Page 41 of Her Irish Savage

This is the oldest Catholic cemetery in Boston. The tombstones cluster around the chapel like giant sea urchin spikes. A place has been reserved for my father since he was a child; he’ll spend eternity between his own parents.

My mother is buried an hour south of here. I’ve never visited her grave.

Father Bertram conducts the service in the chapel. I sit inthe front row, with Patrick by my side. Uncle Aran is in the pew across the aisle.

The chapel fills behind us, most of the Old Colony Crew sitting behind my uncle. Keenan Rivers is on the aisle, directly behind Uncle Aran. Sacco, the mafia don, sits a few rows back. The pews fill in with the people who paid my father protection money for decades—the ones who’ve run his brothels and gambling dens, along with legitimate business owners who only want to guarantee smooth operations. Everyone lines up behind Uncle Aran.

A handful of people sit behind me. There’s Oona, my former nanny, back to her job as a cook at thedún. There’s a reporter, scribbling on a pocket notebook. I’d love to throw him out the door, but it isn’t worth making a scene.

There are a couple of young women who join us, so similar in appearance they could be twins—wide-set eyes in heart-shaped faces, plump lips, and breasts so huge there’s no way they’re real. One has dyed black hair; the other is a platinum blonde, but my father clearly had a type for his girlfriends, hiscailíns.

A few men at the very back look like they’ve been sleeping rough. The chapel is warm and dry, and they can nod off without anyone taking great offense.

Just before the service starts, a few Irish relatives slip into the pews behind me. There’s an aunt and three uncles I last saw on my trip to Dublin, each of them with red eyes and drawn faces, exhausted from travel, if not from sorrow. None of my cousins have made the trip.

But when my family realize how the crowd has lined up, they shift over to Uncle Aran’s side. I want to stand up, to demand they come back to me. Uncle Aran isn’t flesh and blood. He married into the family, married Aunt Siobhan. But the Irish Ingrams understand power when they see it.

I set my shoulders, refusing to look at them again.

Even the latecomers stand at the back, instead of sitting withme. They’ll pay, all of them. They’re all betting on the wrong horse.

Father Bertram starts the service half an hour after the announced time, to give everyone a chance to settle. He looks lost in front of the altar, like he’s floating on a sea of flowers. Every captain in the Grand Irish Union has sent a display to honor his general. There are blankets and wreaths and horseshoes, and one huge round of white carnations trimmed with red roses, made up to look like a baseball. I wonder if there are any flowers left in Boston, maybe in all of New England.

Father Bertram wears purple vestments, a sign of penance.

My father never repented a single thing he did, not in his entire life. He lived hard. He died hard. And he truly believed that a single hint of regret might kill him. His men would refuse to be led by a man who showed even a shadow of doubt.

Maybe that’s why he never announced who would take over when he died. He was like an expectant parent, keeping the name of his baby secret until the birth, so he didn’t have to listen to every last friend and relative who thought he was making a mistake.

But goddamn it, heowedme. I did everything my father ever asked of me. Almost everything. I tried.

Water under the fucking bridge. He didn’t name me his heir. And now, I’m fighting for my life with the Crew. Fighting a battle no sane man would say I can win.

It doesn’t take long for Father Bertram to finish saying mass. Uncle Aran takes communion. All the senior officers do.

I don’t go up to the altar rail. I haven’t gone to confession in eight years.

Outside, by the open grave, the wind has picked up. Father Bertram’s fleshy lips look like liver in the daylight. I wonder how much he knows about his predecessor, whether he has nightmares about Father Colin’s untimely death. I do.

I hear the echo of that shot eight years ago, and I flinch. Patrick feels it. He puts his hand beneath my elbow to steadyme. If anyone’s watching, they’ll think I’m overcome with emotion as Father Bertram leads us all in the Lord’s Prayer.

The service ends and the crowd breaks into clusters of two or three. Before I can tell Patrick I’m ready to go, Oona Maguire bustles to my side. When she was my nanny, she marked my height on the frame of my bedroom door every year, on my birthday. When I turned nine, I stretched on tiptoe, and I was taller than she was. In the intervening years, she’s shrunk even more. Her face looks like it’s carved out of a dried apple.

“Coinín beag,” she says, hugging my waist, calling me her little rabbit. I don’t know where to put my hands, so I wave them in the air, helpless.

Oona looks up at me. Her eyes are red. Her lips are chapped. Tears stain her cheeks, and I realize she may be the only person in the entire cemetery who honestly mourns my father.

“Coinín beag,” she says again. “I brought something for you.” She slips a battered tote bag from her shoulder and begins fumbling inside.

I imagine she has something that belonged to my father. One of his cigarette lighters. Maybe a pen from his desk. Even though there’s nothing I want, my throat tightens at the kindness.

But I’m wrong. I very much want the thing she pulls out of her bag.

It’s a cigar box, cedar, decorated in gaudy green and red. The metal clasp is tarnished. One of the hinges slips when the lid opens too far.

I know that last bit, because I kept the box tucked under my mattress for years. I filled it with my treasures. My secrets. My past.

“Oh my God,” I whisper, clutching it close to my chest.

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