Danny couldn’t help but be perversely fascinated by the man in the doorway. This, he wanted to say? You fucked this? He could feel the liquor sledding through his blood and he knew some better part of himself waited behind it, but now the only part he could reach was the one who’d placed his head to her chest and told her he loved her.
To which she’d replied: You love yourself.
His father said, “Mr. Finn, take a seat, sir.”
“I’ll stand, sure, Captain, if it’s all the same to ya.”
“What do you expect is going to happen here tonight?” Thomas said.
“I expect to walk back out that door with my wife in tow, I do.” He nodded.
Thomas looked at Nora. “Raise your head, girl.”
Nora opened her eyes, looked at him.
“Is it true. Is this man your husband?”
Nora’s eyes found Danny’s. What had she said in the study? I can’t abide a man feels sorry for himself. Who’s feeling sorry now?
Danny dropped his eyes.
“Nora,” his father said. “Answer the question, please. Is he your husband?”
She reached for her teacup but it tottered in her grip and she let it go.
“He was.”
Danny’s mother blessed herself.
“Jesus Christ!” Connor kicked the baseboard.
“Joe,” their father said quietly, “go to your room. And don’t dare argue, son.”
Joe opened his mouth, thought better of it, and left the dining room.
Danny realized he was shaking his head and stopped himself. This? He wanted to shout the word. You married this grim, grisly joke? And you dared talk down to me?
He took another drink as Quentin Finn took two sideways steps into the room.
“Nora,” Thomas Coughlin said, “you said was your husband. So I can assume there was an annulment, yes?”
Nora looked at Danny again. Her eyes had a shine that could have been mistaken, under different circumstances, for happiness.
Danny looked over at Quentin again, the man scratching at his beard.
“Nora,” Thomas said, “did you get an annulment? Answer me, girl.”
Nora shook her head.
Danny rattled the ice cubes in his glass. “Quentin.”
Quentin Finn looked over at him. He raised his eyebrows. “Yes, young sir?”
“How’d you find us?”
“A man has ways,” Quentin Finn said. “I’ve been searching for this lass for some time now.”
Danny nodded. “You’re a man of means then.”
“Aiden.”
Danny lolled his head to look at his father, then lolled it back to Quentin. “To track a woman across an ocean, Mr. Finn, that’s quite a feat. Quite a costly feat.”
Quentin smiled at Danny’s father. “I see the boy’s been in his cups, yah?”
Danny lit a cigarette with the candle. “Call me ‘boy’ again, Paddy, and I’ll—”
“Aiden!” his father said. “Enough.” He turned back to Nora. “Have you any defense, girl? Is he telling a lie?”
Nora said, “He is not my husband.”
“He says he is.”
“Anymore.”
Thomas leaned into the table. “They don’t grant divorces in Catholic Ireland.”
“I didn’t say I got me a divorce, sir. I just said he was my husband no longer.”
Quentin Finn laughed at that, a loud haw that tore the air in the room.
“Jesus,” Connor whispered over and over again. “Jesus.”
“Pack your things now, luv.”
Nora looked at him. There was hate in her eyes. And fear. Disgust. Disgrace.
“He bought me,” she said, “when I was thirteen. Man’s my cousin. Yeah?” She looked at each of the Coughlins. “Thirteen. The way you buy a cow.”
Thomas extended his hands across the table toward her. “A tragic state,” he said softly. “But he is your husband, Nora.”
“Fookin’ right on that, Cap’n.”
Ellen Coughlin blessed herself and placed a hand to her chest.
Thomas kept his eyes on Nora. “Mr. Finn, if you use profanity in my home again? In front of my wife, sir?” He turned his head, gave Quentin Finn a smile. “Your path home will, I promise, become far less predictable.”
Quentin Finn scratched his beard some more.
Thomas tugged Nora’s hands gently until he covered them, and then he looked over at Connor. Connor had the heels of his hands pressed to his lower eyelids. Thomas turned next to his wife, who shook her head. Thomas nodded. He looked at Danny.
Danny looked back into his father’s eyes, so clear and blue. The eyes of a child with irreproachable intelligence and irreproachable intent.
Nora whispered, “Please don’t make me leave with him.”
Connor made a noise that could have been a laugh.
“Please, sir.”
Thomas ran his palms over the backs of her hands. “But you will have to leave.”
She nodded and one tear fell from her cheekbone. “Just not now? Not with him?”
Thomas said, “All right, dear.” He turned his head. “Mr. Finn.”
“Yes, Cap’n.”
“Your rights as a husband have been noted. And respected, sir.”
“Thank ye.”
“You’ll leave now and meet me tomorrow morning at the Twelfth Precinct on East Fourth Street. We’ll properly adjudicate the issue then.”
Quentin Finn was shaking his head before Thomas had half finished. “I didn’t cross the bloody ocean to be put off, man. No. I’ll be taking me wife now, thank ye.”
“Aiden.”
Danny pushed back his chair and stood.
Quentin said, “I have rights as a husband, Cap’n. I do.”
“And those will be respected. But for tonight, I—”
“And what of her child, sir? What’s he to think of—”
“She has a kid?” Connor raised his head from his hands.
Ellen Coughlin blessed herself again. “Holy Mary Mother of Jesus.”
Thomas let go of Nora’s hands.
“Aye, she has a little nipper back at home, she does,” Quentin Finn said.
“You abandoned your own child?” Thomas said.
Danny watched her eyes dart, her shoulders hunch. She pulled her arms in tight against her body — prey, always prey, searching, plotting, tensing for the mad dash.
A child? She’d never said a word.
“He’s not mine,” she said. “He’s his.”
“You left a child behind?” Danny’s mother said. “A child?”
“Not mine,” Nora said and reached for her but Ellen Coughlin pulled her arms back into her lap. “Not mine, not mine, not mine.”
Quentin allowed himself a smile. “The lad’s lost, he is, without his mother. Lost.”
“He’s not mine,” she said to Danny. Then to Connor: “He’s not.”
“Don’t,” Connor said.
Danny’s father stood and ran his hand through his hair, scratched the back of his head, and let out a heavy sigh. “We trusted you,” he said. “With our son. With Joe. How could you have put us in that position? How could you have misled us? Our child, Nora. We trusted you with our child.”
“And I did well by him,” Nora said, finding something in herself that Danny had seen in fighters, usually the smaller ones, in the late rounds of a bout, something that went far deeper than size and physical strength. “I did well by him and well by you, sir, and well by your family.”
Thomas looked at her, then at Quentin Finn, then back at her, and finally at Connor. “You were going to marry my son. You would have embarrassed us. Besmirched my name? This name of this house that gave you shelter, gave you food, treated you like family? How dare you, woman? How dare you?”