Page 77 of Irish Vice

“Go on then,” Fairfax repeats. “Start your drawing. I’ll be upstairs in just a mo.”

Aiofe finally leaves.

Birte’s been shouting the entire time. She’s finished her Our Father and two Hail Marys; she’s halfway through the third.

Fairfax closes his hands over hers, so they’re both clasping the onyx rosary beads. He keeps his own voice low and steady as he joins her: “Pray for us sinners…”

And like a feckin’ miracle, Birte lowers her volume to match his. “Glory be to the father,” she starts.

Fairfax calls over his shoulder, into the kitchen. “Grace? Can you help us out a bit?”

Grace Poole slouches into the dining room. Her eyes are bloodshot, and I don’t know when her hair last saw a comb. But she takes Birte’s hands between her own and starts crooning in Irish. I don’t catch the words, but the tone is a mother settling a child after a bout of bad dreams.

Fairfax says to Grace, “Why don’t you take her upstairs? A kip and a bath and she’ll be right as rain.”

Grace nods over Birte’s head before helping her from her chair. As they disappear upstairs a silence falls over the entire house.

“This isn’t working,” I finally say.

Fairfax’s face is bare of any emotion. It occurs to me that this is how he managesme, much as he’s managed Aiofe and Birte into calm. The thought pricks along the back of my neck. I’m better than this. I have been. I can be.

“Birte’s not strong enough to join us down here,” I say. “See to it that she’s kept comfortable on the third floor.”

“Sir,” Fairfax says.

That means he disagrees with me. And I know Samantha would disagree too. She’d say the answer isn’t locking Birte up. The answer is a doctor, same as she’s been insisting for weeks.

But Samantha left. She doesn’t get a vote in how I run my house.

“Do you have something you want to say?” I challenge Fairfax.

“No, sir,” he says. His formality tells me he’s thinking volumes.

“Then get back in the kitchen.” Because I don’t want to hear it, not one word.

“Sir,” he says. His back is stiff as he leaves.

I almost call him back. But if I apologize to Fairfax, that’ll just open doors to all the other words I owe. And I’m not saying them to anyone, not when I’m right, not when I meant every feckin’ syllable.

By reflex, though, I take my phone from my pocket. My finger hovers over Samantha’s name.

No. I’m not calling her. Not when she’ll eat my head off about Birte. When she’s the one who lit Ingram’s fuse. When she broke the feckin’ pool house door, despite Fairfax’s snide conclusions.

I slam my finger down on the icon, blocking Samantha Kelly on my phone forever.

For the second day in a row, I storm out of my own dining room. And this time, when I head to the garage, it takes all my concentration not to see the gaping hole where the Mercedes used to sit.

I order Seamus and Patrick to meet me in Fishtown. We look at three properties, and I choose the one I like best. Seamus makes the necessary calls, finding the owner, making a bid, doubling it to drown out any conflict.

I call my chief foreman at Kelly Construction and order him to meet us on the site within the hour. When he arrives, I tell him I want the ugly mid-century building leveled. I long to see something broken. Ruined. Destroyed.

I give him four months to build a new Hare and Harp. When he protests that he needs more time, I tell him to get the job done, or I’ll find someone who can. Seamus and Patrick stay behind when I stalk back to my Jaguar.

I don’t care if every man who works for me sneers behind my back. I just want the Hare back. I want a place I can work, away from Thornfield, away from Aiofe and Birte and yes, away from memories of Samantha.

I want to turn back time. And failing that, I want to forget the past four months and go back to when being Captain of the Fishtown Boys was all I ever needed to be happy.

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