pocket and took out my phone. I found what I wanted and then turned the phone toward him.
He squinted at the screen and then reached for his reading glasses, grumbling. Once they were on his face, he took the phone from me and held it up almost to his nose. “A picture of Mrs. Kelly looking away from the camera.”
“Maureen took it of her at the airport and sent it to me.” Since my wife was only going to Italy for a couple of days, I sent Maureen and Connolly with her. The baby, Ryan, had round the clock care at Maureen’s place from nurses who had cared for him at the hospital and were trusted in our community.
He looked up from the screen. “I’m not following.”
I nodded toward it. “That’s what Maureen sent, the picture of her looking behind, along with a caption that said, every five seconds.”
The light went out on the phone, but his face seemed to brighten. He handed the phone back and then patted me on the shoulder. “The girl was waiting for you to come after her, Kelly.”
I turned around to face his retreating back. The smugness rolling off of him was as strong as incense.
“This is a problem,” I said. From all of my experience with women, in the face of Keely Kelly, none of it mattered. I could deal with her games, even her truth, but I had no clue how to deal with her silence, or the reason why she wanted me to come after her if she made it clear she was returning the necklace.
Going after the woman was something a prince would do. My role was the villain in this tale.
“It happens to the best of us!” his voice echoed. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you, lad!” His robes melted into the darkness of the church, where I usually felt more comfortable, and then he was gone, but his low laughter seemed to linger.
As I was walking from the church to Sullivan’s, a whistle sounded from behind me. I turned to find Raff running to catch up. I stopped and waited for him.
He dangled a single key in front of my face.
“I’m not in the mood for fucking riddles,” I said. “Or rhymes.”
“Anybody want a peanut?” he said in an accent I didn’t recognize, and then he grinned at me.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
His head came forward a little, naming the movie. When I didn’t answer, he sighed. “Your wife loves that one.”
Movies. Books. Broadway. My wife seemed to love all of those things.
Movies because her brothers did.
Books because her Da did.
Broadway because her Mam and sister did.
I watched her while she read, while she watched movies, while she performed on stage, and none of those things lit her up like when she was painting the room she had claimed as Connolly’s.
After she was arrested, she’d gotten right back to work on it. She even painted a mural on the wall. She’d told me Mari’s adoptive mother let Mari pick out anything she wanted to paint on the wall in their house. Mari had picked a butterfly.
Keely painted a pink and purple dragon, with an exaggerated smile and long lashes, because she knew it meant something to Connolly. Maureen had told Keely that Connolly’s mother had given her a toy dragon, and the little girl slept with it every night.
Whatever it was between my wife and Connolly was strong. No one was able to bond with the child because she’d been let down by her parents from an early age.
Connolly’s parents had been good people—he had a decent job, she was in college, and they had been together since high school. Then he started selling to make some extra money, then he got hooked, and so did she. A little here. A little there. Until he started mooching off of Maureen until she could hardly pay her bills.
My wife, though, she was a fixer. She wanted to fix all things that seemed crooked. Except she was avoiding fixing the one thing she felt she had no control over: the death of her sister.
When she found out about the bastard who had killed her twin and their grandparents, I knew she assumed it was me who had done it.
It was.
She had called a truce at Sullivan’s because of it. I’d earned her trust, and even more, had her heart without the tug of war—if I wanted it without the fight. There was more to it for me, though. I