Only then do I sit. Quietly, I eat. That’s how we do this. He watches me butter a slice of toast like it’s an exam he can grade. Only, he’s never been angry or mean to me. Instead, it’s the silent expectation and the fear of disappointing him that keeps me going.
“How was your meeting with Dean Park?” he asks. Like we hadn’t already texted.
I sigh.
“Efficient.” I butter the other slice. “I signed the attendance sheet.”
His mouth doesn’t move, but his eyes agree with me.Attendance.Notsoul.“Mother Superior speaks well of you.”
“Mother Superior speaks well of the donors.”
A breath, almost a laugh. He doesn’t like it when I’m sharp with the Church, but he likes it when I’m clever on his behalf.
Nico pours me coffee without asking how I take it. Black. He hovers behind my chair where I can feel him like an extra vertebra until Father snaps at him to be seated. Then he shifts his attention to me.
“You were out last night,” my father says, mild as the October weather’s been thus far.
“I was.” Sip. The bitterness is a small punishment and I deserve at least one.
“With Prudence?” he asks. It’s not an accusation. An invitation to lie, maybe.
I keep the lines of my face where they live when I’m being good. “Mmhmm. We walked. It’s Halloween.”
“And you walked to St. Brigid’s?” he asks, not looking at Nico at all, which is how I know he already knows. Nico is my father’s spy.
I cut the toast. Count the triangles.One. Two. Three. Four. And again. Four. “I like the quiet.”
“It is a beautiful church,” he says, like a benediction wrapped around barbed wire. “Who did you meet there?”
Nico shifts. I hear the subtle whisper of his suit jacket and decide to hate that sound for the rest of my life.
“No one.” I drink. Don’t flinch, even when the coffee burns the roof of my mouth. “Do you want me to say a priest?”
“I want you to speak the truth.”
“It was quiet,” I repeat. “I prayed. Pru waited near the doors. We left.”
An almost-smile plays at the corner of my father’s mouth again. He used to take me to playgrounds when I was small and ask me to count every swing. He never corrected me when I counted wrong. He just kept asking until I got bored of my own answer and told him something different to make him be quiet.
I won’t do that this time.
“Purity,” he says, “is not a commodity the world will stop trying to buy…or steal…just because it belongs to you.”
“I’m not for sale,” I say.
“Maybe not,” he agrees.
Silence settles. The paper rustles when he folds it, straightening the crease like the world makes more sense when the edges meet.
“Friday,” he says, eyes still on the crease. “We will be having a sit-down with the Shannons. A dinner.”
My heartbeat does a small, traitorous skip.The Shannons are Southie saints with bloody knuckles. New money, old grudges. They keep the docks honest in the way men with fists make honesty happen while we keep the pews full and the ledgers clean with dirty money.
Their power looks like a brawl behind a bar; ours looks like a handshake in a sacristy. Same city, different altars. Same war, different incense.
A meeting with the Shannons can’t be a good thing. Last time our families had a sit-down ended in a bloodbath, with only a few men on either side walking away. I keep my hands still on the table.
“About what?” I ask.
