Page 33 of Christmas with the Irish Devil
Her mouth curves the tiniest bit. “You think jokes will make you look less like a trespasser.”
“I think jokes keep my hands from being fists,” I reply, and her eyes sharpen.
“You forget yourself,” she says, and this time there is no gentle in it. “You forget whose walls those are. You forget that a boy in a nursery bed is not a lock on a door.”
“Meaning?” I keep my voice polite. I learned manners at her table and can weaponize them.
“Meaning,” she says, stepping closer, “do not mistake your son for a guarantee. Do not mistake his presence in this house for your permission to claim space you have not earned. And do not think for a second that the kitchen you rule in your imagination will survive the rot my son drags in with him.”
I am not sure whether she is speaking to me or to the ghost of a girl she mismeasured. I lift my chin and let the calm that has saved me a hundred times come up under my ribs. “I haven’t asked for your permission,” I say. “And I’m not earning anything. I’m building it. For work. For myself. For Liam when he’s old enough to want to eat in peace.”
“And for Declan,” she says, voice smooth as a blade. “Do not pretend you don’t know what you’re doing to him. Your presence turns him into a boy who thinks wanting is enough.”
“Wanting is never enough,” I say, and the truth of it rings the brass in the lamp above us. “But it’s a start.”
She studies me, the kind of look that adds and subtracts. “Watch your ways, girl,” she says finally. “Do not think the son insures the mother. I have seen that error end in funerals.”
“Is this the part where you threaten me,” I ask, “or the part where you pretend you’re protecting your family by rearranging the furniture?”
She steps back. “Do not step so close to the hearth you forget it burns.”
“Noted,” I say, because I am tired and I can only spar for so long without needing actual food and a chair that doesn’t judge me. “Good night, Moira.”
“Good night, Aoife,” she says, and her voice is almost kind.
In the kitchen, Declan has flour on his knuckles. Liam sits on the counter with his feet drumming the cabinet, a wooden spoon in his hand and a frown of concentration on his face as he peers into a bowl. The room smells like butter and chocolate and unresolved arguments.
“What are we doing,” I ask, washing my hands and bumping Liam’s knee with my hip.
“We are baking,” Liam says gravely, “and Da says we need patience, but I asked how many minutes patience is and he said all of them.”
“Accurate,” I say, and lift him down so he can stir without risking his skull. His hair curls around his ears, damp from a bath, his cheeks pink as if someone painted them with jam. Declan stands behind him and steadies the bowl with one broad palm.
“This is the third attempt at biscuits,” Declan says with the blasé tone of a man who has negotiated ports under fire and found this endeavor more taxing. “We’re in talks with the butter.”
“Talk hard,” I say. “Butter respects conviction.”
Liam leans into my side as I show him how to cut rounds without twisting the cutter. “Like that,” I murmur, and he mirrors me, and when the dough yields with a small, satisfying sigh, he grins at his father like a kid who just lifted Excalibur.
Declan’s face does something then—some small shift that shouldn’t have the power it does. Something snags behind his eyes, tightens, loosens. I know the look because I’ve seen it in my own bathroom mirror. It’s the expression a person makes when the future he wants stands directly in front of him wearing pajamas with tiny foxes and asks for jam on both halves.
We eat warm biscuits with too much butter and honey that tries to escape down our wrists. We drink milk and tea and one small glass of whiskey each because Moira is right, wanting is never enough, but a whiskey can make it bearable. Declan tells Liam an old story about a cow who outwits a giant, and I take the stitches out of the day, one breath at a time.
Later, when Liam is in bed and the house shrinks down to the rooms that still hold light, I find Declan leaning in the doorway of the new dining hall, hands in his pockets, gaze on the dark curve of the pond outside. His voice, when he speaks, is low enough it could be mistaken for the radiators ticking. “Did you sign.”
“Yes.”
“Why.”
“Because it’s mine.” I lean on the table and set my palms flat to feel the cool grain of the wood. “Not yours. Not your mother’s. Not the city’s. Mine.”
“And yet,” he says, and his mouth tilts, “you’ll run the kitchen with my men outside the door.”
“I’ll run the kitchen with my own knives,” I counter. “If your men want to polish the brass and chase ghosts, they can do it quietly.”
He watches me like he’s cataloging sins and virtues on the same shelf. “You’ll let them help,” he says softly.
“I will let them stay out of the way,” I correct, then soften because his expression flickers and I have no interest in breaking him tonight. “I will let you help,” I add, “by leaving me alone.”
