Page 19 of Christmas with the Irish Devil
The hallway bulb flickers once as if it would like to help and then remembers it is old. I shut my door carefully. The latch clicks. It sounds final. My hands shake for the first time. I shove them in my coat pockets and go.
I walk. Cab lights drift by like lazy fish. I wave one off. I need the air. North Station grows out of the night with that dull green glare I’ve always hated. The streets smell like the river and salt and something metallic. The city looks the way a kitchen looks at four a.m.—wiped, humming, pretending it doesn’t remember what was cooked here.
Inside, light. Too much of it. A woman in a Bruins hat argues softly with a vending machine. A kid drags a cello almost his size. I buy a Downeaster ticket with cash and no eye contact. “Platform three,” the clerk says. Her nails are the exact red of my mother’s best lipstick. I want to cry for a second for that, of all things. I don’t.
The train breathes into the station. Doors sigh open. I take a window seat and shove my bag under my legs. Knife roll on top. Always close. The car shudders. Boston slides back an inch at a time like a stubborn pan finally releasing a cake.
Blocks give way to salt grass and low water flashing pewter under the thin morning. A marsh bird lifts, wheels, settles. I watch. I try to build a plan. My mind throws images instead—Declan’s sleeves rolled to the elbow. His hands steady. The gun. The sound in my chest that wasn’t a sound at all, more a torn thing, fabric ripping, a curtain along a window that won’t ever be sewn the same.
A conductor clips my ticket. “Day for it,” he says. For what, I don’t know. For leaving, I suppose. I nod and look past him.
The train stops twice and then a third time in a town with a name that sounds like taffy. I get off because my stomach flips and because I can. The platform is salted in stripes. The air is knife-sharp and honest. Across the street, a diner glows in old neon. OPEN. Fine. Good. I cross.
Heat hits me in a wave. Bell over the door rings like a memory. The woman behind the counter looks me over and sees too much and not enough. “Coffee?” she asks.
“Please,” I say. The cup is heavy, chipped on the rim. It smells like safety and burn and a thousand other mornings.
“Food?” she asks.
“Toast.” My voice catches and clears. “Dry.”
She quirks a brow. “You want to suffer, you can do it here or out there. Same price.” Then she pours the coffee and leaves the sugar within reach anyway.
My phone rings while the toast is still a theory. Reflex makes me answer. Habit is hard to unlearn when it lives in your hand.
“Good morning, Aoife.” Moira. Calm as a blade in cool water.
The diner doesn’t go quiet. But the sound recedes, the way it does when a timer dings and you know it’s your pan, not anyone else’s.
“Mrs. O’Connell,” I say. I set the cup down because my fingers could break it.
“I won’t keep you. I only called to tell you he will never be safe.” She doesn’t push. She places each word like cutlery beside a plate.
“You called to scare me?” I ask. Dry as the toast.
“I called to give you truth before Declan wraps it in hope,” she says. No malice. No sympathy either. “His life is made of obligations that draw knives. That does not change because you cooked him dinner.”
My fingers tighten around the chipped cup. “I know what he is.”
“You know what you wanted him to be,” she replies. “Men like my son do not leave their work at the door. It follows them into kitchens and bedrooms and nurseries. It stains floors that ought to stay clean.”
I take a sip of the scalding hot coffee and wince. “You think you know me.”
“I know our house,” she says. “I built it. And I know the cost of loving a man like my son. Love will not disinfect that world. Love will not stop a bullet or an audit. Love will only make you stay while it happens.”
“You’re very free with your wisdom for someone who keeps a rosary in one hand and a ledger in the other.”
“Rosaries and ledgers keep order,” she answers. “Order is what keeps people breathing.”
“And what keeps them lonely.”
There is the faintest pause. “Do not mistake loneliness for peace,” she says. “You want a kitchen with light and clean floors and knives that only touch onions. You will not have that beside him. Your kitchen will rot under the weight of his enemies and his debts. It will happen slowly, and it will feel like your fault.”
The diner door opens. A bell rings. Cold air moves over my ankles. “If you want me gone, say that.”
“I want you alive,” she says. “Leave now, when leaving is a choice and not a scramble after a funeral. I am not sending anyone after you.”
I close my eyes. “Does he know you called me?”
