My responsibilities have been discharged as far as one of Tino’s children go. The other?
He’s my responsibility until death do we part.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Finch
EvenIwasn’t dumb enough to turn up to Margaret Fincher Donovan’s wake.
The whole horror-movie night at Innisfree, the Donovan retreat, got handwaved by the press and by the police as a violent home intrusion. No indication that there were ties to organized crime. Certainly no ties to what went down in Chicago. Maggie got a glowing obituary that would have pleased even her, and Tara, who was released from hospital the day before the funeral, gave the eulogy.
Or so I hear, since I didn’t go.
I don’t regret what I did. Idoregret getting down on my knees to listen to Maggie’s last words, like I thought she was going to say something profound, something about forgiving me. I should’ve known better.
Because a person’s dying words havepower. And I haven’t heard from Tara since that night, which makes me wonder if she’s come to the same conclusion, that I never belonged in the Donovan family, and cut me out of her life. After Luca and I dropped her, unconscious, at the hospital and got our asses out of there, I texted and called and checked in with the hospital multiple times a day, but she never replied.
Luca told me to give her time. “It’s one thing towantsomeone dead, it’s another to see it happen in front of you,” he reminds me every. Damn. Time. And I get it. I do. Seeing Luca do what he does still shocks me to the core every time, watching him so capable and so calm in the face of human destruction.
But in a choice between Luca and my sister who tried to kill me multiple times, the outcome was always going to be the same. Maggie knewoneof us would shoot her. She had to have known.
And Tara must know why I did it.
So damn it, I feelhurt. I saved her life along with Luca’s, and while I don’t expect a thank you for it, some basic acknowledgement of me would make me feel a whole lot better. I keep calling and calling Tara with no response, until one day when Róisín’s face appears on the video call instead, her red hair shorn and fluffy.
“I thought you were Poor Claring,” I say in surprise.
She presses her lips together. “Hi, Howie. How are you?”
“I mean, I'm alive. What are you doing with Tara?”
“She asked me to come back and help out for a while. She’s…fragile at the moment.”
“Physically?” I asked. “Or mentally? Also, I thought you tookvows?”
“That’s not how it works. You don’t just jump into it like that.” I think about Not-Father Aidan, the Seminarian, and nod sagely, like I know exactly what she means. “Besides,” she goes on, “Tara needed me.”
I smile. “You chose family over God, huh?”
“Howie, what did you want?” she asks with a sigh.
I take the hint. “I wanted to talk to Tara. I wanted to… I don't know, just put her, on will you?”
Róisín looks to the side in a way that tells me Tara is right there in the room. “She's not available right now.”
I could call their bluff, but what would be the point? “Okay,” I say. “Well, you tell Tara that when sheisavailable, her brother would really like to talk to her.”
Róisín gets a suspicious look, and starts to ask, “Howie, do you know anything about what happened with Maggie and Unc—” but I cut her off.
“Gotta bounce. Nice seeing you, Ro. Maybe we’ll catch up sometime.”
Tara's refusal to take my callcouldhave made me feel bad, but I prefer to remember what she said to me in Las Vegas.
I love you, and you’ll always be part of the family as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve decided to believe that she won’t stop loving me just because she saw the darkness in me.
* * *
