1
KEIRA
Rain needles into my coat, tracing the stitches of careful mourning with the same patience as a crime scene technician dusting for prints.
The fabric hugs my ribs too tight for comfort.
The dry cleaner's receipt is still tucked in the pocket, now a sodden curl of pink that leeches a hint of dye into the wool.
Beneath, my gloves keep the skin of my hands pale and cold, a small mercy for the work of today.
I stand at the edge of my father's grave at St. Brigid's Chapel and wonder if any living person will ever feel as unalive as I do at this moment, ankles numbed by the slur of a May downpour and every sensible part of me recoiling from the raw wound in the ground.
Around me, the men who once called Ciarán Donnelly—my father—boss, or enemy, or both on alternating Thursdays, stamp the sodden earth into pockmarked stability.
No one will slip here.
They're dressed in whatever their wives or daughters or long-suffering secretaries told them to wear, but under the black serge and charcoal twill the outlines of violence are unchanged.
Shoulders pulled high and forwardin habit, hands folded as if by force, every knuckle shiny and scabbed.
Most of their faces are stories in long-form—bulbous noses, blue or flattened, from the days before silencers, cheeks webbed by the scarification of barroom glass, the odd auricular chunk missing as a conversation piece.
The men keep their eyes down and their coats heavy, bulging in exactly the way an off-duty Garda would inventory in a crowd like this.
It's not a threat.
It's insurance.
The priest drones something in Latin, his voice wet and soporific as the weather.
No one joins in.
No one even pretends.
The wind is a better mourner than any of us, carrying the old man's words into the bog and slapping the string of sodden rosaries against the casket.
I do not bother to mouth the prayers.
My mother did, and look where that got her—long dead from some metastatic faith that left the house empty and the Donnelly family to the wolves.
A Catholic burial, my father once said, is a formality and a dare—come collect his soul if you can, and good luck picking it apart from the sins of his enemies.
I search the crowd for the faces that matter.
My father's right hand man, Aidan Kelly, stands a full step ahead of his own family, the only man whose shoes shine blacker than his umbrella.
The rumor mill was convinced he'd been gunning for my father's seat since Christmas, but now he looks like a hound who's caught the scent of his own tail and finds it unappetizing.
Aidan is flanked by his wife, dark-haired and too young, her mouth pinched so tightly I'd wager she's imagining how she'd look in mourning crepe.
Next to him is an empty patch of air where Mick Duffy, the chief collector, ought to be, unless the rumors of his flight to London are true, in which case he is already halfway through a bottle of Powers and laughing at our damp, country funeral.
The O'Duinns are here, of course, posturing in synchronized grief.
Their patriarch wears a hat like a signature.
Beside him, his eldest son, eyes as bright and cold as gin, locks onto mine for a single beat, a metronome tick that promises music later.
