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CHAPTER 18PATRICK

Patrick closed the door behind him, took the key from his pocket, and locked it.

Sam had already sprung to his feet, and he caught the key when Patrick threw it to him.

Patrick needed badly to find a drink.

“Don’t let anyone pass you by, Sam,” he said in a far-off voice.

“Yessir.”

“Good man.”

The piano music and raised voices crept up the stairwell, muffling the sounds of a rhythmic moaning on the third floor, a drunken argument on the second. Patrick paused on the last step, pinching the bridge of his noise, forcing his racing mind to shut up.

Then he cursed lowly, pulled his collar higher and pushed the door open.

The volume swallowed him. Clarence was belting the piano keys to the poor accompaniment of “Ol’ Digger Come,” sung by a small crowd with closed eyes, arms banded about one another’s shoulders. The pastor sat in the corner, puce-faced as he arm wrestled a boy half his age. Beneath a framed portrait of Patrick’s grandmother, two women pressed into the wall, mouths and hands and hips joined.

A drum beat incessantly behind Patrick’s right eye.

“Pat!” trilled Marie-Laure. She wore a blouse pulled low over her breasts with the first button undone. “Join us!” Her teeth were wine-tinged. It made her look cannibalistic. The man whose lap she sat upon had turned at the sound of Patrick’s name and grinned drunkenly in his direction. “Brother!” Donny shouted, almost dislodging Marie-Laure. “You’re back already? Weren’t so hard to get her here then, eh?”

Patrick’s little brother felt around the stained table for his drink, almost knocking over several others in the process.

“Lord, kill me,” Patrick groaned, then took the glass of whiskey before Donny could reach it, swallowing the remnants. For a brief moment, he shut his eyes in pleasure, then turned to Marie-Laure. “Excuse us, darlin’.”

She pouted and demurred but stood all the same. She made sure to touch a discreet finger to Patrick’s belt as she passed. An invitation.

When she had melted into the crowd, Patrick grabbed Donny’s coat from the floor and threw it to him. “Get up,” he said. “We’ve got business.”

Donny groaned, then slumped onto the tabletop. “Please, Patty. Not tonight.”

“Get up,” Patrick told him once more, and started for the exit.

Patrick made it three paces before he was stopped. This time, a different woman blocked his way. She wore an apron and carried several empty pints, a furious expression souring her fair looks.

She glared up at Patrick with eyes he’d inherited, though hers were harder, more cutting. Deep lines sprouted from their corners.

“Ma,” Patrick greeted her, resisting the urge to scrub a hand over his face.Let this fuckin’ night end.

Tess Colson had a stare that could gouge out a man’s insides. If someone cut Patrick and his brothers open, they’d find empty husks.

“Where’ve you come from?” she asked shrewdly. Her voice reminded him of cracked leather, the heavy Northern accent born from her marrow.

“Runnin’ errands,” Patrick answered, smiling in a way he hoped was genial. “I’ll say goodnight, then—”

“Who was that wringin’ wet girl you brought back with you?” She eyed the door to the stairwell. “Never seen her before.”

“Just a guest,” he said bluntly. “Sam’s lookin’ in on her.”

Her jaw ticked. “Another?” She was not fooled by the evasion. “You plannin’ to fill up the entire buildin’ with Artisans, Patrick?”

“If I see fit.” He suppressed harsher words. “Tell the cook to send up somethin’ for her, would you?”

Tess Colson shook her head in resigned reproach. “Who is she?”

Patrick didn’t answer the question. He often found he didn’t need to where his mother was concerned. Tess Colson had the ability to weigh her sons’ breaths and read the morphing valleys of their expressions.