I log every O'Duinn in attendance but note who is missing.
The second cousin who was said to be in deep with the Spaniards.
The fixer who once ran a racket through Connacht and vanished last fall.
All the absences add up to a sum I will not ignore, even as the dirt begins to patter down onto my father's casket.
A rose, wilted by the drizzle, slips from someone's hand and lands with a perfunctory splatter.
No one gasps.
No one kneels.
I hear a throat clear behind me, then another, the sound echoing up and down the row like a cough passing through a TB ward.
I watch, unblinking, as the casket vanishes under wet loam and the priest, sensing a break in the script, steps back and folds his hands.
He knows better than to linger near Donnellys, even the dead ones.
I will not say I am unfeeling.
Grief is a luxury product in my line, and today's market is oversupplied.
My father's murder is less an open wound than a realignment of planetary orbits.
The gravitational math is simple.
Some men die, and the city falls in on itself, hungry for equilibrium.
I try to picture my father's face in the ground below me, but all I see is the last time I saw him alive—hunched over a glass, his thumb stroking the rim as if trying to wear the world thinner, his voice hoarse.
"You'll do," he'd said.
Not you'll do well, or you'll do fine.
Justyou'll do.
I believed him then, and I believe him now.
The last shovelful of mud lands, and the priest departs, muttering something into his sleeve.
I wait until I am the only one left by the grave, and only then do I touch the headstone, tracing the inscriptionCiarán Donnelly, 1956-2025.
It occurs to me that my father has never felt more absent, or more present, than in this moment, both a memory and a meteorological condition.
I turn away from the grave and start up the hill, my coat dark and wet and perfectly fitted to the shape of a woman who intends to be underestimated.
At the gates, two boys with shovels lean on the fence and stare.
I meet their gaze, level, until they look away, abashed, and then step into the street.
My father once said that the first rule of inheritance is to act as if you have already lost everything.
Today, I believe him more than ever, especially when a black car cuts through the mist like a missing verse and purrs to the curb.
The driver is neither young nor old, his features weathered past recognition, a face distilled to utility.
He steps out, offers no umbrella, and holds the rear door open with the formality of a firing squad.
