Page 138 of Ruthless Claim

Something about that lands strangely, but I’m too out of it to really examine it.

Finn drags his feet in the dirt eventually and climbs off the swing. He walks over cautiously, eyeing the space between his mother and me. Claire pats the seat by her and he sits down, his eyes never leaving mine.

It’s funny.

We are two people who have been told we might be connected in the most fundamental way and don’t yet know what to do with that.

Whatever is happening here, this kid is real. His nerves are real.

“Hi,” I say, a bit awkwardly, unsure if I should wave or not. I’ve never been good at talking to kids. What do I even say to him?

“Hi,” he repeats, then immediately, “Do you support anyone? In football, I mean. Like a club.”

And that’s the start of the conversation. For the next twenty minutes all we talk about is football. Not American football, mind you.

He tells me about his position—midfielder, he tells me—and a goal he scored last month.

He describes it in specific, passionate detail, the kind of detail that only exists when something actually matters to you.

The way the goalkeeper went left when the ball went right. The sound it made going in.

His coach’s face afterward.

I listen to all of it and I ask questions when appropriate. Finn answers them and his face goes more animated with every exchange and it is—it’s nice. Whatever complexity surrounds it, sitting on a park bench in Queens listening to an eight-year-old talk about football is simply nice.

Then his face settles back into a wary look. “What do you do for work?”

“Business,” I say smoothly, the same answer I always give.

He considers this, face scrunching up. “What kind of business?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” I tell him, which makes him smile.

“Do you like New York?”

“I do.”

“We don’t have anything like this in Belfast,” he says, gesturing at the general concept of New York, the skyline visible over the park fence. “Everything is bigger here.”

Claire laughs softly while I study Finn. “Is that good or bad?”

He thinks about it. “Both, maybe.”

I nod. “Yeah. Both is probably right.”

He asks me if I have brothers or sisters.

He asks me if I grew up here. He asks me if I knew his mum before, like, properly, and something about the way he asks that puts me on edge.

It almost sounds…coached? I tell him yes, I knew his mother briefly, with an emphasis on briefly. He nods like he’s writing something down in his head.

Some of the questions are his. The football, the New York question, whether I like chocolate cake or vanilla cake.

Some of them aren’t; those he glances at Claire after a few of them, thinking I won’t catch them.

I do catch them, but I say nothing.

He goes back to the swings after a while and it’s me and Claire on the bench again.