38

If he was going to go through with it, he knew he had to do it in the daylight.

The day after the funeral, Mickey drove slowly down his street, red-eyed and sweating and a little drunk. It was a little after 11 a.m. and the street was mercifully quiet, not a single reporter or cameraman to be seen. With Byrne dead and buried, the media had mercifully moved on to some fresh new horror.

Bouquets of cellophane-wrapped flowers, cards, extinguished candles and blown-up pictures of his daughter packed his front steps and most of the walkway. He parked in the garage, where his truck would be out of view. He didn’t want anyone to know he was home.

The inside was cool, the air stale. He had turned down the heat and drawn the shades and curtains before leaving for the condo in Melrose a few days ago. In the gloom he could see the dirty dishes and empty coffee mugs scattered along the kitchen counters. He was about to check on his mail when he remembered he’d put a hold on it the day he’d left. He would have liked to put a hold on it permanently. The idea of having to go through mountains of awkwardly written condolence cards, notes and letters made him want to scream. These people, he knew, had the best of intentions, but how could you write to someone and say, Gee, I’m real sorry that the sick son of a bitch who abducted and murdered your baby girl accidentally offed himself and didn’t tell anyone where he buried her body? Hallmark really needs to step up, come up with a section of sympathy and anniversary cards for the parents of dead kids, he thought, tossing his keys on to the counter.

His house felt as cold and silent and welcoming as a crypt. He took his phone out of his pocket and turned it off. He didn’t want any interruptions. He dropped the phone on the counter and went into the basement to gather what he needed.

Upstairs in Claire’s room, he pulled back the blackout curtains. The room filled with strong sunlight. Her smell, that essence of her that had been trapped on her pillows, sheets and clothes, was long gone, faded away by time. Everything else remained the same: the drawing table by the window; the autographed picture of Tom Brady given to her by Big Jim; the stack of Barbie toys in the corner – Barbie’s dream house, car and private jet. Barbie even had her own private McDonald’s right next to her mansion.

Four framed photos hung over Claire’s white four-poster bed: a picture of Claire taken in the delivery room; one of Heather holding Claire for the first time; Mickey holding her for the first time; and one of Claire sleeping in her bassinet. The pictures had been her idea, Claire amazed and fascinated that she had once been that small. Mickey had shown her the first time he had held her, a picture taken inside the NICU, where Claire, all three pounds and six ounces of her hooked up to all sorts of wire and tubes, fitted neatly in the cradle of his hand.

So small, he thought. She had been so, so small as a premature baby. She had been one of the lucky ones: she had survived and thrived.

On the last morning that he would see her alive, he had walked into this very room and kissed her on the head, the same ritual he performed every morning before he left for work. He did it because he loved her, but there was another reason: he was terrified something would happen to her. Every morning when he went in to kiss her goodbye, he said a prayer, asking God to keep her safe. If Mickey did it enough, he believed God would spare him the heartache and terror of having the person he loved the most taken from him.

And yet God looked down on him and said, Sorry, I’m taking your daughter too. Nothing personal, Mick. But don’t worry, it’s all part of my divine plan. I’ll fill you in on it someday.

Were Claire and his mother looking down on him right now? He pictured them together in heaven, forever and ever, amen. He had to believe in heaven. He had to believe that there was something more to life – to his life. The pain and suffering, it all had to amount to something.

Before Mickey had become a parent, Big Jim and other guys had told him how his life was going to change – not just his ordinary, day-to-day life, but his inner life. They told him how your kids filled you up with equal amounts of love and fear. That sometimes you’d look at your kid and your heart would expand until you thought it was going to burst. You didn’t know that kind of love until you had a kid, until you changed their diapers, held them when they cried and teethed or got fussy, when they pissed and shat at all hours of the day and night, or when you lay next to them when they were sick, scared, angry or sad. Until they looked into your eyes that first time – really looked into them – and smiled, you couldn’t comprehend how rare that kind of love was, or how it would change everything about you.

But Mickey had already experienced that kind of love, that kind of fear. His mother had packed up and left without him. And then, while she was getting herself set up, making plans to come back and get him, his old man had found out where she was hiding and flown halfway around the world to kill her. Okay, that hadn’t been proven in a court of law, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Big Jim and the other guys, they had no idea what it was like to go through life with a black hole in the centre of your chest.

Make that two black holes. One for his mother, one for his baby girl.

That morning he had looked at Claire sleeping and he knew this was enough. If this was the only thing life gave him, he would die happy. Fulfilled. And he had meant it.

But that life was gone. He couldn’t have it back.

She’d been born premature and survived against the odds and grown into this wonderfully, beautifully stubborn little girl who –

You’ve got to let her go, Heather had told him. You’ve got to move on.

Move on to what?

You’ll figure it out.

I don’t want to figure it out. I want my daughter back.

That life is gone.

My life is gone.

Not true. If you miss your daughter and mother so much, you can join them.

He thought about the 9-millimetre he had stored in the gun safe underneath his bed.

Mickey shook the idea away and then rubbed at his face with the back of his hand, his thoughts turning to the brand-new bottle of Maker’s Mark – the high-end stuff, Maker’s 46 – sitting inside his truck. He wanted a drink or two, but knew that if he left the room he wouldn’t go through with what he had to do.

He started with the Barbie dolls. One by one he picked them up, everything covered in dust. He hadn’t kept up with the cleaning, not as he had in those first few years, when he would come in here pretty much every weekend to clean, Mickey wanting everything to look spotless for the moment when he received the news that Claire had been found. Then he had cleaned the room to try to stay close to her; and, during these last few years, to try to keep his memories of her from fading.

The toys, the clothes and the furniture – those things he would donate to charity. The pictures hanging on the wall would stay here until he was ready to deal with them. The items that held stories and special memories – like the yellow-and-blue teddy bear with the words YOU’RE SPECIAL printed on its belly – he had purchased it at the hospital gift shop the day Claire was born and had left it on her incubator and, later, her crib – these he would box up and bury in the attic, next to his mother’s things.

Mickey took a long, hot shower in Claire’s bathroom. He wrapped the towel around his waist and padded barefoot to his own bathroom, where he shaved and vigorously brushed and gargled with Listerine until his mouth burned and his eyes watered.

Downstairs, he opened the fridge, took out a bottle of water and drank it down. He had to stay hydrated.

And he had to eat. He realized he hadn’t eaten anything since last night. He wasn’t hungry but he knew he had to eat, because only a fool drank on an empty stomach.

His food options were limited. The milk had turned sour and the deli meat smelled funky. He found some Saltines in the cabinet, and, while his stomach welcomed them, it wanted something more substantial, which meant either going out to get food or ordering for delivery. Delivery it was. He turned on his phone, and, as he dialled the number for the sub shop down the street, he heard the steady chime of missed texts and calls coming across the phone’s screen, a steady and annoying ping-ping-ping.

After he called in his order, he scrolled through his messages and calls, found several from Big Jim and Heather, both of whom were checking in to see how he was doing. Darby had also sent him a couple of texts asking if he was okay, if there was anything she could do.

Seeing Darby’s texts made him smile a bit. Beneath that hard, no-bullshit exterior, there was a side to her that only a few people, he knew, got to see – the part of her that would have your back, no matter what. It was one of the many reasons why he’d fallen for her all those years ago.

His phone rang. The Belham Police Station was calling. He answered it, thinking it was Kennedy.

It wasn’t.

‘So you’re going to let me rot,’ Sean said.

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’ Sean sounded out of breath, his voice pinched tight, like a man who had narrowly escaped from drowning. ‘Knowing you, you probably jumped for joy when you heard the news.’

‘I don’t know what you’re –’

‘The hell you don’t. It’s all over the news.’

Mickey hadn’t seen today’s paper. He hadn’t listened to the news in the car or been on the Internet. His gaze travelled to the kitchen table, where his laptop was, and he moved to it.

‘I don’t give a rat’s ass what they say,’ Sean said. ‘I didn’t do it.’

The laptop was already on; the screen came to life when he opened it. He used the touch pad, clicked on the browser, and, after it loaded, he hit the ‘Home’ button, which took him to the homepage for the Boston Globe.

‘You hear what I said, Mickey? I didn’t do it.’

Right there on the front page was a colour picture of Sean in handcuffs, two Boston cops standing on either side of him. The headline above the picture read: ALLEGED HIT MAN FOR IRISH MOB ARRESTED FOR MURDER OF DEFROCKED PRIEST’S BODYGUARD.

‘I’m not using some goddamn public defender,’ Sean said. ‘Give me the name of the guy you used. He got you a good deal.’

Mickey was speed-reading the article, words and phrases jumping off the screen: solid evidence linking Sean to the murder of Byrne’s bodyguard, Nicholas Rossi, who had died from complications he suffered after being burned; Sean’s ‘alleged’ connection to various Mafia figures over the years and his ‘alleged’ involvement in the murders of nearly two dozen people.

‘Are you listening?’ Sean hissed. ‘I only got five minutes.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Call him.’

‘Call who?’

‘Your lawyer!’

‘He died. Use yours. Guys like you have ’em on a retainer, I’m sure.’

‘My guy is staring at a wall and drooling inside a nursing home. You need to get me a criminal lawyer – a good one. The best.’

Sean was having a hard time keeping his fear at bay – was sounding like he was coming apart at the seams. Which surprised Mickey. His old man was a pro at keeping his feelings hidden – especially fear, because showing fear to anyone was showing weakness.

Then he remembered Sean’s terror of tight, confined spaces. Sean never came out and admitted this, of course. It occurred to Mickey as sort of an epiphany one rainy Sunday afternoon during high school, when he was watching The Deer Hunter on cable. Those scenes in which De Niro and Walken were stuffed inside bamboo cages, prisoners of war – that had once been Sean. Sean had been a prisoner of war, and then Mickey finally understood Sean’s almost pathological insistence on taking the stairs or an escalator instead of an elevator; why Sean refused to fly when he could take a train or drive – but only in a large car, like a Cadillac. No small cars for him. (‘There’s no goddamn escape room in those rice burners. You get into an accident, you’re dead.’)

‘So you’ll take care of this, right?’ Sean asked. ‘The lawyer?’

Mickey was thinking about the attic. His mother’s items – the few he had managed to save – were stored inside a shoebox. A month or so after his mother left for Paris, Sean had collected all of her clothes, the pictures – just about every personal item she had left behind – and burned them in an aluminum trashcan in the backyard.

‘Mickey?’

Mickey didn’t answer, grinning at the thought of his old man stuck in a small space, terrified.

‘You rotten prick,’ Sean said and hung up.