Inside the doors to the parish center, the family greeted mourners who offered condolences for a woman they hardly knew. Faye had spotted Conor O’Kane at the service, so she wasn’t surprised to see him on the line. According to Thomas, the woman hanging off his arm was the new girlfriend, a bombshell who tended bar in Camden where Conor had been living for the last month or more. Too close, as far as Faye was concerned. At least when he was in Boston, news of his comings and goings was sporadic.
As they approached, Faye marveled that the woman appeared older than Conor. It was the one thing Jean ever criticized about him, that he only brought around girls barely out of their teens. Otherwise, he wasperfect in her eyes. “It’s like I have a son again,” she’d said once. The comment had so annoyed William, he had reminded her that she had a son-in-law, a retort completely out of character for him. “You know that’s not the same,” she’d replied.
As they made their way closer, William whispered, “How old is she, do you think?”
“Maybe close to forty?”
“Yeah, maybe. Hard forty.”
O’Kane took a long drag on his cigarette, then snipped the edge with his thumb like he was taking the head off a dandelion. Embers arced to the cement as smoke poured from his mouth and nostrils. He mashed it out with his boot tip, put the butt in his jacket pocket, then made his way inside. “What a blow.” His voice cracked with emotion. He shook Thomas’s hand.
Thomas nodded coolly. “Yes.”
“I have to say, Fiadh, she was like a mother to me,” Conor continued, his eyes swollen and red-rimmed.
Faye’s heart thudded the way it always did when Conor O’Kane appeared, a snake on a trail. She had encountered him a couple of times at the cove house, jawing with Jean over cigarettes and coffee. Only in those situations did he call her Faye, out of deference, she figured, to Jean. He’d make himself scarce when Faye showed up, though with a slanted eye. It gave Faye the creeps, the way her mother looked at him as if theirs was a clandestine relationship, as if they were lovers. “Mm. The two of you did have something special, all right.”
“Don’t take it personally. I made her happy.” He drew Faye into a lengthy embrace. That menacing scent of him—burning paper, pomade, the leather of his jacket almost feral. It was the smell of an animal that lurked where humans gathered. She recoiled as William stepped up.
“Okay, Con. You’ve made your point.”
“All I’m saying is what Jean meant to me. Isn’t that right?” he said to his guest. “Oh, everyone, this is Glenda.”
She was a big woman, hair dyed rubber-ball red, as tall as William and heavier, all of it magnified by blue eyeshadow and overwhelming breasts impossible to ignore, even for Maeve, who stared in that way of children.
“Sorry for your loss,” Glenda said, her voice husky. “Con has talked nonstop about his friend Jean since I’ve known him.”
“Conor thinks everyone is his friend,” Thomas said.
O’Kane, shrugging off the jab, patted Maeve’s head. “This wee one had a time of it.”
“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” Maeve asked.
“Maeve!” Faye admonished.
Glenda roared with laughter. “Trust me. I’ve heard it before.”
“Quite the spitfire you got there, Fiadh,” O’Kane said. “I’ve got half a mind to kidnap her to Ireland with me. Fiery Irish lass ...”
“What’s wrong with you?” William asked. “Hardly the occasion for gallows humor.”
O’Kane tried to pat Maeve again, but this time she ducked behind Faye. “Settle down. It’s a joke. Though it’s true you’ve never been one for humor.” He regrouped, slicked up his voice. “So, how about that? Glenda and me, we’ll go to Galway soon, then to see her brother in Derry. Been more than a decade for me. You lot must miss it. The homeland and all. Too bad Jean couldn’t go back.”
The scoff slipped out of Faye’s mouth on a blast of breath. She shook her head, rolled her eyes. She’d had it with him. She wished she could shove him into the hole they dug for Jean.
“My wife had no desire to return to Ireland,” Thomas said. “Surely in all your ear-bending with her, she’d told you that much. Her home was here. And I will miss her in it.”
Maeve squirmed next to Faye, fussing with her skirt and shoes until it was too late for anyone to thwart what she had planned. Her hand balled like it had earlier with the message for her grandmother. She wound up like a major league pitcher and threw her underpants,hitting O’Kane in the nose with white panties scotched with urine and a child’s poor wiping habits.
“I don’t like him,” Maeve wailed, her face red as a washed tomato.
No one does,Faye thought in an instant, though outwardly she was aghast.
“Dear God,” Faye said, scooping up Maeve and her underwear. “Okay. William. You have to take her home.”
He took Maeve from Faye. “I don’t know what on earth got into her.”
“Little young for my taste,” Conor said, wiping his face with the back of his hand.
