As he drove across the bridge, the strangest thing came back to Patrick. Actually, it had come back to him on the drive from the diner. Trying to put together who his father would have been involved with.
They were blackmailing someone; that was clear now. Someone in the Connecticut state government.
Patrick went over everybody. Everyone it could be. It just seemed so out of character. So beyond his father. Until it hit him. From out of left field.
It was something he hadn’t thought of since the funeral. A woman’s voice. A door opened just a crack, only the shadow of her face visible, a look of sadness he had never quite understood.
“That means it was all for nothing then,” she said simply, closing the door.
He had never understood it—what she meant. Until now maybe.
What was all for nothing?
It was Hilary who first put it in his mind. “Who the hell doesn’t have a cell phone today?” she asked. And then bits and pieces just began to come together. How his father had been acting at the end. The calls he had made.
Who came, and who didn’t come, to his funeral.
“He would have given anything for his neighbors, and he did, right, Mrs. O’B?”
Patrick went down the block and knocked on the door of the blue Victorian at the end of the street.
It took a while before he heard the footsteps coming to the door. Mrs. O’Byrne answered.
“I thought you might want some.” Patrick smiled and showed her a warming dish of baked ziti. “I got it at Romano’s.”
“How could I turn that down?” She smiled. “Would you like to come in?”
“Sure.” Patrick stepped through the door. “Just for a minute.”
“It’s very sweet of you,” she said, taking the dish and placing it on a table, “how you’re always thinking of me. I don’t know how I would have made it through this without you. With Rich moved away . . .”
“It’s been my pleasure, Mrs. O’B. You know how fond my dad was of you. You and Mr. O’B both. He was grief-stricken over what happened.”
“As was I,” Sheila O’Byrne said, “about Joe. I miss him every day. Almost as much as I do Tom.”
“I know you do. I know how close the two of you got after the storm. After . . .” After Tom was killed, he meant to say, but stopped.
“Don’t worry.” Mrs. O’B smiled. “You can say it. Yes, your father and I talked almost every day. He was like an anchor for me. Both of you. You Kelty men have good bones.” She grinned.
Patrick laughed. He had grown up looking at her as if she were an aunt and Tom an uncle. “You mind me asking something?”
“Of course not. Come in the kitchen. I’ll put this on the counter. I’ll warm it up tonight. All I had were some leftovers in the fridge.”
Patrick followed her in. Her kitchen was far less rebuilt than his own, though he had pitched in wherever he could, run power from a generator, as the city hadn’t completely restored the wiring yet. He didn’t know how she stayed here in the cold. Inner fortitude or some kind of devotion. The back of their house was still open to the bay, with only a weatherproof tarp holding back the wind and the cold.
He asked, “How come you never came to the funeral, Mrs. O’B? I looked for you there. I even brought you up, about how Dad was always there trying to help rebuild the neighborhood. Especially for you.”
“Even in his condition,” Sheila O’Byrne nodded. “He didn’t say much. But he was tireless.”
“He was. But I looked in the book after I couldn’t find you at St. Barnabas’s. I didn’t see your name anywhere.”
Sheila put down the warming dish on the counter. “Would you like a drink, Patrick? Listen to me, I sound like some lush. I’ve known you since you were three.”
It was true, he’d grown up in this house as much as his own. “Maybe a Diet Coke.”
“Coke? I’m having a gin and tonic. Tom always had one and we’d watch the news together. A beer? You’re old enough.”
“Sure.” He laughed. “A beer would be even better.”
“I couldn’t be there,” she said. “To your question, at my age a woman doesn’t want to deal with more death than she has to, and I’ve had my share, wouldn’t you say? I’m sorry. I know I was his friend. But it’s haunted me. It’s haunted me for a lot of years, Patrick. Then the storm, and Tom and everyone else around here. Then Joe being killed . . . I just couldn’t mourn another person. Not so soon. That’s why I didn’t come. I know I should have been there for him. But I think your father would understand.”
He looked at her and something he saw told him she wasn’t telling him the truth. Not the whole truth, at least. Sheila had twice the inner strength of anyone else he knew. She was in this house when anyone else would have been in a hotel the city put them up in or with their family. His father had called his mother’s cell phone four times the week he died. And there were five calls in return. Whoever had it now.
I’m on my way back wi—
Something was going on.
“I’ll grab the beer out of the garage,” Mrs. O’B said. “I’ll be right back.”
She went out through the mud room. Patrick took his father’s phone out of his pocket and pressed the number he knew by heart. His mom’s old number: 917-904-9991. He could recite it in his sleep.
“I used to think I had the strength for anything,” Mrs. O’B called out from the garage. “Whatever life threw at me. That I could take it, with good ol’ Irish moxie. And not hate the world back. With spite. But this time life has knocked me for a good one, Patrick . . .”
The number connected. There was a pause. Then suddenly he heard a ring. Not a ring, but the trill of a familiar melody. Bach, he was told. But his mother knew it as a song from the sixties. “A Lover’s Concerto”: “How gentle is the rain . . .”
The melody was coming from Mrs. O’B’s living room.
“I hope this is okay.” She came in holding a can of beer. Budweiser.
Then she suddenly stopped, noticing the ring. Looking toward the other room, where it was coming from. Then back at Patrick. Who held up his phone to her.
“Budweiser was Tom’s favorite,” she said guiltily.
“What did you mean that ‘it was all for nothing’?” Patrick asked, pressing the phone with his thumb and cutting off the call. The house turned silent. “When I told you my dad had died in that crash, that’s what you said to me, through the door . . . ‘Then it was all for nothing.’ ”
“I knew I should have let that damn thing just die,” she said, placing the can of beer on the counter. “But I kept it charged. Foolish, right? Like maybe he would call me one more time. And what happened hadn’t taken place.”
“My father was messaging you right before he was killed. It never went through, though.”
“Messaging me? It’s no crime for a friend to give an old woman a cell phone, is it now? Or is that what this country’s coming to?”
“He was letting you know that he was on his way back. At first I thought maybe it was me. My mom’s name was next to mine on his contacts list. But it wasn’t me. It was you. He gave you the phone. He was calling you. Right before he died. Why . . . ?”
“Please, Patrick. He’s dead. The last thing you want to do is drum up—”
“Drum up what, Mrs. O’B? I saw what he was texting. He was letting you know that he was on his way home. But more than that. That he had something with him. And you know exactly what I’m referring to, don’t you? You knew what was in the car and who he had gone to meet.”
“Did you hear what I said before, Patrick? About spite. It’s not a way to live your life. I can attest. So tell me, do you want to live your life in that way too?”
“For God’s sake, Mrs. O’B, he called you a half dozen times in the days leading up to the crash. What did the two of you have going on? I’m not talking as a cop now. But as his son. As someone who’s known you for his whole life. He was doing something for you. Something he couldn’t divulge. And it got him killed.”
Sheila came to at the table. Her face was colorless; wrinkles around her mouth that just a moment ago weren’t even visible now seemed like deep canals. “You’re a good young man, Patrick. Joe loved you. He idolized you when you became a cop. Don’t get yourself involved in something that might tear him down now. And you. Something you’ll regret.”
Patrick kept his eyes trained on her, his gaze burning. “Why?”
She looked up at him. Her mouth twitched once or twice, or maybe she was just shaking her head.
“I know about the money,” Patrick said.
She sniffed, rolling her eyes at him with a scoffing smile as if he was crazy. “What money?”
“The half a million dollars that was in the car. That he was on his way home with. But that never turned up, right, Mrs. O’B?”
She still hesitated, pushing a dish in front of her to the side. “How . . . ?” Then she sat down on a chair. “How did you know?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I need to know what it was about. How my dad got involved.”
“That money . . .” She sniffed again bitterly and looked at him. “You think I cared two shits about the money? For what . . . ? This . . . ? This hellhole I’m left with . . .” Her eyes darted around the house, dark with scorn. “All my memories, gone. Stolen from me. My life . . . It was never about the money, Patrick. Not for a second.” Her eyes grew scornful and Patrick saw something on her face he had never seen before. “It was about making him pay.”
“Who?” Patrick stepped closer to her.
“You heard what I said before . . .” Her eyes flickered like dying embers in a fire and she smiled thinly. “I held it in a long time. But a mother never fully lets it go. I’m talking about spite, Patrick. It’s been in there, it feels like forever, burning a hole in my belly.” She patted her chest. “Every day. Since the day it happened. You want to know? Then you have to know what’s been in my heart since the day my Deirdre never came home. It’s been over twenty years, Patrick. Twenty years . . .”