"He won’t…I don’t think he’ll go to?—"
"Let's find out."
She hands him over, and forty pounds of furnace-hot, whimpering boy lands against my chest. I settle into the big armchair by the window, and I do the only thing I know how to do at nearly one in the morning with a sick child. I sing.
Soft and low, the song Ma sang to me through my childhood illnesses—Toora loora loora. My hand moves in slow circles on his small back.
Oisin stills. Not asleep, just listening. His breath hitches, hiccups, then slows. One small hand closes into a fist and rests against me.
So I keep going. Through that one, thenMolly Malone.Then, when I run out of lullabies, I sing a soft, embarrassing rendition ofNinety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall—because he doesn't care about the words. He cares about the rumble of my chest and big arms that hold him steadily.
Somewhere around verse forty, I look up.
Maeve is sitting on the edge of the bed, a cool cloth hanging forgotten from her hand, watching us. And her face?—
I've seen my wife furious. Suspicious. Exhausted. I've seen her writhe in pleasure.
I have never seen her look like this. Open. Unguarded.
"He doesn't do that," she whispers. "He doesn't—with anyone but me. Ever."
“Maybe he knows,” I say quietly, over the small head tucked under my chin. “That I’d take a bullet for him.”
Her breath catches. “You would?"
"Maeve." I lock eyes with her across the dimly lit room, holding this warm little boy. “For any of you. Without a moment’s hesitation.”
She doesn't answer. She just crosses the room, sits on the chair's arm beside us, rests her head against my shoulder, and lays her hand over Oisin's small back.
The fever breaks at 4 a.m.
I know because Maeve's checked every thirty minutes all night—and when the thermometer beeps ninety-nine point one, she sags against me in relief. She’s asleep within minutes. Two of them now, sleeping on me in the gray almost-morning, and my arm is dead and my back is ruined and there is vomit in my hair somewhere, I'm nearly sure of it.
I look down at my wife’s face, soft in sleep, and at the little boy breathing easy against my chest, and I think about the two kids asleep down the hall who also came as part of the package deal.
How hard can one small wife be?
Hardest thing I've ever done.
And the best thing I've ever done.
Chapter 16
Maeve
The last time I stood here in St. Brigid's, I married a stranger.
I'm back in the same pew section, surrounded by an entire crime family, watching my husband’s three-week-old nephew be baptized.
Baby Sean does not appreciate the sacrament. He announces this at a volume that rivals a jet engine, his tiny fists swinging at the priest like he's settling a debt.
"That's it, lad," Lorcan murmurs beside me, low enough that only our pew hears. "Never let a man pour water on you without a fight."
I do a double-take when I see Cara's shoulders shake. Her silent laughter is like treasure.
Lorcan’s brother Declan and his wife Saoirse stand at the font as godparents. When the priest hands Saoirse the baby, something in Declan's harsh face softens considerably. It’s like granite melting into goo.
The baby’s father, Cillian, is the head of the family, the one whose mere name makes grown men in my old neighborhood lower their voices in fear. He stands behind his wife, Nora, with his hand on her shoulder, looking at her like she’s the sun in his sky.
