Page 70 of Christmas with the Irish Devil
“That you were a door that led to a flood,” she says. “That if the flood receded, the house could be repaired. That the child could be raised by someone who understands weight.”
“And that someone is you,” I say, because the world is full of sentences I never thought I would say.
“I know how to carry,” she answers, chin up.
“She arranged the kidnapping,” I say, and the words shiver in the air.
“She arranged the opportunity,” she says and smiles like a woman who has been given a recipe she believes will work every time. “I did the work.”
“You took my body,” I say. “And you have the gall to call it work.”
“What would you call it?” she asks, leaning in.
“Cowardice.”
The knife on the linen is still waiting. The bowl of wax ripples where a draft touches it. My wrists burn where the rope has tightened. I keep my face bored because rage spills, and I need the liquid steady.
“Untie me,” I say, voice gone quiet enough to be mistaken for soft. “Let’s see what happens then.”
She laughs, delighted. “You were always bold,” she says. “It’s what I liked most.”
“What did you like second?” I ask, distracting, gauging.
“The way you cooked when no one watched,” she says. “You didn’t pose for the air. You looked at the pan like it was a person you loved. It made me want to be the pan.”
I close my eyes once, long enough to file that away under grief I will unpack when I am not tied to furniture.
“You won’t win,” I say, opening them again. “He will come.”
“He will,” she agrees. “But he will be slower than me, and slower is all I need.”
“You’re underestimating the speed of a man who thinks you’ve touched what’s his,” I say, and her mouth tightens at the pronoun and I smile because I wanted it to.
“You are not a thing,” she says, fierce again. “Not to me. Not to anyone.”
“Then stop trying to move me like furniture,” I say.
We stare at each other across the small, terrible room. Candlelight makes everything honest. The stone sweats. The drip somewhere in the back keeps time.
Behind her shoulder, a shadow shifts. It is nothing. It is the candle dying. It is my hope rearranging itself.
She kneels, suddenly, so we are eye to eye, her hands braced on the arms of the chair, the scent of her perfume sharp with something green. Her voice drops until it is almost kind.
“It’s not too late,” she whispers. “You can still come back to me.”
30
DECLAN
The van trail takes us to a warehouse near the piers, the kind of building that still smells of tar and fish though neither has touched it in years. Rusted padlocks hang broken. The bay doors gape an inch, as if daring us.
“On me,” I say, and my men fan out in practiced silence. Boots crunch glass. Flashlights sweep across damp cement.
Inside it is hollow as a throat. Crates sag against one wall, paper curled with damp. Saltwater stains ladder the brick. At first it feels like nothing, the disappointment of an empty room. Then Keane crouches by a steel post.
“Cord,” he says.
A length of rope lies cut, frayed ends blackened as if someone burned through them with a lighter. Nearby, shards of glass glitter, sticky with residue that clings to his gloves. He lifts one to the light.
