The Last Bride in Ballymuir (22 page)

He swung open the door to Spillane’s making
the bell chime with frantic alarm. Whistling loudly, he took a
basket and filled it at his leisure. Spillane followed four paces
behind, stopping each time Michael did. After the third aisle he’d
had enough. Michael swiftly turned the corner, then hauled to a
stop. He wheeled around as the grocer came up on his heels.

“
Is there something you’re
wanting to say to me, Spillane?”

The man actually wrung his hands. “I was just
wondering if... if... you’re finding everything you need?”

“
Were you now? How
charitable. I’m doing fine, thank you. That is, unless you might
have some explosives hidden behind that row of Puffy Oaties. A man
can never be too prepared, if you know what I mean.”

Spillane’s mouth worked in a round, gaping
“O” with no sound to match the motion.

“
What? None at all?” Michael
gave a regretful shake of his head. “Then after you take my money—
and you
will
be
taking it—I’ll just have to visit the hardware. I can work bleedin’
miracles with a few boxes of nails and a bit of plastique, you
know? Top in my class at terrorist school.”

He ambled to the counter and
set down the basket.
“Hurry along,
Spillane. I’ve got business to attend to.”

Michael’s smile was meaner
as he strolled back through the village streets. Meaner, but also
one hell
of a lot more genuine. Doing
penance had never been
one of his favorite
pastimes, and doing it for those who didn’t deserve his apologies
was repugnant. What he repented for—and he
did
repent—was between himself and
that God who had looked the other way at so many crucial times in
his life.

Stones and glass houses,
Michael thought as he
took the steps to
Vi’s front door. Plenty of stones here
abouts, and some strong arms to heft them. All he
could do was snatch the missiles from the air and
fling
them back at their senders. Imperfect
justice was bet
ter than none at
all.

To Kylie, Tralee was a
wonderful, almost exotic place.
It amazed
her that she’d have the choice between spicy Indian cuisine or
sturdy Irish meat and potatoes, and between live theater or cinema.
After all, choice wasn’t something she’d experienced often in
life.

As she and Michael cut
through the pathways of Town Park on their way from dinner to a
movie, he held tight to her hand. Kylie smiled, wondering if he
thought she’d wander off in the soft twilight if set
free. Silly, because there was no place she’d
rather be
than by his side. Especially
here. She imagined that after imprisonment a man would value
solitude, but
it was such a pleasure to
walk next to him in the busy
park, with
couples and families all bustling from one place to the
next.

Dormant now, in summer the
park’s roses would
be in full, glorious
bloom. She drew in a deep breath,
imagining
their scent and practically seeing the riot of yellows and
crimsons.

As she indulged in this walking dream,
Michael slowed. “Am I moving too fast for you?”

“
No, I was just smelling the
flowers.”

He made an amused noise,
sort of a cross between
a growl and a
laugh. “Like you imagined how Muir House smelled?”

She nodded. “Exactly.”

“
I’m beginning to worry
about you, love. For a practical woman, you don’t seem very well
anchored in the here and now.”

It wasn’t so much that she
didn’t know where she was. Over the empty years, she simply had
fallen
into the habit of embellishing life.
Gazing at Michael,
she realized that the
here and now was finally enough.

“
I like it, that you’re
worrying,” she said. “But don’t waste much sleep over me. Not for
that, at least.” Flirtation was coming easier and easier,
too.

He chuckled and gently tugged her hand.
“You’re becoming just a bit of a tart.”

“
That’s not so bad, is it?”
She had meant the question to be joking, but its tentative tone
gave away her concern. The rules, the boundaries, those lines one
simply didn’t cross when dealing with matters of a sexual nature,
it was as unfamiliar to her as the mulligatawny soup she’d
tried—and loved—at dinner.

They stopped, and he took both her hands in
his. “It’s not. At least if you don’t loose your newfound talents
on anyone else. I want you to be comfortable with me, and know you
can say or do anything. Between us, away from the others,
anything, Kylie.”

This gift held only the value she was bold
enough to give it. She was braver now, stronger than she had been
that day Michael first stepped over a low stone wall and into her
life. She knew what she wanted, though she still wasn’t quite
brazen enough to give it words.

“
Thank you,” she said, then
went up on tiptoe and brushed a kiss against his mouth, chilly but
welcoming in the evening air.

They walked to the cinema
without sharing any more talk. Kylie was accustomed to his
silences,
but
still
wished that she could slip inside his mind and see what he examined
with such intensity when those quiet times came.

Turning the corner, they
found that a small group had already queued up for the night’s
shows. As they took their place at the end of the line, she offered
up some teasing chat about how kind it was of him to agree to the
Shakespearean movie instead of the action thriller she suspected
most everybody else would be seeing. As she spoke her gaze brushed
over the crowd, then flew back to one
head
of auburn-colored hair. A shrill,
unpleasant laugh carried back to her.

“
Evie,” she muttered just
under her breath, thinking how unfair it was that even miles away
from home she would be haunted by Evie Nolan.

She watched as Evie took a
last drag on a cigarette,
then stepped a
bit out of line to toss the butt onto the sidewalk and grind it
under the toe of her black, sharp-heeled boot. Just the sight of
her was enough to dim the bright evening. Kylie unconsciously
slipped closer to Michael.

“
Are you all right?” he
asked.

“
Grand. Couldn’t be better,”
she lied, then added, “I’m looking forward to the show.”
Particularly because Evie would as likely be caught translating
Attic Greek as she would watching Shakespeare. “I haven’t been to
the cinema in ages.”

“
More recently than I have,”
Michael said
with
just a hint of a smile.

“
I doubt that it’s changed
so much. Just to bring back memories of your youth, we’ll sit in
the back row and kiss.”

“
If it’s my youth we’re
trying to conjure, we’d do better by pelting the audience with hard
candies.”

“
One of those, were
you?”

“
Trouble from beginning to
end,” he said.

Almost in answer, Kylie again heard Evie’s
harsh laughter.

“
Sometimes I wish I’d been a
bit more trouble myself. Just a spot or two of mischief to keep Da
on his toes,” Kylie said, trying to drown out thoughts and sounds
of Evie. It didn’t work.

Kylie knew that if she were brave, she
wouldn’t care who saw them together—Evie, the Gaelscoil teachers,
or the entire village. She shouldn’t care, but an unpleasant
churning in her stomach told her that she might, after all.

Lies and evil were Evie’s
forte. A night at the cinema would become a tryst at the hotel
when Evie was through refashioning events. And once a story
was out in town gossip, it was as good as fact.
Better,
actually.

Kylie smoothed a lock of
flyaway hair with one shaking hand. She’d been naive to think that
she and Michael could walk the village streets without a wave of
malicious but oh-so-sanctimoniously-
delivered gossip following:
“Did you
hear about the
schoolteacher and the child
killer?”
It seemed they
couldn’t even manage a night out in Tralee.

She forgot what she’d just
been talking to Michael about, where they were, everything but the
tension that was making tiny beads of perspiration form on
the back of her neck. She felt ill, physically
ill.

She opened her mouth, intending to come up
with some good reason for the two of them to leave. “Ah—”

At that moment, Michael’s hand tensed, then
just as quickly relaxed.

“
I—” he said, then hesitated
before asking, “You were saying something?”

“
Dinner’s suddenly not
sitting too well with me,” she said barely able to voice the lie
above a whisper. “Would you mind too much if we went
home?”

He tipped up her face and
looked at her with obvi
ous concern.
“You’re looking pale. Maybe it’ s best if we came back another
night.”

One when Evie’s back home
making someone else
miserable, Kylie
thought. “I’ll make it up to you,” she said aloud.

Michael took her hand again and led her
toward the car. And away from Evie. “You’ve got nothing to make up,
love.”

At that last
word—
love
—warmth
flowed over the frozen edges of Kylie’s guilt. He’d been calling
her
that more often—
love.
She wasn’t vain or even
hope
ful enough to think it meant he really
loved her. Or even so sure that beneath the hard anger that held
him, Michael knew how to love. Still, he cared. And she cared for
him.

She’d done right by protecting them from Evie
tonight. It didn’t make her weak or selfish. She was simply looking
out for their well-being. Practically noble, she was. Her stomach
rolled again. Kylie ducked her head and watched her feet and
Michael’s close the distance to safety.

Michael saw Kylie safely inside her tiny
home, then sat in his car and watched as a light flickered on in
her bedroom. He leaned back against worn upholstery and released
the breath he felt as though he’d been holding for the past hour
and more. It had been a close thing tonight, avoiding Evie Nolan.
Kylie might think herself strong, but she was too inherently good
to survive what Evie could deliver.

Thank God the Indian food hadn’t set well.
Thank God they’d gotten away before she had seen Evie. Kylie would
have insisted on facing her down. Michael knew that as surely as he
knew his own name. And as surely as he knew that Gerry Flynn was
waiting for him down at the main road, ready to tail him back
through the village, as he had all the way to Kylie’s. Small-town
life at its finest.

A large city like Dublin or
even Cork had a certain
amount of appeal. A
man could get lost there, simply fade into anonymity. And anonymity
was something he craved more than a good meal, or mates to share a
pint and a laugh with. But a large city didn’t hold Kylie O’Shea,
and Michael was afraid that she held him.

One battle to the next, he thought, starting
the car and readying himself for whatever Flynn had in mind this
night. Once Michael made the main road, the Garda followed him
steadily to the edge of the village, then flashed his lights.
Michael pulled over, his jaw so tense that the ache crept down his
neck.

‘‘
Evening,” Flynn said as he
gazed into the car’s open window. “Would you mind stepping on
out?”

“
A pleasure.” He hated
sitting beneath the man’s gaze. It brought back memories of how it
had felt to be slammed into the pub floor and have Flynn sneering
down at him with an oddly intense expression of hatred. Even older
memories of hard, concrete floor, brutal hits, and humiliation
slithered forward to
claim him. Michael
shoved them back. He was a free
man
now, free to be hunted and harassed.

Glad for his inches and muscle in excess of
Flynn’s, he got out of the car and leaned casually against its
fender. In the steady shine of the Garda’s headlights, he caught
Flynn’s hostile expression. “Time for another friendly chat, is
it?”

“
You left town
tonight.”

Michael shrugged. “That’s not a crime.”

“
It might be if you were
meeting old friends.”

“
I was entertaining new
ones,” he answered, knowing that the smugness he hadn’t quite been
able to suppress would just tie Flynn all the closer to his
tail. ‘‘You
know Kylie was
in the car with me, and you know I just dropped her back
home.”

“
What I don’t know is where
you went.”

“
And you’re looking for me
to tell you? Not too
bloody likely. You’ll
just have to start wandering fur
ther
afield.”

Flynn clenched, then unclenched his jaw
before getting words out. “It would be in your favor if you were
cooperative.”

“
Balls. I was cooperative
before and all it bought
me was a cell in
the Maze. Besides, what do I have to
be
cooperative about? My life’s none of your concern. Christ, I work
as a handyman, live under my sister’s roof, and don’t know more
than a handful of people who willingly speak to me!”