Epilogue #2
He whirled the wheelchair around and crouched in front of me. “No. You’re not going down that road.”
“But she—”
“Has she ever been the sort to ask for help?”
I glanced away.
“Exactly. She’s too prideful.” He nudged my chin. “Just like you. Two peas in a pod. She needs this. Sometimes a wound needs to be opened and drained to heal.”
I huffed a deep breath behind pinched lips but bobbed my head.
The next step was the retaliation poisoning, but days later, as she recovered from it, my resolve was tested again.
Her delusions devolved into an intense paranoia that the hospital staff was out to harm her.
She managed to stab a nurse repeatedly in the thigh during a change of her IV catheter and throw off two agents before collapsing to the floor, her unbroken wrist cuffed to the bedrail.
For two days, they kept her continuously sedated for both their safety and hers until Agent Cranwell requested I come visit, in an attempt to calm her down.
To some degree, it worked. I kept her company, held her hand, and stole her focus as the nurses checked her vitals and switched out her medications.
“They’re trying to kill me,” Maeve whispered, her lower jaw quivering, her gaze locked on the nurses pattering around us. “They almost did.”
With a bloodshot, panicked gaze, she begged me not to leave her.
She pleaded with me to free her and take her with me.
Her hands shook as she gripped mine. Her hair hung lifeless down the front of her gown, and weight loss carved grooves around her cheekbones.
It tightened the suffocating vise around my heart, but I shut down the part of me that wanted to take her away from all of it.
This stepping stone needed to happen for her to have a chance to heal.
The poisoning also had another effect. It provided plausible doubt in the FBI’s suspicion of Maeve’s involvement with the Love Knot Killer.
Brody had managed to obtain the exact formula ratio of the poisonous cocktail LK used, and a chemist had reproduced it before mixing it into her hospital soup ration.
The next time I saw her was at the trial. The prosecution’s case was low on evidence and based primarily on her attack on Cillian and me, despite the Love Knot Killer’s history, but the FBI decided to push it forward. It was to our advantage.
When Maeve saw Cillian and me sitting in the public gallery, along with his two brothers, she reacted as expected and nearly vaulted over the railing reaching to grab at Cillian.
Gasps echoed in the courtroom as the bailiffs restrained her amid her shrieks and screams. I squeezed my eyes shut, wetness leaking from the corners, and choked back my sobs.
Cillian pulled me against him. “We’d known this was likely. After today, things will get better.”
I knew he was right, but it didn’t soothe the prickling ache spreading everywhere within me like a virus at the sight of her in this state.
Once the trial began, her attorney pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Witness testimonies followed. From doctors and psychiatrists.
Nurses from the hospital. Erel, who made the trip specifically to detail their relationship with some falsehoods sprinkled throughout.
Cillian. And lastly, me. It all revolved around her obsessive-compulsive attachment to me after an abusive childhood and her groomed animosity toward her half-brothers that developed into a delusional disorder.
For the rest of my life, I would always remember the frozen, heartbroken look of betrayal on her face as I sat on the stand and helped proclaim her mentally unstable. But it worked. The prosecution rested, and she was sentenced to a forensic psychiatric hospital.
Before the state transferred her, Cillian and his brothers bribed state officials to place her in the best one available in Massachusetts and allow us a virtual tour of the place.
They also planted two of their men in the staff for her protection, with another on stand-by as a patient, if needed.
It was the best we had to offer under the circumstances.
Even so, my guilt ate me up inside whenever that wounded, disbelieving look of hers popped up into my mind.
For the next year, the state refused my requests for visits, and she made no contact.
We got regular reports from Cillian’s men, and my cousin, Franc, hacked news about her treatments and progress, but it never seemed like enough.
The three brothers and I wrote her letters.
Theirs tended to be short and infrequent, compared to the extensive essays I drafted about anything and everything, but it was the thought that counted.
We sent her clothes, collages of the latest hairstyles, and photos of the goings-on in our lives.
In the hopes it would help, we didn’t censor the content.
Time went by. The state lifted my visitation ban, but Maeve continued to decline my requests to see her. Not once did she reply to our letters. Not once did she call, but I didn’t give up, and we never stopped trying to reach out.
Since she’d given me power of attorney, Cillian and his brothers took over her construction business, and we forwarded pictures of in-progress and new construction sites.
Then there were images of the new perfume laboratory and manufacturing plant I opened in West Virginia and all the red tape I overcame to get it going, so she never felt excluded.
We sent pictures of O’Leary family dinners with a seat left open for her, of trips Cillian and I took, so that she hopefully felt less confined in the hospital and was able to travel through the photos, and of the first ultrasound picture of Cillian’s and my little shrimp, due in another few months.
One day, our perseverance won out. My phone rang in the middle of a game of pool at a dive bar Cillian recently acquired.
Amid the classic rock music, the thwack of pool balls colliding, and the loud conversations of patrons, I answered, fully expecting a spammer behind the Private Number caller ID.
“Al?”
My heart skipped a beat at the tentative sound of her voice, her confidence frayed at the seams. I steadied the rush of emotions surging up my face to my eyes with pinched lips and rapid blinking, as I rubbed the top of my five-month pregnancy bump.
“What’s wrong?” Cillian tossed his cue stick to Smiles and rushed to my side. “Is it the baby?”
I shook my head and swallowed hard, trying not to let the sudden spike of a mood swing get the better of me.
“Maeve,” I mouthed and gestured at the phone, then I hitched my thumb over my shoulder to tell him I was taking this outside.
He pressed a kiss to my temple and squeezed me briefly against his chest. “See?” he whispered. “I told you this day would come. Go talk to her. I’ll close the tab. Smiles, Paulie, go with her.”
“Al…A-are you there?” Maeve asked sheepishly as I picked up my winter coat and made my way through the bar with an excitement that bordered on frantic. “I understand if you don’t want to talk.”
“No, I do.”
I tugged the door open to the street, and a rush of snowflakes and brisk wind smacked my exposed skin. The chill burrowed below the layers of my clothing and prickled at the wetness clinging to my eyes. My breath fogged in front of me.
“Sorry about that. Hi. It’s…” I pressed my back against the dive bar’s exposed brick exterior and tipped my head up. “It’s good to hear from you. Happy belated birthday. Did you…get my gift?”
The door clanked shut behind my guards and me and dulled the music from inside to a murmur. Smiles lit a cigarette. The flame from his lighter danced with the icy breeze in tune with my eagerness to finally break the barrier she’d set up between us.
“Yes, the spa self-care kit is lovely. You didn’t have to.”
“Of course I did.”
She made a soft grunt. “So…you’re pregnant?”
The baby kicked right then, and I smiled. “Yes, due in four months. It’s a little girl. You’ll be an aunt.”
“Right.”
I twisted my mouth side to side with unease at the awkwardness in her tone.
“Is he with you?” she asked.
Beyond the glass door, Cillian treaded through the bar toward me with firm steps. “He’s inside.”
She released a shaky sigh. “I should let you go. It…was good to hear your voice.”
“Yours too. Call me whenever.” I fiddled with the faux-fur trim of my coat collar. “I…I miss you, Maeve.”
After a short beat of silence, the line disconnected with a chipper beat that clashed with my disappointment.
My hand holding the phone flopped to my side as I gnawed on the inside of my lip.
Beside me, the door clunk-swished open, followed by a heavy waft of stale beer and old leather, and Cillian walked out.
“Done already?”
I nodded, absently rubbing where our baby girl had kicked earlier.
“Then what’s with the sad face?” He thumbed my lip loose from my teeth.
“It felt…unnatural. Not at all like us.”
“First steps, love. You’ll get back to how you were. Just give it time.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and tugged me into him. “Come on. We can still make the last showing of the new movie you wanted to see.”
“Do you think she’ll call again?”
“Not a doubt.”
He was right. Two weeks later, she reached out again.
Her hesitation lingered, but the conversation lasted longer than two minutes.
Two weeks after that, I got another call.
We managed a full five minutes of continuous dialogue about current events and a few books she recently read. It only got better.