Page 35 of Her Irish Savage

Of course she knows how long it’s been. I wouldn’t be surprised if she gave me the number of weeks. The specific number of days.

I look at the cases of baked goods. Athawn’s Apple Fritters still hold place of pride on a top shelf. Jenn’s Jam Tarts gleam with their cherry and apricot fillings. Patrick’s Peanut Butter Cookies are notably missing. I’ll go out on a limb and assume it’s not for fear of allergies.

“Can I get a cup of coffee?” I ask. “Pour one for yourself too.”

She wrinkles her nose, and it’s the exact same expression I saw twenty-eight years ago, when her sister brought me home to meet their parents. She waves a hand toward her scarf. “Everything tastes like I’m chewing on tin foil.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. I mean it.

She selects an over-size mug from the shelf above the sink and turns her back to me as she pours. “Another six weeks of chemo,” she says. “The doctors arecautiously optimistic.”

“Joe’s helping out around here?”

“Joe left fourteen years ago. Thought he’d be happierfucking double-D implants and collagen lips that could suck a baseball through a straw.”

Before I can figure out another way to say I’m sorry, she hands me my coffee. I salute her with the mug and take a good slug.

It takes every ounce of my willpower not to spit all over her counter. “What the fuck?” I say, after I manage to swallow. “Did you dump in a cup of salt?”

“Whoops,” she deadpans. “Meant to add sugar.”

I put the mug on the counter.

Kimi—Kimberly—stares at me flatly. “What’s your plan, Patrick? I’d ask what brings you to town, but I’ve already heard you’re fucking Ingram’s daughter.”

I’ve always been impressed with the Southie grapevine. Gossip moves from one end of the enclave to the other faster than birds can fly. And now that everyone and her sister has a cellphone permanently attached at the fingertips, information travels that much faster.

I start to deny that I’m fucking Fiona. Whatever happened in that hotel room was just between the two of us, and it won’t be repeated, because I’m leaving town after the funeral.

But even if I clear my record with Kimi, she’s not likely to defend me to the rest of South Boston.

So I settle for saying, “I head back to Philadelphia on Sunday.”

She snorts in disgust. “Running away as usual.”

“I didn’t run, Kimi. I left. Because there was nothing to keep me here.”

“You had friends, asshole. Family.”

“Jenn had friends. Jenn had family.”

“We loved you!”

She sounds like she means it, which is news to me. So I remind her: “You loved Jenn.”

“Until you killed her.” There we go. That’s the Kimi I know so well. Hits the target in less than one feckin’ minute.

“Jenn died, Kimi. No one killed her. She drove too fast and she hit a patch of black ice and the Escort flipped three times.”

Jenn worried about crashing the Ford. She’d read articles about seatbelts harming unborn babies. She left hers off so she didn’t hurt Athawn. That’s why they both died—my wife, and our son who was never born.

Kimi’s face twists with an expression of pure hate. “Why was she driving too fast, Patrick?”

I don’t know. No one does. But a fair guess would be she was terrified of me, after she found out what I did.

When I got home that day, I told her my father had ratted out the Crew, turning witness for the feds instead of facing up to a heroin beef. The clan found out, and its Warlord—Keenan Rivers—punished Tommy Moran on the killing floor in thedún’sbasement.

That’s all I thought Jenn needed to know.

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