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My stomach growled and I had no idea what time it was. The midday sunshine streamed into the living room, falling onto piles of boxes and bags stacked by the couch. The clothes I ordered.
Normally, I did not give a shit about clothes, but having spent three days in flannel and sweatpants that belonged to other people, I was a little giddy at the thought of something pretty to put on my body. “Ronan?”
“Not here,” said a voice from the kitchen and I jumped, turning to face a tall woman with short silver hair and gray eyes.
“Do you know where he is?”
“Cleaning up his mess, I reckon.” She eyed me like I was a dog who’d tracked in mud. Like I was the mess.
“You must be Niamh?” I said, using the pronunciation Ronan used with the V sound.
Whatever I’d been expecting, some version of Sinead at the cottage? A rumpled grandmother with wild, untamed hair and a soft spot for rascals? That was not the woman standing there. There was more of an I’m willing to do hard time if I have to vibe about her. She had hair so short it was nearly a buzz cut and a scar across her lip. “And you’re the guest.” She walked into the living room like a general commanding her troops. “We haven’t seen one of you here before.”
“A guest?” I asked.
“A weakness,” she answered. “Ronan’s worked hard to not have any of those.”
Oh, she did not like me. Well, I thought, get in line. “Which mess is he cleaning up?”
“He’s gone to the Morellis.”
Without me? My eyes went wide with outrage. Of course he did that. Of course he went off on his own after demanding I do nothing by myself. Sit around here like some kind of damsel in distress waiting for him to save me. Fuck him.
“I brought you the box.” Niamh pointed back out to the stacks of bags. Beyond them, on the coffee table in front of the couch was the bankers box that the lawyer had given me and I’d pushed into the shadows the night Theo tried to kill me and Ronan took me to Ireland. It was damaged by water and the lid was crumpled on one side. There was soot from a fire across one whole side. It was absolutely miraculous it hadn’t been destroyed.
“I brought in that other shite, too,” she said, talking about all my new things.
Faced with her austerity, being excited about new clothes felt impossibly frivolous. Niamh gave me the sense she’d never be inconvenienced by a lack of underwear. Ronan had said she’d had to leave Ireland or face charges, and I imagined her in the IRA, holding a machine gun in the window of some church, firing at English soldiers. There was badass and then I imagined there was Niamh.
“That box sure doesn’t look like much,” she said as she kept walking through the apartment like she knew it by heart. Years of familiarity with Ronan and his home and I was the stranger. The odd man out.
“I doubt it will be of much use,” Niamh said. “A whole lot of trouble for nothing.”
Oh. All right. I see what you’re doing. She wasn’t talking about the box. She was talking about me. And old me would have let this all go, I would have smiled and played nice and let her feel superior to me. Old me was lost in that store in Carrickfergus.
“If there is something you’d like to say, why don’t you say it?” I crossed my arms over my chest. Her eyes flashed with surprise.
“Well, look at you, a backbone and everything.”
“Say your piece and go,” I told her. “I have messes to clean up, too.” She stepped closer to me and I did not step back. I met her eyes and held my ground because I hadn’t done anything wrong. She could be mad at me all she liked. It’s not like I wanted any of this. Well, except Ronan. I wanted him plenty.
“Manage your business and get the hell out of here,” Niamh said, her voice thick.
“We’re married, did he tell you that?”
“He did.”
“A church and everything.”
“His hand was forced,” Niamh said. “Not sure why you’re proud of it. You’ll get that boy killed.”
I wanted to argue, but her words had the terrible ring of truth to them. There was a good chance I would get him killed. The bankers box sagged on the coffee table and I wanted to believe all the answers we needed to spring the trap we were caught in would be in there, but nothing had been that easy so far. “Or worse, you’ll get yourself killed and he’ll blame himself for the rest of his days.”
That made me flinch. “Do you care for him, then?” she asked.
