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It felt as though the city’s spirits had put on widow’s weeds that Christmas. Kids’ heads were still filled with thoughts of presents and candy and visits from St. Nick. For adults, though, choirs and mistletoe and bright shop windows couldn’t crowd out the reality and uncertainty of a country at war.
After three days in the hospital, Gil Tremain went home with the Collingswoods to recover. When I visited a week before Christmas, Lucille was wearing a fine new diamond engagement ring.
Frank Scott had gotten the lump of coal he deserved in his stocking. He’d be spending the holiday behind bars, and based on mounting evidence against him, a good many to come.
On Christmas Eve, Seamus and I went to Mass. I hadn’t been since my dad died. It didn’t make me any friendlier toward God, but it soothed somehow. It was familiar. In the glow of the candles I sat looking at faces I knew. How many of them would be here next year, and the year after that?
Tabby Warren invited Seamus and me to a bash at her place on New Year’s Eve, but we both chose the one at Finn’s instead. Even there, the laughter rang hollow, at least to my ears. Sometime before midnight I slipped away and went to my office. Leaving the lights off, I went to the window and stood looking out at the city. I thought of all the people, good and bad, moving through it, and wondered as I sometimes did, whether what I did made a difference.
Behind me the door opened softly. I didn’t turn. I sensed who it was.
“Thought I might find you here,” said Connelly’s voice. “Party too much for you?”
“Something like that. I didn’t want to be a wet blanket.”
He settled beside me. “It’s been a rough few weeks all right.”
“Glad you had tonight off.”
“Me too, even though it means going in bright and early. Okay if I twirl a strand of your hair?”
“No.”
He did it anyway, chuckling. I pressed my cheek to the teasing finger.
Outside it had started to snow. Just a few flakes.
“Everything’s going to change, isn’t it?” My breath made a cloud on the window. “Because of the war.”
“Yeah.” His arm slid around my waist and I settled into it. “Everything except there’s still good people around to get us through it. And us. We won’t change, Maggie mavouneen.”
The words traveled not through the air, but from his ribs to mine. Adam and Eve. We stood in darkness, watching the snow fall.