Page 8 of Christmas with the Irish Devil
“Hold it in the east until after the weekend,” I tell him. “Eyes are on the south side. City council member talked too loudly at a fundraiser last month. Reporters will take the obvious gate. I trust the itch between my shoulders.”
“Copy.” His voice is clipped. Then, lower, “You should come down later. New crane operator’s got hands like a surgeon butkeeps looking at the wrong men when he counts. I don’t like a man who doesn’t know where to point his eyes.”
“Make him point them at you,” I say and hang up.
Callum from the gambling circuit is next. “Two collectors got slowed in Southie,” he says. “Not stopped. Not robbed. Slowed.”
“Means someone wanted them to know they could be stopped,” I reply. “Watch the Vietnamese crews. They’ve been pressing north. I’m not letting them believe that line’s unguarded.”
Coins rattle on his end, followed by the ragged laugh of a man who just won a hand.
“Change the bartender on Tuesday nights,” I add. “A bar with a lucky corner breeds the wrong kind of faith.”
It is in the middle of these calls that my mother steps into the doorway. Moira O’Connell is not a woman who knocks. Her black silk robe is tied neatly at the waist, her hair pinned back in a way that shows the silver threaded through it, her eyes sharp and dark, taking in the desk and the phone and the ledgers and me.
“You’re up early,” I observe.
Her gaze doesn’t soften. “I heard the east line is holding.”
“For now.”
She steps into the study, bare feet silent on the carpet. “Push the Italians on the dock shares before Christmas. Moretti’s gone. They’re quieter than they’ve been in years. If you wait, they’ll remember their courage.”
“I’m not concerned with them right now.” Truth, and not truth.
Her eyes narrow. “You should be. Sentiment is a liability.” She lets the next line hang. “And I see where your attention has been wandering.”
She doesn’t speak Aoife’s name, but it’s there, lingering like the scent of the peat fire smoldering in the grate. Shestands with her back straight, hands folded loosely at her waist. Perfect composure, except for the faint tightening at the corners of her mouth. I suppress a wry smile, knowing she is already calculating her next move. She’s never liked the idea of my seeing someone outside the sphere she’s spent decades reinforcing. Not for any failing of Aoife’s, though she’d never say that aloud. She knows storms when she sees them, and Aoife is one.
“You think I can’t separate business from personal.” My fingers tap the armrest once before going still.
Her tone is cool. “I think you’ve already decided you don’t want to.”
She pivots toward the door with the ease of someone who’s ended more arguments than she’s started. The robe’s belt whispers against itself as she turns. At the threshold, she rests one hand lightly on the frame, anchoring herself to the house she built as much with my father’s money as with her will.
Her glance over her shoulder is as toothy as the words that follow. “Remember—every woman you bring into this house becomes a target. The closer to the hearth, the hotter the fire.”
The door closes with a muffled thud.
My mother sees only the danger in Aoife, the clean line of risk and consequence. She does not see that risk can be shaped, sharpened, and turned into something I can hold and use. She does not see that the steadiness I have built is the kind that can meet a storm head-on and emerge changed in precisely the way that makes me harder to dislodge.
I push back from the desk and leave the study for the older part of the house, where the kitchen still has iron hooks in the beams and a low ceiling above the long prep table that has held more wakes than dinner parties. The range is already warm, with stock simmering on a bare flame, the bones sighing their last into the water. Mrs. Brennan has left a folded tea towelon the rail and a pot of coffee on the back burner, but I take down the hand grinder, the enamel kettle, and the small ceramic dripper with the chip turned to the wall. I prefer the ritual, the sound, and the smell, and I prefer to make it myself.
When the water rolls just shy of a boil, I pour it over the dark grounds, watching the bloom rise and collapse into itself. That dome of trapped air tells me the beans are worth the time I am giving them. The first runnel of coffee slips into the waiting cup, and the kitchen fills with something warm, bitter, and clean. While it drips, I slice two thick pieces of brown soda bread from a loaf baked before dawn, the crust dark and tight, the crumb dense and moist. I put a skillet on the flame, add a knob of butter, watch it foam and settle, and then crack in two eggs, letting the whites spread until the edges lace. A spoon of tomato relish warms in the lid of the jar, because there is always relish here, and a small coil of black pudding splits beneath the knife before I lay it in the pan to sear until the casing blisters.
I eat standing with the plate warm in my hand. The yolks run when I break them with a piece of crust, the relish is sweet and sharp against the fat of the pudding, and the coffee tastes perfect. I think of Aoife’s hands and the way they moved over a board at the gala as though the knives were extensions of her intent. I think of how she spoke about salt like someone who has been to the sea and returned with the taste of it in her mouth. I smile to myself because my mother is right about storms, but she is wrong about how a good captain handles one.
The rest of the day passes as it is supposed to, with my head and body buried in work. When I return home, it is well past dinner time. I head straight to the study. There is a leather-bound book in there that I take out only when the city feels too modern for comfort. My grandmother kept it tucked under a linen runner in the sideboard. My mother pretends not to care about it. Inside are receipts, recipes, and notes in three hands.
I go to where it is and turn the pages until I find the place where the seaweed butter is annotated with a frown. It makes me smile. Whoever wrote the margin thought it indecent to mix the ocean and the pasture. The book belongs to my family and to the living more than to the dead. I wrap it in paper and write a note that says only what needs saying. I send it with a man who has no curiosity and a hand that does not shake when he signs for deliveries at midnight.
The day’s demands have begun to crowd the desk. Under every call and every decision, I have felt her presence like a shadow just out of sight. I take out my phone and scroll to the number. I press call. She answers on the second ring, her voice warm and steady. “Declan.”
“Aoife.” I let the syllables rest on my tongue. “Have dinner with me tomorrow night.”
A pause. Then, with the faintest smile in her voice, “You won’t find the kind of food you’re looking for in a restaurant.”
“Then where will I find it?”
