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CONOR
A THOUSAND YEARS - CHRISTINA PERRI
“So, Star, what is it that you actually do?”
Pausing as I spooned potatoes onto my dish, I flicked a look between my mother and my partner.
Star, in the process of loading her plate with broccoli, didn’t skip a beat as she answered, “I’m like Conor. A little bit of this, a lot of that.”
“You work on computers, then?”
“You could say that, yes,” she replied politely, handing the dish to Brennan who was seated beside her.
“Ma,” I said, a warning in my tone once I saw her fold her hands together and place them beneath her chin.
“What? I’m entitled to ask, aren’t I? It’s not as if you’ve ever brought a girlfriend home before.”
“You’re supposed to be eating,” I countered.
“I’m not stopping you from eating yours now, am I?” she grumbled.
“No, but I don’t feel like listening to you grilling my girlfriend over roasted chicken.”
“Hardly your girlfriend. Did you think I wouldn’t see the cameo?”
“What cameo?” Aela inquired.
“You got the cameo?” Eoghan asked, surprised.
“Da left it to me in his will.”
Brennan’s brows lifted. “You always were his favorite.”
“Your father didn’t have favorites.”
Aidan, sitting in Da’s place, hooted. “Since when?”
She scowled at him. “It’s disrespectful to talk ill of the dead.”
“Why? Not like they care,” Star reasoned. “Plus, your husband wasn’t perfect, Mrs. O’Donnelly. You, more than anyone, should know that.”
Though she’d been given leave to call her ‘Lena,’ I knew it was a strategic move that she didn’t use Ma’s first name.
A silence fell among the family, but no one stood up to defend Da. What would be the point? Defending him would mean lying and he’d been the one who taught us that lying was a cardinal sin.
The logic was beyond satisfying.
“No one’s perfect,” Ma drawled. “My husband never claimed to be. And while you’re under my roof, I’ll kindly ask you to refrain from speaking badly about him.”
Star hitched a shoulder as she asked, “Could you pass me the gravy please, Brennan?”
Bren complied, and the cabochon emerald seemed to gleam in the light of the dining room, brighter than ever. Enough that I knew almost everyone was looking at it apart from Star.
“You’re wearing hundreds of years of history,” Ma informed her coolly. “I wonder if you know that.”
“Conor told me it was stolen from a noble.”
Ma smiled but it was Paddy who explained, “Quite literally. Back in the old country, the Donnghals were Robin Hoods of what’s now County Kilkenny.” He raised his wine glass to his lips and took a deep sip. “That comes from the hand of some English noblewoman that our ancestors held up on the road to Dublin.”
Star grinned. “So I’m wearing stolen loot? Why does that make it a hundred times better?”
“Because you’re weird,” I told her with a wink.
"So, the cameo isn't an O'Donnelly?"
"Nope. One of our victims," I mocked.
“Aidan made our family as rich as it is, but we always had good jewels from those days. It’s how our great-grandfather started the property empire. He sold them off as collateral for loans until we started being able to pay them in… other ways.”
“What you’re saying is you’ve always been crooks?”
Aidan agreed with a chuckle, “I think that’s what Paddy’s saying, Star.”
“The question is whether you’re okay with that,” Brennan rumbled, his voice deep with suspicion. “Seeing as you were an alphabet.”
“I am an alphabet,” Eoghan retorted, stabbing his fork into a piece of chicken with more force than was necessary for a breast as succulent as what Ma roasted. “You got a problem with my loyalties, deartháir ?”
Brennan narrowed his eyes. “That’s different.”
“Is it?”
As Eoghan and Brennan engaged in a battle of wills, Ma murmured, “Which agency were you with, dear?”
I grimaced at the term of endearment but Star merely replied, “I was with the CIA. Recruited from the Army and sold into slavery by the same alphabet agency, so you can rest assured that I owe them no loyalties.”
Ma’s mouth gaped a little, but it was Brennan who cut her a look. “This could be a double-blind.”
“Would you like to see my scars, Brennan?” Star quipped, and warily, I studied the fork in her hand.
“Brennan,” I warned, but it was too late.
The fork was there, buried in the antique mahogany between Brennan’s pointer and middle finger. The metal quivered in place from the kinetic energy thrumming through it.
Eoghan chuckled. “You deserved that.”
Victoria croaked, “Did you miss on purpose?”
“Star rarely does things without purpose,” I informed her with a smile that I hoped was soothing.
“Is that supposed to reassure me that you’re trustworthy?” Brennan drawled, moving his fingers out of the way of the makeshift weapon.
“It is actually. You should see what she did to her grandfather.”
Ma released a shocked gasp that morphed into a bark of laughter. She slapped a hand to her mouth to cover it up, but it was too late for that—I’d already seen and heard it.
“You did that to your grandfather?”
Inessa’s question was drowned out by Savannah’s, “Who the fuck is your grandfather and why have I never met him?”
Somehow, that set the tone for the rest of the meal.
Brennan, less suspicious than before but still wary, had even laughed a few times at Savannah and Star’s bickering.
Later, when we were leaving—everyone apart from Paddy, of course—Ma grabbed my hand. “I like her.”
“I could tell.”
“Did she stab her grandfather?”
“She did.”
“Did he deserve it?”
I pulled a face because the jury was still out in my mind. “Star thought so.”
“She’s strong, son. Very strong. That’s a weakness in itself sometimes.”
Curious at her insight, I pressed a kiss to her cheek. “We’re working on it.”
“Your father didn’t rely on me until it was too late and our paths were set, Conor. Even then, he didn’t trust me with his illness, didn’t trust me with his plans. Start as you mean to go on or it’ll taint what you build together.” She swallowed. “I think your grandmother would approve that she’s the one wearing her cameo. Maybe she knew, right from the beginning, that I wasn’t good enough for it.”
My brow furrowed at that. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“And I’m sure it is,” she quipped. “You go on now. Declan let it slip earlier that you’re traveling to England?”
“I am. Tomorrow. For a funeral.”
She sighed. “I’m so tired of death.”
“You should go on that cruise you were talking about at Thanksgiving.”
“Maybe I will.” She angled her head to the side. “What did Paddy want to talk to you about?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“I’m sure.”
“Liam, his son?—”
“I know who he is, Conor,” she clucked.
“Someone’s blackmailing him to throw a match.”
She blinked. “Funny how your father never got into that racket. I never understood why he didn’t. I used to watch my brothers gambling on the horses and thought it was a fool’s game.”
“We have bookies,” I countered.
Ma hitched a shoulder. “Shay’s been talking to me about his plans for the future.”
I leaned against the door and folded my arms across my chest, well aware that Savannah and Star were arguing in the driveway about TikTok so were occupied for the moment. “He’s still having nightmares?”
“Of course he is. It helps, him talking to me. Aela might not like it, but I failed as a mother and I won’t as a grandmother.”
“You didn’t fail us,” I rasped uneasily.
“I did. I let Aidan whip you into shape because that was all I knew. That was what my da did, what my grandfather did. But I should have been the instrument of change. I should—” She swallowed. “Less of that. The past is done. I can’t change what I did but I can make sure I’m better with the next generation.
"As for Shay, he’s told me his father’s been speaking to him about his grades, making noise about him applying for Harvard?”
I shrugged. “So?”
“So… you think I’m deaf to what Seamus has been spouting? About wanting to be a politician?”
“Where are you going with this, Ma?”
She shrugged but patted my chest. “Food and sports—no truer way to get to an American’s heart.”
My brow puckered as she leaned up and I automatically ducked down to let her kiss my cheek.
“Just something to think about, son. You drive safely back to the city, hmm?”
Still frowning, I stated, “I’ll look into getting you that apartment when I’m back from the UK. Okay?”
“Sounds good to me.”
As she drifted away to the kitchen, something about her seemed so frail, so alone that it hit me on the raw. Then, Paddy appeared. He said something I didn’t catch and it made her chuckle, and she seemed a touch less alone. A little less sad.
After decades of marriage to my father, I figured that was the least she deserved.
Even if my brothers didn't.
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