And because I’m too tired to argue but also because it feels like the logical way things are supposed to go, I nod my head softly. There is nowhere else that makes sense. I pack up. Siobhan is still outside and tactfully averts my gaze as I give an embarrassed wave. “Can you lock up after me?” I call out to her, and she raises her hand in what I presume isyes, I’ll do it, just go.
I’m light-hearted and happy. This sentiment follows me through the threshold of the house, until the first thing I see in the hall is Moira at the top of the stairs, mouth a blade, eyes like winter water. Every nerve in me goes tight. Declain tenses beside me.
“Evening,” I manage, my voice thin.
“You mistake hospitality for invitation,” she snaps, eyes bright with manic intent. “And maternity for immunity.”
“Try me,” I say, and I could throttle myself for it, but I am too tired to be meek.
Declan’s jaw goes hard. “Mother.”
She doesn’t look at him. “Watch your ways, girl. You’re far too impulsive and far too brash for this world.”
“Good,” I say brightly. “You could do with someone showing you what a real human being looks like.”
The silence that follows is a polished thing. I break it, because I am not a portrait and I refuse to be stared at. “Not tonight,” I tell Declan, and the words cost me because my body wants the opposite. “I’m going to bed.” He catches my wrist, gentle. I pull free, gentler, and leave them to finish the war they started twenty years before I ever walked into it.
Down the hall, I lean against the door and breathe out all the bravado, then grin like a madwoman because he says, loudenough for the marble to hear, “You should start minding your own business, for once,” and I think,Yes. There you are.
15
DECLAN
My mother does not flinch when I tell her to mind her own business. She tips her chin a fraction higher, the portraits above her catching the light like a jury that never leaves the room, and for a breath we stand inside the old war we’ve rehearsed since I was tall enough to look her in the eye.
“You forget where you stand,” she says, voice smooth as China. “You forget what this house is built to survive.”
“I know exactly what this house is built to survive,” I answer, keeping my hands loose at my sides, keeping my temper where it belongs, in the cold place behind my ribs. “You forget who I intend it to hold.”
Her gaze goes past me toward the dark corridor where Aoife walked away. “A woman who would challenge me on my own stairs does not come peacefully into our winter, Son. She comes like weather.”
“Then we will dress for it, Mother.”
“She will ask for parts of you that are not for giving,” she replies, soft and certain, love wrapped in iron. “And when you give them, this city will smell the blood and come running.”
“I have bled for less,” I tell her. “Do you think I will hesitate now?”
She studies me for the span of a quiet heartbeat, calculation running behind her eyes the way tide runs under ice. “You are your father’s son,” she says at last. “And you were always mine. I will not stand in your way. I will not pull you from the fire, either.”
“Then go to bed, Mother,” I say, tired more than sharp. “I have work in the morning.”
Her mouth presses into that thin line that means surrender for tonight only. She turns, black silk moving like water, and leaves me to the hush of the stairwell, to the settling of the old timbers, to the faint scent of peat in the stones.
I climb the west stairs with the slow tread of a man who’s counting his steps to keep from thinking. The corridor is dark except for a strip of light under Liam’s door. I knock once with two fingers and let myself in.
They’re both asleep, or very near to it. Liam sprawled crosswise, one arm thrown over the stuffed fox that has survived a dozen laundries and a war of attrition with the dog, mouth open, lashes stuck together from the bath. Aoife on top of the coverlet, hair loose, one hand curved over our son’s small ribs like a promise she made to herself long before I caught up to it. The room smells of soap and paper and the sugar-dusted cereal I pretend not to buy. The night-light paints the ceiling with a field of stars someone stuck there years ago. They glow dull green and make the crowns on the wallpaper look like constellations.
For a long minute I do nothing. I lean against the jamb and watch the rise and fall of two chests that have become the metronome of my days. A man can run a city and still feel small in a room like this. I ease my jacket off, set it over the back of the chair, and cross to the bed. I tuck the blanket under Liam’s feet—he kicks them free every hour—and straighten the hem underAoife’s palm without waking her. She stirs anyway, lashes lifting, pupils wide in the low light.
“Go back to sleep,” I whisper.
Her mouth shapes a sleepy protest that never makes sound. She nods. I bend and kiss the curl at Liam’s temple, then the soft place at Aoife’s hairline where warmth collects. It feels like a sacrilege and a sacrament. I sit in the chair with my coat over my knees, and the last thing I see before sleep drags me under is the slow, synchronized rise of two bodies I would set the city on fire to protect.
Morning arrives in a pale sheet, pressed crisp against the windows. Housekeepers pass like ghosts down the hall, a cart rattles, the furnace kicks once. I wake with a stiff neck and a bad idea. The kitchen is nearly empty at this hour. This is why I love it. Our chef, a solemn Frenchman who thinks Boston is a temporary illness, has left oats to soak and a note instructing God Himself not to touch his copper. I ignore it.
I light the burner and put on the kettle. Steel sings. When the oats bloom I stir in cream and a little brown sugar, then crack salt between my fingers like my grandmother taught me—salt in porridge, always, or it tastes like memory without point. I slice an orange into coins and toast the edges under the salamander until they glaze and char. The smell makes me feel ten years old.
Liam arrives in bare feet and a dinosaur shirt that roars when you press its belly. “Da,” he says, soft and pleased, as if he expected a stranger.
