Molly gave him a skeptical look. He seemed harmless. “Sure.”
They tapped rims, took the shots. Molly’s teeth floated, and she shook her head.
“Dan,” he said.
“Thanks, Dan. Molly.”
He nodded and turned his back. Definitely harmless, Molly thought. Now where is that bartender? A heavy-set woman wearing a howling wolf sweatshirt dumped a bucket of ice into a bin then put her hand on the bar in front of Molly. “What can I get you, sweetie?”
Molly played cool in her most adult way, channeled someone who didn’t give a shit. “Two pitchers of Bud,” she said, smiling at Dan, who was looking her way again.
The bartender stared for an extra beat. “Yeah, I’m gonna need to see some ID.”
Molly sighed, rolled her eyes at Dan like she was too old for this nonsense, and rummaged through her purse for her wallet. She’d had the birth date on her driver’s license altered to make her legal to drink, even though she was only twenty. The guy hadn’t done a great job, but it worked fine in dimly lit bars and careless liquor stores. And since she refused to drive once she passed the test, she’d never have to show it to a cop. “Here you go.”
The lady looked at the card, then back at Molly, then at the card again. She ran her fingertip over it, feeling, Molly suspected, for scratch marks. “This is you? Molly Sullivan?”
Molly nodded.
The bartender looked down at the identification again, ran her tongue visibly over her teeth, bit at her lips and nodded. She stared at Molly. “You don’t remember me?” she asked.
Molly racked her brain. She was sure she’d never been in this bar. She and Shelby had gotten tossed out of a bar in September after they got fall-down drunk pounding well drinks on ladies’ night. But that bartender was a man. This woman looked to be in her sixties at least, her hair, streaky with different colored dyes and grown-out roots, up in a messy wad of flyaways. Her skin was smoky and wizened with creases. Molly did not know her.Something wicked ...
“Your mom is Fiadh, right? And your dad is Will?”
Molly nodded. The ice around her thinned.Fiadh ...“Faye,” she said. “My mom is Faye.”
The woman’s eyebrows flicked. “You remember the name Conor O’Kane?”
Molly’s eyes widened. Her stomach churned like a whirlpool. Dan’s shot plus others rose in an urp. Molly swallowed. Didn’t this woman know that was a name no one said out loud? Didn’t she know that person hardly existed at all? That person was a figment. “What?”
“I remember you from when you were little. You had red hair then.”
“For Chrissake, Glenda, give the girl her pitchers!” Dan said. “And while you’re at it, pour us a couple more shots.”
Glenda laughed, loud and hard.
Molly grew small. Good witch or bad witch?Sardonic.She’d learned that word in lit class. Her bones rattled in her eardrums. In fact, the whole bar seemed to shimmer as if none of it were real at all, as if she were imagining the whole thing. Glenda set two pitchers in front of Molly with a thud that sloshed the foam. She grabbed a bottle of Jameson and put three shot glasses out.
“Whoa, there,” Dan said. “No one asked for top shelf.”
“On me,” Glenda said, filling the glasses. “We’re drinking to my dead husband. He might not have been the best man, but he was a good man. And he wasmyman.”
Glenda and Dan lifted their glasses. Molly stood paralyzed. This man, Conor O’Kane, loomed over her entire life. To her, he must have been eight feet tall, rangy and muscled like a werewolf. He tookevery step she took, laid out in front of her, long and distorted like a late afternoon shadow. Good?He was a bad man.That’s what her mother told her. A bad man and a drunk. She could see his hands clawing the air even now. He had sideburns. Dark lips. That’s all she could remember about his face.
“Come on, big girl, big college girl,” Glenda mocked.
Dutifully, Molly lifted the glass. Her palms were sweaty. She wished she had her gloves.
“To Conor O’Kane,” Glenda said. “The love of my life. May he rest in peace.Sláinte.”
“To Conor,” Dan said, clueless.
“To Conor,” Molly whispered.
Glenda filled the glasses again. And again. And again. Molly gagged on the last shot.
“That ought to about do it,” Glenda said. “Banjaxed proper now. Here’s your fake ID, Molly Sullivan. You can tell those parents of yours that I said hello and tell them it would have been nice if they’d come to the service or sent flowers or even picked up the goddamned telephone when I called. All he ever wanted was a family to care about him, you know. I hope you lot pay for how you treated him. So, yeah, you tell them I said hello. You’ll do that for me, won’t you, Molly Sullivan? Tell them Glenda said hello?” She pinned Molly’s wrist to the bar, stared her down accusingly before releasing her again. “Oh, and nice jacket, by the way.”
