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“Your father might be in denial about how many pills that boy’s popping, but I’m not.” She pursed her lips in disapproval. “We should never have called him Aidan. It was just asking for him to be as stubborn as his da.”
“Not sure addicted and stubborn are synonyms, Ma.”
“Maybe not. He’s got a strength of will that beats even you, Brennan, but he’s letting those pills win. The only reason I haven’t raised the subject with Senior is because I know he’ll push.”
“I’m surprised you don’t think that isn’t what Aidan needs.”
She shook her head. “You have to let them bottom out. I—” It was the faintest of hesitations, but because I knew her so well, I sensed it. “—read it in a book.”
Narrowing my eyes at her, I asked, “You read it in a book? You sure about that?”
She huffed. “I’m not in the habit of lying to you, Brennan.”
“I don’t think you are,” I countered, still squinting at her, but I wafted my hand in a circle in front of her face. “What was that about?”
Her scowl made an appearance, but I was long past the age where that scowl was enough to have my knees knocking with fear. I faced bigger boogeymen every day of the fucking week now. I wished she was the scariest thing I’d seen in my life.
“What was what about?”
“You hesitated.” My voice was flat. “You didn’t read that in a book.”
Her mouth tautened into an irritated pucker. “No, I didn’t,” she conceded.
“And don’t say you saw it on Oprah,” I countered immediately. “No BS, Ma.”
“I spoke to my psychologist about him.”
Her words had my eyes flaring wide. “Are you shitting me? I thought you’d stopped visiting him years ago.” She’d seen Da getting stabbed by a rival and, as he phrased it, had taken a funny turn.
One diagnosis of PTSD later, some prescription meds that Da got on the black market, and no more visits with a practitioner who could spill the family’s secrets.
Or so we’d thought.
Jesus.
“Does Da know about this?”
I saw the anger whisper over her face. Over the years, I’d learned to be wary of that look. Redheads and their tempers—nothing beat it. I almost pitied our money man, Finn, his Aoife because her hair was redder than a rose. I just couldn’t imagine her slapping their son Jacob, not like Ma had slapped us and clipped us about the ears.
I wasn’t saying we didn’t need it, because that would be a lie. We’d been a bunch of five—six after Finn moved in with us—rowdy boys, who knew that we owned Manhattan. That level of power quickly went to a kid’s head, but our folks had been swift to nip any mutiny in the bud.
Nepotism might be a key factor in our world, rebellion when it came to the Irish fighting for their freedom, but within the ranks, obedience was expected.
We’d learned that at a very young age.
“I’m not, as you so eloquently put it, shitting you, Brennan. When have you ever known me to do that?”
She’d kissed the Blarney Stone, and I felt no compunction in telling her that, only, my cellphone buzzed. Which was what saved both our asses.
Hers, because I could tell she didn’t want to talk about having another therapist.
A fucking therapist.
The Alphabets wouldn’t think twice about turning a shrink.
Mine, because it’d been a while since she dragged me from a chair by my ear, and I didn’t feel like a repeat.
When my phone buzzed again, I frowned as I checked my messages.
