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“Oh my god,” I cried, sinking back down and dropping my head in my hands. “Kill me now.”
“Your father will calm down,” she replied, tone assuring. “They’ll be okay, love. They’ll patch it up in time. They’ve been working together for a very long time now. They’re practically an old married couple.”
“You should have heard him this morning, Mam,” I groaned, watching my mother as she whizzed around the kitchen. “He was so hostile.”
“Your father’s not hostile, love, he’s heartbroken.”
“Well, that’s even worse,” I strangled out. “I broke his heart. That’s why he avoided me like the plague when he came home from work last night. He hates me.”
“Can we talk?” Kev asked, walking into the kitchen, hands in the air. “Civilly.”
“Kev,” Mam sighed wearily. “I don’t think now’s the time for that.”
“We need to sort this out, Aoife,” he pushed, ignoring our mother. “Come on. Let’s just sit down and hash it out. We can’t go around ignoring each other.”
“You can talk to him all you want,” I told Mam as I jerked to my feet and grabbed my car keys off the table. “I’m going to Casey’s.”
“Aoife,” Kev groaned when I brushed past him. “Please.”
“Fuck off, Kevin.”
69
Fathers and Grandfathers
JOEY
Aching in places I never knew could hurt, I took Tony’s bad mood on the chin at work and navigated the extremely dangerous waters I found myself in, while trying not to collapse in a heap from the pain coursing through my body.
The pain in my back had worsened to the point where I was half-afraid to take off my T-shirt and look in the mirror. I didn’t want to see what kind of damage that belt had done the other night.
Knowing that stripping off would only stress my pregnant girlfriend out further had been the reason I slept in a T-shirt and sweats the night before, much to her suspicion. Sleep had come easy, with the help of a couple of my mother’s prescription benzos that I’d popped in the bathroom after Molloy dozed off, but by morning I was feeling everything again.
Still, I scraped my ass out of bed and made it to the garage on time, knowing that I had to prove myself to Tony Molloy now more than ever. Because for the first time in my life, I was on the outs with my boss, and it was not a good feeling.
Not one word had he spoken to me since the night we sat around his kitchen table with my parents, and the pressure was mounting.
When he pulled up at the garage this morning and found me waiting at the door, I wasn’t entirely sure how it would go down. When he didn’t outright tell me to go fuck myself, I stuck around and dodged every spanner, wrench, and ratchet he threw my way. And when I said threw my way, I meant at my head.
The man was beyond livid with me, and I didn’t blame him. Worse than disappointing him, I’d taken his daughter down with me.
Enduring his silent treatment and flying missiles, I kept my head down, ignored my phone, and worked through lunch, unwilling to give him another reason to toss my ass to the curb.
Whatever way he wanted to handle it was fine by me. It wasn’t like I had a leg to stand on. I’d fucked his daughter’s life up. If the baby Molloy was growing turned out to be a girl, and she fell in with a scumbag like me, I would take leave of my senses just like Tony.
It was a little after five o’clock in the evening when he finally breached the stand-off by slamming a mug of coffee down on the trolley next to me. Not daring to say anything to piss him off further, I raised the mug to my lips, only to halt in my tracks and eye the rim warily.
“Relax, I didn’t poison ya,” he grumbled, taking a sip from his own mug and then swapping it with mine to prove it. “Can’t be leaving my grandchild without a father.”
He was saying the words, but the look on his face assured me that he had thought about it.
“Thanks,” I muttered before taking a sip.
“What happened to your face?”
“Walked into a door.”
He shook his head but didn’t push, choosing to take another sip of his coffee instead.
