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You’d find another desperate kid from the neighborhood with a night school law degree. Someone else who had a sick loved one with hundreds of thousands of dollars in necessary medical care. Someone willing to give up everything, to do anything, to keep that loved one alive.
“You’d manage,” she said.
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Seamus said. “You’re very valuable to me.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t want to be valuable the way she was valuable to Seamus. “Talk soon.”
She hung up the phone, flipped down the driver’s side visor, and looked in the mirror, making sure her makeup was in place, her hair still pulled back into a sleek knot that kept it out of the way.
When she was sure she looked more pulled together than she felt, she grabbed her bag and stepped out of the car. She didn’t bother locking it. It wasn’t worth a damn, and anyway, no one on the block would mess with it, not with Owen sick like he was.
She kept her head up as she walked toward the house, her heels clicking on the uneven sidewalk, weeds sprouting in the cracks. She prayed no one would see her making for the house, that Ida wouldn’t step onto the porch to ask after Owen, that Heather, the young mother next door, wouldn’t wave from her living room window. Bridget had her hands full steeling herself to greet her own family, to force a smile, make a joke about what Owen was watching or reading, kiss her mother’s cheek and dodge the question about where she’d parked.
It was a well-rehearsed play, one that kept them all sane, that made them feel like they were normal. It took every ounce of energy she could muster to play her part, and while it was exhausting, it was preferable to the alternative, to crying and screaming and railing at a god who was cruel enough to strike her brother with ALS.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she made it to the porch without seeing any of the neighbors and stepped into the house.
“Hey!” she called out, setting her bag down by the coat rack near the door.
“There you are,” her mother called out.
Owen’s eyes tracked her as she stepped into the living room. He still had some mobility in his neck, but not much, and she always made sure he could see her before touching him.
She tousled his hair. “Hey, loser.”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “Fuck you.”
Bridget relished the distorted words. Someday he wouldn’t be able to speak at all.
“Language!” their mother shouted.
Bridget looked at the TV to see what Owen had been watching. Superman — the old one.
“Where’s Dad?” she asked Owen.
She forced herself to keep asking these questions, to wait while Owen answered, to maintain the sibling dynamic that made Owen feel like nothing had changed between them. Giving up their conversations, however stilted, would be a capitulation to the disease eating away at the neurons controlling his muscles. It meant leaving him alone in his mind, perfectly functioning and aware while his body stopped working bit by bit.
“Working,” Owen said slowly.
Bridget nodded. At least four days a week their father left his job at Reynolds Machine Shop and spent the next eight hours picking up fares for Uber to help pay for Owen’s treatments and medicine. It wasn’t nearly enough, but with the money Bridget earned getting Seamus O’Brien’s men out of trouble — money she said came from her salary at BRIC, Boston Refugee and Immigration Center, they managed everything Owen needed to be comfortable.
She walked into the kitchen, inhaled the scent of pot roast, and kissed her mom’s cheek. “Can I help?”
“You can sit down and put some meat on those bones,” her mother said, stirring green beans in a frying pan on the stove. “I thought you were going to miss dinner."
Bridget laughed on her way to the cupboard for the plates. “First of all, I’ve gained ten pounds since high school. Second, when have I ever missed dinner?”
Her mother bent to remove a large serving bowl from one of the lower cupboards. “You were too skinny in high school, and you’ve missed dinner plenty.”
Bridget resisted the urge to object. Her mother liked to have the last word. And besides, she was right: Bridget had missed dinner more times than she could count, first when she’d been working her way through law school and lately when she had to run out to spring one of Seamus’s men from jail.
She pulled a glass from the cupboard and filled it with tap water, watching as her mother moved around the kitchen, preparing dinner like she did every night of the week unless they ordered pizza or Chinese. Eileen Monaghan was still a beautiful woman, with shiny strawberry blond hair and a figure that was still proportional in its fullness.
But she was tired. Bridget saw it in the downward slope of her shoulders, her eyes glazed with all the things she had to keep track of — the medication schedules and doctor’s appointments and the notes on Owen’s condition they kept for the specialists trying to staunch the advance of Owen’s disease.
“Can I do anything to help?” Bridget asked.
Her mom looked over and offered her a weary smile. “No thank you, love.”
