AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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 room 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.
