Page 111 of Dirty Padraig: Dirty Dusters

“No, he doesn’t eat them, Jaine.” He laughs.

“There’s so much I don’t know about him.”

“You spent most of your lives hiding behind messages and calls, that’s why. It wasn’t….”

“Real life?”

“Something like that. I guess it was similar to you and Eoin. You spent years with your back and forth. You probably thought you knew him quite well, but I suspect the reality of the complete package that made up my eldest brother wasn’t who you expected.”

He’s right, of course. All I’d ever seen was Padraig’s Mr. Gift of the Irish gab side, much like I’d only ever witnessed Eoin’s Mr. Smug. Selfish. Pompous side. Mr. Dominating. Dangerous. Deadly didn’t make an appearance until after we got married. I want to see the other side of Irish.

“It wasn’t. You’re right,” I admit.

“Anyway, Paddy’s not mentioned to me that he knows, so it’s unlikely he’s told anyone else. Maybe it’s for safety reasons since you and Fin seem to be the ones being targeted.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m glad you told him, Jaine. I’m glad it’s finally out in the open.”

“Do I tell the others that he knows?”

“Let me speak to him first to see how he wants to play it. You’ve done your part now, so there’s not much else you can do.”

“I just thought he may have wanted to see him.”

“He was seeing him most days before you went AWOL, Jaine.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was going to the house when you weren’t there.”

“Why?” I’m suddenly annoyed that he went to such lengths just to avoid seeing me.

“After your run-in with Sophia at the elevator, he’s been banned from communicating with you.”

“But surely that’s extreme? I mean, she knows we share Fin, even if she hasn’t admitted it to anyone.”

“That may be part of the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“She wants him to get her pregnant. She wants a baby.”

I’m not sure how I feel about that. In some ways, it feels final, and I don’t want things to ever be final between us.

“I’m not sure what difference that would make. They’d just be stepsiblings.”

“It’s not quite that simple.”

“I don’t know what you mean?”

“It’s not really for me to say.”

I can’t argue. What goes on inside someone else’s marriage isn’t any of my business. He continues when I don’t respond.

“What are you going to do about Eoin?”

“Again, I don’t know what you mean. His last words to me were that we were done.”

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