her to see her daughter?
“Would you just look at you,” a pretty red-haired waitress exclaimed. “You look frozen to death. Go stand by the fire, luv. Get warm.”
“Don’t have time,” Jax said, coming up behind Marcy and resting a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Me mum’s in need of a toilet,” he announced to the six men gathered at the bar. Marcy winced, then followed the waitress’s raised finger toward the washroom at the back of the dimly lit room. “I’ll have a Guinness,” she heard Jax say.
“Should you be drinking?” Marcy asked when they were back in the car, the open bottle of beer planted firmly between Jax’s sturdy thighs. “I would have thought the driving’s tough enough—”
“Don’t think.”
Don’t think, she heard Sarah say. Just swing.
“I just meant—”
“Not interested in what you meant.” He took a long sip of his beer, and then another, as if to underscore his point. “Uh-oh. I’m forgettin’ me manners,” he said, waving the bottle under her nose. “You want a sip? Don’t be shy, now.”
Marcy turned her head aside, the smell of the beer causing her stomach to lurch. “How much longer?” she asked after another few minutes. It felt as if they’d been driving forever.
“Not much.” He turned down a narrow side road, tossing the now-empty beer bottle into some high grass as he edged the car up the side of a steep cliff. “Too bad it’s so wet and miserable out there. You can’t appreciate the view. It’s pretty spectacular once you reach the top.”
Even with the wind and the rain, Marcy could hear the waves of the Celtic Sea hitting the rocks below. Where the hell was he taking her? “Where are we?” she asked.
He surprised her by answering, “Roaringwater Bay. Good name, eh?”
What was Devon doing in a place called Roaringwater Bay?
She isn’t here, Marcy realized with a certitude that almost took her breath away. The boy had never had any intention of taking her to her daughter. In all likelihood, he was spiriting her as far away from Devon as possible. On Devon’s instructions? she wondered. Had this whole elaborate charade been Devon’s idea? Was everything? Does she hate me that much? Marcy wondered.
Please know how much I love you, how much I’ve always loved you, and how much I always will.
“Did she ever talk about me?” Marcy asked, the question falling from her mouth before she even realized it was forming.
“Audrey?” Jax asked, as if Marcy might have been referring to someone else.
“Her name is Devon,” Marcy said, correcting him.
“She’s Audrey to me.”
“Did she ever talk about … when she was Devon?” Marcy asked tentatively.
“Nah.” The boy shrugged. “Said there wasn’t much to talk about.”
“She never mentioned her brother?”
“Didn’t know she had one.”
“Or her father, or her aunt?”
“The one who was married six times?”
“Five,” Marcy corrected him absently, feeling a stab of unexpected jealousy.
“Said she had a grandma who killed herself.”
“My mother.”
“Know what happened to my ma?” Jax asked, almost proudly.
Marcy shook her head.
“My da killed her.”
“What?”
“It’s the God’s honest truth. He came home drunk one night,” Jax stated casually, as if he were talking about the inclement weather. “And my ma started in on him, accusin’ him of stealin’ the money she had hidden away, money she made from cleanin’ other people’s houses, and they got into it, as riproarin’ a fight as any of us eight kids could remember, and she’s yellin’ and carryin’ on somethin’ fierce, and so he starts pushin’ her around, business as usual when he’s drunk, which is pretty much all the time, except suddenly he’s got this big butcher knife in his hand, and next thing you know, my ma’s lyin’ dead on the floor, her throat slit from ear to ear, blood gushin’ out everywhere, like he’d struck oil or somethin’.”
“Good God.”
“Yeah, well, He was certainly nowhere around that night. Although the place was soon crawlin’ with gardai. They were everywhere. And they’re slippin’ around in all the blood. You should have seen ’em. One of ’em goes crashin’ against the wall, almost breaks a leg. It was pretty funny, I tell you.” He laughed. “So, a few months later, there’s a trial, my da goes to jail, us kids get put in a bunch of foster homes. Big fuckin’ mess.”
“How awful for you. I’m so sorry.”
Jax glanced warily in her direction. “What are you sorry for? You didn’t do it.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“No big deal.”
“Your father killed your mother right in front of you.