Chasing River (Burying Water #3)(26)

The problem is that my comfort zone absolutely abhors the idea of being so obvious. This would be so much easier to do if I had Bonnie or Tory here to help occupy my attention and time until he makes the first move. But I’m in Ireland, and all potential wingmen are thousands of miles away.

Well . . .

Maybe not.

I guess it just depends how desperate I am.

NINE

River

“Have ya been sleeping?”

I flinch from my mother’s rough grip of my face. “I’m fine. Just a long night at work.”

She grabs my scuffed-up hand and then levels me with a stern look. “I see that, River. What happened?”

“I caught Benoit lifting a customer’s wallet.” I shrug. “So I told him not to.”

“That slimy little bastard,” Ma mutters. She brings Da in once a week, so she’s there enough to know the regulars. She’s always had a thing against Benoit that I didn’t understand, said he gave her the creeps.

“Is he going to remember?” Da sits in his seat at the kitchen table, his favorite mug in one hand full of beer, a bowl of stew and the Mirror in front of him.

“I’m guessing so.” Waking up with a black eye and a busted nose is always good for jogging the memory.

“And are the gardai going to be showing up at the doorstep for ya?”

I shake my head, though I can’t ignore the voice in my head that admits, Not for that.

He nods with approval. My father never had a problem teaching someone a lesson if he deserved it.

“Here.” I set the week’s register readings and other paperwork down next to him.

He sighs like he always does, as if it’s a great burden to count out how much money we’ve brought in. Delaney’s has kept all of us quite comfortable over the years. “Good week?”

“Busy week.” It’s always busy at Delaney’s. Through bad weather and bad times, we never lack drinking customers.

“Sit and eat.” Ma drops a bowl of her lamb stew on the table, and then her sturdy hands land on my back to push me into a chair.

I hiss when her palm presses against one of my wounds.

“What’s the matter, son?”

I shake my head, waiting for the pain to subside with gritted teeth. I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.

Marion Delaney isn’t one to take a brush-off, though. “River Fintan Delaney! What is wrong with your back?” Her stubby little fingers fly to my shirt, tugging at the collar.

I swat her hand away. “Ma! Come on!”

“He’s a grown man. Leave him be,” Da mutters, but with a sternness that prompts her to listen. She turns on her heels and marches to the stove in a huff.

Da and I share a look. The fact that I’m twenty-four years old means nothing to that woman. If it were up to her, she’d still be washing my knickers. I do miss her cooking, though, I’ll admit, as I shovel a spoonful of hearty stew into my mouth. No one makes it better. One day every year, on Delaney’s anniversary, she sits at the bar with a vat of it, ladling it into bowls for customers, for free. It’s the busiest day of the year for us, Rowen and me chasing away the greedy *s who come back for a second helping.

“So, what’s that about?” Da juts his chin toward my back.

“Nothing.” I need to change the subject and fast. “How’s your leg?”

He shifts and grimaces in his chair, as if I’ve just reminded him. “Uncomfortable. It’s this bloody heat wave.”

Heat waves, cold fronts, damp weather . . . all of it seems to bother his leg. Twenty-seven years after the bombing in Belfast that left him with severe nerve damage, there isn’t a day when he doesn’t suffer. I sure don’t remember one, anyway. The doctors say there’s nothing they can do. Not even surgery is going to fix it. I think he’s been prescribed every painkiller under the sun.

“I’ll come back midweek if you want, when Rowen’s not in class. Saves you another trip in.”

“That’d be grand. I don’t want to go near Dublin right now with this sort of thing going on.” He taps the newspaper headline, the article about St. Stephen’s Green below it. “Tell me Aengus didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Not that I know of.” I keep my eyes on my bowl and feel his heavy stare size me up. He’s no idiot. There’s a reason Aengus didn’t get out on license after just three years in Portlaoise, like his sentence offered. All he had to do was behave, but instead he fought and preached about the cause. The hearing committee denied his request, and he served out his entire sentence.

And then the day he got released, he skipped the supper that Ma had been preparing for two days and went to meet Jimmy. The metaphorical straw that broke our father’s back and severed all ties. Ma will still call him occasionally and mail him a birthday card, like she did every year while he was behind bars, but she’ll have to sign Da’s name for him.

“Is he around the house much?”

“He isn’t.”

“Any prospective buyers?”

“Not yet, but it’s only been on the market for two weeks. We should get an offer soon.”

Da nods slowly, a mixture of resolution and sadness in his eyes. He grew up in that house. Even after he and Ma married and they moved to Dundalk in County Louth, he spent a lot of nights there, avoiding the commute home while running the pub with Granddad and Uncle Samuel, God rest their souls. “It’s about time you and Rowen cut all ties to him. He’ll never be anything but trouble to this family. I wish Ma never put his name on the deed. The bastard doesn’t deserve any of me family’s money.”