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Thirty-Seven
Finn
The secondhe got out of the car, I knew it was him.
Uncle Paddy.
The guy who’d been like a second father to me, and to Junior too. Who’d been our confessor, our confidante, and the guy who’d helped bury the bodies we’d left behind because we were too young to deal with corpses and crime scenes ourselves.
I knew why Aidan Sr. looked like he was about to pass out, because I fucking felt it too.
I’d gone to his funeral. I’d stood by his grave…
Casting Junior a glance, my eyes widened in surprise when I recognized that he didn’t look shocked. His interest was clearly piqued, but he wasn’t stunned.
Not like me.
I felt like I was seeing a ghost and finding a long-lost message in a fucking bottle.
“This has to be some kind of joke,” Senior rasped.
“It’s him,” I countered at the exact same time as Conor muttered, “It’s definitely Uncle Paddy.”
“I don’t remember what he looks like,” Declan said.
“Me neither,” Eoghan agreed.
Paddy, for all that he was a walking corpse, looked pretty good. Unlike Senior who ran on the lean side, he had round cheeks and a big gut that squeezed over a pair of pants which definitely weren’t tailored. His suit was clean, and the jacket was nicely pressed, but it wasn’t the suit of a wealthy man.
Now I knew what I was looking at,whomI was looking at, I studied his car—a mid 2010s Chevy.
I nearly got whiplash when I saw it had Canadian plates.
“Paddy’s been living in Canada,” I mumbled under my breath.
“Canada?” Senior choked out.
“Look at his plates,” I explained.
Senior didn’t say anything for a second, but then, as Paddy approached, he whispered, “You can’t be Padraig. I buried you. I fucking mourned you. I destroyed half the goddamn city for you.” His head whipped from side to side. “This is a nightmare—”
“It’s me, Aidan,” Paddy denied, his voice husky. “It’s me,deartháir.”
Hearing the nickname we all used between us, that we’d picked up on because Aidan Sr. was as tight with his brothers as his sons were, I knew it shook the lot of us. At the same time, no one had a clue what to do.
Gone were the recriminations about a hundred grand’s worth of landscape gardening that had just been wasted on Aoife’s joyride through Lena’s pride and joy, gone was even the memory of it—it might as well not have happened.
Instead, we stood there like a bunch of marionette dolls waiting on someone to pick up the strings.
“I-I…” Senior stammered. “I need a drink.”
“You’re not the only one.” I grunted.
Senior backed away without another glance, leaving us all behind, and whether Paddy was shocked or not at his greeting, he didn’t betray much with his expression.
As Eoghan, Declan, and Brennan followed Da, Aidan, Conor, and I just hovered there, staring at him.
The betrayal was real. Not just for us, but the ones who’d left without a word of greeting.
