The Last Bride in Ballymuir (32 page)

No great shock since Vi was likely the least
“exact” person walking the planet. “Well, what did you do ...
exactly?”

She cleared her throat
before speaking. “I sent ‘em
two Bus
Eireann tickets in the post, with a note saying that a little visit
this summer might be in order.”

“
And?”

“
Well, after having it out
with Mam over a suspension from school—some nonsense involving
chickens I didn’t quite catch—they thought now might be the better
time for some travel.”

“
Chickens,” Michael
muttered. “And have you
rung their mother
to let her know she needs to gather
up her
boys?” He asked the question with more bitterness than he wanted
to own up to having.

“
Mam—and like it or not,
she’s yours, too— doesn’t want them back.” Vi’s generous mouth
seemed smaller, like she was holding in a bad taste. “They’ll stay
here ‘til this can be sorted out.”

He laughed because any other
response would have been an admission of how much power he
still
let his mother hold. “So you’ve got
the lot of us now.
Maeve’s castoffs.
Probably the only reason Da’s not here is that he hasn’t looked up
from his newspaper long enough to take it in the teeth. And won’t
he be
in for a shock when he does, only him
left at the sup
per table.”

The sympathy he saw in Vi’s eyes burned like
acid. She started to say something to him, but he shrugged it off
and walked the stairs to his room. Or what used to be his room.

Michael stood in the doorway. He took in the
two silhouettes bathed in dim light and felt his mouth twitch with
something that might have been a smile. They damn near stretched
from headboard to the mattress’s end. The poor boys had been
cursed, as he had, with a man’s size before a man’s wisdom had even
the slightest chance to form.

A low, seismic rumble filled the room. He
smiled outright. Pat and Danny might not drool, but they could work
up some hellbending, resonant snores. He looked at the two of them,
hulking squatters taking up the space he’d already begged for his
own. He should be angry, royally irked. But for some stupid,
incomprehensible reason, he suddenly felt pleased. He moved closer
and tugged the pillow from beneath one twin’s head, then watched
him give the other a sleeping, retaliatory swat.

“
Brotherly love,” he
whispered. He’d missed so much with these boys—his brothers. And he
didn’t want to miss any more.

Grinning like a fool, he made his way back
downstairs to the blue sofa and its resident witch.

“
Up with you,” he said to
Vi, then tossed the pillow at her to back up the order.

She caught it with absolute grace. “Are you
evicting me from my own couch?”

“
Fair play, Violet,” he
admonished. “After all, you’ve given away the only spot I have to
lay my head. The fire’s burning nice now, and I’m ready for a bit
of sleep.”

“
Well, I’m not.”

“
Then go to your room and
read a book, or putter
around in the
kitchen and see if you can ever learn to
cook.”

She called him a nasty name that he’d not
heard since childhood, lobbed the pillow back at him, and stalked
off to her bedroom.

“
Then you’ll not be learning
to cook?” he called after
her. “You’ve no
hope at all of catching a husband.”

“
And what would I do with
one if I did?” she growled just before slamming her bedroom
door.

Upstairs, another mighty
snore erupted. Chuckling,
Michael slipped
off his shoes and sprawled on the couch. He’d slept on
worse.

“
Family,” he said, testing
the word to see how it rolled off his tongue. Two brothers to love.
Two brothers to protect. Two brothers to lose.

Kylie had quickly learned
that Breege survived on little sleep. It wasn’t all that unusual,
Breege assured her. This was simply God’s way of fitting time into
the end of a life. She didn’t like to think of Breege as elderly
and absolutely refused to contemplate the
end of her life. She had so few true friends that panic
consumed her at the thought of losing
one.

Tonight, since Kylie was sleeping none too
well herself, Breege’s rustling sounds and anxious sighs seemed
amplified. Kylie sat on the edge of her little cot and tucked her
feet into slippers. She pulled on her worn wrapper and padded her
way to Breege.

The light shone under the
bedroom door. Still feel
ing oddly like an
intruder, Kylie knocked.

“
Come in, darling,” Breege
called.

Kylie opened the door and stepped in. “I
heard you moving about and wondered if I could bring you
something.”

Breege smoothed the duvet over her tiny
frame, then patted the bed beside her. Kylie took the invitation,
sat, and held Breege’s knotted hand, its knuckles swollen under
silvery, translucent skin.

“
Can you bring me
something?” Breege echoed with an amused note in her voice. “A leg
that works,
the energy I had when I was
thirty, or a healthy tot of
whiskey—take
your pick.”

Kylie laughed. “Well, the
leg I can’t be helping you
with, and the
energy you still have, so we’re down to the whiskey.” She frowned
and tapped her lower lip. “Hmmm... with Black Johnny O’Shea as a
father, d’you think I might have some whiskey still
about?”

An odd look flitted across Breege’s usually
serene features before she said, “More than at Paddy’s distillery
itself, I’d be thinkin’.”

Her friend’s words held more
than a nip of asper
ity. Kylie gave Breege’s
hand one last pat, then stood.
“Not quite
that much, but I think I can scare up a wee
drop. Don’t be nodding off on me while I’m gone.”

Breege looked heavenward. “A soul should be
so blessed.”

When Kylie returned with the whiskey, Breege
took an unladylike slug before saying, “You might want to get a
glass for yourself.”

Kylie wrinkled her nose. “Never could stomach
the stuff. The scent is pretty enough, but it tastes like a
mouthful of petrol to me.”

Looking glum, Breege tipped
her glass again, then
waved it to Kylie to
be topped off. After Kylie obliged,
Breege
said, “Trust me, it’s far better to swallow than
what I’ve to tell you.” She swirled the amber
liquid round and round before continuing. “I meant to say something
when you came home tonight, but you were already looking as though
someone had danced a hard hornpipe on ye, and I didn’t want to be
adding to your woes. Then afterward I lay here wishing I could move
about enough to toss and turn instead of just count the cracks in
the ceiling—and you have a fair few of ‘em, you know—”

“
The news,” Kylie
urged.

The deep brackets around Breege’s mouth
tightened. “Your da called. He’ll be getting out Monday next.”

Kylie gulped straight from the bottle, then
choked and snorted. Feeling as though she were drowning in
something far less palatable than the salty waters of Dingle Bay,
Kylie smacked the bottle onto the nightstand.

Breege pounded her on the back with more
strength than those worn hands should have. “There now, dearie,
you’ll be fine in just a moment.”

“
Holy Mother,” she gasped.
“It burnt a hole straight
through to my
toes!”

“
As it’s meant
to.”

Kylie wiped at her watering eyes and drew in
a ragged breath. When she could speak in something above a croak,
she said, “You’re right. It’s still easier to swallow than Da
coming home. Did he give you any details?”

“
None, really. He seemed
confused enough getting me when he rang up. He’ll be calling back
tomorrow evening and hopes you’ll be home.”

“
Best reason yet not to be,”
Kylie muttered. She didn’t want to hear Johnny’s voice. She didn’t
want to be forced to act pleased that he was about to come back and
muck things up for her once again. As if matters weren’t
sufficiently mucked already, she thought with uncharacteristic
bitterness.

Breege stroked her hair, and Kylie sighed at
the comfort of the act. She felt the whisper of a maternal touch
she scarcely remembered anymore. “Calm now, darlin’. This’ll be
hard on you. But you have friends who love you, and your da coming
home won’t change that.”

Johnny’s arrival would change everything, and
they both knew it. Virtually no nest egg had gone untouched by the
time her da had made the rounds.

If nothing else, the whiskey appeared to have
cleaned her mind of clutter; it suddenly struck Kylie how misguided
her attempts at restitution had been. Her acts had been a salve to
her conscience, but had done nothing to resolve the town’s feelings
toward Johnny. And probably had added a drop or two of resentment
toward her in the bargain. Small wonder so many had been annoyed by
her efforts. Saint Kylie, sacrificing herself to tend to the
defrauded.

“
I’ll deal with the changes
in town when Da gets here,” Kylie said. “No use in borrowing
tomorrow’s trouble when today’s was enough already.”

“
Do you want to tell me
about it?”

Kylie shook her head. “I just want to put it
behind me.”

“
That’s my girl. Just a sip
more of
the
fuisce
,
then,”
Breege directed, holding out
her glass. “And I’ll sleep
for
certain.”

Kylie laughed. “I’m putting this bottle up
someplace good and high.”

Breege’s smile showed teeth that remained
white and strong. “How d’ye think I fell to begin with?” she
teased.

Kylie kissed her papery
cheek, whisked the bottle
away just to be
sure, then wished Breege a good night.

Before tucking the bottle
back in the cupboard,
Kylie eyed the level
of its contents. She sighed. She’d
be
needing this and more to survive the arrival of Johnny
O’Shea.

Chapter Twenty

If you meet a red-haired woman, you’ll meet
a crowd.

—
Irish Proverb

P
at
and Danny swore they weren’t identical
twins,
yet Michael was having the
damnedest time telling them apart. Not that it really mattered
which one was which. They seemed to share the same thoughts, one
beginning a sentence, the other finishing it, and all so liberally
sprinkled with obscenities
that
Michael felt like a saint.

Of course the morning
hadn’t
started with
this scattershot approach to conversation. Painful silence had
reigned, the three of them cautiously watching each other from
beneath lowered brows. It had taken Vi’s late arrival, her offering
of blackened toast, and subsequent refusal to cook anything else,
to break the deadlock. Survival had a way of uniting
strangers.

Michael took over at the
stove and told the boys where to find the things he’d be needing.
Soon, the
salty scent of sizzling rashers
filled the air, fried eggs
took on the
proper hue of faint gold at the edges, and the toast was declared
done before it tasted of soot. Vi watched the entire affair in an
apparent state of shock.

“
You mean you can cook this
well and you’ve not shared with me? You’ve bloody well betrayed me
in my own kitchen.”

Michael just looked back
over his shoulder at her. “And how, exactly, did you think that dog
of yours
has grown fat as a sausage roll?
And more important,
how’d you think I
avoided starvation? Though it was a near thing,” he added before
deftly flipping
the eggs, leaving their
yolks perfectly intact. “And as
for sharing
with you, you’ll note I’m not much for tofu or whatever that
gelatinous block of white stuff you live on is.”

Vi grabbed a pot of
raspberry preserves. “The stuff in the fridge? I don’t live on
that! I’m just keep
ing it till I remember
what it is, or until it has a life of
its
own—whichever comes first.”

Michael laughed. The boys
first looked confused,
then eventually
joined in the teasing. He recalled how he felt when he’d first
arrived in Ballymuir, a stranger in his own skin. He hadn’t known
what to expect, and
didn’t understand the
love that simply seemed to exist in Vi’s world. A love without
expectation, without demand—well, perhaps a little demand.
He
would give the twins what Vi had given
him, the time
and love necessary to start
healing.

Cupping his hands on
the
backs of two tousled
red heads, he directed them toward the table. And so they sat and
shoveled food in the ferocious way that only boys-not-quite-men
can, and they talked. Jesus, how they talked about musicians he’d
never heard of and people he was sure he didn’t want to know, until
Michael’s head rang with it.

“
Eat, then you’re coming
with me,” he finally said.