Cornered

Chapter 3-3

THE WINDOWS OF THE cafe we ended up in reached low enough for me to see my bike, where I’d parked it on the pavement outside. My position also gave me a direct view of the entrance, a clear shot toward the counter, a scope of about eighty percent of the other tables. Not to mention the female sitting across from me, as she fiddled with her tea mug and did a whole lot of staring.

On the opposite side of the street outside, around forty yards away, I could just about make out the pack moving about behind the erected railings that helped keep our work site secure. The phone call I’d made to Josh should’ve hopefully kept them off my back some, for when I showed up late—though he’d been grumpy as hell that I’d chosen him to break the news for me.

“How have you been?” Aunt Maghon asked after the pause had stretched.

“How do I look?” Instantly regretting my tone, the way it made her eyes crease, I sighed. “I’m doing okay.” Wasn’t like I’d break down and tell her all my woes, anyway. That kind of trust had to be earned.

She lowered her gaze before asking, “And your dad?”

“If you wanted to know that, you could have asked him directly, any time over the past twelve years.”

“Don’t judge me, Danny Boy, when you don’t know the whole story.” That time, her tone held bite that made me pay attention as a memory sparked. Of how she only ever used to use her full nickname for me in admonishment—or to calm me down.

Tapping a fingernail against the ceramic of my mug, I slouched back against the booth seat, glancing over as a young female rounded the counter.

A pink apron covered her entire front, down to her knees, over jeans and trainers, a short sleeved T. The platter plate she carried, piled high with sustenance my body badly needed, meant I knew to expect her before she even drew alongside our table.

“Mega breakfast for one?” At my nod, she set it down in front of me, along with cutlery wrapped in a disposable napkin, her strawberry blonde ponytail almost dipping in my beans as she twisted toward Maghon. “Sure we can’t get you anything?”

“Thanks, but I already ate.”

More than I’d done. Thanks to lack of sleep, once I’d locked myself in my room, I’d crashed back into the land of nod. When Dad’d banged on my door to see what I was doing, I’d had only twenty minutes to spare. Not wanting to play happy families around the table while Brook snuggled onto Kyle’s lap like they hadn’t just spent the entire night together—the entire week, month, last four months—I’d grabbed my stuff and left. So my stomach could be forgiven for growling at the sight of food.

The waitress unblocked my view, and Aunt Maghon stared at my plate. “You still believe you can eat all of that?”

Nodding, I picked up my knife and fork. “Watch me.”

“Must have one heck of an appetite.”

A laugh came out on my exhale. “You have no idea.”

“Are you going to answer my question now?” she asked, as I bit a chunk from the whole sausage I skewered with my fork.

I watched her as I chewed. Spotted the stubborn set of her jaw—a trait of hers I vaguely remembered. A trait she’d shared with Mum. “He’s doing okay,” I said once I’d finished chewing.

“Did he ...” Trailing off, she took a sip of her drink, her gaze on mine as she set her mug back down. “Did he ever move on?”

She asked like too much hung on the balance of my answer. And what did she even mean, anyway? Move on with his life? Move onto another female? As if. “He’s doing okay,” I said again. Anything other than that, she could ask him herself if she wanted to know so badly.

She must have taken the hint, because she changed course with, “I’m sorry, okay?”

I lowered the forkful of black pudding I’d been about to shovel in.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call all these years,” she added.

“Why didn’t you?”

“It’s a lot to understand.”

I frowned. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

“I know. It’s just—” She sighed. “I blamed your dad ... for taking her from me.”

That much I already knew. “He didn’t kill her,” I said, in his defence.

“I know, I know,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not just that, though. I mean ... for taking her from me in general. At all.”

I set my cutlery down and leaned forward on my elbows. “I don’t understand.” I realised the words only drove home her point about it all but didn’t care.

She turned away, stared out toward the window. “We were inseparable. Until your dad came along.”

I shrugged. “That’s life, Aunt Maghon. You meet someone and fall in love—your priorities shift.” My brain instantly bounced to Kyle and Brook, but I shunted the thoughts away fast and hard.

“You don’t get it,” she said. “I wouldn’t expect you to. But we did everything together. Neither of us had barely a friend of our own. We didn’t need anybody else.”

Kind of like the pack, popped into my head. “What about Beth?” I asked, knowing Nate’s wife and Mum had been best friends at school, even before dating Dad and Nate.

She smiled, the expression seeming to hold as much sadness as fondness. “Beth was different. She simply became an extension of us—like a third sister. For a while, anyway.”

Probably until Beth met Nate and found other interests, too.

A part of me wondered if some of the blame she sought to place had landed on Mum’s best friend as well as Dad. To listen to tales of their younger days, it sounded as if Beth and Nate had helped my parents get together. Or maybe Maghon didn’t know that part of the tale.

“Then Nadine met Connor,” she continued, “and she started staying out late. Going places I wasn’t invited—skipping lessons in school, too. She grew more and more secretive and closed off. Danny, your mother stopped talking to me almost from the moment she got with your father. She used to tell me everything, and all of a sudden she wouldn’t tell me a thing. Not even Beth would let me in on what was going on. Tell me ...” Her brows bunched in the middle before releasing. “How would that look to you?”

Bad, I wanted to say—but I didn’t. Because it could look as bad as it liked to anyone not in the pack, but I knew our side—Dad’s side. The true side. That Dad loved Mum. He went to the ends of the earth to make her happy. If Mum ceased needing anything—or anyone—outside of what she had, it would have been because she already had everything she needed right there.

Besides, it hadn’t been like she’d cut off all communications. “She still visited you,” I said at the memory. At least once a month, Mum’d taken us to Aunt Maghon’s. They’d spent the time chatting in the kitchen, and we’d gotten sent out into the garden to play with our younger cousin Clem. “She never gave you up,” I added.

A gloss of moisture coated her eyes, making their hazel tones look polished. “Yeah,” she said, her voice thick. “I see that now.” Sliding her handbag onto her lap from the bench seat beside her, she rummaged in there. She produced a tissue and waved it toward my plate. “Your food’s getting cold. You said you were hungry.”

Averting my gaze, I grabbed my fork and scooped up some scrambled egg. “So, how’s Clem, Uncle Bill?”

She sniffed hard. “Clem got married last year. She works for the council over in Leicester. She’s doing well—I’m just waiting on her bringing me some grandbabies to love on now.” She gave a watery smile and wiped the tissue beneath her nose. “And your uncle—well ... he turned out not to be the right man for me.”

My frown moved back in. “You separated?”

“Divorced.” She tucked her tissue back into her bag. “It’s okay. I moved on from that about six years ago.”

Not quite sure what to say to that, and not wanting to delve, I folded over a bacon rasher, coated it in tomato, and stuck it in my mouth.

As if the turn in conversation had stemmed her own flow, Maghon sat quietly, intermittently glancing at me but mostly toward the window. Or maybe she just wanted me to finish eating without interruption.

Around us, other patrons chatted, ate, drank tea or coffee, came and went. Each time someone entered or exited, a tiny tinkle sounded out above the door.

When it chimed for the fourth time, I caught the scent of the new arrival before I lifted my gaze to see the hulk of muscle twisting his way around the tables.

Pushing up from my seat, I almost dived into the aisle, talking a few strides in time to intercept him before he could reach our spot.

“Dad—”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Danny?” he asked, keeping his voice low. “You think this is funny?” He thrust a finger toward the window. “If you’re going to shun your responsibilities to your family, you could at least have the decency to not do it right under my nose.”

I looked toward where he pointed. My bike. Explaining how he’d known I was there. “It’s not like that, Dad,” I said, turning back to him.

“So, you’re hiding out when you should be working like the rest of us, just so you can schmooze some female you’ve me—”

“It’s not his fault, Connor,” Aunt Maghon said from behind me. “It’s mine.”

Mouth still poised for speech, Dad stared at a spot just to the left of my shoulder, and I watched as his expression altered, from shock, to hurt, to a darkness he rarely showed.

Without saying another word, he spun away.

My, “Dad, wait,” clashed with Maghon’s, “Connor, please don’t go,” and he halted.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t walk straight out that door right now,” he said over his shoulder, not looking at either of us.

“Because I’m pleading with you not to,” Maghon said. “And because I think it’s about time we talked.”

The clenching of his jaw sharpened his profile, as did the high tension along his shoulders, sending his frame into a rigid display of angles. He stood like that for seconds before his quiet, “Danny, get yourself to work,” rumbled out.

Stepping back, I grabbed my stuff, sliding my arm through my helmet, but as I squeezed past Dad, he gripped my arm and pulled me close.

“Don’t tell your brothers who you’ve been with this morning. Do you understand me?” His green eyes held only a serious concern, none of the anger his voice had portrayed when he’d first found me there, and I nodded. “I need to assess what she’s about, after all this time.”

“And Nate?”

“Tell him I’ll be a while and will explain when I get there.” His pat to my shoulder acted as dismissal, and I strode for the door, ignoring the stares our exchange had provoked.

The tinkle sounded out on my exit into the blustery wind, and as I rounded the cafe front, toward my bike, Dad came back into view through the window.

Closing his eyes for a moment, he rubbed a hand across his face, before spinning toward the table and taking my emptied seat.

As I reached my wheels, I just caught his words through the glazing.

“Okay, May, let’s talk.”