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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ronan
Damn her. I watched her walk up the steps to the church through the window, the wind picking up her hair and sending it streaming behind her. She wore shapeless black clothes that hid her small body, the curves and planes of which were burned onto my skin. How long, I wondered, would it take not to feel her against me, like some phantom pain?
The priest saw her coming and waved at her with his whole arm. Poppy waved back.
Damn him too.
Damn him, especially.
I wasn’t helping them. That was for fucking sure. If she was fool enough to go over there with fifty stitches in her arm, that was on her.
The cat suddenly sank her claws in my arm and screeched at me, and I realized I’d been squeezing her too tight. “Sorry,” I muttered and let her go. She jumped onto the chair and licked her paws, glaring at me.
On the hill, Poppy and the priest were struggling with the roll of chicken wire. She kept dropping her end because she was trying to do it one-handed.
Not that I was going to help.
I turned away from the window and the blue file folder on the mantel caught my eye.
Shoulda burned it.
It was only a matter of time before Poppy looked at it. She’d noticed it during that ridiculous conversation about names. She was foolish, but she wasn’t dumb. She knew the folder was something.
Intending to toss it in the fire again, I grabbed the folder over the mantel. But as was the case with all my intentions here, they dissolved the second I had the thing in my hands.
I opened it.
My marks at St. Brigid’s were up top. Dismal. I tried to remember the last class I’d been in where I’d cared about marks. There’d been Mrs. Daniels in first class. She’d had a nice voice and a lot of patience. After lunch, she’d read Charlotte’s Web to us. I might have tried for her. But by the time I was sixteen, marks were no longer the point.
After my St. Brigid’s marks, there was a picture of all of us, the boys of St. Brigid’s in our jumpers and long pants standing in front of that whalebone altar the priests were so proud of, like they’d carved it themselves. Tom and I were standing together, glaring at the camera, matching black eyes and tough-guy expressions. God, Tom loved a fight. From the looks of us, the picture would have been about a month before everything had fallen apart.
On the far side of Tom was Father Patrick. And next to Father Patrick was Father McConal. Father Patrick looked young. Younger than I remembered him being. Like he struggled to grow facial hair. He had his head turned in the picture, looking at Tom and me.
Father McConal was looking at the camera with that smug half smile on his face, daring the world to say anything about the way he handled the school and the boys placed in his care.
“Pikey Tom had something to say about it, didn’t he?” I murmured. Tommy had said it the only way he could. With the only power he felt he had left.
“Jesus,” I muttered and tossed the folder on the pile of magazines Poppy had straightened up. I checked my phone for word from Glenn who made fake documents. I’d known Glenn when we were both young and coming up. I had a reputation for being fearless and he had a reputation for being meticulous.
I’d been shocked to realize he was still in operation. But when I’d left Derry for Belfast, he’d stayed behind, always content living under the radar. Which was how he never ended up in jail. Or dead. Small kingdoms, he always said, never get taken down. And clearly, he’d been right.
I could trust Glenn. He didn’t know the Morellis or Caroline, and Caroline definitely didn’t know him.
But now there was a plan, and a plan meant the clock was on.
There were no texts from Glenn. The world swam around me. Adrenaline came and went, and when it went, I was left even more tired than I’d been before. The room was warm, and if I sat in that chair behind me, I’d be asleep in a second. I was practically asleep on my feet.
I paced, keeping myself conscious.
On the hill, Father Patrick and Poppy were still struggling with the chicken wire.
It was only a matter of time before she . . . yep. Dropped it. The chicken wire rolled down the hill, unspooling before Poppy could grab it. With her bad arm.
The cat made a horrible screeching sound and I turned to find her at the door, scratching at the wood and yelling at me.
“You want out?” I asked. The cat yelled some more.
“There are animals out there that want to eat you, ya know? You were almost killed once, or don’t you remember?”
