Page 36 of Her Irish Savage

But Aran Dowd had already told her the rest.

He called before I ever got back to the apartment. Maybe he was getting revenge for all the shite Da did. Maybe he was testing me. Maybe he did it just for laughs.

Jenn asked if the rest was true, if I’d really done all the things Dowd said. I told the truth then, all of it. And Jenn just shook her head. She took her keys. She walked out the door of our crappy apartment, and she drove the Escort into a fucking tree.

Kimi repeats her question: “Why was she driving too fast, Patrick?”

After twenty-five years, I thought I could be here. I thought I could remember my wife with the sister who’d loved her. I could mourn my unborn son with the woman who would have been his aunt.

I shove back from the counter. “This was a mistake.”

“You’re damn right, it’s a mistake. You’re the same fucking savage you ever were.”

The bell jangles on the door behind me. Kimi looks past me,and a smile splits her face, like the sun breaking through a bank of thunderheads. “Hannah!” Kimi says. “I didn’t think you were coming in today!”

“I’ve got an hour before rehearsal, so I thought I’d stop by and grab some lunch.” My niece moves behind the counter with the ease of someone very familiar with the space. “Go on,” she says to her mother. “Sit down. Take a glass of water. You know you aren’t drinking enough.”

Impossibly, Kimi obeys the force of nature she brought into this world. She fills a glass with tap water and takes a stool at the counter.

Hannah turns to me with a bright smile. “And what can I get you today?”

She doesn’t recognize me. I left before her first birthday.

Kimi watches me warily.

“Thanks,” I say to Hannah. “I was just leaving.”

As I walk back to the Land Rover, I try to figure out how I could have left them both some money. It wouldn’t be enough. Nothing would. But I’d feel a little better.

And there’s my answer. The women in that bakery don’t need my money. The only thing they need is for me to stay out of their lives forever.

This time, I cut through the heart of Southie, because I don’t give two shites who sees me. I pass the old after-hours joints. I drive by Ingram’s tame bookie. There’s the strip club, and the whorehouse.

I’m a dinosaur, crashing through the jungle, oblivious to the meteor hurtling through the stars. I can’t tell if any of the old businesses are left. Probably not, in this age of online betting, of Internet porn.

I’m out of Southie, nearly back to the tourist-friendly parts of the city, when I realize I never got my cup of coffee. The second I start thinking about it, the wiring frays inside my skull. Deprived of caffeine, the brain squirrels gnaw away.

There’s a Dunkin’ in the next block. Who am I kidding?This is Boston. There’s a Dunkin’ on every block. I can get mine back at the apartment, before I climb four flights of stairs.

That promise doesn’t still the squirrels. In fact, they shift into hyperdrive when we drive past the next orange-and-pink store. This one has a parking space open at the curb—two in front of a huge black Escalade.

An Escalade with a familiar license plate. One I watched being tracked by cops, just last night. I’m good that way, remembering strings of letters and numbers. Playing with the symbols usually makes the squirrels back off a while.

That Cadillac was at thedún’sside yard last night, but it’s out of Southie now. Which is as good a reason as any for me to stop for coffee now.

Waiting in line, I monitor the crowd. The habit is as deeply ingrained as spinning my fidget ring. I’m a Warlord. I keep tabs on everyone around me.

It’s the usual mix of students and tourists and—this close to Back Bay—folks taking a break from crouching over their home computers.

Two men sit in the far-left booth, barely visible in profile. They’re dressed in casual clothes. Middle-aged. Nothing remarkable. I wouldn’t notice them at all if the Escalade wasn’t parked out front. And if the man with his back to me didn’t have a full white beard.

What the hell is Aran Dowd doing in a Dunkin’ outside his Southie territory? And why the fuck does the guy sitting across from him look so goddamn familiar?

From the expression on Dowd’s face, he hasn’t clocked me yet. He’s leaning forward, pointing his finger at Other Guy. Dowd’s cheeks are flushed, and he’s dangerously close to knocking over his cup of coffee.

The Bell rings inside my head. I should walk back to the booth. Let Dowd know I haven’t left town. Find out who he’s lecturing.

But I grit my teeth to tamp down the impulse. Dowd’spresence here is fucking bizarre. I don’t want him to know I’ve seen him.

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