‘I guess I can rejig my afternoons for the next little while.’ Donny had his calendar app open on his phone, scrolling between the days.
‘You’re going to coach?’ Mai asked.
What followed then was a quick four-way side glance between Mai, Siobhan, Rhonda and Catherine. It was part surprised, part alarmed. But, as always in these situations, it was Catherine’s job to tell it like it was.
‘Donny, honey, you can’t run three paces without tripping over.’
Fully aware, and accepting of, his shortcomings, Donny wasn’t remotely insulted by Catherine’s observation. ‘I can’t help my giant clown feet.’
Donny, his legs outstretched, knocked the feet in question together, drawing everyone’s gaze. They were, by any measure, large. Disproportionately so given he was barely five foot seven. As a kid he’d seen several specialists about his lack of balance, but none had been able to find anything wrong, leaving his unofficial diagnosis as CK.
Clumsy kid.
‘Still.’ He grinned at Mai. ‘You know what they say about guys with big feet?’
She returned his grin. ‘Large…socks?’
‘You know it.’
Fin, who had been exposed to Donny’s exhibitionist tendencies from childhood, knew all about the size of his cousin’s socks. And it was clear Donny was fine with the tradeoff life had dealt him—lack of sporting ability for the prowess in his pants.
Catherine, no stranger to Donny’s bragging on the subject, ploughed on. ‘I don’t think it looks good for the coach to be leaving in the back of an ambulance the first day.’
‘I’ll get a loud whistle and yell from the sideline. And I’ll see if other parents can do some, share the load a bit.’
‘No, Donny, don’t be silly,’ Rhonda said. ‘Fin can do it.’
Fin stopped chewing as everyone looked at him. ‘I can?’
‘Of course,’ his mother confirmed cheerily. ‘You were a Banshee as a kid, you’ve seen dozens of live games with your dad as well as the ones you’ve been to in Ireland, and you play in a comp with those people from your work. Plus it’s four weeks away so you’ll still be hereandyou’re on vacation, which means you have the time.’
Ronnie ticked the points off her fingers, each of which made perfect sense. Fin’s first instinct, however, was to say no to what felt like another motherly manipulation. The Banshees were so synonymous with his father that it was bound to be a constant poke at that bruise. Butmaybeit could be an act of atonement? A way to alleviate his guilt over those last harsh words he and his father had traded.
Words neither could now take back.
‘I don’t know much about kids,’ he hedged.
‘What’s to know?’ Donny said. ‘They’re energetic and like poo jokes.’
Fin glanced at Sweeney. He didn’t know why—it wasn’t as though he needed her permission, but already he felt like it was them against the town and they needed a united front to survive the coming days. She gave a little shrug then an encouraging nod.
‘Okay.’ Fin looked at his mother. ‘Sure.’ Why not? He could do this for Ballyshannon. And his dad.
Fin swore he saw some mist in his mother’s eyes as everyone clapped and high fived around them.
‘No, wait,’ Mai said, interrupting the celebrations. ‘He’ll need a blue card to coach kids.’
Donny groaned. ‘Damn it, you’re right.’
‘I had to undergo Garda vetting to work with children and vulnerable adults because of the annual telethon fundraiser,’ Fin said.
Fin worked for a health charity in Dublin—in the finance section. But every department sent people to man the phones during the epic twenty-four-hour event, and they’d all needed to undergo the required screening as children were often involved in the programme.
‘Maybe,’ he suggested, ‘the paperwork for that might do while I apply for the other?’
Now he was committed, Fin was determined to pick up the gauntlet and run.
‘It might.’ Donny nodded. ‘I’ll look into it first thing tomorrow.’
