by Dorien Kelly
Still fighting a gut churning with anger, he flung the broom into a corner. The peacock squawked in protest. Michael quickly checked to be sure he hadn’t accidentally struck the creature. The only one he wanted to hit was Flynn.
No, that wasn’t true. He was pushing back the same thoughts he’d been righting to ignore all day. He also wanted to hit someone he hadn’t seen in over fourteen years, but was pretty damned sure he’d heard from the night before. Another phone call had come, and this time he’d been there to pick it up.
“Settled in, are you?” the man had said. “Got something—or someone—to lose?”
Nothing more. But certainly enough to make him sick.
Threats weren’t unfamiliar to Michael. In prison, they’d been common currency among padmates and guards. He still saw them in the eyes of people like Clancy and Spillane in Ballymuir. But his caller— whether it was Rourke himself or one of his compatriots—had struck to the quick.
For now he had much to lose. A sister. The beginnings of work. And most of all, Kylie.
He hadn’t been trying to frighten her with bleak talk of the future. He’d been trying to ease her expectations. Michael knew he couldn’t stop living over threats, but he couldn’t go to the local authorities, either. His personal prejudice against the justice system aside, any office that held Flynn was of no use to him.
Faceless, nameless threats. How to fight back against someone he couldn’t see?
“Another day, another thing to be learned,” he said to the peacock, who appeared to believe he knew it all, already. Leaving the door open just enough that Martin could escape, Michael headed home.
Vi’s back was to Michael when he walked into the house, not that it stopped her from bossing him about.
“Shh-h-h, you’ll wake them.”
He looked around. Only Roger was in the room, and there was still just one of him. He moved between his sister and what seemed to be consuming her attention. She simply stretched out further on the electric-blue sofa and continued staring at the flames licking bricks of turf in the fireplace. Her brows were arched fiercely together, and her green eyes dark and fixed. Enough to scare the bejeezus out of most men living, his baby sister. Not him, though.
“Communing with the spirits, are you?” He opened his arms to encompass the small living space. “What have you got going here—a regular convention of banshees, pooka, and ghosties?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, it’s your little brothers upstairs, fast asleep.”
He took a second to swallow the thought. Here, and... “In my bed?”
She swung her legs around and sat up. “Don’t you yell at me, Michael Kilbride. Where else was I to put them?”
“In your bed,” he snapped. It was a selfish answer, but an honest one. The thought of Patrick and Danny snuggled into the bed he’d come to think of as his own was too much to take, especially after the series of atrocities recently inflicted on his privacy. “You asked them here, let them drool on your pillows!”
Vi gave a hoot of laughter. “They’re not infants any more. Closer to giants, I’d say, and looking to be a bit beyond the drooling stage.” She combed her fingers through her hair and shook it out all wild. “Besides, I didn’t ask them here... exactly,” she added.
No great shock since Vi was likely the least “exact” person walking the planet. “Well, what did you do ... exactly?”
She cleared her throat before speaking. “I sent ‘em two Bus Eireann tickets in the post, with a note saying that a little visit this summer might be in order.”
“And?”
“Well, after having it out with Mam over a suspension from school—some nonsense involving chickens I didn’t quite catch—they thought now might be the better time for some travel.”
“Chickens,” Michael muttered. “And have you rung their mother to let her know she needs to gather up her boys?” He asked the question with more bitterness than he wanted to own up to having.
“Mam—and like it or not, she’s yours, too— doesn’t want them back.” Vi’s generous mouth seemed smaller, like she was holding in a bad taste. “They’ll stay here ‘til this can be sorted out.”
He laughed because any other response would have been an admission of how much power he still let his mother hold. “So you’ve got the lot of us now. Maeve’s castoffs. Probably the only reason Da’s not here is that he hasn’t looked up from his newspaper long enough to take it in the teeth. And won’t he be in for a shock when he does, only him left at the supper table.”
The sympathy he saw in Vi’s eyes burned like acid. She started to say something to him, but he shrugged it off and walked the stairs to his room. Or what used to be his room.
Michael stood in the doorway. He took in the two silhouettes bathed in dim light and felt his mouth twitch with something that might have been a smile. They damn near stretched from headboard to the mattress’s end. The poor boys had been cursed, as he had, with a man’s size before a man’s wisdom had even the slightest chance to form.
A low, seismic rumble filled the room. He smiled outright. Pat and Danny might not drool, but they could work up some hellbending, resonant snores. He looked at the two of them, hulking squatters taking up the space he’d already begged for his own. He should be angry, royally irked. But for some stupid, incomprehensible reason, he suddenly felt pleased. He moved closer and tugged the pillow from beneath one twin’s head, then watched him give the other a sleeping, retaliatory swat.
“Brotherly love,” he whispered. He’d missed so much with these boys—his brothers. And he didn’t want to miss any more.
Grinning like a fool, he made his way back downstairs to the blue sofa and its resident witch.
“Up with you,” he said to Vi, then tossed the pillow at her to back up the order.
She caught it with absolute grace. “Are you evicting me from my own couch?”
“Fair play, Violet,” he admonished. “After all, you’ve given away the only spot I have to lay my head. The fire’s burning nice now, and I’m ready for a bit of sleep.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Then go to your room and read a book, or putter around in the kitchen and see if you can ever learn to cook.”
She called him a nasty name that he’d not heard since childhood, lobbed the pillow back at him, and stalked off to her bedroom.
“Then you’ll not be learning to cook?” he called after her. “You’ve no hope at all of catching a husband.”
“And what would I do with one if I did?” she growled just before slamming her bedroom door.
Upstairs, another mighty snore erupted. Chuckling, Michael slipped off his shoes and sprawled on the couch. He’d slept on worse.
“Family,” he said, testing the word to see how it rolled off his tongue. Two brothers to love. Two brothers to protect. Two brothers to lose.
Kylie had quickly learned that Breege survived on little sleep. It wasn’t all that unusual, Breege assured her. This was simply God’s way of fitting time into the end of a life. She didn’t like to think of Breege as elderly and absolutely refused to contemplate the end of her life. She had so few true friends that panic consumed her at the thought of losing one.
Tonight, since Kylie was sleeping none too well herself, Breege’s rustling sounds and anxious sighs seemed amplified. Kylie sat on the edge of her little cot and tucked her feet into slippers. She pulled on her worn wrapper and padded her way to Breege.
The light shone under the bedroom door. Still feeling oddly like an intruder, Kylie knocked.
“Come in, darling,” Breege called.
Kylie opened the door and stepped in. “I heard you moving about and wondered if I could bring you something.”
Breege smoothed the duvet over her tiny frame, then patted the bed beside her. Kylie took the invitation, sat, and held Breege’s knotted hand, its knuckles swollen under silvery, translucent skin.
“Can you bring me something?” Breege echoed with an amused note in her
voice. “A leg that works, the energy I had when I was thirty, or a healthy tot of whiskey—take your pick.”
Kylie laughed. “Well, the leg I can’t be helping you with, and the energy you still have, so we’re down to the whiskey.” She frowned and tapped her lower lip. “Hmmm... with Black Johnny O’Shea as a father, d’you think I might have some whiskey still about?”
An odd look flitted across Breege’s usually serene features before she said, “More than at Paddy’s distillery itself, I’d be thinkin’.”
Her friend’s words held more than a nip of asperity. Kylie gave Breege’s hand one last pat, then stood. “Not quite that much, but I think I can scare up a wee drop. Don’t be nodding off on me while I’m gone.”
Breege looked heavenward. “A soul should be so blessed.”
When Kylie returned with the whiskey, Breege took an unladylike slug before saying, “You might want to get a glass for yourself.”
Kylie wrinkled her nose. “Never could stomach the stuff. The scent is pretty enough, but it tastes like a mouthful of petrol to me.”
Looking glum, Breege tipped her glass again, then waved it to Kylie to be topped off. After Kylie obliged, Breege said, “Trust me, it’s far better to swallow than what I’ve to tell you.” She swirled the amber liquid round and round before continuing. “I meant to say something when you came home tonight, but you were already looking as though someone had danced a hard hornpipe on ye, and I didn’t want to be adding to your woes. Then afterward I lay here wishing I could move about enough to toss and turn instead of just count the cracks in the ceiling—and you have a fair few of ‘em, you know—”
“The news,” Kylie urged.
The deep brackets around Breege’s mouth tightened. “Your da called. He’ll be getting out Monday next.”
Kylie gulped straight from the bottle, then choked and snorted. Feeling as though she were drowning in something far less palatable than the salty waters of Dingle Bay, Kylie smacked the bottle onto the nightstand.
Breege pounded her on the back with more strength than those worn hands should have. “There now, dearie, you’ll be fine in just a moment.”
“Holy Mother,” she gasped. “It burnt a hole straight through to my toes!”
“As it’s meant to.”
Kylie wiped at her watering eyes and drew in a ragged breath. When she could speak in something above a croak, she said, “You’re right. It’s still easier to swallow than Da coming home. Did he give you any details?”
“None, really. He seemed confused enough getting me when he rang up. He’ll be calling back tomorrow evening and hopes you’ll be home.”
“Best reason yet not to be,” Kylie muttered. She didn’t want to hear Johnny’s voice. She didn’t want to be forced to act pleased that he was about to come back and muck things up for her once again. As if matters weren’t sufficiently mucked already, she thought with uncharacteristic bitterness.
Breege stroked her hair, and Kylie sighed at the comfort of the act. She felt the whisper of a maternal touch she scarcely remembered anymore. “Calm now, darlin’. This’ll be hard on you. But you have friends who love you, and your da coming home won’t change that.”
Johnny’s arrival would change everything, and they both knew it. Virtually no nest egg had gone untouched by the time her da had made the rounds.
If nothing else, the whiskey appeared to have cleaned her mind of clutter; it suddenly struck Kylie how misguided her attempts at restitution had been. Her acts had been a salve to her conscience, but had done nothing to resolve the town’s feelings toward Johnny. And probably had added a drop or two of resentment toward her in the bargain. Small wonder so many had been annoyed by her efforts. Saint Kylie, sacrificing herself to tend to the defrauded.
“I’ll deal with the changes in town when Da gets here,” Kylie said. “No use in borrowing tomorrow’s trouble when today’s was enough already.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
Kylie shook her head. “I just want to put it behind me.”
“That’s my girl. Just a sip more of the fuisce, then,” Breege directed, holding out her glass. “And I’ll sleep for certain.”
Kylie laughed. “I’m putting this bottle up someplace good and high.”
Breege’s smile showed teeth that remained white and strong. “How d’ye think I fell to begin with?” she teased.
Kylie kissed her papery cheek, whisked the bottle away just to be sure, then wished Breege a good night.
Before tucking the bottle back in the cupboard, Kylie eyed the level of its contents. She sighed. She’d be needing this and more to survive the arrival of Johnny O’Shea.
Chapter Twenty
If you meet a red-haired woman, you’ll meet a crowd.
—Irish Proverb
Pat and Danny swore they weren’t identical twins, yet Michael was having the damnedest time telling them apart. Not that it really mattered which one was which. They seemed to share the same thoughts, one beginning a sentence, the other finishing it, and all so liberally sprinkled with obscenities that Michael felt like a saint.
Of course the morning hadn’t started with this scattershot approach to conversation. Painful silence had reigned, the three of them cautiously watching each other from beneath lowered brows. It had taken Vi’s late arrival, her offering of blackened toast, and subsequent refusal to cook anything else, to break the deadlock. Survival had a way of uniting strangers.
Michael took over at the stove and told the boys where to find the things he’d be needing. Soon, the salty scent of sizzling rashers filled the air, fried eggs took on the proper hue of faint gold at the edges, and the toast was declared done before it tasted of soot. Vi watched the entire affair in an apparent state of shock.
“You mean you can cook this well and you’ve not shared with me? You’ve bloody well betrayed me in my own kitchen.”
Michael just looked back over his shoulder at her. “And how, exactly, did you think that dog of yours has grown fat as a sausage roll? And more important, how’d you think I avoided starvation? Though it was a near thing,” he added before deftly flipping the eggs, leaving their yolks perfectly intact. “And as for sharing with you, you’ll note I’m not much for tofu or whatever that gelatinous block of white stuff you live on is.”
Vi grabbed a pot of raspberry preserves. “The stuff in the fridge? I don’t live on that! I’m just keeping it till I remember what it is, or until it has a life of its own—whichever comes first.”
Michael laughed. The boys first looked confused, then eventually joined in the teasing. He recalled how he felt when he’d first arrived in Ballymuir, a stranger in his own skin. He hadn’t known what to expect, and didn’t understand the love that simply seemed to exist in Vi’s world. A love without expectation, without demand—well, perhaps a little demand. He would give the twins what Vi had given him, the time and love necessary to start healing.
Cupping his hands on the backs of two tousled red heads, he directed them toward the table. And so they sat and shoveled food in the ferocious way that only boys-not-quite-men can, and they talked. Jesus, how they talked about musicians he’d never heard of and people he was sure he didn’t want to know, until Michael’s head rang with it.
“Eat, then you’re coming with me,” he finally said.
“With you?” they howled in unison.
He tried on a big-brotherly voice for fit. “Did you have any other plans in mind?”
“Uh, we thought maybe we’d put our feet up for the day and have a rest,” Pat—or was it Danny?— ventured.
“You’re not lazing about here all day. To begin with, Vi doesn’t even have a telly.”
The twins’ panic-stricken gazes shot about the corners of the room, then to their sister. She raised her mug of tea in silent salute. Michael tried not to smile at their acute disbelief.
“And beyond that,” he said, “I won’t have you doing here in Ballymuir whatever the hell it is you did with chickens ba
ck at home. I’ve given the family name enough to live down as it is. You’ll come with me, do some hard work and get paid a fair wage. Understood?”
One of the twins muttered a string of words under his breath while the other pinned Michael with what he supposed was meant to be a threatening glare. Michael gave him the bared-teeth version of a smile in return.
“Enough,” he ordered. “We can go about this one of two ways: either you come along like gentlemen, or I grab you by your balls—and don’t think I can’t— and persuade you upstairs to get ready.” He cracked his knuckles and waggled his fingers as though preparing to seize the royal gems.
Freckles stood out on milky-white faces. Chair legs scraped noisily across the tile floor, and twin sets of gangly legs made their way upstairs. A few reverent curses drifted down.
Michael cleared the table while Vi observed him as if she’d never seen him before.
He cleared his throat. “I’d say we’re off to a fair start, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d say you’re going to be taking over the cooking while they’re here.”
“To take it over implies that you’ve been cooking in the first place.”
She arched her brow. “So you want their laundry instead?”
“By the time I’m done with them, Sis, they’ll be self-sufficient enough to live on their own. Which is what they’ll be doing anyway when they’re back in Mam’s claws.”
She toyed with her empty mug. “True enough. I don’t suppose we can really do wrong by them, can we?”
As he looked into her worried face, it occurred to Michael that for the first time in as long as he could remember, his perfect harridan of a baby sister was looking to him for guidance. Pride, love, and relief made him stand a little taller. He’d arrived at what he had always considered his rightful place. Not that he didn’t love Vi, and not that he wouldn’t be indebted to her forever. Now, though, he could stand on his own, and God willing, show Pat and Danny how it was done, too.