“No, they don’t,” Jerry replies rather thinly, and then gets up to go check again on the downstairs progress.
“And what about him?” Taylor asks, once he’s left. “How long’s Jerry been here?”
“O’Doyle? Five years, just about,” Liam replies.
“O’Doyle?”
Eduardo shakes his head. “Liam here has a nickname for everyone.” Then, turning to Liam, he admonishes, “Jerry’s last name, as you know, is Doyle, not O’Doyle.”
Liam shrugs.
“And his sister? How long was she here?” Taylor asks.
Liam stops stacking glasses from behind the bar. He looks surprised. “Who told you about Tara?”
“He did.” Taylor juts her chin toward Eduardo, who nods.
“Oh. What was it, a year?” Liam asks Eduardo.
Eduardo closes his book. “Yes, thirteen months. She’s in nursing school now. That’s what she wants to do—be a nurse.”
Taylor can feel her face redden at the mention of nursing. It’s stupid that this word would generate an instant guilty response, like anything outside of the insulated, gilded heft of the Knox is a dirty secret. “So why am I not supposed to mention her around Jerry?”
Liam and Eduardo exchange looks. It’s Eduardo who answers.
“She was in a relationship with Oliver…. Oliver’s in charge, or almost in charge. Jerry didn’t like that. Have you met him—Oliver?”
“I don’t know.”
Liam snickers. “That’s a no, then. You would know.”
Taylor shrugs. “Okay, whatever.” She thinks it’s weird that Tara would continue to be a touchy subject around here, if she’s long gone and doing fine.
“Hey, how didyouget yourself here?” Liam asks.
“Me? My landlord referred me.”
“Yeah? What’s his name?”
“Hername is Anna.”
“And where did you say you worked before?”
“I didn’t say. But I worked at my dad’s restaurant in North Carolina.”
“North Carolina, huh,” Liam says. He’s watching Taylor closely, as if her answers are somehow making him suspicious.
“Peter interviewed her. And then the geomancy confirmed,” Eduardo says.
“And Michael did the geomancy reading?” Liam presses.
“I would assume so,” Eduardo replies.
Meanwhile, Taylor is thinking to herself that they must have made a mistake with her. She never met a Michael, and she has no idea what the geo-thing they mentioned is. What if she’s not supposed to be here?
But Liam nods, seemingly satisfied. He continues stacking glasses and then asks, much more lightly, “What brought you to Boston, anyway?”
“My mother.”
