Staring into her eyes, seeing her resolve and her fear that I’d reject what she was saying, I bowed my head and ran my nose along her temple. “When did my wife get to be so wise?” I questioned.
Her hands tugged at my jacket. “When she grew up and realized her husband wasn’t a white knight, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still be her hero anyway.”
I sucked in a breath at her words and whispered, “I never tried to be your white knight.”
“You became that, but you’re not perfect, and I shouldn’t have put you on a pedestal. Things will change between us, Finn. I can’t stop that from happening.”
“I know,” I agreed sadly. “I’m sorry I broke that, baby.”
“Maybe it needed to be broken. Mom’s death, how she died, there was no closure for me. I think, for the longest time, that I’ve been nursing that open wound.
“Now, it can start to heal. I know who did it, I know why, and I know that I can’t have justice.” She tipped her chin up. “Lena sent me a voicemail. It’s her confession. I could take it into a precinct tomorrow, but I know you’re right. No matter what happens, she’ll never see the inside of a jail cell.” She swallowed. “I don’t know how…” Her mouth worked. “I need you to understand that I might not be able to go to Sunday dinner for a while.”
“I don’t expect you to,” was my immediate retort. “Baby, I didn’t expect that of you last week.”
“I was being spiteful.”
“You’re allowed to be. You’re allowed to be mad at me. You’re allowed to grieve, and you’re allowed to hurt. You’re allowed to shout at me and to sob when I’m there so I can hold you. All of those things you’re allowed to do, sweetheart. You’re just not allowed to leave me.”
Our gazes collided, and softly, gently, I lowered my head and pressed a kiss to her mouth.
It was a simple promise.
A silent vow.
“I choose you, Aoife. Always you.”
When tears appeared and began to trickle down her cheeks, I pressed my lips to those trails and kissed each one.
“I choose you, Finn,” she choked out. “Always you.”
But she didn’t have to make that vow.
I wasn’t the one who’d been betrayed.
“I’ll spend the rest of my life working toward your forgiveness, Aoife.”
A shaky sigh escaped her as she shook her head. “A fresh start, Finn. That’s what we both need.”
“Is moving apartments enough?”
She appeared to consider that but admitted after a couple seconds, “I love my sisters-in-law; I even love my brothers-in-law. I don’t want to be away from them. I don’t want Jake to be away from them either.”
“Maybe it’s time we started our own traditions?”
An interested gleam appeared in her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“How about a Saturday night dinner?”
“So they can still go to their parents’ but we won’t lose touch?”
I nodded. “What do you think?”
Hope appeared to unfurl inside her, tipping the corners of her lips into a beautiful smile. “I like the sound of that.”
Part Five
EPILOGUES
Forty-Eight
Finn
“Con? Let me up.”
A yawn sounded on the intercom. “It’s four.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Four, Finn. You know I don’t get up until six.”
I shot Padraig a look and watched him squint at his watch. “I know you don’t, but this is different. And it’s four in the afternoon, Con, not pre-dawn. Let me up.”
He yawned but I heard the buzz as the elevator drifted down to greet us in the lobby of his building.
When the doors opened, Padraig and I clambered in, and he remarked in confusion, “It’s late.”
“Not for Conor. Anyway, this is the only way I’d get you up there. He’ll be too tired to check the video feed.”
“It’s a lot more high tech than it was when I was younger,” Paddy admitted uneasily.
“Yeah, you hung around in the back of restaurants—”
“Huh, do I look like a fucking Italian? They did that shit. We went to bars, Finn. Bars.”
My lips twitched at his sudden descent into full on New Yorker. “You can take the man out of Hell’s Kitchen, but—”
“Yeah, yeah. Can’t take Hell’s Kitchen outta the man.” He hunched his shoulders in his coat. “You know him well, don’t you?”
“Con?” I frowned. “Of course.”
“It’s good to see. Frank, Aidan, and I, we were tight, but I can tell you and your brothers are closer.”
I pondered that a second and mused, “I think in your position, I’d have no fear about going to Junior.”
He grimaced. “Times were different back then. Had shit with the Haitians and the Aryans going down. This was before the wars, but shit was rough. The eighties were harder going. Lots of territory disputes. Your da made Stalin look friendly where his paranoia was concerned.”
“That sounds about right,” I said gruffly.
“Wish I’d been as tight with him as you guys are. Makes my soul pleased, ya know? Looking at the lot of yous, I know somehow, those fucked up folks of yours managed to make some decent sons.”
My brows lifted at that character assassination. “You sound… critical.”
“I am. Wasn’t at the time. But with distance and the passage of years, and then the fact I got Liam now, I saw what he did and realized it was fucked up.” He reached up and scratched his chin. “Our da was of the same school as yours. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’”
“You weren’t like that with Liam?”
“Nah. I had two choices. Knew I could be like Aidan or I could be like me.”
“And you decided to be like you?”
“I did, but I still fucked it up anyway.” He heaved a sigh. “I fuck up a lot of shit. That’s another reason why I didn’t tell Aidan. There’s only so much shit you can dig your way out of.”
The doors opened to an empty hall. With his words drifting around my head, I beckoned him out and hollered, “The fuck are you, Kid?”
“In the kitchen,” he hollered back.
Aware that Paddy followed me, I headed to the kitchen and found Kid with a mixing bowl full of cereal.
Peering into it as I approached, I asked, “Honeycomb?”
“You’re not having any.”
I scowled. “Why the fuck not?”
“You brought him.” He sniffed at Paddy. “What do you want?”
“Could you sound anymore petulant, Kid?”
“Yeah, I could if I tried.” He pointed his spoon at Paddy. “You knew I depended on you. You left me anyway.”
Paddy’s nostrils flared and his shoulders hunched again, his ears pretty much diving under the upturned collar on his coat.
Watching him turn into a tortoise, I asked, “What did you depend on him for?”