“Cops think boyfriend,” Tommy says with a curl of his lip.
“Cops think whatever lets them finish their coffee.” I tap the map. “This is someone who wants to hunt. We suffocate theirroutes. We do it quietly. I don’t want to scare the women more. I want to scare the killer.”
Orders, again. Cars on the perimeters. Off-duty men walking staff as if they’re uncles and not shadows. Text trees set up with codes that sound like kitchen talk. We arrange the city like a table setting where the knives all point inward. I end it the way I begin most things—plainly. “No one touches Aoife,” I say. “No one touches Liam. No one touches any of ours. Not one hair. Not one step too close.”
After they leave I stand alone in the big room until the house remembers I’m a man and not a function. I go to the window and watch rain crease the lawn in thin silver lashes. The study lamp throws a circle of gold that looks like it belongs to someone with a simpler job.
Night folds down. The restaurant closes without incident. The school sends a newsletter about mittens. The city hums the tune it plays when it wants everyone to think it’s asleep. I’m almost at the bedroom door when I remember the ribbon in my pocket. I take it out and tie it into a neat bow, then untie it and tie it again. I want to learn the knot like a language. I want to be able to undo it with one hand in the dark.
In the quiet I swear something to the bow and to the window and to the saints who tolerate me. It’s not poetry. It’s a vow.
Nothing will touch him.
Nothing will touch her.
Not while I breathe.
19
AOIFE
While Declan is out arranging whatever net he throws over this city when the air turns mean, I keep my head inside the ordinary work that saves me. Morning deliveries, a box of pears that smell like winter sunshine, a sack of flour so soft my hands remember Galway. The boys from produce joke about the weather, Benny pretends the new camera angles were always there, and the panic button under the pass looks like it grew out of the wood. I do not ask questions I am not ready to hear answers to. I move the way a chef moves, measured and exact, and sew the day together with stock and salt.
Liam insists on helping before school, which means the porridge is too thick and the honey is reckless. Declan taught him to make the spoon a train. I give the train sound effects. We are a duet, whether I meant us to be or not. When the car pulls away and the kitchen quiets, I test sauces, call vendors, sign for linen, and convince a nervous new server that hands stop shaking when the first plate leaves your palm. The week builds itself like a layered tart. Each task settles on the next until the shape holds.
The invitation to the Conservatory gala sits under the magnet on my cooler door. Emerald ink, crisp cardstock, words like Benefactor and Chairman and Conservatory Society printed as if they can hold themselves upright without help. I said yes because Declan asked with a voice that did not command, and because a part of me wants to know what it is to walk beside him when the room turns its head.
The night arrives cold and clear. The dress waits across my bed like it might purr if I touch it. Emerald silk, cut on the bias, a narrow shoulder and a low back that bares the line of my spine. I fasten my grandmother’s earrings, tiny drops of green glass that pretend, bravely, to be precious stones, and slide on the simple gold bracelet I never take off. My hair behaves for once, swept to one side in a twist that looks effortless and took twenty pins. If I breathe too hard the pins will revolt. I decide to breathe anyway.
When I step into the hall, Declan is there with his coat in one hand and stillness in the other. He looks at me as if I have moved something inside him with a spoon, slow and irrevocable. His tux is spare and black, velvet lapels, white shirt cut close, cuffs fastened with those old coin cufflinks I found in his drawer once and pretended not to notice. He has shaved like he means it, the line sharp along his jaw, but his hair is a fraction unruly at the temple, which is the detail that makes me reach out and smooth it with my thumb.
“Say nothing,” I tell him, because if he speaks I might do something impractical like kiss him in the corridor.
“I am trying to breathe,” he says, so softly I feel it more than hear it. “You are not helping.”
“Good,” I answer, and he laughs under his breath, the dark, low sound that ends up in my bones.
In the car he watches me the way a man watches the sea, like he knows it can drown him and still can’t look away. I check my clutch for the thousandth time—lipstick, compact, a tiny vial ofperfume that smells like orange peel and patience, a folded note to myself with the wordsSpeak plainly, smile when it’s true. He catches me looking. I make a face. He reaches for my hand and brings my knuckles to his mouth in a gesture so old-fashioned it almost hurts.
“First time bringing me to a party,” I say lightly, because if I do not make it light it will be heavy enough to bend the night.
“First time deserving to,” he says, and I look out the window before the warmth in my chest shows on my face.
The Conservatory glows like a glass instrument. Lights cut the night into bright shapes. Inside, the air is thick with perfume and roses and the particular political tension that forms when ambition meets philanthropy and both are wearing excellent shoes. Women float in jewel tones and column silks, in capes that know they are dramatic. Men look like variations on a theme. The quartet plays something clever that pretends not to be difficult. When the doors close behind us, sound gathers and folds over itself.
“Stay close,” Declan murmurs, palm at the small of my back. It feels like warning and comfort at once.
We move through the room as if the floor is a map he has learned by heart. Heads tilt. Names ripple toward us. “Mr. O’Connell.” “Declan.” “So glad you could make it.” I am introduced as the woman behind The Green Hearth and feel the phrase touch the air around my name and then settle into it. I hear my own name in corners, curious and cool, admiration flavored with calculation.
The canapés are clever and delicious enough to earn a small smile from me when a server passes with a tray of chestnut soup in tiny porcelain cups, each crowned with a shard of sugar-glossed pancetta. The soup is velvet, the salt precise. I steal a second cup when the server isn’t looking. Declan notices, of course, and his mouth tilts as if the theft belongs to us. Hesecures us two flutes of champagne that tastes like brioche, and when a board member asks about the Hearth’s winter menu I talk about char and smoke and why bitterness makes a sweet honest, and he listens like he’s measuring the room’s reaction and mine at once.
A donor’s wife in sapphire silk takes my hand. “Your porridge recipe,” she confesses in a whisper. “We are fighting over it.”
“Add salt,” I say. “More than you think you need. Then cream you do not apologize for.”
She beams. “My husband listens to you more than to his cardiologist.”
“Tell him I charge less,” I answer, and she laughs the right amount.
