Page 96 of Fall for Me

I ran a wet bar rag over the floor to get the last of the glass splinters off, then tossed it in the trash, which I tied up in sharp jerks. I needed to talk to him. That’s all there was to it. Tell him this wasn’t just up to him. That he didn’t get to choose what happened to us all on his own.

I pulled the bag from the container and was just making my way behind the crowd toward the stairs, still scanning the room for him, when the crowd let out a raucous cheer. It was just like they’d sounded when Joyce accepted her retirement gift—a trip to Greece. She was obsessed, apparently, with Greek mythology. She’d studied Mayan mythology first, then Greek. I’d never have guessed. Maybe it would be Joyce up there on stage again to tell a joke about the Parthenon. She’d been a hit with the crowd. But as the cheers settled, I looked up to see it was Jamie at the podium.

I paused, watching Seamus’s father. He didn’t speak at first, just smoothed out the papers in front of him.

He was going to say something serious.

The crowd seemed to sense it, and after a few dying murmurs, they went completely silent.

Jamie cleared his throat. The sound reverberated across the rooftop. Somewhere down below, the thin sound of people outside the restaurant or on the riverfront filtered up here, only accentuating the silence. “My wife, Deirdre, hit me when she found out she was pregnant,” Jamie began.

A ripple of low, nervous laughter ran through the crowd.

“We were teenagers, in senior year.” He lay his hands on the papers before him, clearly going from feeling now.

“I was in love, and I’d messed up, the way teenagers sometimes do. We were going to be parents at seventeen. And we were devastated.”

We all knew that son was Kevin. The one he’d lose, not so long after.

“The devastation didn’t last,” Jaime said. “After the shock wore off, we started to talk about the idea of maybe keeping this child all to ourselves. We were in love, we were happy. We decided to run with it. When we had that first bouncing baby boy, we were…” His voice cracked. “To the stars with joy. Four years later, when we had another, I knew my life was complete.”

Jamie swallowed. I could see it from here. I scanned the crowd, desperately trying to find Seamus. Not for my own immature, desperate anger, but because I knew how this would be making him feel. I knew that if my heart were aching, his would be too, only a thousand times worse.

Jamie continued. “I thought finding out we were pregnant at seventeen was the last time I’d be devastated about my child. I was wrong, of course. We lost Kevin when he was fifteen years old. I wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on my worst enemy.” Jamie’s voice cracked again, and even from here I saw his chin wobble, just once before he caught it, frowning. “I named my company Reilly and Sons during the sunniest of days. When Deirdre brought the boys to visit me on the job sites I worked at before I struck off on my own. They’d bring their toy hammers and plastic hard hats, and stared with wonder at the dump trucks and backhoes.”

Jamie cleared his throat once more, pausing again as if to collect himself. “While we never got to see where Kevin took his life, Seamus joining me in this business has been my greatest joy. He swore to me keeping Sons in the name was fine with him, but I know now that with how my boy is taking Reilly to the next level—that it’s his baby now. So it’s with my blessing and insistence that we filed for a name change last week. For the next chapter of our existence, we’ll be known as Reilly Contracting Group. And Seamus is going to take on the world.”

With that, the crowd exulted, everyone standing and cheering. I dropped the garbage bag in my hand, as overcome as everyone else with this story.

But when Jamie raised his hand, everyone quieted once again. “Before I go, I wanted to leave you with something I’ve prepared for everyone here. Our name may be changed, but I don’t want anyone to forget I had two sons, and they were responsible for not only the formation of this company, but for the greatest joy I’ve ever known.”

With that, Nora—accustomed to audio-visual equipment from her work at the library—turned off the string lights and switched on the music. Bob Dylan’s voice came crooning from the speakers. It was Forever Young—a song I once caught my parents dancing to in the living room as a small child, tears in both of their eyes.

On the screen, a photo popped up. The crowd let out a collective breath, and my throat constricted. The boy was around six, with a mess of brown hair and freckles. His lopsided grin revealed a missing front tooth. His arm was slung around a little toddler in a striped t-shirt, with the same grin, looking adoringly up at his big brother.

Seamus, looking up at Kevin.

A later photo, of Seamus and Kevin at around eight and four in a canoe with their dad; another with Kevin getting his knee bandaged by a pretty woman with long brown hair and big brown eyes. The brothers wrestling; and later, grinning next to the same woman sitting up in bed, a platter of burnt toast and a droopy dandelion in a jar, looking as delighted as if the sad Mother’s Day breakfast was a gourmet meal at a high-end hotel.

Tears ran hot down my cheeks. I wasn’t the only one I saw as I looked quickly around. The woman closest to me was openly weeping. A man across the table had his fist to his mouth.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

“Hey.”

Seamus.

But when I whirled around, it was Eli next to me, his eyes on the screen.

Disappointment washed through me.

But it didn’t last. I took in Eli’s own red-rimmed eyes, the tiny reflections of the images on the screen dancing across their surface. He glanced at me and smiled sheepishly.

“Hey,” I said, my whisper cracking.

Eli threw an arm around my shoulder, pulling me in against him. My aggravating, kind-hearted, heartbroken brother. He’d shown up for me more times than I could count lately.

I’d been furious at Seamus tonight, and Eli too, and neither of them deserved it.

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