Beside me, Maeve is very still. She looks as if she’s bracing for battle.
The iron gates at the end of the estate open for us, and the oak-lined drive unspools toward the mansion.
In the back seat, Jamie forgets himself.
“What the hell," he breathes.
"Language," Maeve says, on reflex, with no force behind it at all, because her eyes are wide too.
"People actually live here?" Jamie asks.
"My ma, mostly. Rattling around all these rooms."
I take a critical look at the place where I grew up—the place where I learned to walk as a toddler, climbed up on the east roof at eleven, and snuck out my bedroom window to meet up with my girlfriend at fourteen. I imagine it from the eyes of my passengers, four people for whom a working radiator is a godsend.
"There's a pool out back too. Heated.”
Jamie's head snaps toward me. "Heated?"
"Year-round. With a diving board."
Jamie's arms uncross half an inch before he catches himself and re-crosses them.
"Whatever," he mutters, remembering he's supposed to be a sullen teenager.
Cara presses her whole face to the glass.
Ma's waiting on the front steps.
This is the part I'm dreading. I have watched this woman take Nora apart at a dinner table. I've watched her hold Saoirse at arm's length like a liability. I’ll admit, she was a little nicer to Prudence, but typically Kathleen O'Rourke does notwelcome.She assesses, she surveys, and she calculates.
And I sprang this on her with little notice.
Maeve unstraps the toddler, sets him on the ground and, with her chin held high, grasps Oisin’s little hand and squares herself for a fight.
Good instinct.
Ma appraises my wife—the well-worn clothes, the scuffed shoes, the way she's positioned her body between the children and the stranger on the steps.
"You must be my new daughter-in-law.” Not warm, exactly. But not cold. "I'm Kathleen O’Rourke. Welcome.”
And then Ma takes in the kids, and her expression softens in a way I don't think she planned. She descends the steps and looks at Oisin, who is peeking out from behind Maeve’s legs. "Who is this?"
"This is Oisin," Maeve says. "He's shy."
Kathleen crouches. She doesn't reach for him. Doesn't do the awful cooing thing. She just lowers herself to his level and waits.
"Hello, Oisin," she says. "I'm Kathleen. Do you know what I have in my kitchen?"
He shakes his head, thumb in his mouth.
"Cookies. Chocolate chip. And I happen to know a boy your size can eat at least three."
Oisin considers this with the gravity of a diplomat weighing a treaty. Then he takes his thumb out of his mouth. "Free cookies?"
"Three," Kathleen corrects gently. "Though we can negotiate."
I don't understand what's happening. My mother—matriarch of a crime family—is squatting on the ground bargaining with cookies.
