The silence at the table was heavy. The Kellys continued picking at the food on their plates, chewing slowly in order to keep from disturbing Noah any further. Despite a few shared glances around the table, it remained quiet. Daniel’s mother took a long sip from her wine glass. Being the man at the other end of the mahogany surface, Rory Kelly was the first to speak:
“Everything alright down there, Noah?” His voice was rough and authoritative most days; Daniel was surprised by the concern his father’s words were laced with.
Noah’s eyes lifted from his plate for the first time since Caitlin stormed out. “Quite,” he confirmed. The tough expression on his face broke when he met his old friend’s eyes from across the table and an easy, familiar smile began to form. “I apologize for the commotion.” He moved his hands in a gesture that encouraged his guests to continue working on their meals as he prepared a load of mashed potatoes on his fork. “Caitlin and I don’t always see eye-to-eye on these things,” his voice was muffled by the last bit of potato in his mouth. “But she needs to realize that passing the pub on goes beyond just her. I need to know it’ll be cared for, and in times of hardship, businesses and families need a strong man’s arm to steer them through the storm.”
Daniel’s mother, Maryella, finished off another sip before chiming in. “Is that why you’ve chosen to make her marrying a condition to her own inheritance?” Maryella rarely spoke up, but when she did, she had the charming ability to make everything she said come off as disdainful, and Noah smiled warmly at Maryella, taking the jab in stride.
“You make it sound like I’m trying to find the highest bidder, Mary,” he laughed, earning a scattered laughter from the guests around the table. This laughter became heartier when Rory joined in with a guttural laugh from the other end of the table.
Maryella hid a lopsided smile behind her fork, tucking her food into the side of her mouth to speak around it: “I was only asking.”
“It’s quite an old-fashioned way of thinking,” Sophie added in a soft voice. She rarely spoke at events like this, especially in the company of her own parents.
Noah met Sophie’s eyes, knowing that she and Caitlin were close. He nodded. Daniel noted that, without anyone on either side of him, Noah looked particularly alone. His solitary presence conjured up images of his late wife, of her funeral, of the times in Caitlin’s life when she’d been more closed off, as he stared at the red-haired man who was struggling to conceal his emotions.
“I know it is old-fashioned of me,” he held his hands up to the heavens as if to silently ask for persecution and earned a tight laugh from Sophie. “But I want to see my little girl married off and happy. I just want what’s best for her and my legacy.”
Sophie nodded, finding it difficult to argue against Noah when he posed his ideas this way. The rest of her protest died on her tongue and Daniel knew she was only storing it for later.
“Surely Caitlin’s capable of looking after the pub with you until she meets herself one of the right sort, yeah?” Kilian said in between bites.
Daniel’s father continued to eat quietly, but his eyes shifted to his eldest son as he chewed. His expression was unreadable.
“She is,” he said confidently. “It has nothing to do with her not being capable, I assure you. That girl can run the pub better than I could at her age.” His eyebrows lifted with excitement as he raved about his daughter. “Marriage will be good for her. She needs someone to care after and to take care of, you can’t do it alone all the time.” He shook his head with his eyes on his plate.
There was a pang of guilt inside of Daniel for finding Noah’s ideas outlandishly old-fashioned. He could see something similar painted on Sophie’s face. She was too far from him to reach, but in that moment, he wished he had been close enough to touch her shoulder.
“And perhaps it is the good company,” Noah continued, looking around at each of the Kellys with grateful eyes as he picked up his glass once more. “Or maybe the drink,” he laughed. On the other side of the table, Rory picked up his glass to meet his friend in his toast. He kept his bent elbow on the table. “But I hope that one day, Daniel will be able to make her see.”
There was a ripple of uncertainty throughout the table. Each of Daniel’s brothers traded a look with another as their father and Noah drank together. Kilian searched Daniel’s face for understanding but found none. Daniel turned to look at his father with a confused smile on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he set his utensil down gently, not wanting to make a scene as Caitlin had before. “I must have missed something. Why would I be able to help Caitlin see something?” He tried to keep his brow from threading as he spoke, but the idea of trying to explain anything to Caitlin—let alone have a normal conversation—made his forehead start to pinch. If he could manage to get a headache from simplythinkingabout talking to Caitlin, then he couldn’t begin to imagine how insufferable it’d be in reality.
“Well,” Rory’s voice had a hesitance to it that set off a sinking feeling in Daniel. He narrowed his eyes as his father continued speaking. “You and she have known each other a long time now. You two have a certain… chemistry.” He made a flippant gesture as if he hadn’t just said the most asinine thing Daniel had ever heard.
“A chemistry?” Daniel laughed. He looked around the table for support; only Sophie seemed to look bewildered by what their father was saying. As the seconds dragged on, Daniel realized that escaping the room had been a good move on Caitlin’s part.
“A rapport, a chemistry, a history—whatever you want to call it, Danny.”
Daniel’s back stiffened at the use of the old nickname. Whether his father had intended it or not, he felt like a child sitting before his father now.
“I wouldn’t really call it anything, Dad.” He shook his head as he pulled a crumpled napkin from his lap and moved it onto the table in front of him. “We’re not close, I hardly think she would even listen to me.” There wasn’t a shred of exaggeration to his words—Caitlin was an incredibly stubborn person and he wasn’t sure Caitlin would take any sort of advice from him.
Rory took a deep breath in and his eyes flickered away from his son, and moved across the table to look at his friend at the other end. After a moment, he set his fork and turned to face his son more directly. He’d done this only a few times before—when grandparents had passed away, when the dogs had to be put down—it was what his father did when things were about to get serious.
Daniel took the moment to look down at his sister. She looked just as lost as he felt. The rest of his family looked on with a mixture of concern and confusion—they watched Rory instead of Daniel. He felt a strange kinship with Sophie then, as if she were the only rational member of his family.
“Now, son,” Rory began.
Daniel whipped his head back around to look at his father.
“Noah and I have been talking about the future a lot lately.” He sat back in his chair and furrowed his brow as if trying to piece together something large and complex in his mind. Daniel tried to swallow the fire that burned at the back of his throat, threatening to leak out all over the table and himself. “And since Noah’s intention is to see his daughter married to someone he can trust…” There was a building tempo to his voice, but he paused here. It almost felt like he had no intention of finishing what he was saying. “We hoped you might pursue the hand of the young Miss Murphy.”
The amused smile began to fall away from Daniel’s face when he realized that Noah and his father were serious. He leaned back in his chair, pulling as far away from the table and from the proposal as he could.
“What?” Daniel laughed humorlessly, putting his finger down onto the table. “She and I loathe one another, Dad. I promise you,” he turned to look down the table at Noah. “Both of you—that would not make either one of us happy.”
“Don’t be silly,” Noah laughed, ignoring Daniel’s admission to loathing his daughter completely. The roaring flames in the fireplace cast strange shapes on Noah’s round face, contorting his friendly features. He looked at the red-haired man as if he had suddenly burst into hysterics. “You two have known each other since you were children. All of that was juvenile… crushing.” He nodded, writing over their history with a wide, mismatched brushstroke. He didn’t understand either of them at all. Daniel was certain both fathers were intentionally deluding themselves at this point. He looked to Sophie.
