Page 3 of Irish Daddies
But they’re good. They’remine.Seeing them grounds me, whether or not I’m the best thing for them. I sit cross-legged on the carpet beside them, watching them play. Other kids seem to need my attention to be able to have fun, but my boys needeach other more than they’ve ever needed me. I birthed a unit, completely independent from me.
Sometimes, late at night, when the house is silent and the only sound is the hum of the fridge, I wonder if they’d be better off with someone else.
Someone stronger. If they need a man in their life. Someone to teach them what I can’t. I can barely figure out how to be a person most days. How can I teach two little boys how to become men?
Still, we’re here. We’re safe. And that counts for something. God, it counts for everything.
Isaac stands on his tippy-toes to put a block on the top of the tower, but he can’t reach. He looks back at me with his blue puppy eyes and says, “Mama, can you help?”
And it snaps me out of my pity party. I stand quickly and grasp him around his little waist, holding him up just the few inches that he needs to make it. With all the gentility that he never shows the rest of the world, he sets the block on top and crows happily. He plants a sticky kiss on my cheek and tells me, “Thanks, Mama.”
There it is. That’s what he needs me for—to take him that last little bit. Moms are finishers. Closers. We lift our kids the couple of inches they can’t travel.
“You got it,” I tell him, sighing happily before making my way back to free Alaina from the shackles of Jimmy.
After that night in the club, the night that ripped my old life to shreds with canine teeth, I didn’t know if I’d ever stop looking over my shoulder. For months, I lived like prey, my heartthudding at every unfamiliar sound, every unrecognizable car parked too long on my street.
I stayed frozen, rooted to the city until I felt it, the first undeniable flutter of life, and that gave me the courage I couldn’t find for myself.
One morning, my belly straining against the steering wheel, I packed everything I owned into the back of my beat-up Toyota. No goodbyes. No forwarding address. Just the open road and a desperate prayer that we would make it somewhere those men wouldn’t follow.
I picked a place as far across the country as I could get from Boston without falling into the ocean. Washington. The literal other side. An ocean of land between us. A town where no one from that world would ever think to look.
I didn’t dare tell my family, didn’t even leave a note. I needed them to be able to say that they didn’t know a thing. I needed them to be able to say it with their hands on Bibles looking a judge in the eye if necessary. I needed them to be able to say it if someone was threatening to rip their nails from the beds of their fingers.
I hadn’t understood what I was getting into back then. I hadn’t realized what it meant to step into that underground club where power, sex, and danger were indistinguishable from each other.
I hadn’t understood that those men were masked for a reason, that they were far more than guys looking for a good time. They had an agenda that night, and I got mixed up in it. I had just been a moment in a plan. I’ll never know if I was part of it or just caught in it.
Did they plan to look distracted to lure that man to his death? Were they just as lost in the sex as I was or were they ready for him the whole time? That couple that I saw for just a flash entering the club—was I meant to see them? Or could I have been anyone? Would they have taken any woman who would have them? Did they actually wantme?
The questions are just echoes of each other, and will never have answers. I know one thing now—my boys will never grow up with that kind of fear hanging over them as long as I can help it.
If that means trading Plan A for Plan Survival, so be it.
2
RIAN
My jaw tense,I watch Caroline from my spot at the small two-person café table. I make sure not to jiggle my leg or swallow excessively—all gestures that indicate anxiety. And while sweat threatens to prickle at the back of my neck, I need to seem calm and collected.
She’s holding two tiny hands, probably sticky based off my limited knowledge of children, as she stands in line waiting to order. Her blonde hair is pulled back in a low bun, and her body is absent any jewelry. She looks like anyone else. She looks the part of a preschool teacher, certainly.
But I know who she really is. Memories swirl in my mind, and I cross my ankles to hide my growing erection as I think of my mouth on her, finding the spots that make her gasp and wriggle, the spots that have her screaming to her god.
She didn’t know my name, or I would have had her screaming it too. She didn’t see my face. I’m the only one of my brothers who didn’t speak. I’m the only one who has half a chance of luring her on the outside. If she remembers my voice, it’s over, though Iwill of course put on my best American accent. Not just that, but a Washington accent.
I scoff into my coffee at the thought. She couldn’t have picked a more boring place to settle. I watch her walk over to the children’s play area that I’m sat so close to.Close to, but notin, because a man with no children in the children’s play area is creepy. I knew I would find her here. Her life is so predictable. I’ve been watching her for weeks, and her schedule is exact. To the minute. I could time my watch by her.How can this life not bore her? How can this be the same woman?
A book makes its appearance from under the crook of her arm as she sits down on a fake stump and her twins go running toward the small Lego table. Her forehead is furrowed before I can even nod a hello. Adjusting my book so she can see that I’m reading the same one, I lean over and ask, “How are you liking it?”
A flicker of annoyance crosses her face. I’ve interrupted her alone time. Men probably invade her space all the time. I find myself momentarily flushed with anger at the thought of other men propositioning her. Which is ridiculous, considering I plan to lure her to her death.
Still, a humble smile takes over, and she shrugs as her eyes dart to her boys, still playing, their heads together now, whispering. “Isaac!” she calls out sharply, and I see it for a moment—the real her, inside. “Whatever it is, get it out of your mouth.”
Isaac complies, releasing a spitty Lego into the palm of his hand, and she shakes her head before looking back at me with a sheepish smile. “Kids,” I say, noncommittally, the kind of thing people say after witnessing someone’s child enjoying a Lego orally. “What can you do? Can’t live with them…”
“You can stop there,” she tells me with a tinkling laugh, tossing her hair back.
