Page 77 of If Looks Could Kill
His uncle. “Is he Mr. O’Flynn?”
Mike smiled. “In a manner of speaking, though that’s not his name. He owns the pub, and I work for him.” He gave me a sidelong look. “I didn’t realize you didn’t know that.”
“How could I?” I told him. “We’ve barely spoken much before today.”
His brow furrowed. “I suppose that’s true.” He sounded almost surprised. “And yet it feels as though we have.”
I would have given much to know what he meant by that.
“Why,” I said, “if you’d rather not work at the pub, do you feel you owe it to your uncle to stay?”
He swallowed. “My uncle paid for my whole family’s passage out of Ireland, four years ago,” he said. “We were to work with him for a certain period to pay him back.”
I became indignant. “Four years? What is this, indentured servitude?”
“Now, Miss Tabitha,” he said, “I can’t have you thinking ill of my uncle.”
I wasn’t sure why my opinion of his uncle mattered. “But why so long?”
“He bought passage for my father, my mother, my two brothers, and me,” he said. “My mother died soon after arriving here.”
I remembered him mentioning that his mother was no more. “I am sorry.”
“My father was quite torn up about it,” Mike went on. “He and my two brothers took off one day. I think they’re somewhere near Chicago now.”
I was horrified. “They just left? They never said a word toyou?”
“Oh,” Mike said slowly, “I knew they were looking to go.” He watched my expression. “My uncle and I get on. It hurt my dad, I think, how I tend to seek my uncle’s advice over his.”
“And why is that?”
Mike wouldn’t look at me for a moment. “My dad always had a hard time with the bottle,” he admitted. “It’s his undoing.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “That must be a great heartache for you.”
His eyes were bright when he looked back at me. “I don’t touch a drop,” he told me. “I work at a pub, sure, but I don’t drink at all. I wouldn’t dare.”
There was something, it seemed, that he wanted me to know, though I couldn’t see why.
“I call that quite remarkable,” I told him. “It’s brave, and wise, and… forward-thinking.” Oh, well done, Tabitha.Forward-thinking.“No wonder your uncle thinks highly of you.”
He grinned. “He’s just glad I don’t drink up the profits.”
“So you feel,” I said, “you need to repay your family’s debt to your uncle?”
We crossed a street. “He doesn’t want me feeling that way,” Mike said, “but I do.”
“Does your uncle have children of his own?”
Mike shook his head. “He and my aunt never had any.”
“So you’re like a son to him.”
Mike squirmed at this. “No father could do more for a son. I’d hate to disappoint him.”
“But…?”
He gave me a quizzical look. “But what, Miss Tabitha?”
