Before he could explain, she said, “Your brother’s asked me to marry him.”
His heart stopped. His lungs. His brain. The circumnavigation of his blood.
“And?” The word came out as if strangled by vines.
“I told him I’m thinking about it,” she said.
“Nora.” He reached for her arm but she stepped away.
“Your father’s in the study.”
She walked away down the hall, and Danny knew, yet again, that he’d failed her. He was supposed to have responded differently. Faster? Slower? Less predictably? What? If he’d dropped to his knees and made his own proposal, would she have done anything but run? Yet he felt he was supposed to have made some kind of grand gesture, if only so she could have turned it down. And that would have somehow balanced the scales.
The door to his father’s study opened as he stood there. “Aiden.”
“Danny,” he corrected him through gritted teeth.
In his father’s study, the snow falling through the black beyond the windows, Danny sat in one of the leather armchairs that faced the desk. His father had a fire going and it reflected off the hearth and gave the room a glow the color of whiskey.
Thomas Coughlin still wore his uniform, the tunic open at the neck, his captain’s bars sitting atop the blue shoulders while Danny wore street clothes and felt those bars smirking at him. His father handed him a scotch and sat on the corner of the desk.
His blue eyes cut through his glass as he drained it. He poured a refill from the decanter. He rolled the glass back and forth between his palms and considered his son.
“Eddie tells me you went native.”
Danny caught himself rolling his own glass between his palms and dropped his left hand to his thigh. “Eddie over-dramatizes.”
“Really? Because I’ve been given cause to wonder lately, Aiden, if these Bolshies didn’t rub off on you.” His father gave the room a soft smile and sipped his drink. “Mark Denton is a Bolshevik, you know. Half the BSC members are.”
“Gosh, Dad, they just seem like cops to me.”
“They’re Bolsheviks. Talking of a strike, Aiden? A strike?”
“No one’s said that word in my presence, sir.”
“There’s a principle to be honored here, boy. Can you appreciate that?”
“And which one is that, sir?”
“Public safety above all other ideals for men who hold the badge.”
“Putting food on the table, sir, that’s another ideal.”
His father waved at the sentence like it was smoke. “Did you see the paper today? They’re rioting in Montreal, trying to burn the city wholesale right to the ground. And there’s no police to protect the property or the people and there’s no firemen to put out the fires because they’re all out on strike. It might as well be St. Petersburg.”
“Maybe it’s just Montreal,” Danny said. “Maybe it’s just Boston.”
“We’re not employees, Aiden. We’re civil servants. We protect and we serve.”
Danny allowed himself a smile. It was rare he could watch the old man get worked up needlessly and be the one holding the key to his release. He stubbed out his cigarette and a chuckle escaped his lips.
“You laugh?”
He held up a hand. “Dad, Dad. It’s not going to be Montreal. Really.”
His father’s eyes narrowed and he shifted on the edge of the desk. “How so?”
“You heard what, exactly?”
His father reached into his humidor and removed a cigar. “You confronted Stephen O’Meara. My son. A Coughlin. Speaking out of turn. Now you’re going from station house to station house, collecting affidavits regarding substandard working conditions? You’re recruiting for your purported ‘union’ on city time?”
“He thanked me.”
His father paused, the cigar cutter wrapped around the base of the cigar. “Who?”
“Commissioner O’Meara. He thanked me, Dad, and he asked Mark Denton and me to get those affidavits. He seems to think we’ll resolve the situation very soon.”
“O’Meara?”
Danny nodded. His father’s strong face drained of color. He’d never seen this coming. In a million years, he couldn’t have guessed it. Danny chewed on the inside of his mouth to keep a smile from breaking wide across his face.
Got you, he wanted to say. Twenty-seven years on this planet and I finally got you.
His father surprised him even further when he came off the desk and held out his hand. Danny stood and took it and his father’s grip was strong and he pulled Danny to him and clapped him once on the back.
“God, you made us proud, then, son. Damn proud.” He let go of his hand and clapped his shoulders and then sat back on the desk. “Damn proud,” his father repeated with a sigh. “I’m just relieved it’s all over, this whole mess.”
Danny sat down. “Me, too, sir.”
His father fingered the blotter on his desktop and Danny watched the strength and guile return to his face like a second layer of skin. A new order of business in the offing. His father already beginning to circle.
“How do you feel about Nora and Connor’s impending nuptials?”
Danny held his father’s gaze and kept his voice steady. “Fine, sir. Just fine. They’re a handsome couple.”
“They are, they are,” his father said. “I can’t tell you what a trial it’s been for your mother and me to keep him from sneaking up to her room at night. Like children, they are.” He walked around to the back of the desk and looked out at the snow. Danny could see both their faces reflected in the window. His father noticed it, too, and smiled.
“You’re the spitting image of my Uncle Paudric. Have I ever told you that?”
Danny shook his head.
“Biggest man in Clonakilty,” his father said. “Oh, he could drink something fierce and he’d get a sight unreasonable when he did. A publican once refused him service? Why, Paudric tore out the bar between them. Heavy oak, Aiden, this bar. And he just tore a piece of it out and went and poured himself another pint. A legendary man, really. Oh, and the ladies loved him. Much like you in that regard. Everyone loved Paudric when he was sober. And you? Everyone loves you, don’t they, son? Women, children, mangy Italians and mangy dogs. Nora.”
Danny put his drink on the desk. “What did you say?”
His father turned from the window. “I’m not blind, boy. You two may have told yourselves one thing, and she may very well love Con’ in a different way. And maybe it’s the better way.” His father shrugged. “But you—”
“You’re on thin fucking ice, sir.”
His father looked at him, his mouth half-open.
“Just so you know,” Danny said and could hear the tightness in his own voice.
Eventually his father nodded. It was the sage nod, that one that let you know he was acknowledging one aspect of your character while pondering flaws in another. He took Danny’s glass. He carried it to the decanter with his own and refilled them.
He handed Danny his glass. “Do you know why I allowed you to box?”
Danny said, “Because you couldn’t have stopped me.”
His father clinked his glass with his own. “Exactly. I’ve known since you were a boy that you could occasionally be prodded or smoothed, but you could never be molded. It’s anathema to you. Has been since you could walk. Do you know I love you, boy?”
Danny met his father’s eyes and nodded. He did. He always had. Strip away all the many faces and many hearts his father showed the world when it suited him, and that face and that heart were always evident.
“I love Con’, of course,” his father said. “I love all my children. But I love you differently because I love you in defeat.”