to charm her or to fill the silence with a joke. I don't feel the need to perform for her. I just want to be someone she can lean on.
At some point she tilts her face up. I don't know which of us moves first.
The kiss starts soft. Then her fingers curl into my shirt, and a fire ignites between us, and I roll toward her, deepening the kiss, tasting her and savoring the little sounds she makes. My blood is roaring.
I pull back suddenly. Put air between us. My dick’s so hard it’s nearly howling in protest, but I promised. Not tonight.
I settle her back against my shoulder.
"Anyway," I say, "you haven't heard about the time Declan got his head stuck in the stair railing."
She exhales—relief, I think, but maybe, just maybe I hear a tinge of disappointment underneath.
"I have to be up early,” she says instead. “I’m cleaning the Bryants' house at nine. Then the Finkelsteins at eleven."
I go still. "You're not cleaning houses tomorrow."
She sits up. "Excuse me?"
"Maeve. You're an O'Rourke now. You don't need—"
“No way. I’m not giving up my job.” Her tone makes it clear she’s immovable on this. "If this all goes sideways, I'm not starting from zero again. I've been at zero. I'm not going back."
I could argue. I could tell her that my wife scrubbing some stranger's toilet makes me want to buy the Bryants' house and the Finkelsteins’ house and bulldoze them both.
But I look at her—chin up, eyes blazing, ready to fight me for the right to work her fingers to the bone—and I understand. Self-sufficiency isn't a preference for her. It's a necessity.
"Counteroffer," I say. "Come work at O'Rourke's. The pub. With me."
She blinks. "Doing what?"
"Whatever needs doing—books, bartending, keeping me humble. I’ll give you a job on the books. Competitive wages. In fact, I’ll double what you’re making now. You earn your own paycheck, every cent yours."
She narrows her eyes at me and is silent for several minutes.
“Deal,” she says at last, settling back down against me. Her cheek finds my shoulder on the first try. "I start tomorrow."
“Deal,” I agree.