“Life moves fast, my boy.” She messed my hair again. “You ever heard the expression,like sands in an hourglass, these are the days of our lives?”
Yeah, I did, but from what she called her “stories.” This television show she was obsessed with. She followed it like she was readin’ a book, Da said. Couldn’t pry her away. Da said all that would change once we got back to Ireland. She liked to be outside there.
She took a spare pillow from my bed and propped it in front of her. She was in a chatty mood, it seemed. I didn’t mind. We had conversations when Da was at work sometimes like this. Da told me it was because she liked talkin’ to me, and she probably missed him when he was out workin’ for Mr. Craig real late. I was the man of the house when Da was gone.
“Got any names?” Mam asked.
I thought about it for a second but couldn’t come up with nothin’ special.
“I have two,” she said, fillin’ the silence. “One for a boy, and one for a girl, just in case.”
“How come you call me by my middle name if my real name’s Cian?” I asked out of the blue.
“My Granda. His name was Cillian. Best storyteller around!” She hugged the pillow closer. “He was a twin. Oh! You have two cousins around your age—twins too. Someday you’ll meet ’em both.”
“Cool,” I said. I had plenty of friends inBaw-sten,but no family but us. Unless I counted Da’s gang, Keenan, Fiona, and Henry. Dunno why Da called them that, but I guess I had a gang at school too. Just a bunch of fellas the same age to run around with in the schoolyard. Another boy who lived in the apartment complex sometimes asked to have me over, but that was it.
“Twins, Cillian! Can you imagine it?”
“That’s what you’re havin’? Two of the same one?”
“Two of the same one?” She grinned at me. “Sometimes they’re identical, but sometimes not. But no, I’m havin’ just the one according to that.” She tapped the picture. “But who knows? Maybe one of them is hidin’. That happens sometimes.”
If that picture was their space, I had no idea where two could hide. It seemed like a tiny box.
“How about Camden for a boy? Caitlin for a girl?”
“Caitlin,” I repeated.
She nodded. “Knew a girl in school by that name. She was somethin’ else. So beautiful. She left before we could grow up together and stay close.”
“Shame,” I said.
“Yeah.” Her voice turned soft. “I think so too.” She sighed. “So? Whatdya think, laddie? About the names?”
“Cool,” I said. They were both good names.
She took me by the face and squeezed. “Cool, huh?” She tried to wrestle her accent in and make herself sound like she was fromBaw-sten.
I laughed a little, but she was squishin’ my mouth, and it sounded funny.
“Keep goin’ with thatBaw-stenaccent, and I might have to wash yer mouth out with Irish Springs’ soap to get my boy’s accent back!” She roughly let my mouth go, like when Da was messin’ with her when he shaved, and she shoved his face away with a laugh because he had shaving cream on it.
We both cracked up laughin’. This time it seemed to make the clock chime in the kitchen, like thesewerethe days of our lives, like she’d said, but the sands in the hourglass had stilled for a little while. She kissed me on the cheek and stood to go.
I held out the picture. She took it, studyin’ it and then me. “I love you,CianCillian O'Callaghan. Remember that, always. You’ll always be someone’s baby. Mine. You’ll understand one day when you have one of your own.” Leaning down, she kissed the top of my head, then propped the picture up on my lamp, turned out the light, and walked to the door.
She stood in it for a second, the light from the hallway haloin’ her before she seemed to disappear into the darkness before my very eyes, as the wordsso proud of my wee ladechoed in a whisper behind her.
Chapter35
Cian
It felt like my lungs were being strangled, and I came to with a gasp that had me chokin’ on what was supposed to be thin. The air. It tasted like dirt in my mouth.
My arms flew out and knocked whatever was on the silver tray all over the floor. The items clattered and shattered, and Higgins held his hands up and took a step back.
“All right, O'Callaghan?”
