21. Maeve
Maeve
Down the hall, the kids are packing.
Jamie's drawers open and close harder than they need to. Cara folds things with her usual careful precision. Oisin "helps” by carrying single items back and forth and narrating each one—my truck, my sock, my udder sock.
I told them we're getting our own place. A nice one. That they'll never have to go back to the old apartment, that they'll have their own rooms, that everything will be fine.
Jamie glared at me for a long moment, and then said, "Whatever.”Cara just turned and walked to her room. Oisin asked if Lorcan was coming.
I didn't answer that one.
Now I'm standing in the middle of our bedroom—his bedroom, I correct myself. It was always his bedroom—with my old duffel bag open on the duvet, and I've been holding the same folded shirt for five minutes.
"You pack like a woman marching to her own execution."
I spin around. Kathleen O'Rourke stands in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her, rings glinting.
"Mrs. O'Rourke—"
"Kathleen." She steps in without being invited, because of course she does, and surveys the half-packed bag with one raised eyebrow. "My son tells me you're leaving. He looks like a man organizing his own funeral, so I thought I'd come see the woman capable of putting that look on his face."
Heat crawls up my neck. “We had a deal. Four days. He agreed."
"Oh, I know all about the deal." She waves it away like smoke. "Men and their deals. May I sit?"
She sits before I answer, settling on the edge of the armchair by the window, her spine ruler-straight.
"Let me tell you something about myself, Maeve.
Something my sons would confirm with great enthusiasm and colorful language.
" She folds her hands in her lap. "I am the most controlling woman in Chicago. Possibly the entire Midwest. I have spent forty years planning, plotting, and organizing this family. And with great success. Until it came to arranging marriages. Oh, I tried, don’t get me wrong.
I kept a list—an actual list, on paper—of suitable brides for each of my four sons. Vetted. Cross-referenced."
I don't want to hear this. Something twists in my stomach.
"Do you know how many of my marriage arrangements came to pass?
" She holds up one hand, fingers spread, and then closes it into a fist. "None. Cillian brought home a girl with everything she owned stuffed in a garbage bag. Declan married a homeless woman to keep her from becoming a witness against him. Ronan,” she exhales through her nose.
"Ronan came back from a cult with a bride wearing a gunny sack who'd never seen electricity.
Every pairing I made for my sons, they demolished.
And every one of those marriages I couldn't control turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to my boys. "
"I don't see what this has to do with—"
"You see exactly what it has to do with you. That's why your hands are shaking."
I look down. The shirt is trembling in my grip. I set it down on the bed and ball my fists against my thighs.
“I’ve been watching you," Kathleen says, quieter now. "I've watched you all week. You've been the only stable influence in your sibling’s life since you were fifteen, and you kept your family together on sheer will and determination.”
She pauses, picks an invisible piece of lint off her slacks. “I respect that more than you know." She pauses. “In fact, I see a lot of myself in you. But you cannot white-knuckle life into submission.”
"I don't know what that means."
"It means, my dear, that I know you’ve had to be the puppet master to keep everything from falling apart.
” Her eyes pin me in place. “But there comes a time when you need to let go of maintaining total control. To trust—the right person, of course. Maybe Lorcan’s that person.
And maybe pushing him away isn't strength. It's fear."
My throat is closing. "I'm not afraid of him."
"No." She rises. "You're afraid of what you feel for him.
There's a reason they call it falling in love, Maeve.
Because that's precisely what it is. A freefall.
No handholds. No safety net. No control at all—the one thing you've never once been able to afford—until now.” She crosses to the door, then pauses with her hand on the frame.
"I fell in love twice in my life. Once, with my late husband.
He was the wrong man, and it cost me dearly.
So I understand your fear. But I'll tell you what I've learned. With the wrong person, the fall breaks you. With the right person,” something moves across her stern face, something almost soft.
“It's the best thing life has to offer us mere mortals.
The question is whether Lorcan is the right person. "
She looks at me for one more long moment.
"For what it's worth, in four days, you and those children became the most important thing in the world to Lorcan.”
Then she's gone. I hear her precise, unhurried footsteps down the hall.
I sit down hard on the edge of the bed.
You're afraid of what you feel for him.
Is she right?
Yes. She is. I fell so hard and fast for Lorcan that I can't see the place I fell from anymore. And falling means no hands on the wheel, no control. It means trusting someone else.
Lorcan has never let me down. Not yet. And that’s just it. Am I being too much of a coward to give him the chance to let me down?
My name's been on a lot of ugly things, Maeve, but it's never—not once—been on a broken promise.
Nothing free is free—that's been my whole religion. But maybe—maybe—some things are just given.
The door opens.
Lorcan stands there with his hands in his pockets and his face arranged in careful, pleasant neutral—a mask, I realize. I've learned his real smiles now, and this isn't one.
"The apartment's ready," he says. "Doorman's expecting you. Car's out front whenever you’re ready. Fridge is stocked—I had them get the cereal Oisin likes. The dinosaur one."
The dinosaur one. He knows which cereal my brother likes?
He starts to turn, then stops. His jaw tics.
"For the record," he says quietly, not quite looking at me, "I don't want this. I don’t want you to leave."