by M. O’Keefe
I lay down on the bed, over the covers, the phone on my chest. I remembered the feel of Poppy against my body. The strength in her arms as she held me as tight as she could. If only, I thought, if only I was that strong. And I waited for day to come.
It wasn’t even an hour before the screaming started.
CHAPTER SIX
Poppy
The girl in the shop was talking to me, telling me where the underwear was, pointing to the far wall. But I couldn’t understand her because there was too much blood in her mouth. And part of her head was gone. And her pretty brown hair was matted with gore. “Stop,” I told her. “Stop. You need to stop.”
“They killed me because of you,” she said. “And I don’t even know you. What’s so special about you that I had to die?”
“Nothing,” I said, sobbing. But the girl kept talking and talking and so I had to scream to be heard. Scream until my throat was raw. “Poppy?”
“I’m sorry!” I screamed.
“Poppy. Wake up.”
There was a hand on my arm and I bolted upright in the dark room. “Poppy, you’re safe.” It was Ronan. Ronan’s voice. His hands on me in the dark, and I collapsed into his arms, panic and fear and guilt cracking me wide open. “The girl,” I cried. “The girl in the shop. They killed her because of me. Because—”
“Shhhh, shhh. She died because of the Morellis,” he said, holding me tight against his chest. His body was a fire I could warm myself against. “You are as innocent as she was.”
That didn’t feel true. At. All. “No one else can die, Ronan. No one else.”
“They won’t. I promise, a chuisle. I promise.”
He held me and stroked my back. My shirt was sticking to me and my hair was damp with sweat but still I was cold. The kind of cold that would never get warm. I realized I was clinging to him. My hands in fists in his shirt. My hair stuck to his face. He wanted less of me and I kept giving him more. I let go of his shirt, patted down the wrinkle.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“It was just a nightmare,” I said and tried to smile, but I was going to cry again. And I didn’t want him here to see it. “I’m okay.”
“Poppy—”
“I’m fine. Honestly. I’m fine.” I sounded like a deranged chipmunk. But I needed him to leave so I could cry in peace. “Go back to your room.”
He was silent, sitting there. I lay down and pulled the blankets over my shoulder and still he sat there. “Please, Ronan,” I said, my voice breaking all over the place. Leave so I can have some dignity. He stood and I bit my lip against a sob, missing him already.
He braced his hands on the bed. “I can’t be what you want, Poppy.”
“All I want is for you to leave—”
“Stop,” he said quietly. “We both know you want…more. You want a regular life with a regular man. And I’m not that man. I can’t give that to you.”
I didn’t want that. I didn’t want it at all. I wanted him and I wanted our life, the kind we could make. In my silence he must have found the agreement he wanted, he stood and opened the door, letting in a slice of light.
“Ronan?”
“Yeah?”
“What if I’m pregnant?”
I heard him stop breathing. I could practically hear his heart stop. The nightmare was gone and so was the adrenaline and I was back to being exhausted. His silence stretched and stretched and I knew he didn’t have an answer, either.
I told myself to stay awake, but my eyelids were too heavy.
If he answered, I didn’t hear it.
* * *
Ronan
“What’s the craic, then?” Niamh asked, making us tea in her shabby little kitchen. She had the good shortbread she ordered in special. It was noon and I’d left Poppy sleeping in my bed like it was the dead of night. If I had my way, she’d sleep through every reckoning that was coming our way, but I knew I would not be that lucky. The only thing I could do was act fast. What if I’m pregnant?
“Dead on,” I said, putting her off, pretending things were fine. “You?”
“Try that garbage with someone else, Ronan. You look shite,” Niamh said, putting the teacup on the table in front of me. I added sugar and milk to my tea and grunted in answer. So much fucking worse than you know, Niamh. She sat down opposite me at her kitchen table and laughed.
“That bad, like?” Niamh owned the building and lived in the most modest unit on the second floor. Smaller than mine, without the big bedroom and en suite off the back. But neither one of us had changed our apartments since we moved in. It was my good fortune that the man who lived on the top floor had moved in within the last ten years and had excellent taste. The previous resident of Niamh’s was in the early ’70s and loved the avocado green craze. Fridge. Stove. A microwave the size of a small car. The table was Formica and sticky as fuck from a million pots of spilled tea. A million more bottles of spilled whiskey. Niamh had given me stitches on this table and set a broken finger. She’d taken a bullet out of McGill’s ass before he went to jail. I had no idea why she didn’t change it and at the same time I was glad she didn’t. Some things were unchanging. Resolute. She was whipcord thin and her silver hair was cut short. Not fashionably short. Like she did it herself with some clippers and a broken mirror.
“Why is there a girl in your apartment?”
“Raj has a big mouth.” I drank the tea too fast because I needed caffeine and sugar more than I cared about a burnt tongue.
“It’s not just Raj. Word is you’re married, but there’s no way you’re that stupid.” I sighed. “You’re that stupid.”
“We didn’t have much choice.”
Niamh crossed one leg over the other. She wore jeans and a faded yellow shirt, with buttons and a rounded collar that looked too soft on her. There were thick wool socks on her feet because she caught chilblains in an English prison and her feet bothered her every day of her life. Of all the women in my life, she’s the one I understood the best. I understood her restraint and her self-denial. The way she only used what she needed and kept what she needed to the bare minimum. Niamh made sense to me.
Caroline, when she came into my life, was the total opposite. The wealth and the glamour. The cars and suits and women…it had been a feast for a man who’d been starving his whole damn life. I took it as my due, as payment for years of trouble. Clearly, it had made me weak. I should have done it the Niamh way and kept myself sharp.
“You know,” Niamh said. Her mug had a chip in it. A mug that would have been tossed and replaced by Caroline. By Poppy. But this woman kept using it, just avoiding the chip so she didn’t hurt her lip. Because the only thing that mattered was restraint and common sense. “I’ve used that excuse once or twice in my life,” she said. “It’s not an excuse.”
She shook her head at me. “They would have killed her,” I said.
Niamh pursed her lips. “Probably not,” she said. “Word is she’s got some kind of information.”
“She doesn’t.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, boy,” she said, leaning forward, skewering me with her gray eyes. “But you keep telling yourself you didn’t have a choice and you’re lying to yourself. Lying to yourself makes blind spots and blind spots—”
“Will get you killed. Fine. Yes, I choose her. I choose her living rather than her dead. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Not really. What are you gonna do now?”
“Go to the Morellis.”
She nodded, approving of my plan. Don’t wait. Strike first. Keep the enemy off-balance.
“You have the box from Poppy’s house?” This bankers box. “I’ll take it to her. But I meant…what are you going to do with her?”
“Get her out of this mess and let her go.”
Niamh tilted her head. The kitchen clock, again a relic, was loud, the second hand clicking constantly, like another heartbeat in the room. “What if she doesn’t want to leave?” Niamh asked. “There’s no r
oom in this life for blind spots.”
“I know,” I said.
“I’m saying you need to make—”
“I know what you’re saying.”
“Of course.” She shrugged, turning her mug in quarter turns. “There’s no rule saying you need to stay in this life.”
That actually made me laugh. “What else am I good for?”
“You got more money than most. Seems like you could figure it out.”
Poppy and the cottage. Rascal the cat. A dream, all of it. “I’m where I need to be.” I stood. “Thanks for the tea and for taking that box up to Poppy.”
She waved me off and I stepped from the cracked yellow linoleum of the kitchen into the worn hardwood of the living room with its console television and green and yellow floral couches. It smelled like cigarettes and Niamh didn’t smoke. “I had a family once,” Niamh said, and I stopped. “Pardon?”
“In Belfast. A million years ago. A husband and a wee boy. Mark. He had a speech thing…” She waved her hand close to her mouth. “Delayed or whatever, and my husband took him every Tuesday to this doctor on the high street. I’d watch them go out my kitchen window. Mark had a yellow mac that was too big and so we kept rolling up the sleeves waiting for him to grow into it but…he was just a wee thing.”
I was gut-punched watching her not look at me. “The first time the English brought me in for questioning, they had a picture of my husband and son walking to that appointment. Mark in that yellow mac. And I remember that soldier looking at me and saying ‘innocent people get hurt all the time.’”
“Niamh,” I said. “I had no idea.”
“Of course you didn’t. I didn’t want anyone to know. But they let me out two days later and I went home and I told my husband it was over. He could have the house and Mark and every penny in our accounts.”
“He believed you?”
“I made him believe me,” Niamh said, finally looking at me, her gray eyes glassy. “That was my job, like. To make him believe me so he and Mark could be safe.”
“Or—” I didn’t say it. I didn’t say she could have picked her family and left the cause behind. “There was no fucking or, Ronan. Not for me. I’d gone too far by then. There was too much blood on my hands.”
I thought of Poppy last night, waking up from that nightmare. No more people can die, she’d begged me. Like I wasn’t the one guilty of killing more than my share. Like I wasn’t the goddamn angel of death around these parts. I didn’t want her in this life. Living by these rules. She was young and rich and she’d seen enough darkness.
“You better go,” she said. “The Morellis are not people you keep waiting.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Poppy
My engagement ring from the senator, I’d left sitting in my house, on a small dish I used for rings on the counter of my bathroom sink. It had been a one-carat emerald-cut diamond. Nothing too fancy or big, as if to enforce his image of a dutiful public servant. He told the press that it was an heirloom, but that was a lie.
The wedding band had just been gold.
He’d wanted something with a little more flash, but I’d picked out the wide gold band. Something about the promise embedded in a wedding ring made me want to be serious about it. Austere. Contemplative, if a ring could be contemplative.
This thing, though.
This giant ugly Morelli ring that weighed ten pounds and was a half-size too big so it slid around, the setting on the diamonds cutting the tender skin between my fingers, there was nothing contemplative about this ring. It was a mission statement. Nearly a threat. I could have it sized, get a blood-red manicure and it might actually look good on my hand.
My stomach growled and I had no idea what time it was. The midday sunshine streamed into the living room, falling onto piles of boxes and bags stacked by the couch. The clothes I ordered.
Normally, I did not give a shit about clothes, but having spent three days in flannel and sweatpants that belonged to other people, I was a little giddy at the thought of something pretty to put on my body. “Ronan?”
“Not here,” said a voice from the kitchen and I jumped, turning to face a tall woman with short silver hair and gray eyes.
“Do you know where he is?”
“Cleaning up his mess, I reckon.” She eyed me like I was a dog who’d tracked in mud. Like I was the mess.
“You must be Niamh?” I said, using the pronunciation Ronan used with the V sound.
Whatever I’d been expecting, some version of Sinead at the cottage? A rumpled grandmother with wild, untamed hair and a soft spot for rascals? That was not the woman standing there. There was more of an I’m willing to do hard time if I have to vibe about her. She had hair so short it was nearly a buzz cut and a scar across her lip. “And you’re the guest.” She walked into the living room like a general commanding her troops. “We haven’t seen one of you here before.”
“A guest?” I asked.
“A weakness,” she answered. “Ronan’s worked hard to not have any of those.”
Oh, she did not like me. Well, I thought, get in line. “Which mess is he cleaning up?”
“He’s gone to the Morellis.”
Without me? My eyes went wide with outrage. Of course he did that. Of course he went off on his own after demanding I do nothing by myself. Sit around here like some kind of damsel in distress waiting for him to save me. Fuck him.
“I brought you the box.” Niamh pointed back out to the stacks of bags. Beyond them, on the coffee table in front of the couch was the bankers box that the lawyer had given me and I’d pushed into the shadows the night Theo tried to kill me and Ronan took me to Ireland. It was damaged by water and the lid was crumpled on one side. There was soot from a fire across one whole side. It was absolutely miraculous it hadn’t been destroyed.
“I brought in that other shite, too,” she said, talking about all my new things.
Faced with her austerity, being excited about new clothes felt impossibly frivolous. Niamh gave me the sense she’d never be inconvenienced by a lack of underwear. Ronan had said she’d had to leave Ireland or face charges, and I imagined her in the IRA, holding a machine gun in the window of some church, firing at English soldiers. There was badass and then I imagined there was Niamh.
“That box sure doesn’t look like much,” she said as she kept walking through the apartment like she knew it by heart. Years of familiarity with Ronan and his home and I was the stranger. The odd man out.
“I doubt it will be of much use,” Niamh said. “A whole lot of trouble for nothing.”
Oh. All right. I see what you’re doing. She wasn’t talking about the box. She was talking about me. And old me would have let this all go, I would have smiled and played nice and let her feel superior to me. Old me was lost in that store in Carrickfergus.
“If there is something you’d like to say, why don’t you say it?” I crossed my arms over my chest. Her eyes flashed with surprise.
“Well, look at you, a backbone and everything.”
“Say your piece and go,” I told her. “I have messes to clean up, too.” She stepped closer to me and I did not step back. I met her eyes and held my ground because I hadn’t done anything wrong. She could be mad at me all she liked. It’s not like I wanted any of this. Well, except Ronan. I wanted him plenty.
“Manage your business and get the hell out of here,” Niamh said, her voice thick.
“We’re married, did he tell you that?”
“He did.”
“A church and everything.”
“His hand was forced,” Niamh said. “Not sure why you’re proud of it. You’ll get that boy killed.”
I wanted to argue, but her words had the terrible ring of truth to them. There was a good chance I would get him killed. The bankers box sagged on the coffee table and I wanted to believe all the answers we needed to spring the trap we were caught in would be in there, but nothing had been that easy so far. “Or worse, you’ll get yourself killed and
he’ll blame himself for the rest of his days.”
That made me flinch. “Do you care for him, then?” she asked.
“So what if I do?”
“Do you love him? Proper, like?” I was silent. Some small scrap of self-preservation held my tongue. “If you don’t, then leave. Right now. Go out the door and don’t look back.”
“And if I love him?”
“Take him with you.”
Mouth gaping, I stared at her, seeing behind the military aspect of her whole vibe, a woman who might, just might, be lonely. Who might have regrets.
“He said you might need this.” She put a bottle of pain reliever on the dining room table and was out the door before I could muster a reply. Get Ronan to leave this life…this world? I didn’t know what that would look like…or how I could manage. But even as I pushed the thought aside as ridiculous fantasy, I imagined us back in Ireland. Our own garden. Our own cat.
Is that enough life for you?
The question was, was that enough life for him? I remembered the sharp edge of his laughter when I’d answered yes to his question and could only surmise—no.
That wasn’t a life he wanted. So, it was back to this life we were in.
I stared at the sun making its way across Bennington’s bankers box and considered my options. Ronan was gone. Off to see the Morellis without me, sure that I would be an obedient wife and stay where he’d told me to stay. Niamh certainly expected me to curl up with that crumpled box that I doubted had anything of use inside of it and wait for Ronan to come home with all our problems solved.
Or I could do what my gut was telling me to do.
Get my own answers.
From Caroline Constantine.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ronan
Bryant Morelli was like a million other men I’d met over the years. A bully who’d never been stopped. A soldier who was still standing miles from the battlefield, so he figured he must have won the war. He was pompous. Arrogant. And believed he was untouchable, all of which meant he had holes in his security large enough to drive tanks through.
