“He is my son,” I answer, just as quiet, because we are both right and that is the problem.
He looks at my face the way one looks at a map, shading in the old landmarks, hunting for the new roads. “You kept him from me.”
“I kept him safe,” I say, and I feel the old anger climb up my spine like a vine that can live without water. “You kill men in warehouses and call it maintenance. That is not a life for a child.”
“He has my name in his bones,” Declan says, and now the steel shows through, the Don and not the man who knew how to fold my dish towels with a competence that made me suspicious. “Do you think the world will forget that because you moved him across an ocean and taught him to sing the old songs without telling him who taught them to you.”
“I think the world had forgotten you existed for a blessed long while, and I would have kept it that way,” I say, and there is a shimmer behind my eyes I refuse to let become tears, because I will not give the alley my tears and I will not give Declan a scene he can file away as evidence.
He steps closer and puts his hand on the wet brick beside my head, not touching me, a wall for his own restraint, the rain dripping from the cuff of his coat, his knuckles nicked the way men get nicked when they work with rope and steel and the edges of crates. This close I can see the small new scar near his hairline, the way his mouth looks more tired when he is notholding it flat, the gold flecks in the blue that no photograph ever manages to tell the truth about.
“I will not argue in your alley,” he says, and his voice is contained, a flame in a lantern. “I came to tell you what is. You are coming back to Boston. With me.”
“Try softer,” I say, because if I do not laugh I will scream, and my laughter has always sounded like a thing you hand to a man when you mean to throw him off the pier. “Try a please.”
“I am not asking,” he says, and the line is one he has used in rooms where men made choices that ended in cement and cold water, but here it sounds smaller, because there is no audience, only my heart trying to climb into my throat and the smell of wet bread from the bakery across the lane.
“You will not take me,” I say, steady as a dock in a storm. “You do not own me. You do not own my child.”
His jaw moves once, a muscle jumping like a warning. “I am not the only person who knows who he is,” he says, softer now, and the softness is worse than the steel. “You were smart, but you were not invisible. Not to me. Not to the men who watch me watching the world. I have held them off, as best I can. I cannot keep doing that from six hours away. Marco Torrino has eyes in Cork and in Galway and far beyond both. He has a long memory and an empty calendar. If he thinks I have a son outside my walls, he will test the theory.”
The name lands heavy in the alley. I hate that I believe him. I hate that the belief slips in like a draft under the door you thought you had sealed. I hate that the word test makes my arms go cold.
“Liam is at a sleepover,” I say, because it matters to say his name out loud, not like a talisman, like a responsibility, and because the practical thing has always been my raft when the emotional thing threatens to drown me. “He is baking scones with Catríona’s mother and feeding a rabbit whose name Icannot say without laughing. You will not go there. You will not bring this to their doorstep.”
“I will not,” he says quickly, and the answer is so fast I almost believe it is the first true thing spoken in this alley. “I am not here to frighten anyone who is not mine.”
“You are here to frighten me,” I say.
“I am here to protect what is mine,” he says, and then the moment opens because the word mine sits between us like a knife and a cradle, both at once.
“You are not the only one with claim,” I say, and the anger that has been simmering softens into something more dangerous, the ache. “I bought every spoon in our kitchen with calluses and tips and hours standing on tiles that broke my back and still I wanted more. I built a name that was mine. I taught our son to stir without splashing and to wait before he touches the pan. I kept him warm in winters, and safe from the men whose names you say like prayers. You will not talk to me about mine as if I have not been carrying him every day you were not.”
He closes his eyes for a blink and I see it, the internal fight, the way wanting and duty wrestle under the same skin. When he opens them again the blue has gone deep, and his mouth is not tired, it is set.
“You have a bag at the restaurant,” he says, his voice low and infuriatingly gentle, as if he is speaking to a skittish horse, which would be a mistake, because I am not a creature you calm with sugar and a steady hand. “You will bring it. You will collect him from the sleepover. I will wait at the corner. We will go to a hotel, not my house, not yours, a place with cameras and night staff and a lobby. In the morning we will talk about what comes next. But you will not sleep in your bed tonight, and he will not sleep in his.”
“Because you say so,” I say, and I hate that my voice is a fraction unsteady.
“Because I am not the only storm coming,” he says.
I could run. I consider it in the mathematical way that has saved me more than once. I could cut through the bakery, out the back garden, over the low wall with the ivy that hides a rubbish bin, down to the quay where the fishermen keep the smaller boats, I could take Liam and the small bag I keep under the bed with cash and a passport and a list of numbers, we could get on a bus that smells like damp wool and too many lunches, we could disappear again into a town where people know each other’s business and pretend not to, we could do it all again, new school, new landlady, new name on the electricity bill. I feel the exhaustion of that plan in my throat like a swallowed cry.
I picture Catríona’s mother opening the door to find a man like Declan on her stoop, even if he is polite, even if he has his coat on and his hands visible and his voice set to low kindness. I picture the wrong men following him by accident, or on purpose. I picture Liam hearing two versions of his own life from two people he loves while holding a rabbit named after a cheese. I picture Marco Torrino saying the word test with a smile.
I choose, and I hate that the choice is not a choice at all, it is triage.
“You will not speak to him alone,” I say, because if the world is going to tip, I will at least set the angle. “You will not take him anywhere without me. You will tell him the truth in pieces that fit his mouth. And you will not bring your mother within a hundred miles of him until I say so.”
He nods once. He looks almost relieved. Then his jaw tightens again. “And you will not run,” he says.
“I will move,” I say, and in my head I am already writing lists, already moving through the restaurant in a path that collects what matters and leaves what can be replaced. “Which is not the same thing.”
He steps back, releases the brick. He looks like a man who has been allowed to exhale after holding his breath for a year. “Then let us move.”
Inside, I speak to the staff in my brisk voice that makes them trust me when I tell them to cut the burners and fold the towels properly. I say we are closed for the afternoon because the investors want a private session, a lie everyone is happy to believe because it makes them feel important by proximity. I tell Sinead to take the day, to call her mother, to send me the inventory list in the morning. I hug Niall because he looks like he needs one, and because I might need it more.
I grab my small black bag from the office, the one that always sits under the desk for the day a child breaks an arm or a fridge dies, it has a spare set of clothes, a roll of twenties, an extra phone charger, a copy of Liam’s health card. I add the envelope from the safe with the emergency cash and the birth certificate that says father unknown because lies wear official paper better than truth in some countries. I do not look at Declan when I pass him at the end of the bar. I do not give the cat flour, though I want to.
