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Now.
Feck. Give me twenty minutes.
Nolan set his phone in the car’s console and leaned down for one last look at the Monaghan house. The lights were on in the living room, shadows moving behind the sheer curtains Eileen had hung for privacy on the street. Kyle Monaghan’s car wasn’t in the driveway, and Nolan remembered Will saying Bridget’s father was working two jobs to offset Owen’s medical expenses.
Nolan wanted to walk into the house, kiss Eileen on the cheek, ruffle Owen’s hair, put his arm around Bridget and tell her everything was going to be okay.
He started the car and pulled away from the curb.
It was Friday night, the neighborhood busy with bar crawlers not wanting to drive and packs of teenagers too young to lie their way into The Chipp with a bad fake I.D.
Nolan was immediately transported back to the days when he’d worked with Will for the Syndicate, the two of them putting the fear of god into guys who owed Carlo Rossi money, meeting up with Bridget after hours to smoke weed in the park. He didn’t remember what they talked about, only that there had been enough fodder to keep them up until Bridget looked at her phone and realized she had multiple unanswered texts from her mother asking where in God’s name Bridget was at that hour.
They’d raced home through the quite streets, laughing and breathing heavy, high on life and friendship and the kind of love Nolan hadn’t thought existed until he’d met Bridget Monaghan.
He looked up to find that he’d arrived at the park. He was early, but he needed to get out of the car, away from the smell of Bridget embedding itself in the upholstery, the memory of her in the passenger seat next to him.
He locked the car and headed down the path toward the old playground. It didn’t make him nervous that the park was deserted. It was more than the weapon strapped to his side, more even than the knowledge that he used to beat people up for Carlo Rossi.
This was his neighborhood. He might have been brought up on Beacon Hill, but Southie was home. His paternal grandparents had died within months of each other two years earlier, but he still knew every turn of the park, every lonely tree and bench.
He came to the playground and crossed the patch of grass that separated it from the walkway. The rusted metal swings were ghostly figures moving in the breeze. Beyond them the jungle gym rose like a wooden beast, the merry-go-round crouched nearby.
He made his way to the merry-go-round and sat on its edge, rocking himself back and forth, remembering the nights he, Bridget, and Will took turns spinning, jumping on at the last minute and laying on their backs as it turned, watching the sky spin until they had to close their eyes and surrender to the workings of the creaky metal.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and looked up to see Will approaching on the sidewalk, his hands stuffed into his old track jacket. Nolan wondered how many times they’d replayed the scene with minor variations, one of them waiting, the other arriving, the conversation that followed funny or meaningful or biting depending on the topic.
“If you’d wanted to ride the merry-go-round we could have set up a playdate,” Will said when he got close enough for Nolan to hear him.
“I already have plans for a playdate — with your mom,” Nolan said. Dancing around difficult subjects with humor was part and parcel of their history, the way they navigated subjects neither of them really wanted to navigate.
Will laughed and shook his head. “Jesus you’re as big an eejit as ever.”
“What can I say?” Nolan said. “You bring out the best in me.”
“Fuck you.”
“Back at you,” Nolan said.
Will sat on the merry-go-round. “Feet up.”
Nolan lifted his feet and Will used his legs to give them a spin. Nolan closed his eyes, trying to conjure the old feeling of freedom, of possibility, trying to transport himself to a time when he was young and the woman of his dreams was still his.
They slowed to a stop and he put his feet back on the ground.
Will rubbed his hands together and stuffed them back in his jacket. “You going to tell me why you called me out here on a Friday night? It doesn’t even look like you brought booze.”
Nolan thought about everything Marchand had told him, sifting for the bits he could get away with revealing without compromising Will.
“Have you heard anything about Seamus’s operation?” Will asked. “Anything that makes you think there’s trouble?”
Will looked sharply at him. “What do you mean?”
Nolan shrugged. “Are the other men talking? Have you seen or heard anything that makes you think something unusual’s going on?”
Will hesitated. “Nothing specific.”
“What does that mean?”
