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When I left the house this morning, I’d left Shannon sleeping in my bed. Hours later, I could still feelheron my skin. I was washed, dressed in clean training gear, and far away from the girl, and I could stillfeelher on me.

“You can do this, Johnny.”Her voice filled my mind.“You’re going to shine.”

Feeling sick to my stomach, I sat on the bench in the changing room of the Academy training grounds, having passed every medical examination that had been thrown my way this morning, and concentrated on keeping my heartbeat even. Anxiety was gnawing at my gut, adrenaline pumping through my veins at a furious rate, making my knees bop restlessly.

Shaking my hands out, I inhaled a steadying breath and retied the laces on my football boots before moving my attention to the strapping on my thigh. Blocking out everything around me, I emptied my mind and strapped my body until I was satisfied with the level of support. Standing up, I tested my limbs, twisting from side to side, making sure I was good to go.

They were waiting for me. Right outside.

This was it.

You can do this,I mentally chanted to myself.You were born to do this.

A loud knock sounded on the other side of the changing room door, followed by my coach’s voice. “Let’s go, Kavanagh.”

“On the way,” I called back, unable to suppress the shudder that rolled through my body as my nerves tangled with my excitement. Closing my eyes, I blessed myself and threw a silent prayer up to the man upstairs.

Please, God, don’t let me fuck this up…

My phone pinged then, alerting me to a text message. Scrambling for my phone, I quickly unlocked the screen and clicked into the message.

S: You’ve got this, Johnny Kavanagh. Go show them what you’re made of and shine. I’m proud of you. I love you. (A crazy fucking amount.) xx

Fuck me.

72

Lightning Crashes

Shannon

Sitting in the front row pew in St. Patrick’s Church on a beautiful summer’s day in May, with my brothers on either side of me, I felt a mask slip into place as countless faces stepped in front of me, shaking my hand, telling me how sorry they were for our loss. I wasn’t sure which loss they were talking about: our mother who had been murdered, or our father who had murdered her.

All five of my brothers looked smart in identical black suits, crisp white shirts, and black ties Mrs. Kavanagh had delivered to the house before the rosary on Saturday. She had bought me a knee-length black dress and cardigan to wear, with small black heels. In the midst of my turmoil and my world crashing down around me, all that kept popping into my head was that my dressfit. It was the strangest, most inconsequential detail, but it kept swirling around and around in my mind.

My eyes were glued to my parents’ coffins lying side by side in front of the alter.

His coffin was on the right.

Our mother was on the left, closest to us.

Like the steps of the stairs, my brothers and I were lined up according to our age, with Darren sitting at the edge of the pew, Joey to his left, followed by me, and then Tadhg, Ollie, and finally Sean.

Darren was thanking everyone that sympathized with us, like the head of the family did during these ordeals, while Joey sat rigid, eyes glued to our mother’s coffin in a trancelike state, ignoring everyone who shook his limp hand. Ollie was crying softly into his tissue, while Tadhg scowled at anyone who tried to pat his head. Sean was looking around at the Stations of the Cross hanging on the walls and the beautiful stained-glass windows all around us.

Sean didn’t seem to understand what was happening, and his lack of awareness gave me immense comfort. He had a fighting chance to survive this. The couple sitting behind my brothers gave me hope for all of their futures. John Sr. had his head bent between Ollie and Tadhg, whispering something in their ears that was amusing enough to draw a smile from Tadhg and a sniffling thumbs-up from Ollie, while Edel had positioned herself on the kneeler behind Sean, quietly entertaining him and explaining all the different pictures and statues.

Beside Mr. and Mrs. Kavanagh sat my mother’s sister, Alice, her husband, Michael, and my eighty-one-year-old maternal great-grandmother, Nanny Murphy.

That was it.

That was all the family my mother had to show for thirty-eight years on this earth.

I knew my brothers’ and my friends and their families were filling up the pews behind us. I’d seen them all earlier when they had come up to sympathize, and it gave me the strength to not look at the other side of the church, to wherehisfamily were sitting, weeping and wailing loudly. None of us knew our father’s side of the family, and I had no plans to start now.

Every time one of his family members sobbed too loudly, I felt Joey stiffen beside me. Darren noticed too because he reached down and placed a hand on Joey’s knee to stop him from shaking. Hooking my arm through Joey’s, I held on to him for all I was worth, terrified of what he might do if they didn’tstop. The Lynch side had caused terrible trouble over the funeral arrangements as it stood, making a big deal of the family plot and demanding that they both be laid to rest together. Darren had hit the roof, insisting on cremating our mother before he allowed her to be placed with him, before Mr. Kavanagh stepped in with his wallet and arranged for my mother to be buried in her own fresh plot. My parents would share a service and a cemetery, but at least she could finally rest in peace.

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