Page 52 of Irish Vice
On Tuesday, Liam drives me to an office tower in downtown Philadelphia. I meet Teddy Newland, the criminal attorney Sonja recommended to assist me with the police inquiry into That Night. Teddy looks like somebody’s absent-minded grandfather—he has a fringe of gray hair and glasses that slip down his nose, and there’s a stain on his Harvard tie.
Looks are deceiving. He grills me like he’s paid by the Spanish Inquisition, going over every detail of That Night once, twice, three times, four. Only after he’s convinced my story won’t change does he call Detective Tarrant to schedule a meeting for Friday.
On Wednesday, I take online meetings at home from ten in the morning till six at night, trying desperately to catch up with my work for the freeport.
On Thursday, I meet Alix and Trap in New York, delivering a new-client orientation for a reclusive billionaire who hasn’t left her Upper East Side condo in twenty-seven years, not even to see museum exhibits of the German Expressionist paintings she collects.
On Friday, the first episode of Mousetrap airs.
I told Sonja I didn’t want to listen to the podcast. She said I didn’t have a fucking choice—the details will become the basis for yet more questions from the ethics board, from Detective Tarrant, from the world at large.
So I listen to it, every word. I learn more about my father’s career as one of Antonio Russo’s lieutenants than I ever cared to know. I begin to understand why Zia Sara and Zio Matteo were always so cold to me, how they had to answer to Russo for taking in the daughter of an executed traitor. The nun who taught me catechism says I fell asleep in class. Former teachers—at least the ones featured in the recording—remember me as lazy, shifty, untrustworthy.
The podcasters are experts at foreshadowing. They bring mycousins Elisabetta and Giorgia and Gianni to life. They make a long-forgotten parking ticket sound like proof that I was a reckless driver from the instant I got my license.
And the podcast finds its audience.
By Friday night, a group of protesters sets up camp outside Thornfield’s gates. The group of podcast fanatics holds up signs:Pay the Price.Justice for GiorgiaandGianni. A Murderer Lives Here. Shame, Shame, Shame!
The reinvigorated paparazzi have a field day. They conduct interviews and they film protests, gaining valuable footage even when I don’t set foot outside the gate.
Birte seems oblivious to the changes outside her home. But Aiofe glances at the windows often, and more than once I catch a worried frown creasing her forehead. Braiden swears and calls a local official on his payroll. Sadly, every time the crowds are dispersed they return within an hour.
Fiona has a field day.
She comes to dinner late three nights in a row, shrugging and saying she couldn’t get her Cooper Mini through the throng. She laughs when she finds an online article with the headlineKnown Mobster’s Daughter Holing Up at Murder Mansion.
She offers to address the press on my behalf: “I’ll be your surrogate,” she says, all the while eyeing Braiden. When I clench my fist around my wedding band and coldly refuse, she laughs.
Braiden puts me in my collar on Tuesday, and on Thursday, and again on Friday night. He measures out my punishment with a fierce determination. He leaves me aching and breathless, a soaked cloth wrung out so thoroughly that each individual fiber threatens to fray. He comes as hard as I do, calling me hispiscín, insisting I’m hischailín maith.
And every night, I go back to the pool house, where my angry, frustrated tears can leak silently into my pillow.
After a week of hell, another Sunday morning dawns cool, like the middle of April should. The sky is a piercing blue, without a cloud in sight. House rules be damned, I have stacksof work to do for the freeport, and I’m hoping my piles of correspondence will distract me from all the things I can’t control. I’ve just pulled on yoga pants and an ancient cashmere pullover when I’m startled by a sharp knock at the pool house door.
I open it to discover a yellow chick and a snow-white rabbit. Or, rather, to find Aiofe and Birte, with brightly colored Easter masks strapped to their heads and wicker baskets gripped in their hands. Grace Poole stands behind them, holding a third mask—a curly haired lamb—along with a headband sporting bunny ears.
“Ya’ve got a choice,” she says. “Lamb or rabbit.”
I smile, even though it sounds like she’s reading from a menu. “Sorry, ladies,” I say. “I have work to do.”
Aiofe shakes her bright yellow mask so vigorously her hair billows around the elastic strap. With her free hand, she points to Grace’s hands and then to me. Someone has to complete the happy foursome.
I make my words gentle. “I wish I could, Aiofe. But I have to finish my assignment. Same as when you do schoolwork for Mr. Bell.”
But Aiofe just digs in her wicker basket until she produces an Easter egg decorating kit. I haven’t used one since I was her age. Maybe younger.
“Colored eggs,” Birte says suddenly, like she’s just awakened from a restful nap. “Move your legs. Aiofe begs.”
Taking her cue from her aunt, Aiofe clasps her hands in front of her heart. She turns her masked face up to me as if I’m the sun, the moon, and the stars in her little world.
The freeport work can wait until tomorrow.
“Okay,” I say. “Easter eggs it is. I’ll be the bunny.”
Birte claps. Aiofe lets out a high-pitched squeal of excitement, the first sound I’ve ever heard her make. Grace hands me the bunny-ear headband and leads the way to the kitchen in the main house.
Aiofe turns out to be a vicious little general. Fairfax has left us three dozen eggs, already hard boiled. Even without words, Aiofe makes it perfectly clear that we’re supposed to start with solid colors, then we’ll do a batch that are part one color and part another.