Chasing River (Burying Water #3)(6)
“Best you call in sick. I don’t see you being in any shape to work today.” He sets a bottle of cheap whiskey on the table. “I’m out of the good stuff.”
No anesthetic. This is going to f*cking hurt.
While Eamon heads to the kitchen, I pull out my phone to text Rowen.
I can’t cover the bar today. It’s because of Aengus . . .
I can’t really explain any of this over the phone, but that should be enough for my little brother to understand that this is serious. Still, he’s going to curse me. When he enrolled in summer classes, I promised that I’d cover the bar on Wednesdays and Thursdays for him.
Maybe he can get one of our part-time bartenders in.
I crack the lid on the bottle of whiskey and take a long swig, the liquor burning inside my stomach as I prepare myself mentally, relieved that I could come to Eamon today. Walking into a hospital with shrapnel wounds on the day of a bombing wouldn’t have been wise.
Within a few minutes I hear the whistle of his kettle singing. He returns with a bowl of steaming water, fresh rags, and a handful of surgical instruments swirling in a tall glass container filled with what I assume is antiseptic. Thick-lensed glasses rest on his nose now, and he’s exchanged his morning robe for a coat that I’m sure was once pristinely white, but has seen its share of blood that no amount of bleach can completely erase.
“On your stomach,” he instructs, patting the lacquered surface with one hand, while his other fusses with a desk lamp.
I take another swig and then comply, stretching out on the cool wood. It feels soothing against my bare chest.
He hands me a short wooden stick, marred by little divots. “I can’t have my neighbors calling the gardai on me,” he warns.
Fuck. I comply, biting down on it.
Eamon snaps a glove over his wrist.
I exhale slowly, watching the tendrils of smoke curl their way out the window and vanish into the night sky. The pack I opened earlier today lies empty on the table and I haven’t taken a single puff, content to let the tobacco burn and the red embers glow and then fade into ash while I relish the calm before the coming storm.
Listening for the telltale jangle of keys at the door. Aengus didn’t even come home last night, which was probably the first smart move he’s made in all this, because I would have taken the agony from my day out on his jaw.
And he’d deserve it.
The front door to our house creaks open. Measured footfalls make their way down the hall, his boot scraping the worn wood floor on every fourth step.
“River . . . ya here?” Aengus’s deep voice cuts through the peace. Though we grew up in the same household, in the same city, people have said his accent is thicker, the way Rowen and I speak more refined.
I could answer but I don’t, don’t get up to greet him. I just sit in my rickety kitchen chair, shrouded in darkness, stewing in rage. And I wonder what kind of “warning” could be worth walking four kilometers with a volatile explosive tucked under your arm. I know my brother’s not suicidal, but that . . . only an idiot would do that.
I sense him standing at the kitchen threshold now, his eyes on my shirtless back, no doubt seeing the gauze patches covering the three shrapnel wounds. They weren’t too bad, after all. Tiny slivers that cut into my skin, thin enough that Eamon was able to stitch me up. That didn’t stop me from passing out from the pain as he dug into my flesh for that last one, though.
“Thought ya quit.” A beam of light hits my face as Aengus pulls two cans of Smithwick’s out of the fridge. He drops one in front of me, not saying a word about the five empty cans lined up at the table’s edge. Normally he’d cuff me for touching his beer.
That’s how I know he feels at least some remorse.
“I did.” I take a single haul off the smoke burning between my fingers, exhale slowly, and then mash the rest of it into the heap of other butts. “Funny what almost getting blown up does to a person.”
He drags out the chair across from me and sits down, straddling it. “Ya weren’t supposed to be there.”
I finally meet eyes with my brother for the first time since the Green yesterday morning. His face is rosy from drink and covered in strawberry scruff, the jeans and shirt that he traded his disguise for rumpled. He looks like he’s been hiding at the bottom of a barrel for the past thirty-six hours.
“You made the front page.” I toss the Times at him. The Herald and the Mirror share similar headlines. In fact, I’m guessing that the bombing in St. Stephen’s Green made every front page from Cork to Belfast.
His eyes only flicker toward it. “Been in to work yet?”
I shake my head. “Rowen’s covering.” The youngest of the Delaney boys, and the one I can always count on, had to miss classes both yesterday and today to cover for me. He was mighty pissed yesterday, but after he found me belly-down in bed last night, moaning in pain, he played it off like it was no big deal. Who needs a college degree when you can watch Greta—the tall blonde from Germany that we just hired—bend over tables to hand out pints to customers, he had joked.
That’s my younger brother. Day and night from the * sitting across from me.
“Did he mention anyone stopping by there?”
Aengus doesn’t really mean just “anyone.” “Not yet. But they will.” Gardai always come sniffing around our pub when there’s trouble. It just comes with the territory of being a Delaney.