Page 106 of Her Irish Savage

Another century passes. But Patrick finally says, “Your father caught mine wearing a wire. Rivers worked Da over, in the basement at thedún. In the tile room?”

I nod to let him know I’ve seen it.

“After, your da sent me downstairs to find him. Told me to bring up a case of Guinness. To hurry.”

Patrick stares at something I can’t see in the distance. His muscles turn to steel beneath my palm. Finally he says, “Da was still alive when I got there. He was tied to a chair. Both his legs were broken, above and below the knee. His arms were shattered too. His face was chopped meat, and a dead rat was shoved between his lips.”

I catch my breath. I’ve always known what happens in the basement at thedún. I’ve never seen it myself.

I think Patrick won’t say anything more then, but I’m wrong. “I took the rat out of his mouth, and he said my name, as best he could without a tongue. He begged for help. Even after the worst Keenan Rivers could do, he wasn’t ready to die.”

Patrick closes his eyes. Now I’m sorry that I asked him. I want to take back my question, even though I know I can’t. But more than that, I want Patrick to know I understand. I care. I trace the jagged heartbeat tattooed across his wrist.

And finally he says, “I took out my feckin’ phone. I punched in 9, 1, 1. And I stood there without placing the call. I held the phone in front of him and then I watched him die.”

I feel Patrick’s pulse under my hand, steady and strong. “There was no way to save him,” I say.

He shrugs, like he doesn’t believe me. “I brought the Guinness upstairs,” he says. “Your da told me to go back down and butcher that hunk of meat in the basement. To grind it into dogfood.”

I can hear my father issuing orders. I can see the cruel glare in his eyes as he waited to be obeyed.

Patrick says, “I had to prove he could trust me. That I was different to my da. And nothing I did was going to hurt my father any worse. So I fed Tommy Moran to the fucking dogs.”

I think that’s the end. I think it can’t get worse. I’m wrong.

Patrick’s voice gets softer. More strained. “When I got home, my wife knew all about it. Aran Dowd had phoned. Told her she should be proud of me, and why. Jenn wrapped our car around a tree that night. She died, and our unborn son too. And two days later, Mam had had enough. She jumped off the Longfellow Bridge. Hit the water head-first, a witness said. They had to drag the Charles to bring her up.”

It sounds like some dark fairytale from centuries past, the type of stories told to little kids when they won’t eat their vegetables or refuse to go to bed. I half expect him to say, “And the moral of the story is…”

But there isn’t any moral to the story. There’s just my uncle’s cruelty and my father’s rules and decades of pain bleached gray by time.

I don’t have any words to comfort him. But I want to give him something. Tell him something. Share, the way he just dared to share with me.

So I say, “There were two of them.”

He gets very still.

I hurry on before I can chicken out. “In the chapel at my school. One held me down on the cold stone floor while the other tore away my panties. He shoved his way in like I was some plastic doll, and I kept thinking it hurt so much because itwasn’t my wedding night, because he wasn’t my husband, because I was committing a sin.”

“Little girl…” Patrick says, but I shift my fingertips to his lips. I need him to know this about me. I need him to understand.

“After the first one finished, there was blood between my legs. I felt so fucking ashamed, like I’d started my period in public. My legs were shaking so hard I couldn’t stand, but I tried to crawl away. And that’s when the second one grabbed me. He choked me. Put both hands around my throat.”

“Jesus,” Patrick breathes, and I know we’re both thinking aboutBunbun, about how I used my safeword.

It’s my turn to close my eyes, because that will help me get out the rest of the story. “The second one took longer to finish. He was still inside me when Father Colin came into the chapel. Father was carrying a… what do you call it? The thing with incense?”

“A thurible.”

“A thurible. Newly polished. Father told the boys to go down to the gym. To clean up in the locker room, then go straight home. He reminded them about some paper they needed to turn in for New Testament Ethics.”

“Fucking gobshite,” Patrick says, and his fingers grip my hip so tightly I know they’ll leave a mark.

“Father Colin took me to his office. He said I was the reason the boys did what they did. I was Eve’s daughter. Sin incarnate. He gave me lines to write, one hundred times for each of the boys:I will not use my body to tempt innocent boys into sins of the flesh.I was still bleeding when I finished.”

Patrick’s hand trembles against my body. “You went to your da,” he says. “And he saida good King chooses his battles.”

He remembers what I told him when I was feeling sorry for myself, downing my third boozy milkshake in an hour. I nod and say, “I’d been thrown out of so many schools by then. For skipping class. For fighting—girls and boys. For talking back toSister. So Da said he was done. He wouldn’t help me. He washed his hands of all of it.”

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